It is early to be writing this, about 6.30 on a Saturday morning and I have been up since, ooh, 5.30 because I can never sleep these days. But it does mean I get to see a lot of sunrises - though the screech cat doing the hokey-cokey, in and out, shaking it all about is a distraction. I received a gift yesterday, it came by post, a book entitled Barrie Kosky on ecstasy in a series entitled Little Book on Big Themes, Melbourne University Press, and its just the most wonderful little book. Indeed, I am so taken with it I am planning to contact the press about a potential title. Anyway, Kosky in a section on Lenny Bernstein and Mahler's Second Symphony quotes part of the libretto:Mit Flugel, die ich mir errungen
In heissen Liebesstreben
Werd ich entschweben
Zum Licht, zu dem kein Aug
gedrungen!
(With wings that I have gained
Shall I soar aloft
In love's ardent striving
To the light to which no eye has
pierced)
And I am once again fascinated by the wings and flying and the theme of ecstasy in the Icarian theme. Kosky describes Bernstein as flying, "I was electrified. Did music really have the power to do this to a human body?" "Bereite dich zu leben!" (Prepare thyself to live!) - the Icarian connections just fly in and out of my field of vision, like the pair of blackbirds who have built a nest in the ivy growing up my back wall, ever recognisable, back again (they must have enjoyed last year so much - one likes to hope - and of course the screech cat just yawns as they peck for worms in the lawn, her own flying days are but dreams for she sleeps more than anything). And now I am off to the gym - where I heard this track come round on my iPod, long time no hear but I like it:
