Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I NEED AND RECOGNITION
- PART II COMPASSION
- PART III ASCENTS OF LOVE
- 9 Ladders of Love
- 10 Contemplative Creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust
- 11 The Christian Ascent: Augustine
- 12 The Christian Ascent: Dante
- 13 The Romantic Ascent: Emily Brontë
- 14 The Romantic Ascent: Mahler
- 15 Democratic Desire: Walt Whitman
- 16 The Transfiguration of Everyday Life: Joyce
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Name Index
- Subject Index
14 - The Romantic Ascent: Mahler
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I NEED AND RECOGNITION
- PART II COMPASSION
- PART III ASCENTS OF LOVE
- 9 Ladders of Love
- 10 Contemplative Creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust
- 11 The Christian Ascent: Augustine
- 12 The Christian Ascent: Dante
- 13 The Romantic Ascent: Emily Brontë
- 14 The Romantic Ascent: Mahler
- 15 Democratic Desire: Walt Whitman
- 16 The Transfiguration of Everyday Life: Joyce
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
THE HOT STRIVING OF LOVE
The violins and violas joyfully leap up, bursting into a realm of brightness, where the harp celebrates their arrival. The contralto voice now follows – the dark voice that has sung of the terrible neediness of human life – celebrating, in her free springing movement, release from “all-penetrating pain.” With a sensuous soaring movement the two female voices spiral around one another, like serpents made of light, coiling through the sky with the strings and harp, winged by their own passionate energy:
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen,
In heissem Liebesstreben
Werd' ich entschweben
Zum Licht, zu dem kein Aug' gedrungen!
With wings that I have won for myself
In the hot striving of love
I will soar away
To the light to which no eye has penetrated.
The choice of two female voices is significant: for, as we have seen, Mahler frequently drew attention to the connection of his creativity with a female or receptive element in the personality, which is, as he puts it, “played on by the spirit of the world.” And as the voices rise to the hidden world of light, wrestling upward in separate striving movements, each uttering separately the passionate words of love, they arrive together at the summit, at the words “zum Licht” – the soprano a third above the contralto, suddenly hushed in triumph.
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- Upheavals of ThoughtThe Intelligence of Emotions, pp. 614 - 644Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001