All 50 Uses of
Mozart
in
Steppenwolf
- The golden trail was blazed and I was reminded of the eternal, and of Mozart, and the stars.†
Mozart = one of the most famous composers of classical music (1756-1791)
- If I had had a magic wand at this moment I should have conjured up a small and charming Louis Seize music room where a few musicians would have played me two or three pieces of Handel and Mozart.†
- Compared with Bach and Mozart and real music it was, naturally, a miserable affair; but so was all our art, all our thought, all our makeshift culture in comparison with real culture.†
- There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals.†
- When he worships his favorites among the immortals, Mozart, perchance, he always looks at him in the long run through bourgeois eyes.†
- His tendency is to explain Mozart's perfected being, just as a schoolmaster would, as a supreme and special gift rather than as the outcome of his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois, and of his patience under that last extremity of loneliness which rarefies the atmosphere of the bourgeois world to an ice-cold ether, around those who suffer to become men, that loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane.†
- Our whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but the indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretence of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more.†
- Then to my surprise, he asked, "You must have a strong objection, then, to the Magic Flute of Mozart?"†
- But Mozart did not live to be eighty-two.†
- I heard Mozart's "Violets" and Schubert's "Again thou fillest brake and vale" quite distinctly.†
- And Goethe's face was rosy and youthful, and he laughed; and now he resembled Mozart like a brother, now Schubert, and the star on his breast was composed entirely of wild flowers.†
- The late Herr Haller, gifted writer, student of Mozart and Goethe, author of essays upon the metaphysics of art, upon genius and tragedy and humanity, the melancholy hermit in a cell encumbered with books, was given over bit by bit to self-criticism and at every point was found wanting.†
- "Granted," I said coolly, "all the same it won't do to put Mozart and the latest fox trot on the same level.†
- I have nothing to say to your putting Mozart and Haydn and Valencia on what levels you please.†
- Mozart, perhaps, will still be played in a hundred years and Valencia in two will be played no more—we can well leave that, I think, in God's hands.†
- There was to be sure a beauty, one and indivisible, small and select, that seemed to me, with Mozart at the top, to be above all dispute and doubt, but where was the limit?†
- But I am thinking now of your favorite of whom you have talked to me sometimes, and read me, too, some of his letters, of Mozart.†
- Was it Mozart or the business people, Mozart or the average man?†
- Was it Mozart or the business people, Mozart or the average man?†
- The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets.†
- There you will find your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher, Philip of Neri and all.†
- As I reflected, passages of Mozart's Cassations, of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier came to my mind and it seemed to me that all through this music there was the radiance of this cool starry brightness and the quivering of this clearness of ether.†
- And if you still think it worth your while we can philosophize together and argue and talk about music and Mozart and Gluck and Plato and Goethe to your heart's content.†
- "Mozart," I thought, and with the word conjured up the most beloved and the most exalted picture that my inner life contained.
*
- I turned about, frozen through with the blessing of this laughter, and there came Mozart.†
- Mozart was leaning over the front of the box.†
- "You see," said Mozart, "it goes all right without the saxophone—though to be sure, I shouldn't wish to tread on the toes of that famous instrument."†
- Don't overstrain yourself," laughed Mozart, in frightful mockery.†
- He had a melancholy and hopeless air; and Mozart said: "Look, there's Brahms.†
- "Too thickly orchestrated, too much material wasted," Mozart said with a nod.†
- Mozart laughed.†
- Mozart laughed aloud when he saw my long face.†
- I caught hold of Mozart by the pigtail and off he flew.†
- A bitter-sharp and steel-bright icy gaiety coursed through me and a desire to laugh as shrilly and wildly and unearthly as Mozart had done.†
- He had heard Mozart laugh.†
- He had loved Erica and Maria, and had been Hermine's friend, and shot down motorcars, and slept with the sleek Chinese, and encountered Mozart and Goethe, and made sundry holes in the web of time and rents in reality's disguise, though it held him a prisoner still.†
- O Mozart!†
- Yes, with Mozart and the immortals.†
- Then the door of the box opened and in came Mozart.†
- "My God," I cried in horror, "what are you doing, Mozart?†
- Must this be, Mozart?†
- I am a beast, Mozart, a stupid, angry beast, sick and rotten.†
- Mozart laughed his noiseless laughter.†
- All-knowing and all-mocking rang Mozart's soundless laughter.†
- Mozart looked at me with intolerable mockery.†
- When I came to myself again, Mozart was sitting beside me as before.†
- And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the Steppenwolf, and to meddle in his destiny?†
- "Then," said Mozart calmly, "I should invite you to smoke another of my charming cigarettes."†
- And as he spoke and conjured up a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and offered it me, he was suddenly Mozart no longer.†
- I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter.†
Definition:
prolific Austrian composer and child prodigy; widely considered to be one of the masters of the classical style (1756-1791)