In the valley of Engelberg I found Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and on reading it over again, I was anew enchanted and fascinated by such a glorious work of art, and by all the passion, fire, and fervour it displays. An expression of Goethe's suddenly recurred to my mind. In the course of a long conversation about Schiller, he said that Schiller had been able to supply two great tragedies every year, besides other poems. This business-like term supply, struck me as the more remarkable on reading this fresh, vigorous work; and such energy seemed to me so wonderfully grand, that I felt as if in the course of my life I had never yet produced anything of importance; all my works seem so isolated. I feel as if I too must one day supply something. Pray do not think this presumptuous; but rather believe that I only say so because I know what ought to be, and what is not. Where I am to find the opportunity, or even a glimpse of one, is hitherto to me quite a mystery. If however it be my mission, I firmly believe that the opportunity will be granted, and if I do not profit by it another will; but in that case I cannot divine why I feel such an impulse to press onwards. If you could succeed in not thinking about singers, decorations, and situations, but feel solely absorbed in representing men, nature, and life, I am convinced that you would yourself write the best libretto of any one living; for a person who is so familiar with the stage as you are, could not possibly write anything undramatic, and I really do not know what you could wish to change in your poetry. If there be an innate feeling for nature and melody, the verses cannot fail to be musical, even though they sound rather lame in the libretto; but so far as I am concerned, you may write prose if you like, I will compose music for it. But when one form is to be moulded into another, when the verses are to be made musically, but not felt musically, when fine words are to replace outwardly what is utterly deficient in fine feeling inwardly—there you are right—this is a dilemma from which no man can extricate himself; for as surely as pure metre, happy thoughts, and classical language do not suffice to make a good poem, unless a certain flash of poetical inspiration pervades the whole, so an opera can only become thoroughly musical, and accordingly thoroughly dramatic, by a vivid feeling of life in all the characters.
There is a passage on this subject in Beaumarchais, who is censured because he makes his personages utter too few fine thoughts, and has put too few poetical phrases into their mouths. He answers, that this is not his fault. He must confess that during the whole time he was writing the piece, he was engaged in the most lively conversation with his dramatis personæ: that while seated at his writing table he was exclaming: "Figaro, prends garde, le Comte sait tout!—Ah! Comtesse, quelle imprudence!—vite, sauve-toi, petit page;" and then he wrote down their answers, whatever they chanced to be,—nothing more. This strikes me as being both true and charming.
The sketch of the opera introducing an Italian Carnival, and the close in Switzerland, I already knew, but was not aware that it was yours. Be so good however as to describe Switzerland with great vigour, and immense spirit. If you are to depict an effeminate Switzerland, with jodeln and languishing, such as I saw here in the theatre last night in the 'Swiss Family,' when the very mountains and Alpine horns became sentimental, I shall lose all patience, and criticize you severely in Spener's paper. I beg you will make it full of animation, and write to me again on the subject.
Isola Bella, July 24th, 1831.
You no doubt imagine that you inhale the fragrance of orange-flowers, see blue sky, and a bright sun, and a clear lake, when you merely read the date of this letter. Not at all! The weather is atrocious, rain pouring down, and claps of thunder heard at intervals;—the hills look frightfully bleak, as if the world were enshrouded in clouds; the lake is grey, and the sky sombre. I can smell no orange-flowers, and this island might quite as appropriately be called "Isola Brutta!" and this has gone on for three days! My unfortunate cloak! I am confessedly the "spirit of negation" (I refer to my mother), and as it is at present the fashion with every one not to consider the Borromean Islands "by any means so beautiful," and somewhat formal; and as the weather seems resolved to disgust me with this spot,—from a spirit of opposition I maintain that it is perfectly lovely. The approach to these islands, where you see crowded together green terraces with quaint statues, and many old-fashioned decorations, along with verdant foliage, and every species of southern vegetation, has a peculiar charm for me, and yet something affecting and solemn too. For what I last year saw in all the luxuriance and exuberance of wild nature, and to which my eye had become so accustomed, I find now cultivated by art, and about to pass away from me for ever. There are citron-hedges and orange-bushes; and sharp-pointed aloes shoot up from the walls—it is just as if, at the end of a piece, the beginning were to be repeated; and this, as you know, I particularly like.
In the steamboat was the first peasant girl I have seen here in Swiss costume; the people speak a bad half-French Italian. This is my last letter from Italy, but believe me the Italian lakes are not the least interesting objects in this country; anzi,—I never saw any more beautiful. People tried to persuade me that the gigantic forms of the Swiss Alps that have haunted me from my childhood[17] had been exaggerated by my imagination, and that after all a snowy mountain was not in reality so grand as I thought. I almost dreaded being undeceived, but at first sight of the foreground of the Alps from the Lake of Como, veiled in clouds, with here and there a surface of bright snow, sharp black points rearing their heads, and sinking precipitously into the lake, the hills first scattered over with trees and villages, and covered with moss, and then bleak and desolate, and on every side deep ravines filled with snow,—I felt just as I formerly did, and saw that I had exaggerated nothing.
In the Alps all is more free, more sharply defined; more uncivilized, if you will: yet I always feel there both healthier and happier. I have just returned from the gardens of the Palace, which I visited in the midst of the rain. I wished to imitate Albano,[18] and sent for a barber to open a vein: he however misunderstood my purpose, and shaved me instead,—a very pardonable mistake. Gondolas are landing on every part of the island, for to-day is the fête following the great festival of yesterday, in honour of which the P. P. Borromeo sent for singers and musicians from Milan, to sing and play to the islanders. The gardener asked me if I knew what a wind instrument was. I said with a clear conscience that I did; and he replied that I ought to try to imagine the effect of thirty such instruments, and violins and basses, all played at once; but indeed I could not possibly imagine it, for it must be heard to be believed. The sounds (continued he) seemed to come from Heaven, and all this was produced by philharmony. What he meant by this term I know not; but the music had evidently made more impression on him, than the best orchestra often does on musical connoisseurs. At this moment some one has just begun to play the organ in the church for Divine service, in the following strain:—
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