therefore did not write to you for a long time. During these last
weeks I have spun myself into my mass, and yesterday at last I got
it done. I do not know how it will sound, but may say that I have
PRAYED it rather than COMPOSED it. On my return from Hungary in
September, I shall bring you the mass and my symphonic bubbles and
troubles, half of which will by that time be in print. If my scores
should bore you, that will not prevent me from deriving sweetest
enjoyment from your creations, and you must not refuse me the
favour of singing the whole "Rhinegold" and "Valkyrie" to me. In
the meanwhile all other musical things appear to me "stupid stuff."
How do you feel in London?
Troublesome though it may be, one must try to bear the inevitable
and immutable; to take pleasure in it would be a lie.
The English edition of Philistinism is not a whit pleasanter than
the German, and the chasm between the public and ourselves is
equally wide everywhere.
How, in our wretched conditions, could enthusiasm, love, and art
have their true effect?
"Patience and resignation" is our device, and to it we sing
[Here, Liszt illustrates with a music score excerpt]
Pardon me for being your hollow echo, and let us endure what
cannot be cured.
I am very grateful to you for being so kind to Klindworth. In a
few days his cousin will come to London and bring you news of me,
as she has spent the whole winter at Weymar. Your letter about
the sonata has highly delighted me, and you must excuse me for
not having thanked you at once. You are often so near to me that
I almost forget writing to you, and I am seldom at the right
temperature for correspondence. Well, in September I shall be
with you; and (D.V.) we will have some bright, comforting days
together.
Your
F. L.
WEYMAR, May 2nd, 1855.
186.
DEAR POET, DEAR FRIEND,
Our hearts are with you, and suffer with you; that you know, and
cannot be ignorant of.
Let us hear from you soon, and forgive me if, in the midst of the
preoccupations of your heart and of your grief, I ask you for a
trifle; but it will cost you so little to grant it me, and you
will give such great, such very great, pleasure by it. It is the
fate of poets and women sometimes to give what they have not
themselves--I mean happiness. Take a piece of paper and write on
it the following verses, which, as you know, appear to me written
with the purest blood of my veins:-
"Nicht Gut, nicht Gold, noch gottliche Pracht; nicht Haus, nicht
Hof, nicht herrischer Prunk, nicht truber Vertrage trugender
Bund, noch heuchelnder Sitte hartes Gesetz: selig in Lust und
Leid lasst--die Liebe nur sein!--" Sign this with your name, your
great name, enclose it in an envelope, address it to me, and put
it in the post. Forgive me for asking you this small thing--small
in its material aspect, but great as the world in its
significance.
I press your two hands with mine, dear, dear, great man.
CAROLYNE.
May 7th, 1855.
187.
Cordial thanks, dearest Franz, for your kind note, which I had
been expecting a long time. The hope which you open to me of
seeing you in September is my only light in the night of this sad
year. I live here like one of the lost souls in hell. I never
thought that I could sink again so low. The misery I feel in
having to live in these disgusting surroundings is beyond
description, and I now realise that it was a sin, a crime, to
accept this invitation to London, which in the luckiest case must
have led me far away from my real path. I need not expatiate to
you upon my actual situation. It is the consistent outgrowth of
the greatest inconsistency I ever committed. I am compelled to
conduct an English concert programme right down to the end; that
says everything. I have got into the middle of a slough of
conventionalities and customs, in which I stick up to the ears,
without being able to lead into it the least drop of pure water
for my recreation. "Sir, we are not accustomed to this"--that is
the eternal echo I hear. Neither can the orchestra recompense me.
It consists almost exclusively of Englishmen, that is clever
machines which cannot be got into the right swing; handicraft and
business kill everything. Then there is the public, which, I am
assured, is very favourably inclined towards me, but can never be
got out of itself, which accepts the most emotional and the most
tedious things without ever showing that it has received a real
impression. And, in addition to this, the ridiculous Mendelssohn
worship!
And even if all this were better than it is, what business have I
with such concerts? I am not fit for them. It is quite a
different thing if I conduct one of Beethoven's symphonies before
a few friends, but to be a regular concert conductor, before whom
they place the scores of concert pieces, etc., so that he may
beat the time to them--that, I feel, is the deepest disgrace.
This thoroughly inappropriate character of my position led me to
the resolution of sending in my resignation after the fourth
concert. But of course I was talked out of it, and especially my
regard for my wife, who would have heard of this sudden
resignation and of all that would have been written about it with
great grief, determined me to hold out till the last concert. The
infernal torture this is to me I cannot express. All my pleasure
in my work is disappearing more and more. I had made up my mind
to finish the score of the "Valkyrie" during the four months
here, but that is out of the question. I shall not even finish
the second act, in so terribly dispiriting a manner does this
false position act upon me. In July I wanted to begin "Young
Siegfried" at Seelisberg, on the lake of Lucerne, but now I think
of delaying that beginning till next spring. This dislike of work
is the worst feature of all. I feel as if with it eternal night
were closing around me, for what have I still to do in this world
if I cannot do my work?
Through this hell my study of Dante, to which I could not settle
down before, has accompanied me. I have passed through his
Inferno, and am now at the gate of Purgatory. Really I am in need
of this purgatory; for if I consider it rightly, I was brought to
London by a really sinful degree of thoughtlessness, which now I
have to repent with fervour. I must, I must be resigned; my
experience long ago convinced me of the necessity of resignation
in the widest sense of the word, and I must now subdue altogether
this terrible, wild desire of life, which again and again dims my
vision and throws me into a chaos of contradictions. I must hope
that I may at some future time rise from purgatory to paradise;
the fresh air of my Seelisberg will perhaps help me to this. I do
not deny that I should like to meet Beatrice there.
In all other respects things are going badly and crookedly. Poor
Klindworth has been ill all along, and the fact that I could
undertake nothing with him has deprived me of a great pleasure.
He is better now, but not yet allowed to take a walk with me.
Besides him, my intercourse is limited to Sainton, the leader of
the orchestra, who caused my ill-fated appointment here, and a
certain Luders, who lives with him. Both are ardently devoted to
me, and do all in their power to make my stay here pleasant.
Apart from this, I frequently go to Prager. Quite recently a Mr.
Ellerton, a rich amateur, approached me very cordially. He has
heard my operas in Germany, and my portrait has been hanging in
his room for two years. He is the first Englishman I have seen
who does not care particularly for Mendelssohn. A fine, amiable
mind.
Klindworth has made the pianoforte arrangement of the first act
of the "Valkyrie," which he plays beautifully. Unfortunately I
have lost my voice entirely, and can sing very little, so that I
am afraid I shall not be able to be of much service to you in
that way.
You will have to do all the work next September. You owe me a
great debt, you reticent man. If I look forward to anything in
the future as pure happiness, it is my becoming acquainted
through your means with your new compositions. Do not forget to
bring me every one of them. I congratulate you on your mass from
the bottom of my heart. Let us hope that you will derive much
pleasure from it at Gran.
And how is the Princess? Joyful and sorrowful? Does she still
preserve her bright enthusiasm? And Beatrice--I mean the Child?
Greet her for me a thousand times.
Farewell, dearest, most unique of friends. Believe me that the
thought of you is an ever-new delight to my heart. Be thanked for
your love!
Farewell.
Your
R. W.
LONDON, May 16th, 1855.
188.
22, PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK, LONDON,
May 26th, 1855.
Once more, dearest Franz, I must make a complaint about the
"Faust" overture. The Hartels have sent me an abominable
arrangement for four hands, of which I cannot possibly approve.
Did not you tell them that B., who, I believe, had already made a
be ginning, would best be able to make this arrangement?
Klindworth also would be prepared for it. In any case it should
be a pianist of that type. The actual arrangement, which I
yesterday returned to the Hartels through a music-seller, must
not appear.
However, some wrong notes in this arrangement have drawn my
attention to the fact that very probably there are many errors in
the score as well. You will remember that it was a copy which I
sent to you for your own use, asking you to correct such errors
as might occur in your mind, or else to have them corrected,
because it would be tedious for me to revise the copy. For the
same reason I urgently requested the Hartels, if they printed the
score, to send me a proof. You are in frequent communication with
the Hartels, and the edition of this overture is really your
doing. Be not angry therefore if I ask you to set the matter
completely right when convenient. For heaven's sake, forgive me
for troubling you with this trifle. The day after tomorrow I have
my sixth concert, and a month afterwards I start for home.
Shall I hear from you soon?
A thousand greetings.
Your R. W.
189. DEAREST RICHARD,
I returned here yesterday from the Dusseldorf Musical Festival,
tired and dull. Hiller, who conducted the whole, had invited me,
and it interested me to go through the whole thing for once, to
hear "Paradise and the Peri," and to applaud Jenny Lind. I need
not tell YOU anything about it, and I am not much the wiser
myself. Although the whole festival may be called a great
success, it wanted something which, indeed, could not have been
expected from it. In the art world there are very different kinds
of laurels and thistles, but you need care very little about
such. "The eagle flies to the sun."
Then you are reading Dante? He is excellent company for you. I,
on my part, shall furnish a kind of commentary to his work. For a
long time I had in my head a Dante symphony, and in the course of
this year it is to be finished. There are to be three movements,
HELL, PURGATORY, and PARADISE, the two first purely instrumental,
the last with chorus. When I visit you in autumn, I shall
probably be able to bring it with me; and if you do not dislike
it, you must allow me to inscribe it with your name.
With the Hartels little can be done. If the arrangement for four
hands of the Faust overture has already been made, I do not
advise you to propose some one else. The only thing that can be
done with the four-hand arrangement is to ask Klindworth to make
some corrections in accordance with your instructions, and to
have some of the plates newly engraved without mentioning
Klindworth's name on the title-page. Another time it would be a
practical thing to send in the four-hand arrangement together
with the score, and to come to terms with the publisher about it.
The attitude of the Hartels towards us is naturally always a
little reserved. I, for my part, cannot complain of them, and
they have always treated me in a decent and gentlemanly manner.
But I should not rely upon them for many things, because their
intimate friends are decidedly adverse to us; and for the present
we shall not be able to arrive at more than a peaceful, expectant
footing with them. Although this may sometimes be inconvenient, I
think it best to let it continue.
I am surprised that you found so many mistakes in the proofs of
the "Faust" score, for, amongst other advantages which they
possess as publishers, one is bound in justice to admit that the
Hartels have excellent readers (Dorffel, Schellenberg, etc.).
Therefore use time and patience in correcting, and where
necessary let the plates be engraved over again.
When shall you be back in Zurich? At Dusseldorf they were saying
that you had already left London, and jealous Philistia received
the news with a joy which I was not sorry to spoil. Whatever may
happen, and however it may happen, I implore you to
"Hold out and persevere."
In your capacity of poeta sovrano, you must, as Dante says of
Homer, pass on your way quietly and undisturbedly, si come sire.
All this dirt does not touch you. Write your "Nibelungen," and be
content to live on as an immortal!
Later on I shall ask Klindworth to let me see the pianoforte
arrangement of the first act of the "Valkyrie." How about that of
the "Rhinegold?" Has H. kept it? Write to me about it, so that I
may know how to get at it.
I have advised H. to settle in Berlin, where his position at the
music school will be very useful to him. There is not much to be
got by travelling about in our days. Later on he may go to Paris
and London, but for the next few years Berlin will be a good
field for his activity.
I shall stay here during the summer, until I start for Gran at
the end of August. The musical task which occupies me is a new
and considerably altered score of my choruses to "Prometheus,"
which I want to publish next winter. As soon as it is finished I
shall return to my Dante symphony, which has partly been
sketched.
Farewell, dearest, most unique of friends, and write soon to your
serf, body and soul,
F. L.
WEYMAR, June 2nd, 1855.
The Princess and the Child send cordial greetings.
190.
Let me express to you, best of men, my astonishment at your
ENORMOUS PRODUCTIVENESS. You have a Dante symphony in your head,
have you? And it is to be finished in the autumn? Do not be
annoyed by my astonishment at this miracle. When I look back upon
your activity in these last years, you appear superhuman to me;
there is something very strange about this. However, it is very
natural that creating is our only joy, and alone makes life
bearable to us. We are what we are only while we create; all the
other functions of life have no meaning for us, and are at bottom
concessions to the vulgarity of ordinary human existence, which
can give us no satisfaction. All that I still desire in this
world is a favourable mood and disposition for work, and I find
it difficult enough to protect these from the attack of
vulgarity. It is the same thing with you. But what astonishes me
and appears worthy of envy is that you can create so much.
A "Divina Commedia" it is to be? That is a splendid idea, and I
enjoy the music in anticipation. But I must have a little talk
with you about it. That "Hell" and "Purgatory" will succeed I do
not call into question for a moment, but as to "Paradise" I have
some doubts, which you confirm by saying that your plan includes
choruses. In the Ninth Symphony the last choral movement is
decidedly the weakest part, although it is historically
important, because it discloses to us in a very naive manner the
difficulties of a real musician who does not know how (after hell
and purgatory) he is to represent paradise. About this paradise,
dearest Franz, there is in reality a considerable difficulty, and
he who confirms this opinion is, curiously enough, Dante himself,
the singer of Paradise, which in his "Divine Comedy" also is
decidedly the weakest part. I have followed Dante with deepest
sympathy through the "Inferno" and the "Purgatorio;" and when I
emerged from the infernal slough, I washed myself, as does the
poet, with the water of the sea at the foot of the Mountain of
Purgatory. I enjoyed the divine morning, the pure air. I rose
step by step, deadened one passion after the other, battled with
the wild instinct of life, till at last, arrived at the fire, I
relinquished all desire of life, and threw myself into the glow
in order to sink my personality in the contemplation of Beatrice.
But from this final liberation I was rudely awakened to be again,
after all, what I had been before, and this was done in order to
confirm the Catholic doctrine of a God Who, for His own
glorification, had created this hell of my existence, by the most
elaborate sophisms and most childish inventions, quite unworthy
of a great mind. This problematic proof I rejected from the
bottom of my soul, and remained dissatisfied accordingly. In
order to be just to Dante I had, as in the case of Beethoven, to
occupy the historic standpoint; I had to place myself in Dante's
time and consider the real object of his poem, which, no doubt,
was intended to advocate a certain thing with his contemporaries-
-I mean the reform of the Church. I had to confess that in this
sense he understood marvellously well his advantage of expressing
himself in an infallible manner through means of popular and
generally accepted ideas. Before all, I cordially agreed with him
in his praise of the saints who had chosen poverty of their own
free-will. I had further to admire even in those sophisms his
high poetic imagination and power of representation, just as I
admire Beethoven's musical art in the last movement of his "Ninth
Sympthony." I had further to acknowledge, with deepest and most
sublime emotion, the wonderful inspiration through means of which
the beloved of his youth, Beatrice, takes the form in which he
conceives the Divine doctrine; and in so far as that doctrine
teaches the purification of personal egoism through love, I
joyfully acknowledge the doctrine of Beatrice. But the fact that
Beatrice stands, as it were, on the chariot of the Church, that,
instead of pure, simple doctrine, she preaches keen-witted
ecclesiastic scholasticism, made her appear to me in a colder
light, although the poet assures us that she shines and glows for
ever. At last she became indifferent to me; and although as a
mere reader I acknowledge that Dante has acted appropriately, in
accordance with his time and his purpose, I should as a
sympathetic co-poet have wished to lose my personal
consciousness, and indeed all consciousness, in that fire. In
that manner I should, no doubt, have fared better than even in
the company of the Catholic Deity, although Dante represents it
with the same art with which you, no doubt, will endeavour to
celebrate it in your choruses. I faithfully record to you the
impression which the "Divine Comedy" has made upon me, and which
in the "Paradise" becomes to my mind a "divine comedy" in the
literal sense of the word, in which I do not care to take part,
either as a comedian or as a spectator. The misleading problem in
these questions is always How to introduce into this terrible
world, with an empty nothing beyond it, a God Who converts the
enormous sufferings of existence into something fictitious, so
that the hoped-for salvation remains the only real and
consciously enjoyable thing. This will do very well for the
Philistine, especially the English Philistine. He makes very good
terms with his God, entering into a contract by which, after
having carried out certain points agreed upon, he is finally
admitted to eternal bliss as a compensation for various failures
in this world. But what have we in common with these notions of
the mob?
You once expressed your view of human nature to the effect that
man is "une intelligence, servie par des organes." If that were
so, it would be a bad thing for the large majority of men, who
have only "organs," but as good as no "intelligence," at least in
your sense. To me the matter appears in a different light, viz.,-
-
Man, like every other animal, embodies the "will of life," for
which he fashions his organs according to his wants; and amongst
these organs he also develops intellect, i.e., the organ of
conceiving external things for the purpose of satisfying the
desire of life to the best of his power. A NORMAL man is
therefore he who possesses this organ, communicating with the
external world (whose function is perception, just as that of the
stomach is digestion) in a degree exactly sufficient for the
satisfaction of the vital instinct by external means. That vital
instinct in NORMAL man consists in exactly the same as does the
vital instinct of the lowest animal, namely, in the desire of
nourishment and of propagation. For this "will of life," this
metaphysical first cause of all existence, desires nothing but to
live--that is, to nourish and eternally reproduce itself--and
this tendency can be seen identically in the coarse stone, in the
tenderer plant, and so forth up to the human animal. Only the
organs are different, of which the will must avail itself in the
higher stages of its objective existence, in order to satisfy its
more complicated, and therefore more disputed and less easily
obtainable, wants. By gaining this insight, which is confirmed by
the enormous progress of modern science, we understand at once
the characteristic feature of the life of the vast majority of
men, and are no longer astonished because they appear to us
simply as animals; for this is the NORMAL essence of man. A very
large portion of mankind remains BELOW this NORMAL stage, for in
them the complicated organ of perception is not developed even up
to the capability of satisfying normal wants; but, on the other
hand, although of course very rarely, there are ABNORMAL natures
in which the ordinary measure of the organ of perception--that
is, the brain--is exceeded, just as nature frequently forms
monstrosities in which ONE ORGAN is developed at the expense of
the others. Such a monstrosity, if it reaches the highest degree,
is called GENIUS, which at bottom is caused only by an abnormally
rich and powerful brain. This organ of perception, which
originally and in normal cases looks outward for the purpose of
satisfying the wants of the will of life, receives in the case of
an abnormal development such vivid and such striking impressions
from outside that for a time it emancipates itself from the
service of the will, which originally had fashioned it for its
own ends. It thus attains to a "will-less"--i.e., aesthetic--
contemplation of the world; and these external objects,
contemplated APART FROM THE WILL, are exactly the ideal images
which the ARTIST in a manner fixes and reproduces. The sympathy
with the external world which is inherent in this contemplation
is developed in powerful natures to a permanent forgetfulness of
the original personal will, that is to a SYMPATHY with external
things for their own sake, and no longer in connection with any
personal interest.
The question then arises what we see in this abnormal state,
and whether our sympathy takes the form of COMMON JOY or COMMON
SORROW. This question the true MEN OF GENIUS and the true SAINTS
of all times have answered in the sense that they have seen
nothing but SORROW and felt nothing but COMMON SORROW. For they
recognized the NORMAL state of all living things and the
terrible, always self-contradictory, always self-devouring and
blindly egotistic, nature of the "will of life" which is common
to all living things. The horrible cruelty of this will, which in
sexual love aims only at its own reproduction, appeared in them
for the first time reflected in the organ of perception, which in
its normal state had felt its subjection to the Will to which it
owed its existence. In this manner the organ of perception was
placed in an abnormal sympathetic condition. It endeavoured to
free itself permanently and finally from its disgraceful serfdom,
and this it at last achieved in the perfect negation of the "will
of life."