Man redeemed,--the world transfigured.

_DON JUAN. (TONE POEM.)_

A score or more of lines from Lenau's poem of the same title stand as
the subject of the music.

O magic realm, illimited, eternal,
Of gloried woman,--loveliness supernal!
Fain would I, in the storm of stressful bliss,
Expire upon the last one's lingering kiss!
Through every realm, O friend, would wing my flight,
Wherever Beauty blooms, kneel down to each,
And, if for one brief moment, win delight!

* * * * *

I flee from surfeit and from rapture's cloy,
Keep fresh for Beauty service and employ,
Grieving the One, that All I may enjoy.

My lady's charm to-day hath breath of spring,
To-morrow may the air of dungeon bring.
When with the new love won I sweetly wander,
No bliss is ours upfurbish'd and regilded;
A different love has This to That one yonder,--
Not up from ruins be my temple builded.
Yea Love life is, and ever must be now,
Cannot be changed or turned in new direction;
It must expire--here find a resurrection;
And, if 'tis real, it nothing knows of rue!
Each Beauty in the world is sole, unique;
So must the love be that would Beauty seek!
So long as Youth lives on with pulse afire,
Out to the chase! To victories new aspire!

* * * * *

It was a wond'rous lovely storm that drove me:
Now it is o'er; and calm all round, above me;
Sheer dead is every wish; all hopes o'ershrouded,--
It was perhaps a flash from heaven descended,
Whose deadly stroke left me with powers ended,
And all the world, so bright before, o'erclouded;
Yet perchance not! Exhausted is the fuel;
And on the hearth the cold is fiercely cruel.[A]

[Footnote A: Translation by John P. Jackson.]

In the question of the composer's intent, of general plan and of
concrete detail, it is well to see that the quotation from Lenau's poem
is twice broken by lines of omission; that there are thus three
principal divisions. It cannot be wise to follow a certain kind of
interpretation[A] which is based upon the plot of Mozart's opera. The
spirit of Strauss's music is clearly a purely subjective conception,
where the symbolic figure of fickle desire moves through scenes of
enchantment to a climax of--barren despair.

[Footnote A: In a complex commentary William Mauke