370 music, philosophy, and modernity
itself lacks the hope which the stars once promised. It is submerged in
empty galaxies. On it beauty lies as a reflection of past hope which fills
the dying eye until it freezes under the flakes of now unlimited space.
The moment of rapture at such beauty dares to stand up to the spell of
disenchanted nature. That metaphysics is no longer possible becomes
the last metaphysics.
( 13 : 297 )What might be paraphrased as just another account of modern dis-
enchantment resists such reduction when read as a response to the
unique tone of Mahler’s song cycle. It reminds us of the admittedly
limited possibilities for metaphysics 2 in the light of a sober appraisal of
now dead sources of meaning that were based either on theology or on
the centrality of humankind in the cosmos. The music’s combination
of resistance to disenchantment and admission of the hopelessness of
traditional metaphysics cannot be conveyed discursively, as that would
miss its affective dimension, without which the hope it embodies has no
power. The fact that only the music can convey this combination is what
sustains it as the ‘last metaphysics’. Adorno’s rejection of the familiar
interpretation of the last song of the cycle as a pantheistic celebration of
the eternal life of nature may be contentious, but his rejection should
not be assessed just as a cognitive claim. It is better interpreted as an
attempt to disclose the mimetic character of the music’s move towards
silence in a manner which is adequate both to its aesthetic quality and
to its historical situation.
If one reflects on how ‘the earth’ can be thought about in moder-
nity, the competing demands of scientific and ‘life-world’ conceptions
make it clear that there is always a need for ways in which we can,
in Dieter Henrich’s phrase, ‘hold a world together in thought’. We
cannot do so by regarding the earth as the interconnection of all its
natural laws, because that leads to mere disintegration into endless par-
ticularity. Rather we can see it as a context of meanings of the kind
which we encounter when touched by its beauty, savagery, or indiffer-
ence. At the same time these meanings are marked by our intensified
awareness of the ultimate transience of all that the earth can ever be.
Adorno’s insistence on the ‘temporal core’ both of truth and of works
of art gives music a special significance, precisely because it is built on a
transience which yet seems to generate meaning. Mahler’sLiedembod-
ies the modern situation, giving a bitter-sweet pleasure to the sense of
mourning associated with the awareness of our ephemeral character.