ABSTRACT
In the wake of the fiasco of the first five Little Piano Pieces, Arnold Schoenberg has the sorrowful insight that it is impossible to continue along his old musical-spiritual path. Inspired by Balzac, he tries to turn art into prayer by making Ratsel, which do not attempt to present God directly but still allow presentiment to apprehend him. This new path to salvation involves a change from seeking blindness to the world to affirming blindness to God while yet believing in the visionary genius. Schoenberg thematizes these kinds of visionary blindness in several works. Schoenberg declines to consummate his new path, leaving the major religious works Die Jakobsleiter and Moses und Aron unfinished, yet he cannot put his finger on what bothers him. As Schoenberg says, "Remorse remains: but it explains nothing, for it does not name its cause. It is not without repentance, but without a visible image".
