Apart from Cellini’s ruffianism there are several points of contact between the two men. Berlioz made the roaring goldsmith the hero of an opera, and it is not doubtful that he was in complete sympathy with his subject. In the Frenchman there is a full measure of the waywardness of temper, the impatience of authority, the resolute and daring humour, the passion of worship for what is great in art and of contempt for what is little and bad, which entered so largely into the composition of the
Florentine. There is not much to choose between the Berlioz of the Débats, the author of the Grotesques de la Musique and the A Travers Chants, and the Benvenuto who, as Il Lasca writes of him,
‘Senza alcun ritegno o barbazzale
Delle cose malfatte dicea male.’
Benvenuto enlarges upon the joys of drawing from the life and expatiates upon the greatness of Michelangelo in much the same spirit and with much the same fury of admiration with which Berlioz descants upon the rapture of conducting an orchestra and dilates upon the beauty of Divinités du Styx or the adagio of the so-called Moonlight Sonata. It is written of Benvenuto, in connection with Vasari’s attack upon that cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore which himself was wont to call ‘the marvel of beautiful things,’ that if he had lived to see the result,
‘Certo non capirebbe nelle pelle;
E saltando, e correndo, e fulminando,
S’ andrebbe querelando,
E per tutto gridando ad alta voce
Giorgin d’Arezzo meterebbe in croce,
Oggi universalmente
Odiato della gente
Quasi publico ladro e assassino’;
and you are reminded irresistibly of Berlioz betrampling Lachnith and the ingenious Castil-Blaze and defending Beethoven against the destructive pedantry of Fétis. And, just as the Vita is invaluable as a personal record of artist-life
in the Italy of the Renaissance, so are the Mémoires invaluable as a personal record of the works and ways of musicians in the Paris of the Romantic revival. Berlioz is revealed in them for one of the race of the giants. He is the musician of 1830, as Delacroix is the painter; and his work is as typical and as significant as the Sardanapale and the Faust lithographs.
His Theory of Autobiography.
To read the Mémoires is to feel that in writing them the great musician deliberately set himself to win the heart of posterity. He believed in himself, and he believed in his music: he divined that one day or another he would be legendary as well as immortal; and he took an infinite deal of pains to make certain that the ideal which was presently to represent him in men’s minds should be an ideal of which he could thoroughly approve. It is fair to note that in this care for the good will and the good word of the future he was not by any means alone. The romantiques, indeed, were keen—from Napoleon downwards—to make the very best of themselves. The poet of the Légende des Siècles, for example, went early to work to arrange the story of his life and character at least as carefully as he composed
the audiences of his premières; and he did it with so light a hand, and with such a sense of the importance of secrecy, that it is even now by no means so well and widely known as it should be that Victor Hugo raconté par un Témoin de sa Vie is the work of the hero’s wife, and was not only inspired but may also have been revised and prepared for publication by the hero himself. Again, the dramatist of Antony and the novelist of Bragelonne was never so happy as when he was engaged upon the creation of what he hoped would be the historical Dumas; he made volume after volume of delightful reading out of his own impressions and adventures; he turned himself into copy with a frankness, a grace, a gusto, a persistency of egoism, which are merely enchanting. Berlioz, therefore, had good warrant for his work. It is more to the point, perhaps, that he would have taken it if he had not had it. And I hold that he would have done well; for (in any case) a great man’s notion of himself is, ipso facto, better and more agreeable and convincing, especially as he presents it, than the idea of his inferiors and admirers, especially as presented by them. Berlioz, it is true, was prodigal in these Mémoires of his of wit and fun and devilry, of fine humanity and noble art, of good things said and great things dreamed and done and suffered; but he was prodigal of invention and suppression as well, and the result, while considerably less veracious, is all the more fascinating,