“That shameful competition!
“Boïeldieu says I go further than Beethoven, and he cannot even understand Beethoven; and that, to write like that, I must have the most hearty contempt for the Academicians! Auber told me much the same thing, and added, ‘You hate the commonplace, but you need never be afraid of writing platitudes. The best advice I can give you is to write as insipidly as you can, and when you have got something that sounds to you horribly flat, you will have just what they want!’
“That is all very well, but when I go writing for butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers I certainly shall not go to the passion-haunted, crime-stained Queen of Egypt for a text.”
To Ferdinand Hiller.
“1829.—What is this overwhelming emotion, this intense power of suffering that is killing me? Ask your guardian angel, that bright spirit that has opened to you the gate of Heaven. Oh, my friend! can you believe that I have burnt the manuscript of my prose elegy? I have Ophelia ever before me; her tears, her tragic voice; the fire of her glorious eyes burns into my soul—I am so miserable, so inexpressibly unhappy, oh, my friend!
“I seem to see Beethoven looking down on me with calm severity; Spontini—safely cured of woes like mine—with his pitying indulgent smile; Weber from the Elysian Fields, whispers consoling words into my ear....
“Mad, mad, mad! is this sense for a student of the Institute; a domino-player of the Café de la Régence?
“Nay, I will live—live for music—the highest thing in life except true love! Both make me utterly miserable but at least I shall have lived! Lived, it is true, by suffering, by passion, by lamentation and by tears—yet I shall have lived! Dear Ferdinand! a year ago to-day I saw her for the last time. Is there for us a meeting in another world?
“Ah, me! miserable! Alone! cursed with imagination beyond my physical strength, torn by unbounded, unsatisfied love!—still, I have known the great ones of the heaven of music; I have laughed as I basked in the radiance of their glory! Immortals, stretch out your hands, raise me to the shelter of your golden clouds that I may be at rest!
“Voice of Reason: