This has been well called "the riddle" of the symphony; nor can we
altogether accept Herr Elterlein's solution of it, though
_geistreich_. He prolongs his fancy, and looks upon this music as a
contagious pause and period of melancholy, of pathetic reminiscence in
the "hot-blooded southern folk." Imaginative sympathy has a right to
its own fancies, and these fancies will ever be more or less true;
nevertheless, a more profound, more sacred gloom--mystery of
sorrow--is borne in upon us in these unfathomable tones. Here we seem
to have the portentous, almost God-accusing, grief of insane love and
virtue, in this fate-and-madness-haunted world--of Juliet in the tomb
(re-read the tremendous lines)--of the ineffable Ophelia, after
outraged princeliness and intellect had lost its reason, and killed
Ophelia's own venerable father;--"Ach!" previous to the violent death
(her own) of an angel. Or, we might feel here the incipient atheism of
a Hamlet himself; wrestling with it, but dreading he wrestles in vain.
Later, it is true (the A major melody--"immortal" Berlioz calls it),
solace descends from heaven, through the toppling sun-gilt clouds; but
it is unavailing (indeed, we rather regret the introduction of this
episode? we had liefer be plunged to, and remain in, the heart of this
"deeper, and deeper still" of grief): Rachel will not be comforted, in
her _sublime_ despair; and the final strains seem those of incurable,
illimitable woe. Ah! these are the strains, too, the accents--"Oh,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, how often would
I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens and thou wouldst
not!" The divine resolution to sacrifice self for all that (the A
major motive?) remains even firmer, but the divine sorrow _at_ it
remains even deeper and inextinguishable.