Read Online Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann - Free Book Online Page B

tempo with unsettlingly long pauses between the individual phrases. The
Sehnsuchtsmotiv
, a lonely and wayward voice in the night, softly made its fearful question heard. Silence and waiting. And look: the answer. That same timid and lonely sound, only a bit brighter and more tender. Renewed silence. Then, in that wonderful hushed sforzando, came the
Liebesmotiv
that is so like passion stirring and arising in sacred revolt. It ascended, climbed ecstatically upward toward sweet entanglement, then sank back, disengaging itself, as the cellos emerged with their deep song of heavy, anguished rapture to carry the melody . . .
    With not inconsiderable success, the pianist strove to suggest on this poor instrument the effects of an orchestra. The violin runs of the great crescendo sounded with shining precision. Playing with keen reverence, she lingered piously over every theme and emphasized each individual passage with humble insistence, like a priest raising the Holy Communion over his head. What was happening? Two forces, two enraptured beings reached out in suffering and bliss toward one other and embraced in the ecstatic, frenzied pursuit of the eternal and the absolute . . . The prelude blazed, then died down. She concluded at the parting of the curtains and continued to gaze silently at the music.
    Meanwhile, in Mrs. Spatz, boredom had reached that point where it distorts the human countenance, causing the eyes to bulge and giving the face a hideous,corpselike look. This sort of music upset the nerves in her stomach, filling the dyspeptic magistrate’s wife with such anxiety that she feared an attack of cramps.
    â€œI’m afraid I must go to my room,” she said weakly. “Farewell, I’ll be back . . .”
    With that she left. The light had grown much dimmer. Outside you could see the snow falling thick and silent on the terrace. The two candles gave off a close, flickering light.
    â€œThe second act,” he whispered, and she turned the pages and began the second act.
    The horns died away in the distance. Or was it the rustling leaves? The gentle murmuring of the fountain? Already night’s silence had swathed hedge and house, and pleading admonitions could no longer check the sway of passion. The sacred mystery was consummated. The torch was extinguished, the
Todesmotiv
descended with an unearthly, suddenly muted timbre, and restless with impatience, longing waved her white veil at the beloved, who was approaching, arms outspread, through the darkness.
    O torrential and unquenchable exultation at union in the eternal realm beyond things! Liberated from agonizing delusion, delivered from the bonds of space and time, thou and I, thine and mine melted together in sublime bliss. Though the day’s thievish illusions might still divide them, those nocturnal seers could no longer be blinded by its pompous lies, for the love philter had initiated their vision. For him who had lovingly gazed into death’s night and its secret, there remained in the madness of day but one desire, the longing for that sacred night, unending and true, that unifying . . .
    O fall upon them, night of love, grant them the oblivion they crave, wrap them wholly in your bliss and free them from the world of deception and division. Behold the last torch extinguished! Reason and supposition founder in the sacred twilight that spreads out, world redeeming, over the agonies of madness. Then, when the illusions fade, when mine eye bursts with delight, and that from which the day’s lies have excluded me, thatwhich it has falsely and to my eternal agony pitted against longing—then I, o miracle of fulfillment! then
I myself
am the world. And there followed, during Brangäne’s dark song of warning, that ascending violin phrase that surpasses all reason.
    â€œI don’t understand it all, Mr. Spinell; a lot of it I can only sense. This part ‘then—I myself am the