Fourthly: I neglect every one for thy sake; nobody is anything to me, and I don't care anything about their love; indeed, if any one praises me, he displeased me. That is jealousy of thee and me, and by no means a proof of a generous heart; it is a sign of a wretched character that withers on one side when it would blossom on the other.
Fifthly: I have a great inclination to despise everybody, especially those that praise thee, and I cannot bear to hear anything good said of thee. Only a few simple persons can I allow to speak of thee, and it need not be praise at that. No, they may even make fun of thee a little, and then, I can tell thee, an unmerciful roguishness comes over me when I can throw off the chains of slavery for a brief spell.
Sixthly: I have a deep resentment in my soul that it is not thee with whom I live under the same roof and with whom I breathe the same air. I am afraid to be near strangers. In church I look for a seat on the beggars' bench, because they are the most neutral; the finer the people, the stronger my aversion. To be touched makes me angry, ill, and unhappy, and so I cannot stand it long in society at dances. I am fond of dancing, could I but dance alone in the open where the breath of strangers would not touch me. What influence would it have on the soul if one could always live near one's friend?—all the more painful the struggle against that which must remain forever estranged, spiritually as well as physically.
Seventhly: When I have to listen to any one reading aloud in company, I sit in a corner and secretly hold my ears shut or, at the first word that comes along, completely lose myself in thoughts. Then, when some one does not understand, I awaken out of another world and presume to supply the explanation, and what the rest consider madness is all reasonable enough to me and consistent with an inner knowledge that I cannot impart. Above all, I cannot bear to hear anything read from thy works, nor can I bear to read them aloud; I must be alone with me and thee.
Vienna, May 28, 1810.
It is Beethoven of whom I want to speak now, and in whom I have forgotten the world and thee. I may not be qualified to judge, but I am not mistaken when I say (what perhaps no one now realizes or believes) that he is far in advance of the culture of all mankind, and I wonder whether we can ever catch up with him! I doubt it. I only hope that he may live until the mighty and sublime enigma that lies in his soul may have reached its highest and ripest perfection. May he reach his highest ideal, for then he will surely leave in our hands the key to a divine knowledge which will bring us one step nearer true bliss!
To thee I may confess that I believe in a divine magic which is the element of spiritual nature, and this magic Beethoven employs in his music. All he can teach thee about it is pure magic; every combination of sounds is a phase of a higher existence, and for this reason Beethoven feels that he is the founder of a new sensuous basis in the spiritual life. Thou wilt probably be able to feel intuitively what I am trying to say, and that it is true. Who could replace this spirit? From whom could we expect anything equivalent to it? All human activity passes to and fro before him like clockwork; he alone creates freely from his inmost self the undreamed of, the untreated. What would intercourse with the outside world profit this man, who is at his sacred work before sunrise and scarcely looks about him before sunset, who forgets bodily nourishment, and who is borne in his flight by the stream of inspiration past the shores of superficial, everyday life. He himself said to me, "Whenever I open my eyes I cannot but sigh, for all I see is counter to my religion and I must despise the world which does not comprehend that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. It is the wine which inspires new creations, and I am the Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and intoxicates their spirit! * * * I have no friend and must ever be alone, but I know that God is nearer to me in my art than to others, and I commune with him without fear; I have always recognized Him and understood Him. Nor have I any fears for my music; it can meet no evil fate, for he to whom it makes itself intelligible will be freed from all misery with which others are burdened."
All this Beethoven said to me the first time I saw him, and I was penetrated with a feeling of reverence when he expressed himself to me with such friendly candor, since I must have seemed very unimportant to him. Besides, I was astonished, for I had been told that he was exceedingly reticent and avoided conversation with any one; in fact, they were afraid to introduce me to him, so I had to look him up alone. He has three dwellings in which he alternately conceals himself—one in the country, one in the city, and the third on the bastion, in the third story of which I found him. I entered unannounced and mentioned my name. He was seated at the piano and was quite amiable. He inquired whether I did not wish to hear a song that he had just composed. Then he sang, in a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the listener, "Knowest thou the land?" "It is beautiful, isn't it, very beautiful!" he cried, enraptured; "I'll sing it again;" and was delighted at my ready applause. "Most people are stirred by something good, but they are not artistic natures; artists are fiery—they do not weep." Then he sang one of thy songs that he had composed lately, "Dry not, Tears of Eternal Love."
Yesterday I went for a walk with him through a beautiful garden at Schönbrunn that was in full blossom; all the hothouses were open and the fragrance was overpowering. Beethoven stopped in the burning sun and said, "Goethe's poems exercise a great power over me, not alone through their content, but also through their rhythm, and I am incited and moved to compose by his language, which is built up as if by the aid of spirits into a sublime structure that bears within it the mystery of harmonies. Then from the focus of my inspiration I must let the melody stream forth in every direction; I pursue it, passionately overtake it again, see it escaping me a second time and disappearing in a host of varying emotions; soon I seize it with renewed ardor; I can no longer separate myself from it, but with impetuous rapture I must reproduce it in all modulations, and, in the final moment, I triumph over the musical idea—and that, you see, is a symphony! Yes, music is truly the mediator between the spiritual and the sensuous world. I should like to discuss this with Goethe; I wonder whether he would understand me! Melody is the sensuous life of poetry. Does not the spiritual content of a poem become sensuous feeling through melody? Do we not in the song of Mignon feel her whole sensuous mood through melody, and does not this sensation incite one in turn to new creations? Then the spirit longs to expand to boundless universality where everything together forms a channel for the feelings that spring from the simple musical thought and that otherwise would die away unnoted. This is harmony; this is expressed in my symphonies; the blending of manifold forms rolls on to the goal in a single channel. At such moments one feels that something eternal, infinite, something that can never be wholly comprehended, lies in all things spiritual; and although I always have the feeling of success in my compositions, yet with the last stroke of the drum with which I have driven home my own enjoyment, my musical conviction, to my hearers, I feel an eternal hunger to begin anew, like a child, what a moment before seemed to me to have been exhausted.
"Speak to Goethe of me; and tell him to hear my symphonies. Then he will agree with me that music is the sole incorporeal entrance into a higher world of knowledge which, to be sure, embraces man, but which he, on the other hand, can never embrace. Rhythm of the spirit is necessary to comprehend music in its essence; music imparts presentiments, inspirations of divine science, and what the spirit experiences of the sensuous in it is the embodiment of spiritual knowledge. Although the spirits live upon music as man lives upon air, it is a very different matter to comprehend it with the spirit. But the more the soul draws its sensuous nourishment from it, the riper the spirit becomes for a happy mutual understanding.