We have a landscape in the A flat major (Op. 110). Over the sward rises the tender song. Butterflies and sun-glitter are the accompaniment. A wholesome strength mounts up and cheerfully wings its way. In a pause of meditation it comes to rest; and from the contemplation rises the old eternal lamentation of man. From its last breathed tones ascends the fugue, the great law of nature. Once again the lament, broken, helpless, dashing itself blindly against fate--and all the more dazzling is the fugue, embracing all, Truth with its disregard of the individual.[119] Thus does Beethoven express his pantheism. But even this sonata seems feeble in comparison with the unheard-of intensity and greatness of Op. 111. The master sits at the piano, and his hands run preluding over the keys, in broad, piercing, dashing chords, which become closer and intenser round the node-point of the dominant. From the dominant grows a theme of savage grandeur, of Titanic power, all-embracing in its widening grasp, its Medusa-locks flying in the air, crushing out all sweetness and softness, till, as it came, it sinks terribly to earth, in those helpless _diminuendo_ chords,[120] with no _ritardando_, such as Beethoven alone experienced. In the elemental song of the Adagio comes the release. In its variations it spreads itself out into a world-embracing grandeur, till its wisdom attains the two extremes of deep internal ardour and ethereal brightness, whose opposition is developed in the last pages in broad lines. The earth remains below; the minor conclusions are forgotten; the forms have become a twilight dream; only when _our_ soul meets the Master-Soul does man attain to these realms. * * * * *