this is good stuff - between avetma and allthumbs. interesting to read about analysis and how different people approach it. always some new turn or direction. with the beethoven grosse fugue - one scholar got so frustrated by the beginning and end that he started with the middle (or around the middle). he says - he thinks that's what beethoven himself did - using the main ideas from this section to spread out thinner and thinner to the beginning and ending. a sort of crescendo main section decrescendo of form. no real substantive form until one sees the motives.
now, with the pathetique - i think that in the first movement - measures 221 - open like sun peering through clouds. you hear the pathos in the 'sigh' of the sf's - and then the jubilance of overcoming these sorrows at 227 228 with the emergence of the trills - as one hurdle is overcome and another and another. pretty soon - it's like a resolution of everything that has been 'pent up' from the huge beginning and somewhat repeat of the ending.
Topic: Analysis of Beethoven´s "Pathetique"