Kings and princes can indeed create professors and privy councillors, and bedeck them with titles and orders; but they cannot make great men—spirits that rise above the world's rubbish—these they must not attempt to create; and therefore must these be held in honour. When two such come together as I and Göthe, these great lords must note what it is that passes for greatness with such as we. Yesterday, as we were returning homewards, we met the whole Imperial family; we saw them coming at some distance, whereupon Göthe disengaged himself from my arm, in order that he might stand aside; in spite of all I could say, I could not bring him a step forwards. I crushed my hat more furiously on my head, buttoned up my top coat, and walked with my arms folded behind me, right through the thickest of the crowd. Princes and officials made a lane for me: Archduke Rudolph took off his hat, the Empress saluted me the first:—these great people know me! It was the greatest fun in the world to me, to see the procession file past Göthe. He stood aside, with his hat off, bending his head down as low as possible. For this I afterwards called him over the coals properly and without mercy, and brought up against him all his sins, especially those against you, dearest Bettine! We had just been speaking of you. Good God! could I have lived with you for so long a time as he did, believe me I should have produced far, far more great works than I have! A musician is also a poet; a pair of eyes more suddenly transport him too into a fairer world, where mighty spirits meet and play with him, and give him weighty tasks to fulfil. What a variety of things came into my imagination when I first became acquainted with you, during that delicious May-shower in the Usser Observatory, and which to me also was a fertilising one! The most delightful themes stole from your image into my heart, and they shall survive and still delight the world long after Beethoven has ceased to direct. If God bestows on me a year or two more of life. I must again see you, dearest, dear Bettine, for the voice within me, which always will be obeyed, says that I must. Love can exist between mind and mind, and I shall now be a wooer of yours. Your praise is dearer to me than all other in this world. I expressed to Göthe my opinion as to the manner in which praise affects those like us; and that by those that resemble us we desire to be heard with understanding; emotion belongs to women only (pardon me for saying it!): the effect of music on a man should be to strike fire from his soul. Oh, my dearest girl, how long have I known that we are of one mind in all things! the only good is to have near us some fair, pure spirit, which we can at all times rely upon, and before which no concealment is needed. He who will SEEM to be somewhat must really be what he would seem. The world must acknowledge him—it is not for ever unjust; although this concerns me in nowise, for I have a higher aim than this. I hope to find at Vienna a letter from you; write to me soon, very soon, and very fully. I shall be there in a week from hence. The court departs to-morrow; there is another performance to-day. The Empress has thoroughly learned her part; the Archduke and the Emperor wished me to perform again some of my own music. I refused them both; they have both fallen in love with Chinese porcelain. This is a case for compassion only, as reason has lost its control; but I will not be piper to such absurd dancing—I will not be comrade in such absurd performances with the fine folks, who are ever sinning in that fashion. Adieu! adieu! dearest; your last letter lay all night on my heart and refreshed me. Musicians take all sorts of liberties! Good Heaven! how I love you!
Your truest friend, and deaf brother,
BEETHOVEN.
No. IV.
Letter of Madame Bettine von Arnim to Göthe.[81]
Vienna, May 28, 1810.
* * * * And now I am going to speak to you of one who made me forget all the world besides. The world vanishes when recollections spring up—indeed it vanishes. It is Beethoven who made it vanish before me, and of whom I would fain speak to you. It is true I am not of age, yet I would boldly assert that he has far outstepped our generation—too far perhaps to be come up with: (shall I be understood or believed in this assertion?) No matter. May he but live until the great and mighty problem of his mind has ripened into maturity; may he but attain his own noble aim, and he will carry us on to loftier regions, to bliss more perfect than is yet known to us. Let me own it to you, dear Göthe, I do believe in a spell—not of this world, the element of our spiritual nature; and it is this that Beethoven calls around us by his art. If you would understand him, you must enter into his own magic circle; you must follow him to his exalted position, and occupy with him that high station which he alone can claim for a basis in this sublunary world. You will, I know, guess at my meaning, and extract truth from it. When could such a mind be reproduced?—when equalled? As to other men, their doings are but mechanical clock-work compared to his: he alone freely creates, and his creations are unthought of! What indeed could the intercourse with this world be to him, who before sunrise is at his holy work, who after sunset scarcely looks up from it, who forgets his bodily food, and, carried past the shallow banks of every-day life, is borne along the current of enthusiasm? He said himself, "When I lift up mine eyes I must sigh, for that which I behold is against my creed; and I must despise the world, because it knows not that music is a higher revelation than science or philosophy. Music is like wine, inflaming men's minds to new achievements, and I am the Bacchus serving it out to them, even unto intoxication. When they are sobered down again, they shall find themselves possessed of a spiritual draught such as shall remain with them even on dry land. I have no friend—I must live all to myself; yet I know that God is nearer to me than to my brothers in the art. I hold converse with him, and fear not, for I have always known and understood him. Nor do I fear for my works: no evil can befal them; and whosoever shall understand them, he shall be freed from all such misery as burthens mankind."
All this did Beethoven say to me the first time I saw him. A feeling of reverence came over me as I heard him speak his mind with such unbounded frankness, and that to me, who must have been wholly insignificant to him; and I was perhaps the more struck with his openness, having often heard of his extreme reserve, and of his utter dislike to converse with any one. Thus it was that I could not get any one to introduce me to him, but I found him out alone. He has three sets of apartments in which he alternately secretes himself: one in the country, one in town, and a third on the ramparts (Bastei). It was there I found him in the third floor. I entered unannounced; he was seated at the piano; I gave my name; he was most friendly, and asked me if I would hear a song which he had just been composing; and sang, with a shrill and piercing voice that made the hearer thrill with woefulness, "Know'st thou the land?" "Is it not beautiful?" said he, enthusiastically; "exquisitely beautiful! I will sing it again." He was pleased with my cheerful praise. "Most people are moved on hearing music, but these have not musicians' souls: true musicians are too fiery to weep." He then sang another song of yours, which he had lately been composing: "Dry not, ye tears of eternal love." He accompanied me home, and it was during our walk that he said all these fine things on the art—talking so loud all the while, and standing still so often, that it required some courage to listen to him in the street. He however spoke so passionately, and all that he uttered startled me to such a degree, as made me forget even the street. They were all not a little surprised at home on seeing me enter the room with him, in the midst of a large dinner-party. After dinner he sat down to the instrument and played, unasked, wonderfully, and at great length. His pride and his genius were working that out together which to any mind but his would have been inconceivable—to any fingers but his, impossible of execution.
He comes daily ever since—if not, I go to him; and thus I miss all sorts of gaieties, theatres, picture-galleries, and even the mounting of St. Stephen's church-steeple. Beethoven says, "Never mind seeing these things: I shall call for you, and towards evening we shall walk together in the Schönbrunn avenues." Yesterday, as we were walking in a lovely garden, everything in full bloom, and the open hot-houses almost intoxicating one's senses with their perfumes, he suddenly stopped in the oppressive heat of the sun, saying, "Göthe's poems exercise a great sway over me, not only by their meaning, but by their rhythm also. It is a language that urges me on to composition, that builds up its own lofty standard, containing in itself all the mysteries of harmony, so that I have but to follow up the radiations of that centre from which melodies evolve spontaneously. I pursue them eagerly, overtake them, then again see them flying before me, vanish in the multitude of my impressions, until I seize them anew with increased vigour, no more to be parted from them. It is then that my transports give them every diversity of modulation; it is I who triumph over the first of these musical thoughts, and the shape I give it, I call symphony. Yes, Bettina, music is the link between intellectual and sensual life. Would I could speak to Göthe on this subject, to see whether he could understand me! Melody gives a sensible existence to poetry; for does not the meaning of a poem become embodied in melody? Does not Mignon's song breathe all her feelings through its melody, and must not these very feelings be reproductive in their turn? The mind would embrace all thoughts, both high and low, and embody them into one stream of sensations, all sprung from simple melody, and without the aid of its charms doomed to die in oblivion. This is the unity which lives in my Symphonies—numberless streamlets meandering on, in endless variety of shape, but all diverging into one common bed. Thus it is I feel that there is an indefinite something, an eternal, an infinite, to be attained; and although I look upon my works with a foretaste of success, yet I cannot help wishing, like a child, to begin my task anew, at the very moment that my thundering appeal to my hearers seems to have forced my musical creed upon them, and thus to have exhausted the insatiable cravings of my soul after my 'beau ideal!'
"Speak of me to Göthe: tell him to hear my Symphonies, and he will agree with me that music alone ushers man into the portal of an intellectual world, ready to encompass him, but which he may never encompass. That mind alone whose every thought is rhythm can embody music, can comprehend its mysteries, its divine inspirations, and can alone speak to the senses of its intellectual revelations. Although spirits may feed upon it as we do upon air, yet it may not nourish all mortal men; and those privileged few alone, who have drawn from its heavenly source, may aspire to hold spiritual converse with it. How few are these! for, like the thousands who marry for love, and who profess love, whilst Love will single out but one amongst them, so also will thousands court Music, whilst she turns a deaf ear to all, but the chosen few. She too, like her sister-arts, is based upon morality—that fountain-head of genuine invention! And would you know the true principle on which the arts may be won?—It is to bow to their immutable terms, to lay all passion and vexation of spirit prostrate at their feet, and to approach their divine presence with a mind so calm and so void of littleness as to be ready to receive the dictates of Fantasy and the revelations of Truth. Thus the art becomes a divinity, man approaches her with religious feelings, his inspirations are God's divine gifts, and his aim fixed by the same hand from above, which helps him to attain it.