Object #42

Arnold Schönberg
Gustav Mahler
1912

Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien

“We are to continue to battle and struggle, to yearn and desire. And it is to be denied us to see this light as long as it remains with us. We are to remain blind until we have acquired eyes. Eyes that see the future. Eyes that penetrate more than the sensual, which is only a likeness; that penetrate the supersensual. Our soul shall be the eye. We have a duty: to win for ourselves an immortal soul. [...] We already possess it in the future; we must bring it about that this future becomes our present. That we live in this future alone, and not in a present which is only a likeness, and which, as every likeness, is inadequate.”
Arnold Schönberg held his lecture on Gustav Mahler for the first time on March 25, 1912 in Prague prior to a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky. In the final movement of this symphony, the "Chorus Mysticus" sings the closing words from Goethe’s Faust: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis; das Unzulängliche, hier wird’s Ereignis” [All that passes is only a likeness; the unattainable here is achieved.].