[lit-ideas] The Demonic Waltz
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas " <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 07:17:21 -0800
Mike, before you lose your memory entirely perhaps you'd like to consider
the following (from pp. 34-35, Wittgenstein's Vienna):
"The Waltz has always been the symbol of Viennese joie de vivre; yet, it
too, had its other face. One visitor from Germany described Strauss and his
waltzes as providing an escape into the demonic:
"'African and hot-blooded, crazy with life . . . restless, unbeautiful,
passionate . . . he exorcises the wicked devils from our bodies and he does
it with waltzes, which are the modern exorcism . . . capturing our sense in
a sweet trance. Typically African is the way he conducts his dances; his
own limbs no longer belong to him when the thunderstorm of his waltz is let
loose; his fiddle-bow dances with his arms . . . the tempo animates his
feet; the melody waves champagne-glasses in his face and the devil is abroad
. . . A dangerous power has been given into the hands of this dark man; he
may regard it as his good fortune that to music one may think all kinds of
thoughts, that no censorship can have anything to do with waltzes, that
music stimulates our emotions directly, and not through the channel of
thought . . . Bacchantically the couples waltz . . . lust let loose. No God
inhibits them.'"
The person who wrote that wasn't alone. "This is but one of many reports in
which contemporary observers spoke of the Viennese passion for the dance as
pathological and as reflecting their need to escape the harsh realities of
daily life in the City of Dreams."
You wrote that you wished you could forget you lived in Memphis. Perhaps a
few waltzes will help.
Lawrence
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