[776W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 86-87]
[P. 86] {FEUER} “Here the might of the musician is conceivable as nothing but Magic. It certainly is an enchanted state into which we fall while listening to a true Beethovenian masterwork, when in every particle of the piece – which our sober senses would tell us was merely the technical means of exhibiting a given form – we discern a supernatural life (geisterhafte Lebendigkeit), an agency now soothing now appalling, a [P. 87] pulse, a thrill, a throb of joy, of yearning, fearing, grief and ecstasy, whilst it all appears to take its motion from the depths of our own inner being.” [776W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 86-87]
[777W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 92-93]
[P. 92] “But the blinded Seer we know. Tiresias to whom the world of Appearance has closed itself, and whose inner eye beholds instead the ground of all appearances: his fellow is the deaf-musician who now, untroubled by life’s uproar, but listens to his inner harmonies, now from his depths but speaks to that world – for it has nothing more to tell him. So is genius freed from all outside it, at home forever with and in itself. (…)
(…) And all his seeing and his fashioning is steeped in that marvellous serenity (Heiterkeit) which Music first acquired through him. Even the cry, so immanent in every sound of Nature, is lulled to smiling: the world regains its childhood’s innocence. ‘To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise’ – who has not heard these words of the Redeemer, when listening to the ‘Pastoral Symphony’?
{FEUER} Now thrives apace that power of shaping the unfathomable, the never-seen, thene’er experienced, which yet becomes a most immediate experience, of most transparent comprehensibility. The joy of wielding this new power turns next to humour: all grief of Being breaks before this vast enjoyment of the play therewith; the world-creator Brahma [P. 93] is laughing at himself [* Translator’s Footnote: “Cf. Wotan in Siegfried; ‘my jovial god who craveshis own undoing.’ (Letter to A. Roeckel, Jan. 1854).], as he sees how hugely he had duped himself;guiltlessness re-won disports it with the sting of guilt atoned; freed conscience banters with itstorment overpassed.
{FEUER} (…) The effect upon the hearer is precisely the deliverance from allearthly guilt, as the after-effect is the feeling of a forfeited paradise wherewith we return to the world of semblances.” [777W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 92-93]
[778W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 93]
[P. 93] {FEUER} “Here the only aesthetic term to use, is the Sublime: for here the operation of the Radiant at once transcends all pleasure in the Beautiful, and leaves it far behind. Each challenge of self-vaunting Reason is hushed forthwith by the Magic mastering our whole nature; knowledge pleads confession of its error, and the transport of that avowal bids our deepest soul to shout for joy … .” [778W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 93]
