This last work of Mozart's has a companion piece in Lessing's last work: "Nathan the Wise." In both of them the soul wings its flight far beyond the disjointed, struggling world and dwells in the pure region beyond, where peace and piety have become actual existences, and where the vexations of narrow, circumscribed, finite humanity provoke but a smile. The great treasure of humanity is not buried in the past; it must be dug out, fashioned and created from the future.
"Nathan" and the "Magic Flute" abound with precious gems. They prove that happiness is not an illusion, but they speak in a language unintelligible to him who does not bear within himself a sense of things above this life.
To have lived such hours is life eternal.
The song of the three boys is full of divine bliss. If the angels in Raphael's Sistine Madonna were to sing, such would be their melodies, and in this register would their voices move.
I would like to hear such sounds at my dying hour, for that would be an ecstatic death.
If such ecstasy could only continue without interruption.
After the opera was over, I sat in the park for a long time. All was dark and silent.
Filled with this music, I would gladly fly back to my forest solitude, have nothing more to do with the world, and silently pass away. After these, no other tones should fall upon my ear and disturb me.
But I was obliged to return to the world.
And here I sit, late at night, the whole world resting in sleep and self-oblivion, while I am awake in self-oblivion.