Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (13). The End.

Today’s Bible reading. Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12, 11:1-5.

After all of this—raging against injustice, and mourning the death that awaits all animals, human or nonhuman—both Solomon and Schubert’s Winterreise wanderer found something. It is companionship.

“Two are better than one, because they can appreciate one another’s work. If one of them falls, the other can lift him or her up, but woe to him who falls alone! If two lie together, they are warm, but how can one be warm alone? A man might prevail against one who is alone, but cannot overcome two men who work together, even if they are not strong. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” There has hardly ever been better poetry of friendship than this.

Solomon also makes another, and more surprising, discovery. It is opportunity.

Whatever happens, happens. “The tree falls to the south, or maybe to the north, but wherever it falls, there it is.” So what should we do? Solomon says, take a chance! Do something enjoyable and good! If the fate of good people is no better than that of evil people, neither is it worse! “Cast your bread upon the waters! Have a feast for seven people—why not eight? For if you are always worrying about the wind, you will never sow, and if you are always worrying about the clouds you will never reap.”

At the end of Die Winterreise, Schubert’s traveler notices a poor organ-grinder standing in the street, his feet bare in the snow. He waits for someone to put money in his tray, but nobody does. Even the dogs snarl around him. But he does not notice; he is at peace. Perhaps the traveler went crazy at this moment, as crazy as the organ-grinder already was. But for once—for once!—the wanderer thinks about someone other than himself, and sees through another’s eyes. He tells the old man he wants to stay with him, and sing while he grinds his organ. It’s too bad that the wanderer has to stand out in the cold in order to appreciate companionship; he could have saved himself the trip. But he found some meaning in life.

And many of us find plenty of meaning in life, despite Luck being the Empress of the World, and despite God not doing anything in the world. To affirm the good things that we can find to do, even if in the long run the forces of evil erase all of our good work—that is what most of the entries in this blog will be about!

Thus ends, for now, my series of 13 essays in which I explore Ecclesiastes, Die Winterreise, and Carmina Burana, in search of a meaning for life.