Monday, June 13, 2005
ADRIENNE VON SPEYER
There is little available about her in English. A reader sent in a rambling essay from the Asia Times website that happens to mention her at the end:
Late in his life, von Balthasar envisioned Mozart among the saints in heaven during sessions with his spiritual muse Adrienne von Speyr. "Can you see Mozart?" von Balthasar would ask Adrienne, the co-founder of his Community of St John. "Yes, I see him," Adrienne would smile.
Yes, I see him praying. I see him praying something, maybe an Our Father. Simple words, which he learned in his childhood, and which he prays in awareness that he is speaking with God. And then he stands before God like a child, bringing his father everything: pebbles from the street and special twigs and little blades of grass, and once a ladybird as well, and with him all these are melodies, melodies which he brings the dear Lord, melodies which he suddenly knows in prayer [12].
That doesn't sound like the Mozart who wrote Don Giovanni , not to mention some particularly ribald canons [13].
How much more of von Balthasar's theology came from von Speyer's visions? And even more to the point, how much of John Paul's theology came from von Speyer via von Balthasar?
