14. Sextuor pour 2 Violons, Alto, Violoncello et 2 Cors obligés. Op. 81 (81b), by Simrock, Bonn, in the spring.
Chapter XI
Bettina Brentano Again—Letters Between Beethoven and Goethe—The B-flat Trio—The Theatre in Pesth—Opera Projects—Therese Malfatti—Sojourn in Teplitz.
Beethoven’s intercourse with the Brentanos kept his interest in Bettina alive and to this we owe a characteristic and welcome letter which, like the first, is here taken from the Nuremberg “Athenæum”:
Vienna, February 10, 1811.
Beloved, dear Bettine!
I have already received two letters from you and observe from your letters to your brother [“to Tonie” in the “Ilius Pamphilius,” Tonie being her sister-in-law], that you still think of me and much too favorably. I carried your first letter around with me all summer and it often made me happy; even if I do not write to you often and you never see me I yet write you a thousand times a thousand letters in my thoughts. I could have imagined how you feel amidst the cosmopolitan rabble in Berlin even if you had not written about it to me; much chatter without deeds about art!!!!! The best description of it is in Schiller’s poem “Die Flüsse,” where the Spree speaks.
You are to be married, dear Bettine, or have already been, and I could not see you once more before then; may all happiness with which marriage blesses the married, flow upon you. What shall I tell you about myself? “Pity my fate,” I cry with Johanna; if I can save a few years for myself for that and all other weal and woe I shall thank Him the all-comprehending and Exalted. If you write to Goethe, hunt out all the words to express my deepest reverence and admiration for him. I am about to write to him myself concerning Egmont for which I have composed music and, indeed, purely out of love for his poems which make me happy, but who can sufficiently thank a great poet, the most precious jewel of a nation? And now no more, dear good Bettine. It was 4 o’clock before I got home this morning from a bacchanalian feast at which I had to laugh so much that I shall have to weep correspondingly to-day; boisterous joy often forces me in upon myself powerfully. As to Clemens,[80] many thanks for his kind offer. As to the cantata, the subject is not sufficiently important for us here, it is a different matter in Berlin, and as concerns affection, the sister has monopolized it so much that little will be left for the brother, does that suffice him?
Now, farewell dear, dear Bettine, I kiss you upon your forehead and thus impress upon you as with a seal all my thoughts of you. Write soon, soon, often to your friend