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other. (What a great expression: "one an-other.") Different and same. They are similar in that they are excluded from the world of the light. The light is only for a few, the chosen (how boring the Masonic interpretation of Mozart’s opera is!®). The song sung by the chorus sounds practically like a schoolbook lesson. „Wenn Tugend und Gerechtigkeit, Der grossen Pfad mit Ruhm betreut, Dann ist die Erde ein Himmelreich, Und sterbliche den Göttern gleich.** When virtue (Tugend) and justice (Gerichtigkeit) rule, everything becomes possible: the “Earth and the heavens” and “mortals and gods” draw near to each other (Sterbliche den Götter gleich). A perfect and beautiful order is realized, where the type of person reigns whose greatest evil is their inability to do evil. It lacks interest; this world of Sarastro is infinitely perfect—and infinitely boring. There is only one figure who may be an exception and is therefore true to life: it is Papageno. He does not sacrifice himself for the ideal. He wants areal woman, but not at the cost of his own life, and that is why he can (and dares to) be a coward. He is an “Unmensch” in a different way than a Monostatos, an Othello, or a Shylock. Such a community as theirs is also foreign to him, as he is to them. With the rule of the all-encompassing light and the complete exclusion of darkness, a one-dimensional world opens before us. And if we think about it, this is the real parousia: the complete exclusion of 43 For an example of this analysis see the useless book of the otherwise outstanding Jan Assmann, (Assmann 2005) 44 “If virtue and righteousness pave the Great Path with honour, then earth will be a paradise and mortals resemble gods.”
