The Arcades Project - Operi

The hidden figure that is the key to "Le Balcon": the night which holds the lovers
in its emhrace as, after day's departure, they dream of the dawn, is starless­
"The night solidified into a walJ:'''' [J21a,7]
To the glance that encounters the "Passante" contrast Georges poem 'Von einer
Begegnung" :
My glances drew me from the path I seek
And crazed with magic, mad to clasp, they trailed
The slender bow sweet limbs in walking curved,
And wet with longing then, they fell and failed
Before iota your own they boldly swerved.
Stefan George, Hymnen; Pilgerjalzrten; Algabal (Berlin, 1922), pp. 22-23.'"
[J22,1]
1.'The unexampled ogle of a whore / glinting toward you like a silver ray / the
wavering moon releases on the lake';1l9 so begins the last poem. And into this
extraordinary stare, which brings uncontrollable tears to the eyes of him who
meets it without defenses, Berg looked long and avidly. For him, however, as for
Baudelaire, the mercenary eye became a legacy of the prehistoric world. The
arc-light moon of the big city shines for him like something out of the age of
hetaerism. He needs only to have it reflected, as on a lake, and the banal reveals
itself as the distant past; the nineteenth-century commodity betrays its mythic
taboo. It was in such a spirit that Berg composed Lulu." Wiesengrund-Adorno,
"Konzertarie 'Del' Wein, m in Willi Reich, Alban Berg, with Berg's own writings
and with contributions by Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno and Ernst Krenek (Vienna,
Leipzig, Zurich