From EITHER/OR (1843)
On Mozart's DON GIOVANNI.
“If you cannot get an idea of Dion Giovanni by hearing him, then you never will. Listen to the beginning of his life; just as the lightning is discharged from the darkness of the thunderclouds, so he bursts out of the abyss of earnestness…. Hear how he plunges down into the multiplicity of life, how he breaks against its solid embankment. Hear these light, dancing violin notes, hear the intimation of joy, hear the jubilation of delight, hear the festive bliss of enjoyment. Hear his wild flight; he speeds past himself, ever faster, never pausing. Hear the unrestrained craving of passion, hear the sighing of erotic love, hear the whisper of temptation, hear the vortex of seduction, hear the stillness of the moment—hear, hear, hear Mozart’s Don Giovanni.”
The above passage is taken from “The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic,” the second major section of the first part of Either/Or. As such, it is attributed to the aesthete known only as “A,” whose dark yet poetic musings make up the “Either” to Part Two’s ethically-oriented “Or.” Here “A” lauds Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni, thereby indicating the main argument of his essay—that Mozart’s masterpiece epitomizes the very nature of Musik.
As “A” sees it, artistic media convey ideas, but not all media are suited to convey the same idea. For example, if one were to want to give expression to the idea of sensuality, one would need a correspondingly abstract medium, since the sensuous “continually moves within immediacy.” As it turns out, music is best qualified to convey immediacy, because, unlike language, it does not represent or promote reflection. It unfolds “in a succession of instants.” That is why “A” is so awed by Mozart’s Don Giovanni: it musically captures the very idea of sensuality, personified by the legendary rake Don Juan.
Yet, towards the end of his piece, “A” observes that one figure serves to disrupt the musical immediacy of the opera’s title character—namely, Il Commendatore, the deceased father of one of Don Juan’s conquests. At opera’s end, Il Commendatore appears to his enemy “as spirit, and the thundering voice of heaven sounds in his earnest, solemn voice. … [H]e no longer speaks, he passes judgment.” In this way, the rake is punished, cast into the fires of hell.