Lynn Harvey's Alexander Nicholaivich Scriabin:

A.N.SCRIABIN

Scriabin.& His Women
The Prefatory Action

Reading
Scriabin: Artist & Mystic
Scriabin: A Biography

Listening
Preparation for the Final Mystery
Horowitz Plays Scriabin
Goldenweiser Plays
50 Years of Vox

Scriabin Sites
Scriabin Society
Scriabin Moscow Flat
State Memorial Museum
Bill Restemeyer's Page
Synesthetic Experience
Richard E. Cytowic
Arthur Greene
Great Books: Scriabin
Romance Text
Bob Shubinski
Dr. Bob Plays Etude in
C# minor Op.2,No.1
Danse Opus 73 Number 1
by Bill Restemeyer

THE PREFATORY ACTION
Scriabin's mature works are suffused with a singular mysticism first inspired by Theosophy (which he soon abandoned), the Symbolists, and finally India which was to him a magic land of sages and illumination. Chords produced specific colors which Scriabin saw and dictated his composition. Some works were accompanied by prepared text (unappreciated and later ignored) and colored lights. Scriabin contemplated a complete sensory experience, including smells and surround sound. It wouldn't be until the Beatles's psychedelic period, modern light shows, and the space age that culture and technology would catch up with Scriabin's vision, although the mystical texts have sunk into obscurity. The texts are not essential to an appreciation of the music, perhaps even a hindrance. Yet they provide interesting insight into the development of Scriabin's belief that he was central to the transformation of the world through love/ecstasy. The Prefatory Action was the introduction to Scriabin's master work, the Mysterium. It was completed posthumously in the early 1970s by Alexander Nemtin from scraps of notation. The accompanying text, also incomplete at death, was translated by G. Reavey and is interpreted below.
THE TEXT
Once again in you the Pre-Eternal wills acceptance of Love's paradise. Once again the Infinite wills to know himself in the finite.
Choir	In the lightning soaring, In the dread explosion, In love's creative surge, In its godlike breathing There's the innermost aspect of the universe. The ardor of the instant gives birth to eternity, Lights the depths of space; Infinity breathes with worlds, Ringing sounds envelop silence The great comes to pass And sweet delightful love Is born anew! In burning hearts Our Pre-Eternal Father Weds with death!
Female Voice	To you many-lighted, U U, to you impulsive My answering moan, U U, my cry of summons.
Male Voice	Who are you, arisen in holy silence, In white beams calling to me?
Female Voice	I am the bright joy of the ultimate achievement In the white flame I am the incandescent diamond I am the ineffable bliss of dissolution I am the joy of death, I am freedom, I am ecstasy!
Male Voice	Impart to me how I may soar to our desired one That drives me made with the shimmer of your beams Where stands your palace, illuminated with magic light. Hear my prayer and reveal to me the mystery of death.
Female Voice	Heed me variegated light, the abysses of life lie between use, Life with its delusions, agonizing dreams; Multicolored spaces have divided us Amid the wondrous radiance of star-bloomed adornment. To enthrall me, you must pass through them Overcome them and break down at your journey's end.
Male Voice	But I do not see my way in the starry firmament, I don't see, blessed one, those spaces, those abysses.
Female Voice	Like me, they're your dream, your willing. You must see the light, hear your prophetic voice, And you will know, you will behold in your languor The flowering worlds dividing us. You fill everything with yourself I am not when you are there When in the beams of your dreaming As an image of new beauty I, in shimmering play, appear Thereby dooming to life Swarms of reveries, choirs of dreams, Assemblies of glittering worlds. There is no I, no I, only you exist, You fill everything with yourself. Speaking within you, I call upon you From radiant heights from divine exhalations And appealing to the creative will in you I demand sacrifices and solemn vows, So that in your infinite striving you may Come to know the bliss of another timelessness. Three deeds you must perform, Pre-Eternal, Make three sacrifices in intoxicating mutability. The first sacrifice-is a dream of me; You must forget caressing sleep And rush into the abysses that have separated us And thus given us wings for the feat of love.
Male and Female Voices	O divine deed, all-starry dance, In you we shall prove victorious over the abyss, In you we, who have been torn apart, shall discover ourselves, In you we shall blissfully die in each other.
Female Voices	You have begun your dance. From the peak of exhalations I behold you I motion, O Lord; I distinguish the colors of the surrounding sphere- Of the bridal garments adorning you. You live already and, moving towards me Lives bear your away from me With intoxicating dreams around you Shimmering and froth, illumining and sound.
Male Voices	In my movements I am bound Bye the crude texture of my apparel, yet I soar, obliged to you For all the energy of my fiery hopes.
Female Voice	If the cry of my joyous call Had not sounded in your soul, You would not have created, O Sweet Lord, the beginning of all beginnings. You are all-yearning for me And because of that the night Of the abysses will assist you To overcome all things in your creative striving. Behold: Seven angels in ethereal garb, The purest harbingers of your deathless glories, Fiery soaring pillars, the beaming heads Of your dazzling sparkling orbs Shall come to serve you in divesting your holy raiments! They are the heaven-dwellers, Fire-bearers, Rulers of destiny, Builders of the world, Preservers of frontiers, Warriors against God, Destroyers of walls. They are yours, these children tearing you apart, Fathered by you in an agitated breast. Your path towards me lies in their negating dawn Come in their aspect and perform your deed! They are the builders of a radiant cathedral, In which the drama of the universe will take place, Where in a languorous dance, in being wedded to me You will attain to another desired world. I am Your will, I am the dread instrument Of Your great achievements. Through my strength you pour down dreamlike Intoxication into crystals of creations. And I am your dream about the future universe, one of the links of dual existence. I enthralled you, but soon I shall be in thrall In your wreath I'll be a wondrous star. Lightnings of the will, we thirst for achievements. We'll be incarnated in the blows of decision. In the roar of explosions and in the thunder of wrecks We shall live boldly in dreams, We shall serve both dark and light. We are the bright fumes of divine thought, Through contemplation we'll be incarnated in pure souls. Through us you enthrall the spirits of darkness and negation And anew you'll bind together fractured dreams. We are the beaming assembly of flame-thoughts And of pure lights, of token-lights, For you-of the world of yearning dreams, For the earth-of the feast of rejoicing stars. We are born through your desire to distinguish, We are awakened by the gleams of heavenly fire, We are the waves of feelings, the world of aspects and delusions, Sounding on sunbeam-strings, we enthrall all things
We are the Waves of Life	Waves, The first ones, Waves, The timid ones, The first Murmurs, The timid Whispers, The first Quivers, The timid Lispings. Waves, The gentle ones, Waves, The swelling ones, The tender Mutations, Mounting Foam-flurries, The gentle Soarings, The impulses Of rising spray. We are-all of us-a single Current, directed from out of Eternity towards the instant On the way to humanity, Down from transparency Towards a stony gloom So that we may imprint upon stone In fiery creativeness The image of Your Divine Countenance, Waves, Waves, First Waves, With waves, Waves, Stirring ones, Waves, With waves Kissing Waves. What's this sweet bliss That is roused in the waves By the flaring snow Of the foaming rollers? What is the mystery That lures us into the valleys From the boundless heights To the schism of life?
Awakening Feelings	The tender delight Of touching for the first time The mysterious sweetness Of moist lips kissing, The sweet moaning Of first languorous moments, The first ringing vibrations The calls of our inclinations. The tender caresses Of the first glimmers- The mysterious tales Told by amorous lights.
The Waves	Having grown heavy-sodden In a downpour of ensations, We have become absorbed In the current of life. Into the valleys of languor Wave come surging. In clouds of desiring We have been clothed In cloud-bondage Closer to the perishable, Pour down you frothing waters Lower and lower. Sweet is the perishable world, For only on what is perishable Can your image be Imprinted Sweet is the perishable world, For only in what is perishable In the manifest world Can you go on living. All the more invested, The waves U foaming, All the more manifest, The tender bondages, All the more loving, All the more pleasurable, All the more languorous, All the more joyous, All the ore torturing, lovely, Sensuous, corporeal: Our captivity, Sweet captivity, Everywhere present, for us, Mot inevitable, Enveloping us on all sides, Become our bodily clothing.
The Wave	You gleamed, and swooning sweetness Poured through the moist body, And I soared full of languor, Towards you in dreams. Born of the dark elements, A wave merging with other waves, As in a languorous dream, I now take leave of my sisters. And in your sweet turbulence I am the most wingèd of the waves, In my bold flight I am your joyous, Your divine laughter I am the love that stirred within you, You are the light that stirred within me. I am a wave, become self-aware, As though in answer to your play. Into the super-terrestrial spheres of the spirit Where the thread of life originated, Where your ethereal palaces are I soar to implore you: Awaken like the consciousness within me, Awaken, o golden beam! Heed my conjurations And merge with me-in a wave! Listen to the tender whispering of foam About our one and only mutual destiny And about our imitability In our striving towards you. A long time with your shimmerings Have you gleamed before me, immortal sunbeam, And have lured and called me With your lights. I would have remained impersonal And would not have become a wave If the extraordinary gleams Had not given me existence. O, fall, spread in caresses, Spill over our blessedness, You gain knowledge of yourself through the tales Told by fractured sunbeams!
Sunbeam	Only in the garb of a threatening cloud Solemn and fatal could I Meet you, abandoning My godlike dream.
The Wave	In our dreams, which rush to the heights Like illusions, clothe yourself Wrapped in their mists, Do not descend closer into the valley.
Choir	All covered in the breathing Of the yearning dream about the wave And drunk with its sweet fragrance In sweet sleep, in transports of burning love, In the power of a single thought, The sunbeam drooped in a lightning cloud Above the loving wave.
The Wave	I soar towards you, my courageous one, An instant more-I've risen higher And into the valley languorously moist I plunged in tender foam. O, sacred instant of creation Blessed instant, fiery instant, you've manifested to me the reflection Of death pale white and fatal. You've roused in me the awareness Of existence one and dual. I am henceforth the combination Of "I" and an alien "not-I." Delicate textures come to life, The textures of feelings-my apparel, And rebellious they speed into the distance Far way from the opening eyelids. The smoky walls of dungeons Melt and drown and break apart, And crowds of lives-carriages Rush into the depths. In a world of sacrificial love I became a royal union. I overflow with settled strength, I came to know the ardor of my blood. All-powerful desire, You are living-and you are not I. Our passionate caresses are still living In multicolored existence. You and I and our swoonings Are a world of discovered wonders, Of dreamlike intoxication, Of the life of slumbering skies. The miraculous combinations have come to pass. The circle was completed, and there was born the fruit of the marriage of wave and sunbeam, The starlit countenance of the universe. Kindled by the sacred instant's lightning, The dreams of creation flame, and the wave, With bewitching consciousness imprisoning inspirations, Is all given up to the contemplation of distinctions. He shines in the sun, the God of the ruling light, And gleams in starts in fathomless night. In space the wave hovers like a royal planet Enveloped in a shroud or cloudy pearl. And the sunbeam caresses U of the first chosen union Awakening in a mirage of dazzling wonders Are identified with the multicolored, many-faceted With the bridal adornments, the brocade of her veils.
The Mountains	We are the frozen impulses of amourous rages. We are the petrified billows of the stormy caresses, The explosion caught arrested by the enchantment of cooling snowy peaks, valleys and rocks.
The Meadows	We're the warm breathing of lips that did not meet, Secreting in ourselves all the delights of poisons. By the fragrance of flowers we are awakened here We have begun to stir with rustling grasses.
The Forest	We are the soaring pillars of twilight cathedrals. We are richly garbed in green rustling sounds. We hide crowds of enigmatic creatures. Into us pour mysterious languorous lights.
The Desert	Having identified myself as a desert in space, The dry sultry kiss of a sunbeam and the earth, Having driven out the forest life from my region And hating the living songs of streams. I am a winged caress, I flutter birdlike, And I come to life as a savage lacerating beast. As a writhing, crawling snake I have awakened, I, voluptuous one, as the darling of the moist elements.

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