Et ton printemps aux larmes destiné.”[200]
The effect is all the more striking because absolutely new: an harmonic
sequence of incredible boldness, resolving itself into fresh discords more audacious still, and, hovering above, a simple phrase of song, which falls cold and solemn, like a malediction from on high!
Towards the middle the discords resolve themselves regularly; and before resuming the original idea, before returning to the expressions of anguish uttered by the first harmonies, Schumann allows us, through eight bars, a breathing-time, on a very simple phrase which he keeps in the proximate keys to the primitive. If, with regard to the overture to Manfred, Schumann is to be reproached with having allowed so little light to find entrance among its shadows, he has, at any rate in this case, had the good sense to submit to the necessary laws of contrast, and thus gains much by allowing us to breathe a few moments, that we may realize more fully the depth of despair to which he is about to drag us down. He returns to the first phrase, and we hear again the chords which have already so deeply moved us; still the melodic phrase enlarges and mounts upward, while the discords take a new development. After this tempest of the soul we reach the haven, the key returns to ut on the words J’ai pardonne (“I have pardoned”), and Schumann leaves us filled with admiration, not unmixed with horror.
Strange eccentricity of the human genius! In this sublime Lied, perhaps the most powerful page which Schumann has written, we can discover the germ of those defects which too often mar his more extended works, and begin to understand why Schumann has fallen into the obscurities we just now named. What is, in fact, the especial characteristic of this wonderful
melody? Despair; but despair under tortuous and exaggerated forms.
If only Schumann would have been content to paint the sufferings of the heart, all might have gone well; but no, he exhausts himself in attempting also to render the tortures of the mind, the anxious doubting of Manfred, the absolute negation incarnate in Faust. Now, if the torments of the heart furnish one of the most powerful elements of the drama (Orestes, Œdipus, and Phædrus prove this truth), there is absolutely nothing artistic whatever in mental torments, philosophic doubt, and scepticism. The true artist, by his very nature, must believe and love.
If against this assertion Goethe, Byron, and Alfred de Musset are quoted—three great poets, with whom Schumann has some analogy—we would say: All three were poets, not because, but in spite, of doubt; and, what is truer still, they are poets when they cease to doubt, or when they struggle against it. Even Alfred de Musset was no sceptic when he exclaimed in his immortal “August Night” (Nuit d’Août):
“O ma muse, ne pleurez pas;
A qui perd tout, Dieu reste encore.