A summer thunderstorm approaches and would attempt to disturb the peace of a cemetary.If you click on any photo, you will see the orignal (larger) size, revealing many details. Here the clouds are stunning - mountains and valleys parading across the sky, but yet there is terror to this beauty - wind, hail, lightning, flash floods not only participate in, but are this beauty also.
Towards the end of the last movement in Mahler's second symphony one experiences a musical version of this. The text speaks of dying in order to live, of rising again, and as the gigantic orchestra, organ, and massive choir, supported by rumbling bass drums and tympani, prepare the listener for the revelation of this resurrection, one of those rare moments of sublime beauty occur that strikes terror in you - as if you must shout "stop this, I can't take any more of this beauty!" while you begin to writhe.
I think this is what the authors recording theophanies in the Old Testament experienced when they saw the God of Israel on the mountain; beauty and truth simply too intense and too much for a human in this life to process and deal with.
But we keep seeking and creating - or imitating - truth and beauty; our destiny or a diversion?
1 Kommentar:
Perhaps it is flesh that cannot cope with such truth and beauty. It is certainly too flawed to deal with the truth in it's (collective) present state. Maybe that is why we need the eternal to cope.
Kommentar veröffentlichen