And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music. Bruno Schulz
About This Quote

“And then, as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before.” This passage is from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The words are spoken by the character of Lieschen in Act 1, Scene 2. Lieschen is speaking of her feelings about the death of her sister, but it’s also a wonderful metaphoric message about life in general. The passage continues: “Now she was gone, gone forever, for she had died young. But what was left? The earth herself, which had held her so tightly? Or else this other longing that lay concealed beneath it? And then she thought of her sister again.” Mahler uses the idea that “life itself has its own beauty, its own immensity; it can be made to be beautiful without having to do anything for it all on its own.”

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  1. ...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high...
  2. And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the...
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