[The Allegro.]
"Quando Giove fu arcanamente giusto."
"Ich glaube, nur Gott versteht unser Musik."
These two mottoes, from Dante and Jean Paul, give some sort of expression to the feelings excited by this music—music which makes rather premature that offer of a premium for a new epithet, at Symphony, No. 2. And yet it is distinctly the same Beethoven here, only full grown; not only serpent-strangling, but hydra-killing and labour-doing Hercules. Jove, left for ever the society of the nymphs, and speaking from the central throne, orcanamente giusto. One is certain, Beethoven himself could not have explained this music; there is such a mysterious pregnancy in it, such a holy ominousness (if not played too fast), such a shadowy sorrow, such other-world tones of pathos and resolution and triumph. This is a message the prophet does not dream of daring to try and comprehend; an utterance which oracle itself would never attempt to explain. This is the sort of music Jean Paul alluded to, when he declared that it was above our own understanding, clear only to the Divine. This is the sort of music which might illustrate his sublime utterance, "Women are beautiful, because they suffer so much." Here (once more), we have the Invisible Host chaunting in almost appalling mournfulness round the cross, or the tomb—"It is over; it is over. The Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief! Thus have they 'done to death' their Highest among them!" But then—
ensues such high retrospect and encouragement—
"Love bears it out even to the end of doom;"
then such angelic clamour of triumph—"O grave, where is thy victory! O death, where is thy sting?" This, too, is a walk "over the field of battle by night" (Marx, re the Funeral March, Eroica); but it is another battle-field than a Napoleonic one—the world is the field, and Heroic Love has gone down on it, like a cloven star at sea. The world is the field, and the highest and the lowest in us doing battle therein, amidst heaps of slain. Poor humanity!
It has been a fearful conflict. What do we not deplore? But, lo! as the infernal volumes roll sluggishly away, as though loth to quit the hateful banquet, high above all an unspeakable orb shines through, the orb of promise and peace. "Ach!" poor man, there is enough, indeed, to root pessimism in thee; evil seems to have nestled in every pore; life seems to try how hard she can make it to live; thou thyself shudderest at thy self; art tortured by appetites, goaded by passions, infested by thoughts, distracted by doubts, almost driven to despair. But, no! do not despair. Progress is slow, but sure. All is justified at last; and higher life lightens in the dawn. Nay, even if thy dearest hope be a dream—that word too great for any mouth, Immortality—be good (great and strong) here; that, if not so happy, is a still higher immortality—
"Then what could death do, if thou should'st depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?"