Dearest friend! I communicated your beautiful letter to Beethoven so far as it concerned him. He was full of joy and cried: “If there is any one who can make him understand music, I am the man!” The idea of hunting you up at Karlsbad filled him with enthusiasm. He struck his forehead a blow and said: “Might I not have done that earlier?—but, in truth, I did think of it but omitted to do it because of timidity which often torments me as if I were not a real man: but I am no longer afraid of Goethe.” You may count, therefore, on seeing him next year....
I am enclosing both songs by Beethoven; the other two are by me. Beethoven has seen them and said many pretty things about them, such as that if I had devoted myself to this lovely art I might cherish great hopes; but I merely graze it in flight, for my art is only to laugh and sigh in a little pocket—more than that there is none for me.
Bettina.
By the middle of June she was in Bohemia.
There are a few letters from this period to which attention may be paid. On July 9, 1810, Beethoven wrote to Zmeskall telling him of his distracted state of mind: he ought to go away from Vienna for the sake of his health, but Archduke Rudolph wanted him to remain near him; so he was one day in Schönbrunn, the next in Vienna. “Every day there come new inquiries from strangers, new acquaintances, new conditions even as regards art—sometimes I feel as if I should go mad because of my undeserved fame; fortune is seeking me and on that account I almost apprehend a new misfortune.” On July 17th, he sent to Thomson the Scotch songs which he had arranged, accompanied by a letter (in French) in which he discusses business matters, gives some instructions touching the repetitions in the songs, repeats his offer to compose three quintets and three sonatas and to send him such arrangements for quartet and quintet as have been made of his symphonies. Soon thereafter he wrote to Bettina Brentano:[79]
Beethoven’s Letter to Bettina
Vienna, August 11, 1810.
Dearest Bettine:
No lovelier spring than this, that say I and feel it, too, because I have made your acquaintance. You must have seen for yourself that in society I am like a frog on the sand which flounders about and cannot get away until some benevolent Galatea puts him into the mighty sea again. I was right high and dry, dearest Bettine, I was surprised by you at a moment when ill-humor had complete control of me; but of a truth it vanished at sight of you, I knew at once that you belonged to another world than this absurd one to which with the best of wills one cannot open his ears. I am a miserable man and am complaining about the others!!—Surely you will pardon this with your good heart which looks out of your eyes and your sense which lies in your ears—at least your ears know how to flatter when they give heed. My ears, unfortunately, are a barrier through which I cannot easily have friendly intercourse with mankind—otherwise!—Perhaps!—I should have had more confidence in you. As it is I could only understand the big, wise look of your eyes, which did for me what I shall never forget. Dear Bettine, dearest girl! Art!—who understands it, with whom can one converse about this great goddess!—How dear to me are the few days in which we chatted, or rather corresponded with each other, I have preserved all the little bits of paper on which your bright, dear, dearest answers are written. And so I owe it to my bad ears that the best portion of these fleeting conversations is written down. Since you have been gone I have had vexatious hours, hours of shadow, in which nothing can be done; I walked about in the Schönbrunn Alley for fully three hours after you were gone, and on the bastion; but no angel who might fascinate me as you do, Angel. Pardon, dearest Bettine, this departure from the key. I must have such intervals in which to unburden my heart. You have written to Goethe, haven’t you?—would that I might put my head in a bag so that I could see and hear nothing of what is going on in the world. Since you, dearest angel, cannot meet me. But I shall get a letter from you, shall I not?—Hope sustains me, it sustains half of the world, and I have had her as neighbor all my life, if I had not what would have become of me?—I am sending you herewith, written with my own hand, “Kennst du das Land,” as a souvenir of the hour in which I learned to know you, I am sending also the other which I have composed since I parted with you dear, dearest heart!