Paradoxically peace was made the
occasion for a struggle; it had to be wrested from life. No victory is
such unless well fought for and dearly bought.
This eternal struggle with fate, this conflict forever raging in the
heart, runs through all the Symphonies, but nowhere is it so strongly
depicted as in this, his last. We have here in new picturing, humanity
at bay, as in the recently completed Kyrie of the grand mass. The
apparently uneven battle of the individual with fate,--the plight of the
human being who finds himself a denizen of a world with which he is
entirely out of harmony, who, wrought up to despair, finds life
impossible yet fears to die,--is here portrayed in dramatic language. To
Wagner the first movement pictured to him "the idea of the world in its
most terrible of lights," something to recoil from. "Beethoven in the
Ninth Symphony," he says, "leads us through the torment of the world
relentlessly until the ode to joy is reached."
Great souls have always taught that the only relief for this
_Weltschmerz_ is through the power of love; that universal love alone
can transform and redeem the world.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248