When Wozzeck describes his bizarre hallucinations in the open field to the Doctor in Berg's opera, he conjures up mysterious images whose meaning is concealed in some secret geometric code. "Lines and circles," he mutters, "strange figures . . . if only one could read them!" Analytic attempts to decipher Wozzeck's visions have focused upon the circle as a symbol of his state of mind and Berg's own view of life, but with ambiguous results. Some see it as a pessimistic image of fatalistic doom, others as an optimistic metaphor for hopeful rejuvenation. A dialectical conception of Berg's music, however, suggests the amalgamation of these conflicting interpretations through their unresolved juxtaposition. It depicts the opera as intrinsically paradoxical on both musical and dramatic levels, simultaneously asserting affirmative and negative conceptions of life. The musical dialectic balances the competing dictates of Berg's Schoenbergian heritage of progressive motivic transformation against his fascination with stasis, symmetry, and repetition. This is paralleled by a dramatic conflict between traditional dramaturgy and the nihilistic montage of Büchner's play.
Musical and dramatic contradictions permeate Berg's opera, and their analysis demands recognition rather than reconciliation. But it is Wozzeck's "lines" rather than his "circles" that unlock the enigma of Berg's dialectics and the cryptic geometry of "strange figures" in the open field. A dialectical ramp configuration of two intersecting lines in oblique motion embodies the musical conflict between dynamism and stasis in Wozzeck. The motivic oscillation between progression and repetition simulates the vacillation between affirmation and negation in central themes of the drama: time, power, sex, money, free will, suffering, and obsession itself. Tracking this "strange figure" as a musical metaphor of dialectical tension reveals a profound ambivalence at the heart of Berg's masterpiece: hope and fate tug against one another, juxtaposed without victor-each sharing the stage to weave a delicate synthesis of unresolved antinomies.