Part 9 (2/2)
”Write me now frequently; I shall make a point of finding time to write you occasionally. Give my kind regards to all, especially to the good Frau Hofrathin[22], and tell her that even now I sometimes have a 'raptus.'
”With regard to K----, I am not at all surprised at the change.
Fortune rolls on like a ball; and naturally, therefore, does not always stop at what is n.o.blest and best. One word for Ries,[23] to whom remember me cordially. With regard to his son,[24] I shall write you more particularly, but I believe that Paris offers a better field for his exertions than Vienna, which is so overstocked that even people of the greatest merit find it a hard matter to maintain themselves. By autumn or winter I shall see what I can do for him, for then everybody will have returned to town.
”Farewell, my good, faithful Wegeler. Rest a.s.sured of the love and friends.h.i.+p of your
”BEETHOVEN.”
_Vienna, November, 16th, 1801._
”MY DEAR WEGELER,--For this fresh proof of your solicitude about me, I must thank you the more, that I deserve it so little. You want to know how I am progressing, and what remedies I use; however unwilling I am in general to refer to this subject, I do so with the least reluctance to you.
”For several months past, Vering has ordered me to apply blisters constantly to both arms, made of a certain kind of bark, which you doubtless know. This is a most disagreeable remedy, inasmuch as (without taking the pain into consideration) I am deprived of the free use of my arms for a few days, until the blisters have drawn sufficiently. It is true, and I cannot deny it, that the buzzing and ringing are somewhat less than formerly, especially in the left ear, that in which my malady first commenced--but my hearing is certainly not a whit better. I dare not say positively that it has not rather grown worse.
”My digestion is better, especially after using the tepid baths, when I feel tolerably well for eight or ten days. Tonics I very seldom take, but follow your advice now with regard to the herb-plasters. Plunge baths Vering will not hear of. On the whole, I am not at all pleased with him; he has far too little solicitude or indulgence for a malady such as mine; if I did not go to him, and this I cannot do without great difficulty, I should never see him.
What do you think of Schmidt?[25] I am unwilling to make a change, but it seems to me that Vering is too much of a pract.i.tioner to gain fresh ideas by reading. With regard to this, Schmidt appears a very different sort of man, and might also, perhaps, not be quite so negligent of my case.
”I hear wonders of galvanism--what say you to it? A medical man told me that he had known a deaf and dumb child whose hearing was fully restored by it (in Berlin), and also a man who, after having been deaf for seven years, recovered his hearing. They tell me that your friend Schmidt is making experiments on the subject.
”I lead a somewhat more agreeable life now that I mingle more with other people. You can hardly realize what a miserable, desolate life mine has been for the last two years. Like a ghost did my deafness haunt me everywhere, till I fled society, and must have appeared a misanthrope--yet this is so little my character.
”This change has been brought about by a lovely and fascinating girl,[26] who loves me, and whom I love. After the lapse of two years I have again enjoyed some blissful moments, and now for the first time I feel that marriage can bestow happiness; but, alas! she is not in the same rank of life as myself; and at present, certainly I could not marry: I must first bestir myself actively. Were it not for my deafness, I would long ago have travelled half round the world, and I must do it yet. For me there is no greater pleasure than to follow and promote my art. Do not believe that I could be happy with you. What would there be, indeed, to make me happier?
Even your solicitude would pain me; every moment I should read sympathy on your faces, and should find myself only the more wretched.
”Those lovely scenes of my Fatherland, what part had I in them?
Nothing but the hope of a better future, which would have been mine, were it not for this affliction! Oh! once free from this, I would span the world! My youth, I feel it, is only beginning; have I not always been a sickly creature? For some time past my bodily strength has been increasing more than ever, and my mental power as well.
Every day I approach nearer the goal which I feel, but cannot describe. Only in this can your Beethoven live. No rest for me! I know of none other than Sleep, and sorry enough I am to be obliged to give up more time to it than formerly. Let me be only half delivered from this malady, and then--a more perfect, mature man--I shall come to you, and renew the old feelings of friends.h.i.+p.
”You shall see me as happy as I am destined to be here below,--not unhappy. No, that I could not bear. I will grasp Fate by the throat, it shall not utterly crush me. Oh! it is so glorious to live one's life a thousand times! For a quiet life, I feel it, I am no longer made.
”Pray do write me as soon as possible. Persuade Steffen to decide upon seeking an appointment somewhere from the Teutonic Order.[27]
His position here is too fatiguing for his health, and besides, he leads such an isolated life, that I do not see how he is ever to get on. You know how things are here. I will not positively say that society would lessen his depression, but we cannot persuade him to join in it at all. A short time ago I had some music in my house, but our friend Steffen stayed away. Advise him to be more calm and composed. I have already tried all my powers on him,--without this he can never be either happy or in good health. Tell me in your next letter if there is any objection to my sending you my music, even though there should be a quant.i.ty of it. What you don't require, you can sell, and thus get back what you paid for carriage,--and my portrait into the bargain.
”Say all that is kind and obliging to Lorchen, as well as to her mamma and Christoph. Have you still a little love for me? Be convinced of the love as well as of the friends.h.i.+p of
”Your BEETHOVEN.”
The year 1800 found Beethoven already busy with his ”Mount of Olives,”
which, however, was not produced till 1803. This, the master's first and last attempt at oratorio writing, ”is a striking instance of the insufficiency of even the highest powers to accomplish that to which the special call has not been given. It was impossible for Beethoven to feel himself so inspired by his task as the composer of a time when the mind of the people was almost exclusively occupied by religious convictions; the man of the revolutionary period could not see or think out a Christ like that of Bach and Handel before him. Even the pure spring, out of which we Protestants of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries draw our ideas of Christ--the Bible--flowed not for him; his Christ must first be poetically made for him. And how? The poet had no other aim but that of making verses for a composer; the latter no other motive than the ordinary creative impulse prompting him to try his powers in a different and important sphere. The result on both sides could not, therefore, be other than _Phrases_, although the better of the two proceeded from the composer, and that composer was Beethoven. To conceal or palliate this would be derogatory to the reverence which we all owe to Beethoven,--he stands too high to be in need of extenuation.”
So far Marx; but in addition to the miserable libretto (which imparted unreality, artificiality, to the whole work, and especially gave to the part of the Saviour a theatrical air which Beethoven afterwards deplored) many peculiarities of the oratorio--with all deference to the able critic just quoted--may be traced to the period in which it was composed. The very choice of subject reveals the convulsion that was taking place in Beethoven's _volcanic_ nature. It is a question whether Beethoven would ever have a.s.serted his sovereignty in this branch of composition; it may be, as Marx hints, that the peculiar tone of thought and feeling necessary to the successful treatment of sacred subjects was wanting in him; but there can be no doubt that had the master's attention been devoted to the subject in happier days, when his tempest-tossed natures had attained to some degree of peace and serenity, the result would have been very different. Let him who would see Beethoven as a _devotional_ writer, turn to his Gellert songs, which breathe the very depths of true religious feeling.
The greater part of the oratorio, and also of ”Fidelio,” was composed at Hetzendorf, a pretty little village near the imperial summer palace of Schonbrunn. Here Beethoven pa.s.sed several summers in the greatest retirement--wandering all day long, from early dawn to nightfall, amid the leafy glades of the park. His favourite seat was between two immense boughs of an old oak, which branched out from the parent stem about two feet from the ground. This memorable tree, endeared to Beethoven as the birthplace of many a thought, was afterwards visited by him, in Schindler's company, in 1823.
In 1802 a gleam of hope dawned upon the sufferer; his deafness was for a time cured by the skilful treatment of Dr. Schmidt (to whom, out of grat.i.tude, he dedicated his Septet arranged as a Trio), by whose advice he went for the summer to the village of Heiligenstadt, in the hope that the calm, sweet influence of nature, to which he was at all times most sensitive, might act beneficially upon his troubled mind.
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