In a peaceful light
Gustav Mahler composed the song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I Am Lost to the World) in 1901. It is based on his interpretation of the poem by Friedrich Rückert bearing the same title.
Of course, everyone has their own interpretation of poems, songs, and images.
To me personally, becoming “lost to the world” feels like something both sadly necessary and deeply beautiful.
We are still born with an invisible stamp on our foreheads—defined by the place, the system, and the conditions in which we grow up.
These images, expectations, roles, opinions, assigned duties and supposed purposes must first be buried in our own minds. We must first lose ourselves to the world—perhaps even become unreachable for a while—before we can dare to reposition ourselves within it, to look it squarely in the eye.
“I have died to the world’s turmoil,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love, in my song!”
These lines from Rückert’s poem capture the feeling that rises in me when I look at this image.
If you look closely, you’ll find painted-over areas—traces of earlier versions, earlier ideas of what this image was supposed to be. These had to die first, so that the painting could become what it is now—and so that it could radiate the calm it now carries.
