In one of Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestral works, Opus 4, Verklarte Nacht- Transfigured Night, he wanted to convey through music the message of the redemptive power of love. He used as inspiration a poem by Richard Dehmel.
Transfigured Night tells the story of a man and a woman walking through a bare, cold forest on a moonlit night. The woman confesses to the man whom she loves that she’s carrying a child that is not his. The child within he womb is the product of sin, she cries. She desperately wanted to be a mother, but there is no one who loved her. And so, as she put it, she yielded her body “to then embrace of a stranger.” She cries, “Now life has taken its revenge; now I have met you, O you.”
She knows that she will now be abandoned by this man whom she truly loves and who has said that he loves her. They live in a Victorian society; she is a fallen woman; all that she can envision out for herself is the life of shame and misery. She will become a pariah; she will be shunned. “Now life has taken its revenge.”
Then the man speaks:
“Let the child you have conceived
not be a burden on your soul;
Look how brilliant the universe shines!...
A warmth of our own darts
from you to me, form me to you.
It will transfigure the stranger’s child.
You will bear it for me, by me…
Their breath intermingles in the air…”
One human being save another human being through forgiveness and love? Can you?
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