Between the years 2003 – 2010 and ultimately until 2016, I dedicated a large portion of my life to a project which, in many ways, is much more than a project. During those years, I was literally living for and through this incredible, humbling mission. It has always been my deepest wish that Gustav Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony would be heard in its full grandeur. Unfortunately this will never be possible, because only Mahler himself could take us on this journey. I decided to dedicate all the resources that I had – first and foremost my love for this music, my complete dedication to its cause, and my deep conviction that it is uniquely crucial and necessary – to bringing it as close as possible to a living, breathing concert piece.
I have been extremely privileged to be able to publish my version of Mahler’s 10th Symphony with SCHOTT Music, as well as record it with my beloved International Mahler Orchestra for the label WERGO. Here is an excerpt from the text I have written as an introduction to the publication of the study score.
If you would like to download the complete text, please click here for the English version and here for the German version.
For more information on the publication as well as enquiries regarding hiring the orchestral material, please click here. If you would like to purchase the study-score via SCHOTT please click here. For more information and purchase of the CD via WERGO click here.
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Excerpt from the English Text:
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It is difficult to put into a few words the meaning of a process more meaningful to me than any words can describe. Mahler’s 10th Symphony has been essential to my life for years, it has become an inseparable part of my identity, we have almost become one – therefore I will share with you our story.
I first came in contact with the Adagio from Gustav Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony when I was about 12 or 13 years old, whilst fishing curiously amidst a jungle of books and scores in a local library. Ever since my early childhood it was clear to me that Mahler’s music was going to play a principal and quite unique role in my life. But the sheer extent to which this has been true is greater than I could have ever imagined.
Already at first glance, it was obvious to me that this symphony has – or indeed would have had, considering it was almost lost and forgotten for decades – a unique meaning in musical history. It is innovative, intense and sincere to a degree that exceeds most works of art I know. When I discovered that it was only the first movement of a large unfinished symphony, I instantly started investigating and was immediately confronted with the commonly accepted misinformation that the piece was a mere skeleton, a ‘preliminary sketch’, and that it was of no use to get one’s hopes up about finding any ‘real symphony’ out there.
When I finally managed to get hold of a pale photocopy of one of the facsimile-editions of the original manuscript, I soon came to realize that had those cryptic, incredibly apocalyptic musical thoughts been completed and performed 100 years ago, they would have entirely changed the course of musical history and perhaps of all 20th century art. It wasn’t quite clear to me yet, though, that those pages would forever change my life.
One probably expects to read a very analytical and musicologically-founded ‘critical note’ when opening the introduction to such a delicate publication, the result of over 10 years of intense research, painstaking ‘assembly’, revisions and a complete personal and professional devotion. But just as much as it wasn’t my intention to create a musicological edition ‘explaining’ in sounds Mahler’s would-have-been-10th-Symphony, I will also not explain in words my concert-version of this symphony. I will however share with you my take on the meaning behind this symphony and the reasons for which I had decided to dedicate myself to making this unique music come to life – or perhaps the reasons for which this music possessed me to a degree where I had no choice but to take upon myself this monumental task and accept with humility the mission of bringing it to you.
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As soon as I discovered Mahler’s drafts for the 10th Symphony, I became indescribably fascinated and intrigued, in fact hypnotized by the sheer magnitude of meaning and content hiding within this manuscript which some call ‘mere sketches’. It was immediately clear to me that the piece was entirely thought-through and that the meaning behind this hurried testament was an almost unbearably painful albeit thoroughly planned legacy. It seemed like the sketch was staring at me demanding to be heard, like a message in a bottle that hasn’t really been found, let alone entirely understood for almost a century.
I soon found out that several attempts had been made to bring this masterpiece to life and of course my first reaction was one of euphoria and curiosity – my second was already some degree of scepticism; if the piece had already been heard, how come its message has hardly reached anyone? Why are musicians, artists, human-beings still walking around, behaving, creating, thinking, listening and feeling as if they haven’t been exposed to this music?
When I was introduced to the various existing completions of the symphony, the different reasons became clear to me. Given the extremely delicate ethical implications of completing or even editing an unfinished work of art, I wonder whether the approaches employed by those individuals did the piece justice and helped its reception. This being said, it is very important for me to emphasize that any sort of dissatisfaction with previous versions or disagreement with the approach behind their creation is secondary to the enormous respect I have for the immeasurable amount of time, energy and skill that all those devoted people put into their work and to my true and sincere admiration for their dedication as well as many aspects of the result.
I believe that the most dangerous pitfall when attempting to finish someone else’s work is to try and be authentic. This approach is quite problematic, as by definition it can never be authentic. Authentic is only that which is original, and in the case of this symphony, that which was left in the sketch. Yet that, in its ‘pure’, unprocessed state, is not performable. Any attempt to stay at all costs as close as possible to this partially very naked draft risks turning the result into a mere musicological “presentation”, a skeleton depicting what could have become Mahler’s 10th Symphony rather than a real concert-experience. Since the process of turning that material into a performable symphony is in essence and by definition unauthentic, it is debatable whether such a venture would do Mahler’s spirit any justice.
When it gets to meddling with a great master’s unfinished work, I think one should either take a 100% risk or leave it altogether. Any cautious, diplomatic attempts to stay true to an unfinished original very often end up becoming an unconvincing, sparse, pale jam of unprocessed ideas.
Some of my predecessors indeed ‘went for it’ – only that they allowed so much of their own creative personalities into the process that the result can hardly be called a symphony by Mahler but rather a symphony by Mr. So-and-So, inspired by Mahler’s sketches. There is a good reason why Shostakovich and Schönberg declined the offers to complete this piece – this process is not suitable for a composer, for it is not primarily creative in the sense of expressing one’s own ideas. It necessitates the complete dedication and subordination of one’s senses and feelings to an external aesthetic, to doing the intention of Mahler justice, not one’s own.
The Tenth Symphony will never sound the way Mahler had conceived it, it will never appear in its full grandeur and mind-blowing dimension, as it would have, if Mahler had completed it – and very importantly, also performed it. But the message within this piece is of such importance that I believe we should rather experience it through the devotion of somebody who subordinated himself entirely to his perception of the composer’s intentions rather than not experience it at all.
One could write a whole library on the ethics behind the question whether completing an unfinished work of art is a legitimate thing to do or not. Since my purpose here is to draw your attention to my personal sequence of thoughts rather than to this philosophical issue, I will discuss this here only in short. If one argues purity to its fullest extent, one should also not perform Mahler’s Ninth Symphony or his ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. Of course, these pieces are far more advanced in their development, but if we consider the fact that Mahler had revised all of his pieces numerous times after each performance before considering them complete, if at all, and considering he hasn’t lived to perform either of those pieces, we could hardly consider them complete. It would of course be ridiculous to imagine a world without the Ninth Symphony or Das Lied von der Erde. I therefore find it absolutely legitimate to wish to share the message of the Tenth Symphony with the world, for we would have all found it tragic if the Ninth and Das Lied had remained unknown to us. The debates of how advanced a piece has to be for such a performance or edition to be legitimate, and of how much external intervention is necessary for such a legitimation are left open to be judged by the extent to which such an edition – or even more so, a performance thereof – do justice to Mahler’s spirit.
After having spent some time with the existing versions and growing rather discontented with most of them, I embarked on a long journey of questions, trying to research and understand Mahler’s manuscript. This exploration started with learning to decipher his impossibly cryptic handwriting, leading up to slowly understanding his groundbreaking harmonies and trying – and I emphasize trying, because none of us really can – to conceive and grasp at least a glimpse of the unprecedented musical and spiritual dimension he exposed us to with this piece.
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I did not wake up one morning and decide to complete Mahler’s 10th Symphony; this musical revelation began to haunt me, and the more it took over the more I started to empathize with the sentiments, insights, hopes and abysses behind this music, in my own very limited, mortal way. One day I suddenly felt like those few bars in the middle of the Purgatorio (the 3rd movement of the symphony) started telling me exactly how they wanted to be heard. My hand, almost unintentionally, took some pen and music paper and started jotting down a few bars. I hadn’t intended for this to become anything serious at that point – I just started sketching. Suddenly it made sense – then more of it made sense – and then I realized the Purgatorio was the turning point, indeed a purgatory between the Paradiso and the Inferno – only, with what conclusion?
Before I realised it, my Purgatorio was complete, fully orchestrated and annotated. I was – and this in true honesty – shocked to realize that I had a complete score of a whole movement in front of me. If it were not for one man, this would probably have been left at that – and the rest would have been an anecdote of a teenage boy obsessed with Mahler. This man was a unique phenomenon: a Dutch scholar, no, in fact, first and foremost a musician, who has dedicated his entire life to Mahler in a way more selfless than we can all imagine. He was also able to look into that 16 year old weird boy, see beyond the awkward and embarrassed facade and give him a chance.
When I was first introduced to this gentleman, Mr. Frans Bouwman, Dr. Reinhold Kubik from the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna called him the ‘Pope of the Tenth Symphony‘ – only later did I realise this was almost an understatement. Few people have ever amassed such an amount of knowledge about this piece as Mr. Bouwman has, and I believe nobody possesses such understanding of its meaning as he does. Mr. Bouwman went on to help me for almost 10 years, providing material, allowing me glimpses into previously unpublished sketches, accompanying early performances and tryouts, spending weeks and weeks correcting, proofreading and offering his knowledge, experience and above all his love for Mahler’s music with endless generosity. It seemed clear to us both from the very start that one conviction united us profoundly – it was not about us, it was about the music. This has always been the motto behind my work.
My sketches soon grew and expanded and before I could actually seriously consider whether what I was doing was sensible, I had three finished movements in my hand. I felt as if I had no choice but to continue, I felt like this piece chose me, as if it was my calling, my duty, to bring it to life. I felt I was entrusted with a very humbling mission – my task was to bring this forgotten message-in-a-bottle to see the light of day.
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Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony exists in sketch-form from A to Z. Every single bar of this piece has been written by Mahler – to very different stages of elaboration. The first movement (falsely believed by many to be complete) is the one most advanced in its development; Mahler managed to complete several rounds of particell (short-score) drafts as well as a relatively advanced full-score draft. The second movement is already far less developed, and comprises hardly more than a rudimentary skeleton of an orchestral score,a preliminary annotation of ideas. The Purgatorio (interlude – 3rd movement) was orchestrated up until Bar 30 and then – the rest of the piece (the rest of the Purgatorio as well as the whole of ‘Part II’: Movements IV & V) only exists in short-score form: 4 or 5 staves of music, containing a great deal of musical material but never fully orchestrated.
The process of elaborating these unfinished sketches is a painstaking ordeal hardly comparable to any other artistic endeavour. From the very beginning it has always been my goal to serve in the first place the spirit behind the music and be loyal to what I view as the message behind this symphony. This is an important decision one has to keep constantly in mind, especially in those cases where one has to decide against the text, against the very fragmentary ‘written testament’ and choose the ‘spiritual testament’ over it. I made a point of not consulting any of the existing completed versions of the Tenth Symphony while I was working on my own version. I confined myself to very sparse tools which were my companions for many months of every year for a very long time: a copy of all existing sketches of the Tenth, a pencil, ruler, music-paper and very occasionally a piano. Oh, and most importantly, an eraser.
One essential and crucial aspect for me in the decision to continue on that journey was the fact that the structure and form of the piece had been fully thought-through by Mahler. I believe the most important compositional aspect in devising a piece of music is its general structure, its so-to-say ‘large message’. A piece can have many great ideas, beautiful moments and lush orchestration – but it only becomes a masterpiece when its form is masterfully crafted, when the dramaturgy of the piece is full of well-placed, carefully built content and when its build-up of tension is well planned. I would never dare to meddle with the formal structure of a piece of music because this is an art so incredibly personal and so extraordinarily subtle that nobody except the composer himself could produce anything but a grotesque caricature of the piece. Nobody can build a narrative except the person who wishes to tell the story.
I believe I found a sensible mid-way between the pursuit of the unattainable authenticity and the over-creativity of some versions. Staying true to Mahler’s spirit and immersing myself in his earlier works (especially in the aesthetic of his late period), trying to familiarize myself with the various elements that influenced his creativity (first and foremost in the form of nature) and trying to make his orchestrational language my second nature, I did my best to create a Mahlerian experience using a healthy, albeit often fragile balance between intuition and logic, between creativity and caution and between assumptions and observations. I took upon myself a new identity, I saw the world through a heavy cloak of Mahlerian sensitivity and tried to submit myself entirely to the wreath of this extraordinary music. It is through that filter that I lived much of my life for those ten years, and also through which I wrote down this score.
Throughout the entire process of putting this immense score together, my first priority was always to convey what I believe to be Mahler’s intended message, to bring this legacy to life and share with all of you this daunting, vast universe of musical apocalypse which Mahler left behind: his prophetic, transcendental Epilogue of the apocalypse, the hope, the reconciliation and acceptance of fate… and beyond.
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I believe Mahler was in a state of mind hardly resembling a mere mortal existence while writing his last three works. He was spiritually and psychologically torn between his present, earthly existence and another world, a dimension beyond what we are able to perceive, his soul fluctuating between the concrete and the transcendental in every breath, in every heartbeat. Although many scholars insist on attributing the existentialism and drama of Mahler’s last works to his personal crisis (and his notoriously tragic marital crisis) and generally see his music as autobiographical, I strongly believe it is of a far bigger meaning than a mere personal outlet. Of course every artist is influenced by their life in the process of creation. It is indisputable that Mahler was hugely affected by the happenings in his life when composing this piece (this even shows through the horrifying verbal annotations he added to the manuscript). If this music were only the reflection on personal matters, it would have disappeared with time. But Mahler has been dead for over 100 years now and his music keeps on meaning to us so much more than his marital crisis – it does, because it is not a mere illustration, because it is relevant for each and every one of us and because it is truly universal.
Mahler’s three last works form to my opinion by all means a trilogy – a trilogy of farewell. This trilogy goes from the personal to the universal, from the detail to the whole, from the individual to the collective. It is a ‘via dolorosa’ of farewells from all aspects of existence – from one’s simple, physical death to the annihilation of it all.
The ‘Lied von der Erde’, composed two summers before the Tenth Symphony and two and a half years before the composer’s death, is the first stage of farewell; with its devastatingly intense, beautifully heartbreaking last Movement, ‘Der Abschied’ (literally ‘The Farewell’) in particular, it is Mahler’s farewell from life. After a decade-long occupation with death, in this first farewell we are exposed to Mahler’s first acknowledgement of mortality – a very painful step every human-being experiences on the journey towards awareness. It is a farewell to the physical existence, it is the recognition that the body is a mere servant of nature, and it is the realization of how powerless one is in front of one’s destiny and how dependant the spirit is on its terrestrial host.
The Ninth Symphony, the second episode of the farewell trilogy, unfolds itself as the phoenix that rises from the ashes. The enigmatic introduction of the first movement is the search of a blind phoenix, crawling on a surface of nothingness to redefine his own meaning and the texture of existence. He himself does not know – does he exist, or is it all an illusion, a memory? He is afraid to awake from this illusion and realize – that it is all over. It is all past. The heart stopped beating – but the soul continues its journey. The last movement of the Ninth is unique in the literature and comprises the most complete spectrum of all elements of life, it is the summary of the cycle of life; the soul is recounting the story of its visit to the earthly existence. This time he bids farewell to his own soul, to his spirit, to tonality, and in a sense to music. Three times ‘ersterbend’, eight times ‘morendo’. The end of this Symphony – the second farewell – is an epic description of a last breath. A slow, painful disintegration of the spirit – with almost no pulse, we are carried on an endless surface of silence – into nothingness.
After the perish of the soul, the cease of the spiritual existence, and the disappearance of tonality, we have arrived at a ‘limbo’ – the Tenth Symphony is starting in a universe of no tonality, no centre, no direction, no gravity – no tension, no resistance, no meaning – the moment after the death of the soul – the moment before the creation, before the beginning of it all – a static depiction of nothingness – vacuum. But is this a point of no return?
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‘Part I’ of this symphony begins with the first movement, Adagio, which emerges from this utter limbo (depicted by the viola-solo entirely void of a tonal centre), and is soon followed, in the most contrasting manner imaginable, by the most chromatic and extremely intense tonality that Mahler ever composed – a unique texture of such incredible sensuality, of such emotional charge, of such rhetoric – with no comparable equivalent. Yet it is only a memory, a memory of all things past, it is the Paradiso, a silhouette of many earlier cycles of being. We are soon again in the limbo, which brings us back to the harsh reality – the soul, as well as tonality, are gone. The Adagio continues exploring the contrast between sections of extreme intensity and utterly static ones – finally leading to its climactic episode where the occupation with death and mortality in a metaphysical sense rises to new dimensions – not the death of the individual, but the demise of everything. ‘The end of it all’ – this notion is introduced to us by a uniquely innovative chord, a chord comprising 9 of the 12 notes of the scale, unprecedented in its modernism and unique in its dissonance and charge of tension. This is the first announcement of the apocalypse.
The second movement, probably initially conceived as the final movement of this symphony, follows the Adagio almost attacca. A movement full of contradictions, idiosyncrasies and urges, it is Mahler’s typical ‘Scherzo’ movement in which one can find every traditional dance form and at the same time none at all, taken to a completely new dimension of grotesque sarcasm and its antithesis. It is, once again, only a memory – a fragment of idiosyncratic, almost schizophrenic rhythms contrasting with an idyllic Trio and culminating in a perhaps unparalleled euphoric climax. One last time.
The Purgatorio, the so-called ‘interlude’ between the two major parts of this symphony, is the shortest movement Mahler ever composed and also one of the strangest. A neurosis of a constantly changing pulse, a condensed movement of modest proportions but of gigantic meaning – it is the turning point of this piece, it is the moment where it all tips over. In the very middle of this extremely concise movement ridden by sinister ostinati, there is a summit – a turning point, after which nothing will be as it was before. It is the gate of the Inferno, an understated ‘Gate of Hell’ where the very bleak prospect of our universe is being revealed, with no drama or pomp – a horrifying strike of the tam-tam echoes long beyond the end of this movement.
Mahler himself wrote on the manuscript of the fourth movement – which is also the beginning of the second and final part of this symphony – “The Devil is dancing with me”. The so-called second scherzo of this piece has very little to do with humour. Not even dark humour. It is existential on every possible level. It is a movement constantly on the verge of the unbearable; its habitat is that very thin line just before the limit, it resides in the blood-curdling dimension of the extreme. It is in fact the extreme – an agonizing dialogue, a painful roller coaster of contrasts and visions, all united by this existential aspect, all lying at the very physical limit of the bearable. Tonally and structurally, in terms of the orchestration as well as in the constantly changing and contradicting moods, this movement is the sheer definition of extreme and it is as uncomfortable to listen to as it is to dance with the devil. It is, in fact, impossible. But is it really?
The fifth movement, Finale, is a piece of music so unique and special that one can either write a whole book about it or better leave it uncommented since what it conveys is so much larger than what words can describe. The Finale is the key to the Tenth Symphony, and it is also the most intense and shattering statement in music I have ever encountered. The very beginning of this movement is already terrifying: twelve strokes of a muffled bass drum, played as loudly as possible; twelve universal, devastating strokes even more terminal than the hammer strokes of the Sixth Symphony, twelve strokes comprising the last hour of the universe, each one more shocking and rattling than the previous one. But after this epic battle of planets and natural forces, after this entire saga of saying farewell to all different aspects of existence, and after the apocalyptic, physically overwhelming drum strokes, Mahler comes back to the most intimate and personal way to say goodbye – the song.
The flute introduces a melody very different in its meaning to all songs previously laid on paper by Mahler – it signals the return of the dove to the ark with a very clear message: it is a message of acceptance – the acceptance of fate. This last movement has the most vital importance to this piece and to the entire statement of the Farewell Trilogy. After that immense journey, Mahler brings back the apocalyptic chord (which strongly resembles a last prayer before death, hence the quote of ‘Shma Israel’ which I allowed myself to add to the climax of the movement), we are back in the limbo of the introduction, this time with an imposing alternative to the violas (four horns in unison!) and an overwhelming counterpoint by the trumpets – but all that with a very different message to that of the beginning. The dove has landed and brought the olive branch – the Epilogue.
The Epilogue is the alternative to the apocalypse, it is the light at the end of the tunnel, and this light is not brought by struggle nor by destruction. It is only through acceptance that we can reach redemption and deserve a future after all: acceptance of love, acceptance of humility, but also acceptance of death, of fate, of everything lost and everything finite – of the individual, of the soul, of the universe. It is only through acceptance that a spiritual resurrection is possible.
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Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony seems to have been written from beyond the horizon – his only work that was ‘given to us’ from another world, from beyond the dead. It is fundamentally transcendental, it observes and conveys a horrifying acceptance past the mortality of the body as well as of the spirit, a reconciliation with fate as well as with one’s powerlessness in front of destiny, and leaves us with an exceptionally meaningful message – the future – of Music, of Europe, of Humanity – is to be based on acceptance of the past. Not on preserving the past, but on accepting the loss and preserving the flame – on memory as an equal counter-part to innovation.
Perhaps today, in an age where technology offers a tempting alternative, it is more vital for us than ever before to be reminded that it is only through these human values that our future will emerge and rise beyond the ruins of our past. Mahler offers us a new door, a path – a new way we have not known before. A similar door, both musically and humanly, was opened to us by Beethoven with his late string-quartets – similarly, he died with them, and mankind never explored that route, that which could have become of music. Mahler embarked on a new path with this piece – a path only he could have elaborated and explored. And through his death, this path was closed forever.
The Tenth Symphony is Mahler’s eulogy to tonality, to old Europe, and to the creation of art as a form of expression of human emotions. This notion died to a great extent with Mahler and with his Tenth Symphony. A century of invention and innovation followed, a century of exploration and genius – but also a century that nearly brought the destruction of civilisation and an almost complete annihilation of human values; not only did the aesthetic of all creativity change, but the raison-d’être behind music and art changed forever. Art wasn’t anymore about searching for or admiring beauty, it was often about destruction, about voidness, about what isn’t there rather than what is there. The 20th century taught us the notion of anonymity, the irreplaceable survival tool of a thick skin and relieved us of any wish to make ourselves vulnerable. We have replaced our identities in something else, an image we have been taught to admire, a standardized ideal to aspire to. It was a century which pretended to support individualism but in fact created the most anonymous mass-production of identities in history. The result led to unprecedented confusion, to a painful lack of authenticity and to human beings’ ultimate loss of their own self as well as any connection to their emotions and true identity. We learned to worship the impersonal and became masters of new ways of repression and escapism. It is in fact the anonymity towards the self which this century has brought upon us, the exchangeability of all things personal and the aversion towards the undefinable. But first and foremost, the 20th century ironed away our sensitivity.
We have lost the ability to listen, to music and to silence – and without silence, there is no music. We have landed in a society that is full of output but is incapable of input – and Mahler’s music forces a mirror onto this society and confronts us with things we have been desperately trying to repress. It is indeed our first task to acknowledge and reconcile the loss of tonality, of culture, of emotions and of human values in order to be able to create a future for music, a future for culture, a future for mankind – a future where sincerity becomes an inseparable part of our existence.
Mahler never received substantial recognition during his lifetime because his music was way ahead of its time. Mahler composed for posterity – in fact, he composed for our time. As soon as people were ready to experience his music, it was there, waiting to unfold and be discovered. It is not a coincidence that his symphonies began to be performed more regularly only many decades after he died. It was then that people were starting to be ready to take over the torch. Mahler’s music is contemporary in the truest sense of the word – it is the music of our time, music which constantly redefines itself, a coded message which decrypts itself as soon as the listener is ready for the dimension it will unveil.
The Tenth Symphony is Mahler’s legacy – a mission given to us by him, to resurrect those values, as he showed us with the final movement of his Tenth. He created a new future with this symphony – a future we have not been able to see and experience for the past hundred years, a future he did not live to show us, to guide us through. But he left us a mission, a duty to fulfil – this future is still ahead of us. It is indeed a message in a bottle – sent to us over a hundred years – it waited to be found and to be taken over, the journey must continue. Music must go on.
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I would like to briefly quote Arnold Schönberg (Prager Rede, 1912), a close friend and admirer of Mahler, whose words are so utterly relevant to this matter and express exactly what I tried to write above:
“It seems as if the Ninth is the limit. Whoever wants to explore beyond it, must be gone. It looks like we were about to be told something in the Tenth, which we should not yet know, for which we are not yet ready. Those who have written a Ninth came too close to the after-life, to the other world. Perhaps all riddles of the earth would be solved, if one of those, who know the answer, would write a Tenth. And that seems not meant to be.
We must remain further in the dark, the dark which is only occasionally illuminated by the Light of Genius. We should continue fighting and struggling, yearn and wish. This should remain unreachable to us, as long as we are unable to see it. We must remain blind, until we have acquired eyes. Eyes, that see the future. Eyes, that see not only through the sensual and the concrete, which is no more than a metaphor, but also penetrate through the transcendental. Our soul should be this eye. We have a task: we must acquire an immortal soul.
We already possess it in our future, what we must achieve is that this future becomes our present. We only live in the future and not in the present, and this, as any metaphor, is insufficient. Because that is the most essential about the Genius, it is this future. That is the reason why the Genius is worthless in the present. Genius and present have nothing to do with each other. The Genius is our future… the Genius illuminates the path forward, we try to follow. It is already bright, where the Genius is; but we cannot bear this light. We are dazzled and only see a reality, which is not yet existent, which isn’t tangible, because it is only the present. But a higher reality does exist, and the present passes and dies away. It is the future which is everlasting and therefore it is in the future that the higher reality exists, the reality of our immortal soul… Mahler could only reveal this much from this future; as soon as he wanted to say more, he was retrieved and wasn’t with us anymore… he is somewhere where one doesn’t seek retaliation. But we, we must go on struggling, because we have not yet been exposed to the Tenth.”
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