Examined by and large, however, Beethoven does not often disappoint us by failing to make that distinction between the nucleus of reality and its swathings and accompaniments, which lay at the foundation of his greatness. Nowhere were his instinct for the real and his contempt for the superfluous more active than in his thoughts on religion, the deepest and most serious topic on which a man can think. Sturdily ignoring, all his life, the trappings of ritual, and the narrow preciseness, as it seemed to him, of creeds and theologies, he as resolutely clung to the essence of religion, the belief in a universal, inclusive consciousness, and in the importance to it of right human effort. On the practical side his religion was eminently positive, efficient, sane; it prompted him to full development of his genius, without neglect of the responsibilities of ordinary life. Of the metaphysical side it is a sufficient description to say that there lay constantly on his desk, copied by his own hand, these sentences:
“I am that which is.”
“I am all that is, that was, and that shall be. No mortal man has lifted my veil.”
“He is alone by Himself, and to Him alone do all things owe their being.”
Combined with the mental originality, the habit of deciding all questions for himself and as if they had never before received solutions, which made Beethoven so pronounced a non-conformist in all matters from his toilet to his religion, was a physical peculiarity that underlay much of what was grotesque about him. This was the nervous irritability inherited from his grandmother. His moodiness, his sudden alternations of depressed and excited states, his bursts of uncontrollable anger, his wild pranks and practical jokes, were almost beyond doubt the result of an unstable nervous system. So restless was he that he was continually changing his lodgings; once it was because there was not enough sun, again because he disliked the water, another time because his landlord insisted on making him deep obeisances; in the later part of his life, when his habits were well known, he had difficulty in finding rooms anywhere in Vienna. He put little restraint upon his tongue; Schindler says that “the propriety of repressing offensive remarks was a thing that never entered his thoughts.” After hearing a concerto of Ries, he wrote a furious letter to a musical paper, enjoining Ries no longer to call himself his pupil. This his friends persuaded him not to send. He was so impatient that he often took the medicines intended for an entire day in two doses; so absent-minded that he often forgot them altogether. A badly cooked stew he threw at the waiter, eggs that were not fresh at the cook. To a lady who had asked for a lock of his hair he sent, at the suggestion of a friend, a lock cut from a goat’s beard; and when the joke was discovered he apologized to the lady, but cut off all intercourse with the friend. An English observer wrote that “One unlucky question, one ill-judged piece of advice, was sufficient to estrange him from you forever.” Even on his best friends and his patrons, he wreaked his ill-humors. When Prince Lobkowitz, to whom he owed much, had been so unfortunate as to offend him, he went into his court-yard, shook his fist at the house, and cried “Lobkowitz donkey, Lobkowitz donkey.” It is not hard to see why casual acquaintances, who knew nothing of the noble qualities behind his stormy and perverse exterior, frequently thought him mad.
Nor will it be difficult, after this brief summary of Beethoven’s fundamental traits, to understand the formidable effect that deafness, coming upon him slowly but relentlessly in early manhood, when intellectual achievement and social and personal happiness seemed equally attainable, exercised upon his character. Naturally self-dependent, deafness made him self-absorbed; naturally proud, it made him so sensitive to imagined slights, so suspicious of even his best friends, that he would at times refuse all intercourse with people; naturally taking keenest joy in intellectual activity, this physical disability forced him, while gradually renouncing social pleasures, to throw himself with ever greater concentration and completer devotion into his work. All these effects of his deafness are clearly discernible in the letters written about 1800. “I can with truth say,” he writes in that year, “that my life is very wretched; for nearly two years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, I am deaf!” “Plutarch,” he continues, “led me to resignation. I shall strive if possible to set Fate at defiance, although there must be moments in my life when I cannot fail to be the most unhappy of God’s creatures.... Resignation!—what a miserable refuge! and yet it is my sole remaining one.” And still later in the same letter: “I live wholly in my music, and scarcely is one work finished when another is begun; indeed, I am now often at work on three or four things at the same time.”
Many such passages occur in the letters of this period, but in none does the pathetic mingling of almost despairing wretchedness with a noble courage that will not despair become so striking as in the remarkable document known as “Beethoven’s Will,” written to his brothers in the fall of 1802. The summer had been a trying one, and at the end of it Beethoven, apparently half expecting and a little desiring death, yet dreading its interruption of his beloved work, uttered this cry of pain, which deserves to be quoted almost entire:
HEILIGENSTADT, Oct. 6, 1802.
TO MY BROTHERS CARL AND JOHANN BEETHOVEN.
O! you who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, treated by unskilful physicians, deluded from year to year by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable).
Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing!—and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men,—a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection; to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood.... Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone, deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life—so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life.... I joyfully hasten to meet Death. If he comes before I have had the opportunity of developing all my artistic powers, then, notwithstanding my cruel fate, he will come too early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant period; but even then I shall be content, for his advent will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when he may I shall meet him with courage. Farewell! Do not quite forget me, even in death; I deserve this from you, because during my life I so often thought of you, and wished to make you happy. Amen.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.
It is time, however, turning away from this painful contemplation of a strong nature’s struggle with adverse fate, to examine that artistic work in which its strength wrought more successfully, and to which its weaknesses were less disastrous. Beethoven’s artistic life, as is well known, has been divided into three periods: that of training and assimilation, which lasted to about 1803, that of complete mastery and mature creation, occupying about a decade, and that of exploration of new, untravelled paths, lasting from 1813 to the end.[38] The division is a convenient and natural one, as will become clear as we go on.