Just as the plant’s life is confined to the soil, so the first stage is captivated in substantial*> longing. Desire awakens, the ob- ject flees, multiple in its manifestation; longing tears itself loose from the soil and takes to wandering. The flower ac- quires wings and flutters, fitful and tireless, here and there. Desire turns toward the object; it is also internally moved. The heart beats, sound and happy; the objects swiftly appear and vanish, but before each disappearance there is nevertheless an instant of enjoyment, a moment of contact, short but sweet, glowworm brilliant, fitful and fleeting as the alighting of a butterfly, and as harmless, and there are innumerable kisses, but so quickly enjoyed that seemingly only that is taken from one object which is bestowed on the next. Only momentarily is there a presentiment of a deeper desire, but this presentiment is forgotten.
In Papageno, desire aims at discoveries. This urge to dis- cover is the pulsation in it, its liveliness. It does not find the proper object of this exploration, but it discovers the multi- plicity in seeking therein the object that it wants to discover. In this way desire is awakened, but it is not qualified as desire. If it is kept in mind that desire is present in all three stages, then it can be said that in the first stage it is qualified as dreaming, in The Immediate Erotic Stages 81 the second as seeking, in the third as desiring. That is, the seek- ing desire is not yet desiring desire; it is only seeking that which it can desire but does not desire it. Therefore, perhaps the most suggestive predicate for it is: it discovers. If we com- pare Papageno with Don Giovanni, then his journey through the world is something more than a journey of discovery; not only does he enjoy the adventure of a journey of discovery, but he is a knight who is out for victories (veni—vidi—vice [I came, I saw, I conquered]).*° The discovery and the victory are identical here; indeed, in a certain sense one may say that in the victory he forgets the discovery or that the discovery lies be- hind him, and he therefore leaves it to his servant and secretary Leporello, who keeps a list in quite another sense than I would imagine Papageno would keep an account. Papageno selects, Don Giovanni enjoys, Leporello reviews.
As with every stage, I can represent in thought what is char- acteristic of this stage, but always only in the moment it has ceased to be. But even if I could describe ever so completely what is characteristic of it and give the reason for it, there would always be something left over that I cannot express and that nevertheless wants to be heard. It is too immediate to be contained in words. So it is with Papageno—it is the same song, the same melody; he begins all over again as soon as he finishes, and so on continually. The objection could be made to me that it is altogether impossible to express something im- mediate. In a way, this is entirely correct, but, in the first place, the immediacy of spirit has its immediate expression in language, and, in the second place, if a change occurs in it through the intervention of thought, it still remains essentially the same simply because it is a qualification of spirit. But here it is an immediacy of the sensuous, which as such has a com- pletely different medium, where as a consequence the dispar- ity between the media makes the impossibility absolute.
If I were to venture to characterize with a single predicate the Mozart music in the part of the play that concerns us, I would say: It is exuberant, merrily twittering, bubbling over with love. What I must emphasize particularly is the first aria and the chimes; the duet with Pamina and later with Papagena 63 64 82 Either/Or, I falis completely outside the qualification of the immediate- musical. But if one takes the first aria into consideration, then one presumably will approve the predicates I have used and, if one pays closer attention, will also have the opportunity to see what importance the musical has where it appears as the ab- solute expression for the idea and how this as a consequence is immediate-musical. As is known, Papageno accompanies his cheerful liveliness on a reed flute. Surely every ear has felt strangely moved by this accompaniment. But the more one thinks about it, the more one sees in Papageno the mythical Papageno, the more expressive and the more characteristic it proves to be. One does not weary of hearing it over and over again, for it is the absolutely adequate expression of Papage- no’s whole life, whose whole life is such an uninterrupted twittering, without a care twittering away uninterruptedly in complete idleness, and who is happy and contented because this is the substance of his life, happy in his work and happy in his singing. As is known, the opera is very profoundly de- signed in such a way that Tamino’s and Papageno’s flutes har- monize with each other. And yet what a difference! Tamino’s flute, which nevertheless is the one the play is named after, miscarries completely, and why? Because Tamino simply is not a musical character. This is due to the misbegotten struc- ture of the whole opera. Tamino with his flute becomes very boring and sentimental, and if all the rest of his development, his state of consciousness, is considered, then every time he takes out his flute and blows a piece on it one thinks of the peasant in Horace (rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis {the bumpkin waiting for the river to run out]),*” except that Hor- ace did not give his peasant a flute for pointless pastime. As a dramatic character, Tamino is completely beyond the musical, just as in general the spiritual development the play wants to accomplish is a completely unmusical idea. Tamino has simply come so far that the musical ceases, and therefore his flute playing is only a waste of time to drive away thoughts. Music is indeed excellent for driving away thoughts, even evil thoughts, as in the case of David, whose playing is said to have driven away Saul’s evil mood.** But there is a considerable il- The Immediate Erotic Stages 83 lusion here, for it does so only insofar as it leads the conscious- ness back into immediacy and soothes it therein. Therefore, the individual may feel happy in the moment of intoxication but becomes only all the more unhappy. Here I may be per- mitted a comment quite in parenthesi. Music has been used to cure insanity and in a certain sense this goal has been attained, and yet this is an illusion. When insanity has a mental basis, it is always due to a hardening at some point in the conscious- ness. This hardening must be overcome, but for it to be truly overcome the road to be taken must be the very opposite of the one that leads to music. When music is used, one is on the wrong road altogether and makes the patient even more in- sane, even if he seems not to be so anymore.
What I have said about Tamino’s flute playing I presumably can let stand without fear of having it misunderstood. It is not at all my intention to deny what in fact has been acknowledged many times, that music may have its importance as an accom- paniment when entering a foreign domain, namely, the do- main of language. The defect, however, in The Magic Flute is that the whole piece tends toward consciousness, and as a con- sequence the actual tendency of the piece is to annul the music, and yet it is supposed to be an opera, and not even this idea is clear in the piece. Ethically qualified love or marital love is set as the goal of the action, and therein lies the play’s basic defect, for whatever that is, ecclesiastically or secularly speaking, one thing it is not, it is not musical—indeed, it is absolutely un- musical.
The first aria, then, has its great importance musically as the immediate-musical expression of Papageno’s whole life—and history, which is the absolutely adequate expression for this in the same degree that music is, is history only metaphorically. The chimes, however, are the musical expression for his activ- ity, of which, in turn, a notion is gained only through the mu- sic; it is enchanting, tempting, alluring, just like the playing of the man who made the fish stop and listen. *?
The spoken lines, which are either Schikaneder’s or the Danish translator’s,*° are generally so lunatic and foolish that it is almost incomprehensible how Mozart has brought as 65 84 Either/Or, I much out of them as he has done. To have Papageno say of himself, “I am a child of nature,’’*! and then in the very same moment make a liar of himself, can be regarded as an example instar omnium [worth them all]. An exception could be made of the words in the text of the first aria, that he puts the girls he catches into his cage.* If one puts a little more into them than the author himself in all likelihood did, then they characterize precisely the innocence of Papageno’s activity, just as we have suggested above.
We now leave the mythical Papageno. The fate of the actual Papageno cannot concern us. We wish him happiness with his little Papagena, and we gladly let him seek his joy in populat- ing a primeval forest or a whole continent with nothing but Papagenos.¥ THIRD STAGE This stage is epitomized by Don Giovanni. Here lam not in the position, as heretofore, of having to isolate a specific portion of an opera; here the point is not to separate but to synthesize, since the whole opera is essentially the expression of the idea and, with the exception of a few particular numbers, centers essentially in this and with dramatic necessity gravitates to this as its pivot. Here again there will be occasion to see in what sense I can call the previous stages by that name when I call Don Giovanni the third stage. | indicated earlier that they do not have any separate existence, and since my starting point is this third stage, which actually is the whole stage, they cannot very well be regarded as one-sided abstractions or preliminary anticipations, but rather as intimations of Don Giovanni, ex- cept that there still is always something left over that some- what justifies use of the word “‘stage’”—namely, that they are one-sided intimations, that every one of them intimates only one side.
The contradiction in the first stage consisted in the inability of desire to find an object, but, without having desired, desire did possess its object and therefore could not begin desiring. In the second stage, the object appears in its multiplicity, but The Immediate Erotic Stages 85 since desire seeks its object in this multiplicity, in the more profound sense it still has no object; it is still not qualified as desire. In Don Giovanni, however, desire is absolutely quali- fied as desire; intensively and extensively it is the immediate unity of the two previous stages. The first stage ideally desired the one; the second desired the particular in the category of multiplicity; the third stage is the unity of the two. In the par- ticular, desire has its absolute object; it desires the particular absolutely. In this resides the seductiveness that we shall dis- cuss later. In this stage, therefore, desire is absolutely genuine, victorious, triumphant, irresistible, and demonic. Therefore, of course, it must not be overlooked that the issue here is not desire in a particular individual but desire as a principle, qual- ified by spirit as that which spirit excludes. This is the idea of the elemental originality of the sensuous, as suggested above. The expression for this idea is Don Juan, and the expression for Don Juan, in turn, is simply and solely music. It is espe- cially these two observations that will now be stressed contin- ually from various sides, and thereby the classic significance of this opera will be indirectly demonstrated. Meanwhile, to make it easier for the reader to maintain an overview, I shall attempt to gather the scattered observations under specific themes.
To say something specific about this music is not my aim, and with the aid of all congenial spirits I shall take care not to scare up a mass of pointless but very noisy predicates or in lin- guistic excess to make manifest the impotence of language— and all the more so since I regard it not as an imperfection on the part of language but as a high potency, but for this reason Iam more willing to acknowledge music within its boundary. What I want to do, however, is in part to illuminate the idea from as many sides as possible and its relation to language and thereby continually to encompass more and more the territory where music is at home, to provoke it, so to speak, to declare itself, without my being able to say, when it can be heard, any more than: Listen. I think that thereby I have wanted to do the best that esthetics is able to do; whether I shall be successful is another matter. In only a single place will a predicate, like an 67 68 86 Either/Or, I arrest warrant, provide a description of it, but I shall not there- fore forget or allow my reader to forget that the person who has an arrest warrant in his hand has by no means thereby ap- prehended the person it names. Furthermore, the design of the whole opera, its inner structure, will be discussed separately in the appropriate place, but again in such a way that I do not per- mit myself to shout loudly enough for two: Oh, bravo, schwere Noth, Gotts Blitz, bravissimo but just keep on tempting forth the musical and think that thereby I have wanted to do the best one is capable of doing purely esthetically with the musical. Therefore, I shall not give a running commentary on the mu- sic, which essentially cannot contain anything but subjective incidentals and idiosyncrasies and can apply only to something corresponding in the reader. Even a commentator like Dr. Hotho,* so discriminating and fertile in reflection, so copious in expression, has been unable to avoid, on the one hand, hav- ing his interpretation deteriorate into verbiage (which is sup- posed to constitute recompense for Mozart’s sonority or sound like a faint echo, a pale copy of Mozart’s rich, full-toned luxuriance) and, on the other hand, having Don Giovanni at times become more than he is in the opera, become a reflective individual, and at times become less. The latter comes about, of course, because the deep and absolute point of Don Giovanni has escaped Hotho. For him Don Giovanni is still only the best opera; it is not qualitatively different from all other operas. But if one has not discerned this with the ubiquitous certainty of the speculative eye, then one cannot speak worthily or val- idly about Don Giovanni, even though, if one has discerned it, one would be able to speak far more magnificently and richly and, above all, more truthfully about it than the one who here dares to speak.
I shall, however, continually track down the musical in the idea, the situation, etc., explore it by listening, and when I have brought the reader to the point of being so musically re- ceptive that he seems to hear the music although he hears noth- ing, then I shall have finished my task, then I shall fall silent, then I shall say to the reader, as I say to myself: Listen. You friendly jinn who protect all innocent love, I commit my The Immediate Erotic Stages 87 whole mind to you; guard my laboring thoughts so that they may be found worthy of the subject; form my soul into a eu- phonious instrument; let the gentle breeze of eloquence hasten over it; send the refreshment and blessing of fruitful moods! You righteous spirits, you who guard the boundaries of the kingdom of beauty, guard me lest I, in confused enthusiasm and blind zeal to make Don Giovanni all in all, do it an injustice, disparage it, make it something other than what it really is, which is the highest! You powerful spirits who know how to grasp men’s hearts, stand by me so that I may capture the reader, not in the net of passion or the wiles of eloquence, but in the eternal truth of conviction.
1. The Elementary Originality of the Sensuous Qualified as Seduction When the idea of Don Juan emerged is not known; only this much is certain—that it is linked to Christianity and through Christianity to the Middle Ages. Even if the idea could not be traced with some certainty back to this world-historical period in the human consciousness, every doubt would be removed at once by a consideration of the inner nature of the idea. On the whole, the Middle Ages is the idea, partly conscious, partly unconscious, of representation; the totality is repre- sented in a particular individual, yet in such a way that it is only a particular aspect that is defined as the totality and that is now manifest in a particular individual, who is therefore both more than and less than an individual. Then alongside this in- dividual stands another individual, who just as totally repre- sents another aspect of the content of life—for example, the knight and the scholastic, the clergyman and the layman. Here the great dialectic of life is continually exemplified in repre- sentative individuals, who are ordinarily paired opposite to each other. Life is continually approached sub una specie [under one form], and there is no inkling of the great dialectical unity that life possesses in unity sub utraque specie [under both forms].*° The contrasts, therefore, are generally indifferent, detached from one another. Of this the Middle Ages was not aware. Thus the Middle Ages itself actualized the idea of rep- 69 88 Either/Or, I resentation unconsciously, whereas a later reflection first per- ceives the idea in it.
If the Middle Ages places before its own consciousness an individual as representative of the idea, then it usually places another individual] alongside him in relation to him. This re- lation, then, is customarily a comic relation, in which one in- dividual, as it were, makes up for the other’s disproportionate magnitude in actual life. For example, the king has the fool by his side, Faust has Wagner, Don Quixote has Sancho Panza, Don Juan has Leporello. This structure also is linked essen- tially to the Middle Ages. Consequently the idea is linked to the Middle Ages, but in the Middle Ages it is not linked to a particular poet—it is one of those powerful, primitive ideas that emerge from the folk consciousness with autochthonic originality.
The Middle Ages had to make the discord between the flesh and the spirit that Christianity brought into the world the sub- ject of its reflection and to that end personified each of the con- flicting forces. Don Juan, then, if I dare say so, is the incarna- tion of the flesh, or the inspiration of the flesh by the spirit of the flesh itself. This notion has already been brought out suf- ficiently in the foregoing discussion; what I would like to call attention to here, however, is whether Don Juan ought to be assigned to the earlier or later Middle Ages. That he stands in an essential relation to the Middle Ages is easy for anyone to see. Either he is the contentious, mistaken anticipation of the erotic, which became manifest in the knight, or chivalry is still only a relative contrast to spirit, and not until the contrast split even more deeply did Don Juan emerge as sensuality that is mortally opposed to spirit. The erotic in the age of chivalry has a certain resemblance to that in Greek culture in that both are psychically qualified, but the difference is that its psychical qualification lies within a universal spiritual qualification or a qualification as totality. The idea of femininity is continually in motion in many ways, which was not the case in Greek cul- ture, where everyone was just the beautiful individuality but there was no intimation of femininity. Therefore, in the con- sciousness of the Middle Ages, the erotic of chivalry was also The Immediate Erotic Stages 89 in a moderately conciliatory relation to spirit, even though spirit in its zealous rigor held it suspect.
If the point of departure is that the principle of spirit is pos- ited in the world, then, on the one hand, it may be supposed that the most striking contrast, the most scandalous separa- tion, was the first to appear, and thereafter it was gradually mitigated. In that case, Don Juan belongs to the earlier Middle Ages. But ifit is assumed that the relation gradually developed into this absolute contrast, which is also more natural inas- much as spirit takes more and more of its shares of stock out of the united corporation in order to work alone, whereby the real oxdvdahov [offense] comes to light, then Don Juan belongs to the later Middle Ages. Then we are led in time to the point where the Middle Ages begins to soar, where we then also meet a related idea, namely, Faust, except that Don Juan must be placed a little earlier. As spirit, qualified solely as spirit, re- nounces this world, feels that the world not only is not its home but is not even its stage, and withdraws into the higher realms, it leaves the worldly behind as the playground for the power with which it has always been in conflict and to which it now yields ground. Then, as spirit disengages itself from the earth, the sensuous shows itself in all its power. It has no ob- jection to the change; indeed, it perceives the advantage in being separated and is happy that the Church does not induce them to remain together but cuts in two the band that binds them.
Stronger than ever before, the sensuous now awakens in al] its profusion, in all its rapture and exultation, and—just as that hermit in nature, taciturn echo, who never speaks first to any- one or speaks without being asked, derived such great pleasure from the knight’s hunting horn and from his melodies of erotic love [Elskov], from the baying of the hounds, from the snorting of the horses, that it never wearied of repeating it again and again and finally, as it were, repeated it very softly to itself in order not to forget it—so it was that the whole world on all sides became a reverberating abode for the worldly spirit of sensuousness, whereas spirit had forsaken the world.
71 72 90 Either/Or, I In the Middle Ages, much was told about a mountain that is not found on any map; it is called Mount Venus. There sen- suousness has its home; there it has its wild pleasures, for it is a kingdom, a state. In this kingdom, language has no home, nor the collectedness of thought, nor the laborious achieve- ments of reflection; there is heard only the elemental voice of passion, the play of desires, the wild noise of intoxication. There everything is only one giddy round of pleasure. The firstborn of this kingdom is Don Juan. But it is not said thereby that it is the kingdom of sin, for it must be contained in the moment when it appears in esthetic indifference. Only when reflection enters in does the kingdom manifest itself as the kingdom of sin, but then Don Juan has been slain, then the music stops, then one sees only the desperate defiance that powerlessly resists but can find no firm ground, not even in sounds. When sensuousness manifests itself as that which must be excluded, as that with which the spirit does not wish to be involved, but when spirit has not as yet convicted it or condemned it, sensuousness takes this form, is the demonic in esthetic indifference. It is a matter of only a moment; soon all is changed, and then the music, too, is over. Faust and Don Juan are the Middle Ages’ titans and giants, who in the grand- ness of their achievements are not different from those of antiquity, except admittedly in this, that they stand isolated, do not form an amalgamation of powers that only through amal- gamation become heaven-storming; instead, all the power is concentrated in this one individual.
Don Juan, then, is the expression for the demonic qualified as the sensuous; Faust is the expression for the demonic quali- fied as the spiritual that the Christian spirit excludes. These ideas have an essential relation to each other and are very sim- ilar, and consequently it could be expected that they also have this in common, that both have been preserved in a legend. As is known, this is the case with Faust. There is a folk book,** the title of which is rather familiar even though the book itself is little used, which is especially strange in our age when every- body is so engrossed in the idea of Faust. So it goes—while every would-be assistant professor or professor thinks he will The Immediate Erotic Stages 91 be accredited as intellectually mature by the reading public through the publication of a book about Faust, in which he faithfully repeats what all the other graduates and scholarly confirmands have already said, he thinks he dares to ignore such an insignificant little folk book. It never occurs to him how beautiful it is that true greatness is common to all, that a farmhand goes to Tribler’s widow“ or to a ballad-monger on Halmtorv® and reads it half aloud to himself at the same time Goethe is writing a Faust. Indeed, this folk book deserves at- tention. Above all, it has what is praised as a commendable quality in wine: it has bouquet. It is a splendid vintage from the Middle Ages, and, when it is opened, such an aromatic, deli- cious, and distinctive fragrance flows forth that one has a very special feeling.
But enough of this. I would only point out that there is no such legend about Don Juan. No folk book, no ballad has pre- served his memory by being published continually this year.°° Presumably a legend has existed nevertheless, but in all prob- ability it was limited to only a few hints that were perhaps even briefer than the few stanzas on which Birger’s Lenore*! is based. Perhaps it contained only a number, for, unless I am greatly mistaken, the present number, 1,003,°? does belong to a legend. A legend that has nothing else seems somewhat mea- ger and in a way easily accounts for its not being written down, but still this number has an excellent quality, a lyrical recklessness, which many perhaps do not notice because they are so accustomed to seeing it. Although this idea has not found its expression in a folk legend, it has been preserved in another way. As is known, Don Juan existed long ago as mel- odrama; indeed, this was probably its first existence. But here the idea was conceived comically; moreover, it is noteworthy that just as the Middle Ages was very proficient in fitting out ideals, it was equally sure to see the comic in the preternatural magnitude of the ideal. To make Don Juan a braggart who imagined he had seduced all the girls and to have Leporello be- lieve his lies certainly was not an altogether bad comic design. And even if that has not been the case, even if that has not been the idea, the comic twist still could never be avoided, since it 74 92 Either/Or, I is implicit in the contradiction between the hero and the arena in which he moves. Thus the Middle Ages may be allowed to tell about heroes so mightily constructed that their eyes were a foot apart, but if an ordinary man were to come onstage and pretend to have eyes a foot apart, the comic would be well under way.
The above remarks about the legend of Don Juan would not have been included here if they were not closely related to the subject of this study, if they did not serve to lead our thoughts to the goal already set. The reason that this idea, compared with Faust, has such a meager past is no doubt due to some- thing enigmatic in it as long as it was not perceived that music is its proper medium. Faust is idea, but an idea that also is es- sentially an individual. To conceive of the spiritual-demonic concentrated in one individual is natural to thought, whereas to conceive of the sensuous in one individual is impossible. Don Juan continually hovers between being idea—that is, power, life—and being an individual. But this hovering is the musical vibration. When the sea heaves and is rough, the seething waves in their turbulence form pictures resembling creatures; it seems as if it were these creatures that set the waves in motion, and yet it is, conversely, the swelling waves that form them. Thus, Don Juan is a picture that is continually coming into view but does not attain form and consistency, an individual who is continually being formed but is never fin- ished, about whose history one cannot learn except by listen- ing to the noise of the waves.
When Don Juan is comprehended in this way, there is meaning and deep significance in everything. If I imagine a particular individual, if I see him or hear him talk, then his having seduced 1,003 becomes comic; for as soon as he is a par- ticular individual, the accent falls on an altogether different place—that is, the emphasis is on those whom he has seduced and how. The naiveté of legend and popular superstition can successfully state such things without hinting at the comic; for reflection, this is not possible. But when he is conceived in music, then I do not have the particular individual, then I have a force of nature, the demonic, which no more wearies of se- The Immediate Erotic Stages 93 ducing or is through with seducing than the wind with blow- ing a gale, the sea with rocking, or a waterfall with plunging down from the heights. For that matter, the number of the se- duced can just as well be any number whatever, a much larger number.