“Now, you brutes, I have got you; I’ll smite you hip and thigh!”
But I smote no one and nothing.
My utter ignorance of journalism, of the ways of the world, of press etiquette and my untamed musical passions, landed me in a regular bog. My article went far beyond the bounds of newspaper warfare, and M. Michaud’s hair stood on end.
“But, my dear fellow, you know, I cannot possibly publish a thing like that. You are pulling people’s houses down about their ears. Take it back and whittle it down a bit.”
But I was too lazy and too disgusted, so there it ended.
This laziness of mine does not apply to composition, which comes naturally to me. Hour after hour I labour at a score, sometimes for eight hours at a time; no work is too minute, no pains too great.
Prose, however, is always a burden. Sometimes I go back eight or ten times to an article for the Journal des Débats; even a subject I like takes me at least two days. And what blots, what scrawls, what erasures! My first copy is a sight to behold.
Propped up by Ferrand, I wrote for the Révue Européenne appreciative articles on Beethoven, Gluck and Spontini that made a certain mark, and thus began my apprenticeship to the difficult and dangerous work that has taken such a fatal hold on my life.
Never since have I shaken myself free, and strangely diversified have been its influences on my career both in France and abroad.