‘Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende’: Aspects of Apocalypse in Words and Music, Mainly German

摘要

Nietzsche sought to expose the impulse behind Biblical visions of Apocalypse, yet the (mostly) secular imagination continued to draw on apocalyptic thought and imagery as reality surpassed foreboding in world wars and further catastrophes. The choice between ‘an end with horror or horror without end’ is one such theme with variations which has resonated from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung to Franz Schmidt’s apocalyptic oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, from Döblin and Roth to Enzensberger, Sebald and Genazino, but perhaps most centrally in the work of Karl Kraus and Thomas Mann.