(In a conversation-book at Haslinger’s music shop, where Beethoven
frequently visited.)
136. “Goethe has killed Klopstock for me. You wonder? Now you laugh? Ah, because I have read Klopstock. I carried him about with me for years when I walked. What besides? Well, I didn’t always understand him. He skips about so; and he always begins so far away, above or below; always Maestoso! D-flat major! Isn’t, it so? But he’s great, nevertheless, and uplifts the soul. When I couldn’t understand him I sort of guessed at him.”
(To Rochlitz, in 1822.)
135. “As for me I prefer to set Homer, Klopstock, Schiller, to music; if it is difficult to do, these immortal poets at least deserve it.”
(To the directorate of the “Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde” of Vienna,
January, 1824, in negotiations for an oratorio, “The Victory of the
Cross” [which he had been commissioned to write by the Handel and Haydn
Society of Boston. H. E. K.].)
136. “Goethe and Schiller are my favorite poets, as also Ossian and Homer, the latter of whom, unfortunately, I can read only in translation.”
(August 8, 1809, to Breitkopf and Hartel.)
137. “Who can sufficiently thank a great poet,—the most valuable jewel of a nation!”
(February 10, 1811, to Bettina von Arnim. The reference was to Goethe.)
138. “When you write to Goethe about me search out all the words which can express my deepest reverence and admiration. I am myself about to write to him about ‘Egmont’ for which I have composed the music, purely out of love for his poems which make me happy.”