AESTHETICS reason we are given for this is that music is the most abstract of the arts Like language, it addresses the ear; like the spoken word, it unfolds in time, not in space But while language is the vehicle of spirit, music is the vehicle of sensuality Kierkegaard’s essayist goes on to make a surprising claim Though religious puritans are suspicious of music, as the voice of sensuality, and prefer to listen to the word of the spirit, the development of music and the discovery of sensuality are both in fact due to Christianity Sensual love was, of course, an element in the life of the Greeks, whether humans or gods; but it took Christianity to separate out sensuality by contrasting it with spirituality If I imagine the sensual erotic as a principle, as a power, as a realm characterized by spirit, that is to say characterized by being excluded by spirit, if I imagine it concentrated in a single individual, then I have the concept of the spirit of the sensual erotic This is an idea which the Greeks did not have, which Christianity first introduced to the world, if only in an indirect sense If this spirit of the sensual erotic in all its immediacy demands expression, the question is: what medium lends itself to that? What must be especially borne in mind here is that it demands expression and representation in its immediacy In its mediate state and its reflection in something else it comes under language and becomes subject to ethical categories In its immediacy it can only be expressed in music (E/O 75) Kierkegaard illustrates the various forms and stages of erotic pursuit by taking characters from different Mozart operas The first awakening of sensuality takes a melancholy, diffuse form, with no specific object: this is the dreamy stage expressed by Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro The second stage is expressed in the merry, vigorous, sparkling chirping of Papageno in The Magic Flute: love seeking out a specific object But these stages are no more than presentiments of Don Giovanni, who is the very incarnation of the sensual erotic Ballads and legends represent him as an individual ‘When he is interpreted in music, on the other hand, I not have a particular individual, I have the power of nature, the demonic, which as little tires of seducing, or is done with seducing, as the wind is tired of raging, the sea of surging, or a waterfall of cascading down from its height’ (E/O 90) Because Don Giovanni seduces not by stratagem, but by sheer energy of desire, he does not come within any ethical category; that is why his force can be expressed in music alone The secret of the whole opera is that its hero is the force animating the other characters: he is the sun, the other 259