XLI
Shortly after the outing to Linderhof, L. summons Schwerdtfeger and asks him to woo Marie Godeau on his behalf. In doing so, he enacts a Shakespearean thematic—his interest in the Bard having remained unbroken since he set Love’s Labour’s Lost to music. L. insists Schwerdtfeger go through with his commission even after he learns that the violinist harbors feelings of his own for Godeau.
Time of composition: October 6–12, 1946. Time of narration: Late March 1945. Narrated time: 1925.
| An end is come, the end is come | See 376/519. Z. is ironically conflating the First World War, which inspired L.’s Apocalipsis, with the Second. |
| That “Tenth” Symphony again? | Because of its stylistic similarities to Beethoven, Brahms’ First Symphony is sometimes jokingly called “The Tenth Symphony.” The epithet also strengthens the general argument of DF, which casts nineteenth-century music history as a singular tradition emanating from Beethoven. |
| whose stout-hearted perseverance overcame death | L. is ascribing Christ-like traits to Schwerdtfeger whom he, after all, is about to send on a mission to nullify the devil’s pact, which demands that its subject may never love (264/363). |
| | Official title of a papal ambassador. The original simply has Werber (“courter”). |
| the most secret pages in the book of my heart have been opened | A quotation from I.4 of Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599), one of several plays that deal with a courtship triangle very much like the one described here (Much Ado about Nothing [1598] and The Two Gentlemen of Verona [1599] are the others). All three were found on L.’s desk on 322/445. |
| the lass—but you don’t like that word | The word that L. tries to avoid is Mädel, which also occurs in the title of O lieb Mädel, wie schlecht bist du, the poem by Clemens Brentano that L. set to music around 1906, and in which he first employed the H-E-A-E-Es logogram (see 194/266). In the earlier passage, Woods translated the term as “maiden” rather than “lass.” |