Und mag er schleudern seines feurigen Blitzes Loh'n,
In weissen Schneesturms Ungewittern, in Donnerhall
Der unterirdischen Tiefe werwirren mischen das All:
Nichts dessen wird mir beugen!
Then arises the belief in a deliverer, a faith motif which is one of those heartfelt inventions of the melodic Liszt. After this the struggle continues. Magnificently, the god, believing in his own obstinate will for freedom, the composition concludes on this supreme note.
MAZEPPA
The sixth of Liszt's symphonic poems, Mazeppa, has done more than any other to earn for its composer the disparaging comment that his piano music was orchestral and his orchestral music Klaviermässig. This Solomon judgment usually proceeds from the wise ones, who are aware that the first form of Liszt's Mazeppa was a piano étude which appeared somewhere toward the end of 1830.
Liszt's orchestral version of Mazeppa was completed the middle of last century and had its first hearing at Weimar in 1854. Naturally this is a work of much greater proportion than the original piano étude; it is, as some one has said, in the same ratio as is a panoramic picture to a preliminary sketch.
The story of the Cossack hetman has inspired poets and at least one painter. Horace Vernet—who, as Heine said, painted everything hastily, almost after the manner of a maker of pamphlets—put the subject on canvas twice; the Russian, Bulgarin, made a novel of it; Voltaire mentioned the incident in his History of Charles the Twelfth; Byron moulded the tale into rhyme, as did Victor Hugo—and the latter poem was used by Liszt for the outline for his composition.
The amorous Mazeppa was of noble birth—so runs the tale. But while he was page to Jan Casimir, King of Poland, he intrigued with Theresia the young wife of a Podolian count. Their love was discovered and the count had the page lashed to a wild horse—un cheval farouche, as Voltaire has it—which was turned loose.
From all accounts the beast did not allow grass to grow under its hoofs, but lashed out with the envious speed of the wind. It so happened that the horse was "a noble steed, a Tartar of the Ukraine breed." Therefore it headed for the Ukraine, which woolly country it reached with its burden; then it promptly dropped dead.
Mazeppa was unhanded or unhorsed by a friendly Cossack and nursed back to happiness. Soon he grew in stature and in power, becoming an Ukraine prince; as the latter he fought against Russia at Pultowa.