For several years he kept the secret to himself, even from his dearest friends. He avoided company, so that his infliction should not be noticed. But in 1801 he can no longer remain silent; and in his despair he confides in two of his friends, Dr. Wegeler and Pastor Amenda. "My dear, good, loving Amenda, how often have I longed to have you near me! Your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that the best part of me, my hearing, has become very weak. Even at the time when we were together I was aware of distressing symptoms which I kept to myself; but my condition is now much worse.... Can I ever be cured? Naturally I hope so; but my hopes are very faint, for such maladies are the least hopeful of all. How sad my life is! For I am obliged to avoid all those I love and all that are dear to me; and all this in a world so miserable and so selfish!... How sad is this resignation in which I take refuge! Of course I have steeled myself to rise above all these misfortunes. But how is this going to be possible?[14]..." And to Wegeler: "... I lead a miserable life indeed. For the last two years I have completely avoided all society, for I cannot talk with my fellow-men. I am deaf. Had my profession been any other, things might still be bearable; but as it is, my situation is terrible. What will my enemies say? And they are not few!... At the theatre I always have to be quite near the orchestra in order to understand the actor. I cannot hear the high notes of the instruments or the voices, if I am but a little distance off.... When anyone speaks quietly I only hear with difficulty, ... On the other hand, I find it unbearable when people shout to me.... Often I have cursed my very existence. Plutarch has guided me to a spirit of resignation. If it be possible at all, I will courageously bear with my fate; but there are moments in my life when I feel the most miserable of all God's creatures.... Resignation! What a sorry refuge! And yet it is the only one left to me!"
This tragic sadness is expressed in some of the works of this period, in the Sonate pathétique Op. 13 (1799), and especially in the Largo of the Piano Sonata in D, Opus 10, No. 3 (1798). It is a marvel that we do not find it in all the works; the radiant Septet (1800), the limpid First Symphony (C Major, 1800), both breathe a spirit of youthful gaiety. There is no doubt that he is determined to accustom his soul to grief. The spirit of man has such a strong desire for happiness that when it has it not, it is forced to create it. When the present has become too painful, the soul lives on the past. Happy days are not effaced at one stroke. Their radiance persists long after they have gone. Alone and unhappy in Vienna, Beethoven took refuge in the remembrances of his native land; his thoughts were always of Bonn. The theme of the Andante for the Variation in the Septet is a Rhenish Song. The Symphony in C Major is also inspired by the Rhine. It is a poem of youth smiling over its own dreams. It is gay and languorous; one feels there the hope and the desire of pleasing. But in certain passages in the Introduction, in the shading of the sombre bass passages of the Allegro, in this young composer, in the fantastic Scherzo, one feels with emotion the promise of the great genius to come. The expression calls to mind the eyes of Botticelli's Bambino in his Holy Families—those eyes of a little child in which one already divines the approaching tragedy.
Troubles of another kind were soon to be added to his physical sufferings. Wegeler says that he never knew Beethoven to be free of a love passion carried to extremes. These love affairs seemed to have always been of the purest kind. With him there was no connection between passion and pleasure. The confusion established between the two things now-a-days only shows how little most men know of passion and its extreme rarity. Beethoven had something of the Puritan in his nature; licentious conversation and thoughts were abhorrent to him; he had always unchangeable ideas on the sanctity of love.... It is said that he could not forgive Mozart for having prostituted his genius by writing Don Giovanni. Schindler, who was his intimate friend, assures us that "he spent his life in virginal modesty without ever having to reproach himself for any weakness." Such a man was destined to be the dupe and victim of love; and so indeed it came about. He was always falling violently in love and ceaselessly dreaming of its happiness, only however to be deceived and to be plunged in the deepest suffering. In these alternating states of love and passionate grief, of youthful confidence and outraged pride, we find the most fruitful source of Beethoven's inspiration, until at length his fiery, passionate nature gradually calms down into melancholy resignation.
In 1801 the object of his passion appears to have been Giulietta Guicciardi, whom he immortalised in the dedication of the famous (so-called) "Moonlight" Sonata, Opus 27 (1802). "I now see things in a better light," he writes to Wegeler, "and associate more with my kind.... This change has been brought about by the charm of a dear girl; she loves me and I love her. These are the first happy moments I have had for two years."[15] He paid dearly for them. From the first, this love made him feel more keenly the misery of the infirmity which had overtaken him and the precarious conditions of his life which made it impossible for him to marry the one he loved. Moreover, Giulietta was a flirt, childish and selfish by nature; she made Beethoven suffer most cruelly, and in November 1803, she married Count Gallenberg.[16] Such passions devastate the soul; indeed, when the spirit is already enfeebled by illness, as was Beethoven's, complete disaster is risked. This was the only time in Beethoven's life when he seems to have been on the point of succumbing. He passed the terrible crisis, however, and the details are given in a letter known as the Heiligenstadt Testament to his brothers Carl and Johann, with the following direction: "To be read and carried out after my death."[17] It is an outcry of revolt, full of the most poignant grief. One cannot hear it without being cut to the heart. In that dark hour he was on the verge of suicide. Only his strong moral force saved him.[18] His final hopes of recovering his health disappeared. "Even the lofty courage which has hitherto sustained me has now disappeared. O Providence, grant that but a single day of real happiness may be mine once again. I have been a stranger to the thrill of joy for so long. When, O God, when shall I feel joy once more?... Ever again? No, that would be too cruel!"
This is indeed a cry of a torn heart, and Beethoven was destined to live yet twenty-five years longer. His powerful nature would not refuse to sink beneath the weight of his woe. "My physical strength improves always with the growth of my intellectual force.... Yes, I really feel that my youth is only just beginning. Each day brings me nearer to my goal, which I can feel without being able to define clearly.... O, if I were only free from my deafness I would embrace the world!... No rest! At least, none that I know of except sleep; and I am so unhappy that I have to give more time to it than formerly. If only I could be free of a part of my infirmity; and then ... no, I can bear it no longer. I will wage war against destiny. It shall not overcome me completely. Oh, how fine it would be to live a thousand lives in one!"[19]
This love of his, this suffering, this resignation, these alternations of dejection and pride, these "soul-tragedies" are all reflected in the great compositions written in 1802—the Sonata with the Funeral March, Opus 26; the Sonata quasi una Fantasia, Opus 27, No. 1; the Sonata called the "Moonlight," Opus 27; the Sonata in D Minor, Opus 31, No. 2, with its dramatic recitatives which seem like some grand yet heart-broken monologue; the Sonata in C minor for Violin, Opus 30, dedicated to the Emperor Alexander; the Kreutzer Sonata, Opus 47; and the Six Religious Songs, heroic yet grief-laden, to the words of Gellert, Opus 48. The Second Symphony written in 1803 reflects rather his youthful love; and here one feels that his will is decidedly gaining the upper hand. An irresistible force sweeps away his sad thoughts, a veritable bubbling over of life shows itself in the finale. Beethoven was determined to be happy. He was not willing to believe his misfortune hopeless, he wanted health, he wanted love, and he threw aside despair.[20]
In many of his works one is struck by the powerful and energetic march rhythms, full of the fighting spirit. This is especially noticeable in the Allegro and the Finale of Second Symphony, and still more in the first movement, full of superb heroism, of the Violin Sonata dedicated to the Emperor Alexander. The war-like character of this music recalls the period in which it was written. The Revolution had reached Vienna. Beethoven was completely carried away by it. "He spoke freely amongst his intimate friends," said the Chevalier de Seyfried, "on political affairs, which he estimated with unusual intelligence, with a clear and well-balanced out-look. All his sympathies leaned towards revolutionary ideas." He liked the Republican principles. Schindler, the friend who knew him best during the last period of his life, said, "He was an upholder of unlimited liberty and of national independence ... he desired that everyone should take part in the government of the State.... For France he desired universal suffrage and hoped that Bonaparte would establish it, thus laying down the proper basis of human happiness." A Roman of the revolutionary type, brought up on Plutarch, he dreamt of a triumphant Republic, founded by the god of victory, the first Consul. And blow by blow he forged the Eroica Symphony, Bonaparte, 1804,[21] the Iliad of Empire, and the Finale of the Symphony in C minor, 1805 to 1808, the grand epic of glory. This is really the first music breathing the revolutionary feeling. The soul of the times lives again in it with the intensity and purity which great events have for those mighty and solitary souls who live apart and whose impressions are not contaminated by contact with the reality. Beethoven's spirit reveals itself, marked with stirring events, coloured by the reflections of these great wars. Evidences of this, (perhaps unconscious to him) crop up everywhere in the works of this period, in the Coriolanus Overture (1807), where tempests roar over the scene; in the Fourth Quartet, Opus 18, the first movement of which shows a close relation to this Overture; in the Sonata Appassionata, Op. 57 (1804), of which Bismarck said, "If I heard that often I should always be very valiant";[22] in the score of Egmont; and even in his Pianoforte Concertos, in the one in E flat, Opus 73 (1809), where even the virtuosity is heroic: whole armies of warriors pass by. Nor need we be astonished at this. Though when writing the Funeral March on the death of an hero (Sonata, Opus 26), Beethoven was ignorant that the hero most worthy of his music, namely Hoche, the one who approximated more closely than Bonaparte to the model of the Eroica Symphony, had just died near the Rhine, where indeed his tomb stands at the top of a small hill between Coblentz and Bonn.... He had twice seen the Revolution victorious in Vienna itself. French officers were present at the first production of Fidelio in Vienna in November, 1805. It was General Hulin, the conqueror of the Bastille, who stayed with Lobkovitz, Beethoven's friend and protector, to whom he dedicated the Eroica and the C minor Symphony. And on 10 May, 1809, Napoleon slept at Schönbrunn.[23]