Painting a Dream...
Elizabeth Majoros, First Year (Spring 2019)
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton
As first-year students, we found ourselves immersed in the modal tones of the Norwegian mystery story The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson in December and January. In this song, which Rudolf Steiner refers to as one of the last authentic stories of initiation, a man experiences a profound, life-changing journey in his sleep during the Holy Nights of Christmastide, and appears at the church to tell about it. Our teacher, Bonnie Manaças, first learned of this version from a Norwegian eurythmist friend who had been singing it in Norwegian Stave churches at Christmastime. They worked on translating it directly from Norwegian to English, instead of from Norwegian to German to English. The evocative music itself was set in the modes of the ancient Norwegian folk music. Previously, Bonnie had brought The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson to three of the Waldorf school classes that she taught, and they sang and performed it. At the seminary, Bonnie would sing us a portion of the song each week, and lead us in a watercolor painting exercise. Listening to Bonnie, and then immersing ourselves in the watercolors, was for us a meditative soul experience, where we lived in the moods and the pictures through hearing and then made them visible on paper. It lent a depth to our study of Rudolf Steiner’s Christianity as Mystical Fact in another class. There we looked at the initiation experience in general, objective terms; here, we dreamed into it ourselves. Even now, months later, the melodies and pictures echo in my soul.
