
Schoenberg Prints:
a multimedia response to his Second String Quartet
Entrückung II
. . .
I am dissolved in swirling sound, am weaving
unfathomed thanks with unnamed praise, and
wishless I yield myself into the mighty breath.
A wild gust grips me suddenly, and I can
Hear the fervent cries and prayers of women
prone in the dust and seized in pious rapture
And then I see the hazy vapors lifting
above a sunlit, vast, and clear expanse
that stretches far below the mountain crags.
**This translation is by Carl Engel and was Schoenberg’s preferred version.
The second section in Entrückung narrates the process of transportation to a transcendental world. Once again, the print is a pretty direct portrayal of the poem’s content. This piece is a landscape, visualizing the wild, swirling marks in the atmosphere, mountain crags, and the vast, sunlit expanse.
Beneath my feet a flooring soft and milky,
or endless chasms that I cross with ease.
Carried aloft beyond the highest cloud
I am afloat upon a sea of crystal splendor
. . .
