large number of writers have described the appearance and playing of Niccolo Paganini, but none ever did the assignment with the creepy vividness of Heinrich Heine. The rest of this chapter is Heine's. I make the explanation because the passage is so well known that it would be both indiscreet and inexpedient for me to bring my literary jimmy to bear and claim it as my own—much as I would like to.
Says Heinrich Heine:
I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy upon paper—a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has with a few strokes of chalk so well hit the great violinist's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. "The devil guided my hand," the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with a good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music in the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And yet is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colors and forms.
I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be seized, features which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of life. "Indeed, the devil guided my hand," the deaf painter assured me, as we stood before the pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert there. "Yes, my friend, it is true that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and principally to escape the damnable galley where he had already languished many years. For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the theater, was jealous of some little abbate, was perhaps deceived by the faithless amata, stabbed her in approved Italian fashion, came in the galley to Genoa, and as I said, sold himself to the devil to escape from it, became the best violin-player, and imposed upon us this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise God! There in the avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious impresario."
It was Paganini himself whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark gray overcoat, which reached to his heels, and made his figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius and hell had engraved their lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic—with rosy, wrinkled face, bright gray little coat with steel buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's presentation of "Faust" and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipzig. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. "Does it not seem," said he, "as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk forever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he can not separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude, indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris' form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form—namely as a black poodle."
But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him walking in bright midday under the green trees of the Hamburg Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked there so early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in the first row of boxes the whole educated commercial world, a whole Olympus of bankers and other millionaires, the gods of coffee and sugar by the side of their fat goddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the assembly. Every eye was directed towards the stage. Every ear was making ready to listen. My neighbor, an old furrier, took the dirty cotton out of his ears in order to drink in better the costly sounds for which he had paid his two thalers.
At last a dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the underworld, appeared upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black costume—the black dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible cut, such as is prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpine. The black trousers hung anxiously around the thin legs. The long arms appeared to grow still longer, as, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the floor with them, while displaying to the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh. But his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring, so simply humble, that a sorrowful compassion repressed one's desire to smile. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an automaton, or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death, or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets?
Such questions crossed our minds while Paganini was performing his strange bows, but all those thoughts were at once still when the wonderful master placed his violin under his chin and began to play.
As for me, you already know my musical second-sight, my gift of seeing at each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so Paganini with each stroke of his bow brought visible forms and situations before my eyes; he told me in melodious hieroglyphics all kinds of brilliant tales; he, as it were, made a magic lantern play its colored antics before me, he himself being chief actor. At the first stroke of his bow the stage scenery around him had changed; he suddenly stood with his music-desk in a cheerful room, decorated in a gay, irregular way after the Pompadour style; everywhere little mirrors, gilded Cupids, Chinese porcelain, a delightful chaos of ribbons, garlands of flowers, white gloves, torn lace, false pearls, powder-puffs, diamonds of gold-leaf and spangles—such tinsel as one finds in the room of a prima donna. Paganini's outward appearance had also changed, and certainly most advantageously; he wore short breeches of lily-colored satin, a white waistcoat embroidered with silver, and a coat of bright blue velvet with gold buttons; the hair in little carefully curled locks bordered his face, which was young and rosy, and gleamed with sweet tenderness as he ogled the pretty young lady who stood near him at the music-desk, while he played the violin.