Weekend Concert 42: The Interrogation of Life and Death

2007/8/25 14:55:06

Life and death -- the ultimate question of existence. Whether you realize it or not, this question lies terminally before every person. During life's so-called glorious moments, this question may seem absent, but it has always been there. Any avoidance is merely a coward's self-evasion.

The music begins, the funeral begins. The one lying there may be a hero, may be a scoundrel -- all stories about this piece of rotten flesh have ended. All glory has become fragments of memory. Western winds, dying sunlight, even royal tombs will turn to dust. Dust fills the sky, stars hang low, everything dissolves into boundless thoughts amid chaos, sweeping across heaven and earth.

A ray of primordial light polishes the stars. The world becomes crystal clear. All images come alive, begin to dance.

Suddenly, everything shatters, falling into a world of fire and earth. The dance of matter is strange and seductive. Everything soars materially, but has nothing to do with you. Everything grasped becomes illusory in death.

Dead beyond resurrection, the world sings like a phantom.

What bursts through the starry sky is not the sky; what bursts through death is death itself. Death has never died. The flower of death withers upon the ruins of the world. The world withers deathly. The world that has shed death remains the world. You of this world, transcending such life and death: what can be resurrected was never born or died -- whence resurrection? The transcendence of life and death continues; life and death's transcendence continues.

Wind is still wind; mountains are still mountains; the world is no longer the world.

Below, please listen to the five movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, 'Resurrection.'