Kant's Second Paralogism of Pure Reason

The second paralogism of the Second Book of the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason pertains to the simplicity of the soul as approached by the rational psychologists, such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Mendelssohn. Specifically, Kant wants to deal with the pure doctrine of the soul, which is that formulation of the soul that is derived from pure reason. Pure reason, in turn, is the central enterprise of the rationalists; its purity is purity from all traces of empiricism. On a purely a priori basis must the rational psychologists give their account, from their “sole text” of “I think” (A343), lest they cease to be rationalists, just as an empiricist may make no claim that is not rooted in experience. The latter two, of course, are necessarily in opposition in their pure forms, and Kant refuses to embrace either one; hence, he is both a rationalist and an empiricist in different, nuanced respects, throwing his lot with neither one nor the other, so also bearing much antagonism with both. In his criticism of rational psychology, here again on the simplicity of the soul, Kant was led to at least two conclusions of particularly important note. The first is his denial of the knowability of the simplicity of the soul, despite his acknowledgement of that same simplicity on other grounds. The other is his conclusion, in a way adding insult to the injury of the rational psychologists, is that even granted the simplicity of the soul, their desired conclusion of immortality yet remains entirely remote.

According to Kant, the project of the rational psychologists is directed to the ultimate end of inferring immortality for all rational beings. Thus the rational psychologists conceive of the soul as a unified, simple substance which interacts with bodies of matter. From substance, the soul is supposed to be immaterial; from simplicity, it is supposed to be incorruptible; from unity of identity over time, it should have personality; and from interaction, it may be understood how bodies of matter are given animality—soulishness (A345/B403). These, according to Kant, are the necessary conditions that the rationalists believe establish the immortality of the soul, and the rationalists believe that these have been demonstrated. Kant, in turn, argues that each conclusion—substantiality, simplicity, unity, and interaction—is a paralogism of pure reason, and in this way he attempts to dissolve the so-called science of rational psychology, which he considers to be a false science (A345/B403).

It is fitting now to define what Kant means by a paralogism and moreover what he means by a transcendental paralogism. In short, a logical paralogism is a fallacious argument that appears to be formally sound, but which critical philosophy exposes as fallacious. A transcendental paralogism, as one might suspect, is one in which there is a “transcendental ground for inferring falsely due to its form” (A341/B399). It is a distinguishing feature of a paralogism, resulting from the transcendental ground for false inference that it is attributed to the psychology of human reason itself; that the human proclivity to be deceived by a paralogistic illusion is somehow innate (A341/B399). Thus, all four of Kant’s paralogisms of pure reason are presented as being guilty of an amphiboly, which is the fallacy of equivocation, which Kant also refers to as an argument per Sophisma figurae dictionis (B411). This involves the use of a particular term in two different senses in the major and minor premises of an argument; despite their bearing different meanings, they are equivocated.

In the first edition of the Critique, Kant formulates the second paralogism on the simplicity of the soul from the premises, “That thing whose action can never be regarded as the concurrence of many acting things, is simple,” and, “Now the soul, or the thinking I, is such a thing” (A351). From there, that the soul is simple follows perfectly obviously. Now specifying the argument for the simplicity of the soul, simple substance is to be differentiated from composite substance, and given this distinction, Kant points out that “the action of a composite is an aggregate of many actions or accidents,” which may be unified in effect, as a human body may move in unison (A351-352). Such presents no problem, being an outer effect, but concerning thoughts, directed inward, the situation grows trickier, and Kant’s formulation of the paralogism is a reductio ad absurdum. For if thinking were composite, the thought would be constructed from its parts, but in order to have parts, the whole thought must first come, and this, goes the paralogism, is contradictory (A352).

The question now, of course, is the location of the fallacy in the aforesaid argument. The contradiction must not arise somehow. Kant denies that “many representations have to be contained in the absolute unity of one thought” (A352), meaning the idea that a collection of representations can constitute a single thought, after all. Kant’s contention is that this is unprovable from concepts, meaning that pure reason is without hope to prove the simplicity of the soul in this way. “The proposition, ‘A thought can be only the effect of the absolute unity of a thinking being’ cannot be treated as analytic” (A353), Kant concludes. In other words, the concept of a thought does not entail unity in the subject of the thought, which may be divided across subjects as a result. Again, without analyticity in the concepts, the rational psychologists are without a leg to stand on, as they have precluded empirical reasoning by the parameters of their own project. Empiricism is, however, open to Kant. Still, Kant is left with no concrete position regarding the position of the soul, having defeated this first argument of the second paralogism.

Kant then moves on to the paralogism surrounding the foundational thought of the rationalists, as championed by Descartes, “I think.” This is unique, says Kant as he builds the argument, inasmuch as it is the only representation for which the subject assumes the position of the object (A353-354), since the only thinking being only knows itself as a thinking being. Because the subject, the thinker, is an absolute unity, and because in this case the subject and the object are one in the same, the object, too, is an absolute unity, and so it cannot be thought but by a unified subject. One knows that the subject is unified from the thought, “I think,” since thinking, “I think” entails the absolute unity of the “I” (A354).

How is Kant to defeat this pillar of the rationalists? The trouble, says Kant, is that the “I” of the rationalists is quite simply “wholly empty of content” (A355). What he means by this is that the “I” does not necessarily refer to an absolute unity; the “I” is not clear at all what it is actually referring to. Rather, the “I” is a unity only as a representation, but it may represent a composite. The rationalists, then, in speaking of the “I,” are not dealing with the actual thinking being when they make pronouncements about simplicity, but about the representation of that thinking being, which may not be simple at all. Kant argues further that, just as the Cogito, ergo sum of Descartes is a tautology, since appending “I am” to “I think” does not contribute anything new to the expression, “I think” may be appended to any thought, demonstrating that “the simplicity of my self (as soul) is not really inferred from the proposition ‘I think’” (A354). In this way, declaration of one’s own simplicity refers only to the representation “I,” which is really nothing more than a perfectly vague “Something,” (A355), according to Kant, and by itself, there is nothing to a Something.

For the remainder of the Second Paralogism, Kant addresses the simplicity of the soul in relation to matter, and for this he turns to the transcendental aesthetic. According to Kant’s transcendental aesthetic, what is empirically discernable is done so through the pure forms of intuition, space and time, and it is only appearance that is empirically observable. Thus, from the vantage point of the transcendental aesthetic, one may experience an intuition of matter being represented by the mind in space and through time, but one may not know what matter is in itself. Matter “is merely an outer appearance” (A359), says Kant. Regarding the place of the soul in the transcendental aesthetic, Kant notes that “this Something is not extended, not impenetrable, not composite, because these predicates pertain only to sensibility and its intuition” (A358). The soul, the Something, is not a sensible object; in other words, it is not a phenomenal object, it is a noumenal object, “or better, [a] transcendental object” (A358). That said, it is in addition the recipient of the outer sense, which gives it a rather peculiar place.

The potential trouble distinguishing the soul and matter arises at the level of substratum, specifically the substratum of matter, which “is not cognized through any specifiable predicates,” for which reason Kant assumes that the substratum of matter could well be simple (A359). It would appear that Kant is acknowledging the possibility for the substratum of matter to exhibit thoughts and consciousness, being simple, and thereby eliminate the concept of the soul, subsuming its functions in the substratum. Because soul and matter are inwardly indistinguishable, as nothing can truly be established of the substratum of matter, there is no means by which the two may be certainly severed, at least for Kant (A360). What Kant is trying to do in making this point is crushing as thoroughly as he can any remaining attachment one might have to the rational psychologists’ concept of the soul, based on the assumptions of the transcendental aesthetic. The idea is that the simplicity of the soul is uncertain to the point that the soul may be conjoined with matter itself and may remain simple. At the same time, empiricism is so indeterminate about matter and the soul that it is not equipped to establish anything but the appearances of matter. The simplicity of the soul, for Kant, is very much unknowable, and as a result, so too is the much sought-after conclusion of the rational psychologists from the simplicity of the soul, its imperishability.

In the second edition of the Critique, a related issue arises with Moses Mendelssohn’s argument against the perishability of the soul, given its simplicity. Kant takes this as an opportunity to finish off one final matter with the rational doctrine of the simplicity of the soul, and that is that imperishability even follows from simplicity at all. The trouble that Mendelssohn tried to confront is that, though simplicity does preclude perishing by disintegration, it does not at all stand in the way of perishing by vanishing (B413). It is against this that Mendelssohn directed his argument, which Kant summarizes as

attempting to prove that a simple being cannot cease to be at all because, since it cannot be diminished and thus lose more and more of its existence, and so be gradually transformed into nothing (since it has no parts and thus no plurality in itself), there would be no time at all between a moment in which it is and another moment in which it is not, which is impossible. (B413-414)

Kant’s response still assumes the simplicity of the soul, which it must if it is to show that simplicity does not entail imperishability, and he does so by arguing for “elanguescence” (B414). This essentially means the diminishment of the soul’s powers until they are no more, rendering the soul no more. Such attributes like consciousness, says Kant, may be present in differing magnitudes, even in a simple substance, since these to not make the substance composite, and if these faculties diminish in magnitude, or gradually remiss as Kant would have it, then the soul may very well be left powerless. What is a powerless soul, or more exactly, what is a soul without powers? It is nothing, as these faculties and powers represent all that “constitutes its existence” (B414). Thus, argues Kant, not only is the rational psychologist unable to say that the soul is simple, even if it is, it cannot be said to persist.

To summarize Kant’s stance on the simplicity of the soul, it seems suitable to begin with his conclusion to the first edition of the Paralogisms, saying, “the fundamental concept of a simple nature is of such a kind as cannot be encountered anywhere in experience, and hence there is no way at all by which to reach it as an objectively valid concept” (A361), thereby severing knowledge of the simplicity of the soul from empiricism. It is even less challenging to recall the ongoing argument against the rational doctrine of the soul, which is the whole subject of the Paralogisms. In short, because “I think” does not mean simplicity for the “I” in any meaningful sense, Kant concludes that the foundational argument for simplicity by pure reason is flawed. To make matters worse for the rationalists, Kant even pursues a line of argument to show that, even if the soul is simple, the conclusion does not even fulfill the function that they think it should, namely to establish the imperishability of the soul and establishing our immortality. Hence, since the simplicity of the soul is indeterminate by both rational and empirical investigation, and it is additionally shown to be conclusively indeterminate (for Kant) by the transcendental aesthetic, the views of Kant regarding the knowability of the simplicity of the soul are largely apparent, so they may be stated. It is not by pure reason that conclusions about the soul are reached, but by practical reason, otherwise “deny[ing] knowledge to make room for faith” (Bxxx), perhaps hearkening back to Hume, the empiricist and skeptic, who first awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber” (PFM, 4:260). It is that denial that allows for the practical reason that allows Kant the breadth of his moral conclusions, which he would contend a rationalist could never do.

Bibliography

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, tr. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2008.

Life, Death, and Representation in Pictures at an Exhibition

A single, unharmonized melodic line sounds to signal the entrance of the composer Mussorgsky into the exhibition featuring the pictures of his late friend Victor Hartmann. It is the opening Promenade; Mussorgsky is walking about, depicted in irregular meter. The time signature is shifting between 5/4 and 6/4, perhaps with the humorous intent of reflecting the awkward gait of the portly composer. It is, as its title indicates, a piece about walking—promenading to be exact—but there is nothing inherent in the notes to suggest that this might be the case. Only in conjunction with the title may this connection be made, and only after this is it possible to give further consideration to musical meaning. The notes have been contextualized; instead of asking why the time signature changes, the question becomes, why, in the context of promenading, should the time signature change? In other words, what might this represent? What we may derive from this are two spheres of extra-musical interpretation, the first, contextual sphere being established by the composer, the second sphere being the interpretive elaboration of the listener. Indeed, in the same way the listener may reason both that it is Mussorgsky doing the promenading and that he is doing so at the exhibition, simply because the title, Pictures at an Exhibition, contextualizes the music in such a way as to allow for this interpretation. In this way the whole work may be considered, as may any work which attempts to represent an extra-musical subject, in the context of the objective declarations of the composer, in another through the subjective, interpretive allowance granted to the listener.

Relatively speaking, the opening Promenade is a vibrant movement—Mussorgsky is walking about, alive until he reaches his destination and stops. Musically, a perfect cadence into a tonic B flat major chord concludes the movement; in other words, the music has reached its destination and stopped. Having done so, however, might be regretful. The end of the Promenade is labeled attacca, which indicates to the performer that the next movement should be played continuously with the one that has just been completed. Rather than connect these movements sonorously, Mussorgsky not only begins the next melody not only fortissimo, which is jarringly loud, but the next melodic note is a C flat, a major seventh below where the Promenade left off. Mussorgsky has shifted to a rather distant key signature in a very sudden transition that is not meant to be the least bit subtle. All this has been directed with the clear aim of shocking his listeners, and this effect, if performed well, cannot fail.

What is it that is supposed to be so shocking? It is the first picture, entitled Gnome, and this gnome is of such a grotesque and frightful variety to warrant such a scare as the one Mussorgsky depicted, the scare that he meant to depict of having first glanced upon the startling picture. Of course, these are subjective elements of the interpretation—in no place does Mussorgsky indicate that the opening jolt of Gnome is to be interpreted in this way, but it is admittedly an appealing and common view to take. Mussorgsky again only contextualized the jolt, first by lulling his listeners into the patterns of the Promenade, then again through the act of titling, which allows us to know not only that this is a picture of something, but also that it is a gnome that is so startling. The movement is far from traditional in any respect, from harmony to technique, and this only adds to the discomfort, and perhaps even anger evoked by this gnome.

Let the interpretation proceed further, into far more controversial territory. Arguably, the suddenness of this shock might be put in the frame of Hartmann’s sudden death. This would then imply a duality between these first two movements, the Promenade representing life, and Gnome at least in this one respect representing death, more specifically death in the immediate sense. The chromaticism and extensive use of dissonance, not to mention the jarring gestures that permeate the whole piece fit well with this idea. In a sense, the music comes in several fits, as fits of rage or of otherwise intense and undirected feeling. It is as if to show the force with which the loss of Hartmann struck Mussorgsky.

Consonant harmonies and even peacefulness return in the proceeding promenade, where the opening melody moves to the bass clef and modulates to a new key signature. Importantly, the dynamics are soft, never being marked above piano. In every respect, this second promenade, even marked “con delicatezza,” stands in stark contrast with Gnome. Mussorgsky is walking once more, but his walk is slower—Moderato instead of Allegro—and less pronounced, though the time signatures preserve his awkward gait. Mussorgsky is past the stage depicted in Gnome, and he is going elsewhere, arriving almost in tears at the transition. The promenade theme plays in harmony while first sustained notes are held in the bass, descending twice in fifths, the second fifth an octave beneath the first, E flat to A flat. The next two measures repeat the promenade theme, this time in a diminuendo toward pianissimo with quiet octaves hanging above. Could these possibly be a groan and a sigh, a tearful inhalation and exhalation? Though this might go a bit far, the lonely, pensive sadness of the movement may be uncontroversially interpreted at least. The subjective range of interpretation, however, allows the promenade to be viewed in this way. The minute it becomes subjective, it no longer needs to be universally true.

It has been noted that Mussorgsky was going somewhere in this promenade, and that is The Old Castle. Mussorgsky here depicts a lone minstrel of sorts at the titular location, whose song may be found in the treble-ranged melody. The other notes, those in the background and those in the harmonically richer A major theme that starts the twenty-ninth measure, are presumably those of his instrument, which would appear on a stylistic basis to be a guitar or some like stringed instrument. Two features pervade this movement. The first is the sense of abject loneliness to be found in this movement. The second, ironically, is the constant company of a pedal-point G sharp, which serves a significant role in imitating the Italian style, but given this contradiction, it may behoove us to seek more in this G sharp. Now, the loneliness as it relates to Mussorgsky has already begun to permeate since the prior promenade, but this G sharp lingers on, even where, as a non-chord tone, it is quite dissonant. A number of possible construals seem appropriate for characterizing this G sharp. It could be the sense of loss, or otherwise the sadness lingering with Mussorgsky. It could be taken as the spirit of Hartmann, remaining in Mussorgsky’s consciousness. Regardless, that G sharp is filled with a persistent mourning that cannot be shaken, and in this way the loneliness of The Old Castle may keep its company.

Fermatas on rests conclude The Old Castle, into which the melodic and harmonic movements began to break apart and diminish and diminuendo, and after a period of silence, another promenade takes Mussorgsky forcefully away, forte and Moderato, but this promenade follows in the key signature whence it came, but this is the relative major, B major. Something of The Old Castle remains with Mussorgsky, and at the end of this brief section of music, the melody, which had previously been in octaves in both hands, sheds its outer doublings, goes silent, and then plays only a bit of the melody in a solo fragment. Mussorgsky’s walk was interrupted. Something has caught his eye.

Tuileries maintains B major, and it provides yet another, far more thorough contrast with the movements preceding it. It depicts children playing and quarrelling, and it does so with great levity. The opening melody seems to mimic the sounds of a child’s taunt, which receives a retort in the form of a repeat. This basic structure advances up the keyboard a couple of times as the quarrel grows in intensity, only to quickly boil back down to a repeat of the initial material. New melodic material is introduced as the quarrel, for some reason, be it discipline or some kind of feigned or actual apology, subsides, but opening taunts quickly begin to assert themselves again, eventually reaching their climactic state before the ending, where the levity of the start takes hold again.

Could it be that Mussorgsky is approaching this light triviality as a distraction from the previous pervasion of death? Children, after all, are not exactly potent conveyers of death—quite the opposite, actually. Could this movement be Mussorgsky’s embrace of the trivialities of life, having confronted death? On a darker note, is Mussorgsky mocking death through this movement? The jump to the Tuileries palace in France, a sort of idealized and luxurious locale, is more suggestive of an escapist interpretation, that this movement represents a flight from the issue of death. Children, furthermore, suggest a flight to childhood, when quarrels were trivial, not at all like the quarrel with death that Mussorgsky has begun upon the loss of Hartmann. Indeed, if any of these interpretations is to be taken as best, the idea of flight to an idealized childhood apart from the idea of death seems to be the one, and this fits very well with the proceeding movement, Bydlo, which refers to an oxcart, specifically in Poland.

Childhood comes crashing down in the face of grinding labor, perhaps as Mussorgsky glances quickly from one picture to another, and the levity of Tuileries is crushed under the weight of a heaviness that might be unsurpassed by any other work for the piano. Bydlo consists of some very lowly pitched harmonies pounded out with perfect regularity as melodic material moves over it. The relative G sharp minor is resumed here, even though Tuileries and Byldo are not marked as continuous movements. Two primary interpretations of this movement are worth noting. The first is Rimsky-Korsakov’s, in which the listener is to hear the oxcart passing by, hence the especial volume of the middle section. This prompted the latter, in editing Pictures after Mussorgsky’s death, to make Mussorgsky’s opening dynamic much quieter. This is very disingenuous to the view of interpretation presented here. Mussorgsky provided the context of Bydlo in his title, and the interpretation of the music in context should not allow actual change to the music. Rimsky-Korsakov, as the self-appointed editor of the late Mussorgsky’s work, tried to objectify his subjective interpretation, and he had no right to do so.

The other interpretation, the one adopted here, places the listener on the oxcart, so that when the music is marked fortissimo until the end, it is loud because the bustle of the oxcart’s movement is in continual commotion. When the dynamics to drop to pianissimo and even ppp, it is because the oxcart has arrived where it is going and stopped. This is important, as the oxcart may be very well interpreted as the vehicle by which Mussorgsky is brought home to his conflict from his fanciful flight to France. Not to make too much of it, but this even works geographically, since Bydlo is Polish. Far more importantly, though, is the cultural aspect of this point. From the distant French movement, Mussorgsky passes through the rustic, closer-to-home Polish movement to get to where the oxcart takes him. Plainly, it takes him back whence he came, to his confrontation with death and loss. There is significance to the fact that the conclusion of Bydlo is marked perdendosi: dying away. Bydlo ends in death.

Following another indefinite period of silence, a promenade follows, at first marked “Tranquillo.” This promenade is significant in its variation on the promenading theme in such a way as to inflect it with a strong sense of melancholy, one which proceeds more into a sense of brooding as pitch drops, volume increases, and forceful octaves replace the tranquil harmonies. This promenade is also interesting in its contrapuntal arrangement of some of the promenade material. It is as if Mussorgsky is pondering to his full capacity how to confront death, not least Hartmann’s death, as he begins walking to some other picture. The promenade is interrupted by the opening chords of Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, as Mussorgsky gets a glimpse of this peculiar image. The promenade is continuous with the “ballet.”

Musically, grace notes, trills, and leaps in range abound in a movement that can hardly be described without recourse to the idea of bounciness. Perhaps the most important thing to point out in this movement is the presence of a lone D flat, which sounds at a relatively high pitch and forte at the dividing point between the two sections of the piece. The emphasis placed upon it has led to the quite rational conclusion that it is supposed to represent the call of a newly hatched chick. In that respect it is a sound of life; it is a sound of birth itself. For Mussorgsky, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks opens the door to an exploration of life that might answer the problem of death. In the music, this is a bit of a rebirth into the life that was found in the opening Promenade, but in order to see how this turns out, the proceeding few movements are in need of exploration. The chicks have called out in life, so let us see what it has to offer.

Immediately, Mussorgsky contrasts the naïve levity of the young chicks with the injustice and suffering of Two Jews: One Rich and the Other Poor. The opening strains of this movement depict the rich Jew, Samuel Goldenberg, in imposing fashion. After that, the poor Schmuyle is represented, and his theme could hardly be seen as anything but mimicry of the sounds of crying. What, though, can be the relationship between Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle? Though this could not work pictorially, Mussorgsky perhaps provides a musical clue in the synonymy of the names “Samuel” and “Schmuyle,” the latter just being the Yiddish variant of the former. It could be that these two characters are, in fact, one in the same, acting as a composite picture of the darker elements of life. This is perhaps supported by the combination of both characters’ themes at the end of Two Jews. Taken alongside the “ballet,” another duality arises. On the one hand is the good in life, as the chicks experience in hatching, as the Trio section of that movement illustrates. On the other hand, there is evil and there is suffering, but that is not all there is. The chicks have shown rebirth.

This is most arguable via the next Promenade that follows Two Jews. It is effectively the initial Promenade with a number of significant modifications. First, rather than state the opening melody as a solo line, it is stated more forcefully in octaves. The other difference is the unexpected restructuring of the music, often splitting formerly conjoined measures up and leaving others out, in addition to adding some new ones. Transitions, in other words, are strange in this Promenade, given the other ones. What this might mean is a growing crowd at the exhibition, which accounts for such features as the octaves at the start, in addition to the structural changes, which might derive their stranger points as Mussorgsky has to move around the crowd. This, however, is trivial compared to the fact that Promenade is restated in the style of the initial one, since it has been suggested that the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks implies a rebirth to the vibrant attitude of that first Promenade, before the shock of Gnome. Does Mussorgsky’s promenading in that style once more, vibrant and perhaps untroubled indicate an embrace of life against death? Perhaps he is merely distracted or even fooling himself.

Just as the exhibition develops a din of activity, a parallel is found in the next picture Mussorgsky stops to see, Limoges, which depicts a busy marketplace in that French city. The conclusion of the previous Promenade, like the first one, indicates a deliberate stop at an intended goal because of a perfect cadence. Quite differently from the transition, or lack of transition, to Gnome, a comfortable modulation from B flat major to E flat major takes place, the Promenade ending and Limoges beginning melodically on B flat. The two points worth noting here are the frantic nature of the marketplace, as depicted in the music, and its location in France. It is beginning to look as if Mussorgsky has merely hidden from death once again, this time in the distractions of life in general. France might well be taken as Mussorgsky’s symbolic hideaway, where death and loss to not matter. Rather the inanities of “The Big News,” which is the feature of the events depicted in Limoges, are the issue of the day, and these may keep one away both from death and even from the troubles found in Two Jews. There is certainly a constant influx of sound to keep the listener busy in Limoges, and the conclusion of this piece seems to be the most desperate barrage of noise of all, all leading up to the sparsest and perhaps the most musically bizarre of all the pictures: Catacombs.

Catacombs opens with B’s across three octaves, taking up a whole measure in 3/4 time and being marked with a fermata and a fortissimo. This is the strike of death, bringing all the life and bustle of the marketplace to silence. Mussorgsky could not escape death, and death descended on him—or rather he descended into the catacombs, having strayed his glance to that picture, being struck once again by the reality of death. What exactly the notes in Catacombs are intended to convey is somewhat mysterious. An important clue might be the oscillation between extreme dynamics between many of its measures. Could this be the music of dying itself—music that itself dies? It is inherent in the nature of the piano that once a note is struck, when it is sustained it dies by diminuendo. The notes in this piece are generally held for extended periods of time, and they go from loud strikes to softer ones until there is no more. Each diminuendo is another death, and to resist death is futile. In the third measure, Mussorgsky asks that the pianist do the impossible: crescendo on a sustained note on the piano. This comes as the first diminuendo would reach its closing in silence. This crescendo is a futile demand to resist death, and after that one demand on the first instance of death, it is not asked of the pianist again. Mussorgsky’s descent into the catacombs, so understood, is his statement of resignation to death.

Having so resigned himself, Mussorgsky proceeds with Con mortuis in lingua mortua, which functions like a promenade, adapts the promenade melody, but is not quite a promenade. Here too, Mussorgsky at last confronts Hartmann’s death, and he is lead to his final understanding of confronting of death. This promenade melody is vastly different in this piece than in any other. The melody is different in that it is transposed to B minor, where before it had made exclusive use of major modalities. The harmonic structure, too, is changed as one ought to expect in such a transposition. Lastly, the rhythm is reduced to a quarter note pulse with the occasional half note or rest strewn in for phrasing purposes. For the latter, a particularly interesting point may be made about Mussorgsky’s movements, as this formulation would depict them. Specifically, they are slow and careful, so much so as to eliminate the awkwardness that has been supposed in the previous instances of this melody. The presence of half notes and rests only serves to corroborate this interpretation; these would be when Mussorgsky, among the dead, felt the need to stop, either for a single step (as in the presence of a half note), or for a longer period (as in a rest, especially if it is conjoined with a fermata).

Presumably Mussorgsky is walking among the dead in order to confront death, apparently having lost himself among Hartmann’s pictures, and based on Mussorgsky’s note in his autograph of Pictures, it seems Hartmann leads the way. It says, “Latin text: with the dead in a dead language. A Latin text would be suitable: the creative spirit of the late Hartmann…leads me to the skulls, summons me to them, the skulls have quietly lit up.”[1] Con mortuis in lingua mortua is divided into two distinct sections, the first having been described above. The second section oscillates between dissonances and F sharp major chords with a small, chromatic melodic figure in between and F sharp major arpeggios following. Eventually, F sharp major proceeds to the tonic B major, and that harmony approximately follows the pattern established by the F sharp major figures into a high register B major chord to close out the piece. Importantly, this second section lacks both the promenade theme and the eeriness of its quality in this piece. Mussorgsky is no longer walking. Hartmann has led him through the underworld with his pictures, and the peace that permeates this section may very well be taken as Mussorgsky’s newfound peace with the loss of Hartmann. He and Hartmann brought together still in Hartmann’s work, and this is how Mussorgsky determines death is to be transcended—through creativity.

It should seem peculiar, that if this interpretation is accurate, that Baba Yaga, a folkloric witch who lives in a hut on chicken’s legs, should follow, but let us not forget that it was the other folkloric picture—Gnome—that struck Mussorgsky in the first place. As Gnome forced Mussorgsky into conflict with death, Baba Yaga shall whisk him away from such conflict in her hut chicken’s legs, much like the oxcart carried him out of Tuileries. It is symmetrically important, therefore, for this movement to take place as the final transition before the transcendence of The Great Gate. The continuity between these two movements is important, as Baba Yaga leads directly into The Great Gate, almost as if the hut itself entered Kiev through it. Both folkloric images are frightening ones; Baba Yaga, like Gnome, is a dark and intense piece of music. The difference is where each proceeds. Gnome leads to mourning, Baba Yaga to transcendence.

At last Mussorgsky lays eyes on The Great Gate, the grand finale of Pictures. In this movement, two sections are particularly noteworthy for our purposes. The first has two subsets, and these are the expressionless arrangements of the Russian Orthodox hymn, first piano then fortissimo. The inclusion of this section is not particularly curious; it provides a contrast to the grandness exhibited in the rest of the piece. What is curious is the designation “senza expression,” without expression. Why should Mussorgsky make such a demand, unless some characterization is to be derived from these sections? In addition, why should this section modulate upward and change its dynamic so dramatically? It is almost as if the second time, the voice behind this theme is trying desperately to be heard, but is drowned out by the rest of The Great Gate. If indeed The Great Gate is about transcendence through creativity, namely Hartmann’s transcendence, then it is clear that the “creative spirit” of Hartmann lives on in grand form, while the ordinary voice behind an ordinary hymn cannot overpower the force of his creations, which sound through Mussorgsky’s music.

The Great Gate seems to imply that Hartmann somehow transcends death though his creative endeavors, as has been suggested several times already. In the middle, in the section that can hardly be taken to represent anything but the bells of the Great Gate, among these bells sounds the promenade theme one final time. This theme has already been associated with life, but up to this point it has only been applied to Mussorgsky. Here, in the ringing of the bells on the Great Gate of Kiev, is Hartmann walking among us, or at least his “creative spirit” is, and as long as this is so, he has transcended death. In this artistic transcendence, Mussorgsky retains a link to his dear friend through what he left behind, and this is what Pictures at an Exhibition is about. Death is indeed central to this work that was largely a response to Hartmann’s death, but in the end, death is not the victor.

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[1] Modest Moussorgsky. Pictures at an Exhibition and Other Works for Piano. Pavel Lamm, ed. Dover, New York: 1990.