{"id":1623,"date":"2010-05-08T11:48:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T10:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2010-05-10T00:06:42","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T23:06:42","slug":"experts-perspective-mahler-8-what-is-the-eternal-feminine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2010\/05\/08\/experts-perspective-mahler-8-what-is-the-eternal-feminine\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert’s Perspective- Mahler 8, What is “the Eternal Feminine?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Mahler<\/a><\/p>\n

Before and after the Mahler in Manchester performance of Mahler 8 last week, there has been a lot of discussion about what Mahler meant in this work by “the Eternal Feminine” and what, if anything, we should take as listeners from his dedication of the piece to his wife, Alma.<\/p>\n

Today, Peter Davison<\/a> takes a look at these and other questions, and helps us to understand what Mahler is trying to say with this extraordinary work<\/p>\n

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Mahler, the Eternal Feminine and the battle of the sexes<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Eighth Symphony is a work that causes a lot of controversy. Many find it a regression\u00a0to the Wunderhorn\u00a0style and that its optimism is insincere. The argument goes; Mahler wrote the Sixth symphony which was tragic, and the Seventh which was ironic, then he lost his way, before finding it again\u00a0in the late works.\u00a0There is a further layer which critics find hard to bear. Mahler dedicated the work to Alma after the crisis in their marriage, when he was trying desperately to impress her and win back her affection. The 8th seems mixed up with Mahler’s\u00a0confusion about his relationships with women, which Freud diagnosed as a bad case of the mother complex. In other words, Mahler idealised women and sought from them unconditional maternal nurture which allowed him to remain in some sense a little boy. That’s simplistic, but there is some truth in it.<\/p>\n

Mahler was not a mysogenist, quite the opposite in fact, but we might conclude that he was in some ways not very grown up about women. He inclined to assume (in common with many men) that women\u00a0existed to\u00a0love him, assist him and\u00a0inspire him, but not to make any great claim upon him for their own sake or to have lives of their own. We might also\u00a0suspect that this attitude is reflected in the 8th symphony, where woman – in the form of Gretchen – redeems Faust’s lost soul. She makes the sacrifice of forgiveness which heals Faust inner wounds, but Faust appears to have done nothing to deserve this loving\u00a0generosity.<\/p>\n

Mahler\u00a0enjoyed the companionship of women – think of his sister Justine and\u00a0his\u00a0biographer Natalie Bauer Lechner. They were devoted to him. He also formed a tempestuous marriage with Alma who stirred something in him which resembled passionate love. But his feelings were\u00a0mingled with his deep-seated hunger for the maternal affection and warmth that was\u00a0not offered him as a child.\u00a0Mahler’s mother was a troubled woman who saw in him\u00a0a favourite son who could fulfill her needs and thwarted ambitions. When maternal love\u00a0is loaded with such expectations, it\u00a0can make a child very insecure and perfectionist. That child is often then hungry for the unconditional love that\u00a0a Gretchen figure might have to\u00a0offer.\u00a0Freud was right to suggest that Mahler saw in Alma something of the perfect woman who could be mother, lover and muse.<\/p>\n

How is this played out in the 8th symphony and does it matter? We can put a narrow personal interpretation on the work and use the Alma dedication to justify such a view, but Mahler was more visionary than that. He wanted to show us truths that have a\u00a0universal application. The key is to see the work in terms of archetypes; the\u00a0idealised forms and energies which operate in the human psyche. These are mythic charcaters which dictate how human personalities\u00a0and human societies\u00a0function and develop.\u00a0The EternalFeminine, as Mahler stated often enough, is the archetypal\u00a0symbol of Eros. That is the principle which binds things together and loosens the differences between things.\u00a0It is associated with the feminine principle and encompasses what is indefinable and\u00a0mysterious. This is in contrast to the masculine principle, often identified with\u00a0Logos, which leads to the separation of things through\u00a0discriminating judgement.\u00a0Logos permits the creation of distinct forms, and it is when it comes together with Eros harmoniously that life\u00a0becomes possible at all \u2013 as spirit finds form or a soul inhabits a body.<\/p>\n

So although, in the 8th, we can easily feel justified to\u00a0start a feminist diatribe about men expecting women to make all the sacrifices, we should probably take another view. Namely, the symphony is about men finding contact with their feminine side and learning to relate to it better. Faust is redeemed because he falls to ground – i.e. he loses his position of lofty male arrogance and must then come to terms with true nature and Eros from a position of\u00a0humility\u00a0before the femninine. Eros is\u00a0then offered as a blessing and source of healing redemption. Life is generous to those who learns to worship the goddess as the symbol of life.<\/p>\n

But one of the lessons of Eros, and perhaps the one Mahler\u00a0struggled to\u00a0learn, is that in real life women are\u00a0not\u00a0simply an\u00a0embodiment of the\u00a0Queen of Heaven. A woman is flesh and blood, not just a projection of a man’s\u00a0soul. Most women will confess that it is nice\u00a0if men show them respect and worship them a little. The majority of men like to do it too, if they have any soul at all. But the same women will also say that it drives them mad if they\u00a0have to live up to that ideal all the time and not\u00a0be valued for their humanity, which is as incomplete and imperfect as everyone else. That is a greater challenge in many ways than worshipping an idealised image from afar.\u00a0Relating to another person depends on an understanding of what\u00a0Goethe\u00a0calls our dual-nature; that we are both human and\u00a0divine.<\/p>\n

Mahler’s symphony and Goethe’s poem are a great education in that duality.\u00a0By this insight we can\u00a0also better understand the stylistic differences between parts one and two of the symphony.\u00a0In part one, we\u00a0enter a constructed world – a world of conventional forms and\u00a0clever counterpoint\u00a0with\u00a0many human voices all striving for unity, but remaining\u00a0 separate nonetheless.\u00a0Music is the\u00a0spiritual force\u00a0that binds people together. In this movement,\u00a0divine spirit finds form\u00a0n a masculine process that requires the\u00a0acceptance of boundaries and limits to\u00a0create order and stability. It is the\u00a0realm of earthly Logos. By contrast, part two expresses Eros – where the form is freer and\u00a0the music flows seamlessly as a series of transformative tableau where angels and mythical figures fly about freely. The soul sheds its earthly body, and the musical form seems to do the same. The music\u00a0grows free of formal boundaries. At the end of the work, there is a feeling of homecoming, as if the collective human order of the first movement reemerges, but now\u00a0in its original heavenly manifestation. Part\u00a0one is then a kind of humanised version of the archetypal symbols in part two. The stylistic contrast\u00a0suggests –\u00a0 here below, that\u00a0is earth…while up there, that is heaven. They are the same and yet totally different.<\/p>\n

Goethe puts it well in those final lines of Faust when\u00a0he tells us…all that\u00a0we experience\u00a0on earth\u00a0is but a vague copy of what is in heaven. But here is the paradox. Music\u00a0can only ever be a symbol of what is in heaven, so expressing a moment of transcendence such a this can only ever be a gesture. We feel a bit closer to heaven, but this is still music belonging to\u00a0this earth. But because the freer romantic style mirrors a sense of release from worldly conventions and constraints, it allows Mahler to make his point. That is why at the end of the work, we feel Mahler is still straining to reach heaven just beyond his\u00a0reach. Remember the end of the Fourth Symphony, where the text says…no music like this exists on earth…yet we are hearing this heavenly music on this earth, and we thereby get an intimation of what music from another world might\u00a0be like.<\/p>\n

So we\u00a0don’t need to worry about the stylistic difference between parts one and two. It makes Mahler’s point about the difference between what is above and what is below, between the masculine and the feminine, Logos and Eros.\u00a0Nor do we need to get into a tangle of political correctness about Gretchen and Alma. Mahler, like almost every man before and since, struggled to relate to women as they really are and not as he would like to them to be; that is to relate to\u00a0women truly\u00a0as a grown man and not as a boy. Equally, many women are often tempted to mother a man without realising that it perpetuates the problem of his immaturity.\u00a0The problem works both ways. Mahler did at least understand what the essential and eternal aspects of the feminine are, and that is a head-start in resolving the battle of the sexes.<\/p>\n

Peter Davison<\/p>\n