E.T.A. Hoffman: "Beethoven's instrumental music opens to us the realm of the monstrous and immeasurable. Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we sense giant shadows surging to and fro, closing in on us until they destroy /us/, but not the pain of unending longing in which every desire that has risen quickly in joyful tones sinks and expires. Only with this pain of love, hope, joy - which consumes but does not destroy, which would burst asunder our breasts with a mightily impassioned chord - we live on, enchanted seers of the ghostly world!"