We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
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.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
