Later and numerous references to his deafness scattered throughout his letters and recorded by his friends and associates all point, with one exception, to the steady, pitiless progress of a disease, at that time unamenable to treatment, which finally totally deprived him of the sense most important to the musician; the one exception in question is that recorded by Charles Neate as heard from Beethoven's own lips in 1815, and is to the effect that in a fit of anger Beethoven threw himself upon the floor, and on arising found himself practically deaf in his right ear. There was no explanation of this occurrence offered, but, taken in connection with the report of the autopsy, it is apparent that the sudden loss of hearing in the right ear was the result either of a form of apoplexy of the labyrinth such as occurs in connection with the more advanced stages of chronic catarrh of the middle ear, or was due to a peculiar affection of that portion of the internal ear devoted to sound perception and consequent upon constitutional disease.
Setting aside this incident, it may be noted that, while himself aware of the gradual increase of his deafness, it was not until eight years later, in 1806, that it became especially appreciable to others, after which time its increase was so rapid that it could no longer be kept secret; the degree of the disability varying with his general condition, but its progress being always downward, in 1815 it had so increased that he abandoned his proposed visit to England, and before his death the hearing had become so much affected that his playing ceased to charm, he would play so loudly at times as to break the strings or drown soft passages of the right hand by striking the keys accidentally with the left, while the hearing for his own voice even had become so imperfect that he spoke with unnatural loudness and deficient modulation.
The influence of this almost life-long malady upon his disposition cannot be estimated without taking into consideration the nervous strain which the impairment of so important a sense would induce in a person of Beethoven's temperament; to the mental effects of apprehension of future evil and the disappointments due to the futility of his efforts at obtaining relief must be added the purely physical consequences of the natural attempt at compensation which results in what may be denominated the fatigue of deafness. Normally we possess double the amount of hearing ordinarily required for the uses of life, and it is possible therefore to lose one half of the fullest amount of hearing without being appreciably affected by the loss. Ordinarily, therefore, our hearing-power is exercised without conscious exertion, but when this sense becomes impaired to a certain degree, an effort at hearing is necessary because of the loss of the sound of the more delicate qualitative overtones, such for instance as those which make the difference between the parts of speech most nearly resembling each other; to help out this deficiency the sight is called upon to watch the motion of the lips, and still later by a conscious effort those parts of a sentence which have been lost to hearing and have failed of detection by sight are mentally filled in from the context, three distinct brain processes being thus required to afford the information which came before unconsciously of effort.
That such a nervous strain was part of the infliction which Beethoven suffered, is shown by his increasing disinclination for social intercourse and a tendency to lead as he says a life of isolation from all men. "You cannot believe," writes his friend Stephan von Breuning, "what an indescribable impression the loss of hearing has made upon Beethoven; imagine the effect on his excitable temperament of feeling that he is unhappy, then comes reserve, mistrust often of his best friends, and general irresolution. Intercourse with him is a real exertion, as one can never throw off restraint."
Undoubtedly his deafness, with the consequent isolation from his fellows, had the effect of increasing the morbid peculiarities which were his inheritance, and of all his portraits extant there is none which so distinctly shows the face of the deaf man as that painted by his friend Maler, Vienna, 1812.
"Beethoven's deafness," says Goethe, "has not hurt so much his musical as his social nature."
Indeed it may be questioned if his musical nature were affected at all other than favorably by his infirmity. His art was greater than the man, or rather the man in his art was greater than himself; his deafness, even by shutting him within, seems to have increased his individuality, for, from the time of its absolute establishment onward his compositions grew in musical and intellectual value, and each generation finds in them something new to study and to appreciate. He wrote not for his time alone but for all time, and from what we can learn of his life and of the influence of his infirmity upon his character, we are glad to believe that through all the clouds which overcast his career Beethoven's transcendent genius shone supreme, superior to circumstance, and that the world is left none the poorer, possibly the richer, because of the misfortunes which, while they developed the peculiarities and intensified the faults of the individual, served but to enclose and protect the intellect too great to be bounded or controlled by the limitations of a saddened life.
