from “Immediate Stages of the Erotic” in Either/Or, Volume I
“That which you have loved with youthful enthusiasm and admired with youthful ardor, that which you have secretly and mysteriously preserved in the innermost recesses of your soul, that which you have hidden in the heart: that you always approach with a certain shyness, with mingled emotions, when you know that the purpose is to try to understand it.”
“As far as Mozart’s music is concerned, my soul knows no fear, my confidence is boundless. For one thing, I know that what I have hitherto understood is very little, so there will always be enough left behind, hiding in the shadows of the soul’s vaguer intimations; and for another, I am convinced that if ever Mozart became wholly comprehensible to me, he would then become fully incomprehensible to me.”
“The kingdom known to me, to whose utmost boundaries I intend to go in order to discover music, is language. If one wished to arrange the different media according to their appointed developmental process, one would have to place music and language next to one another, for which reason it has often been said that music is a language, which is something more than a genial remark.”
The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians
13
For now we see through a glass darkly,
But then face to face: now I know in part;
But then shall I know even as also I am known