The Sources of Musical Feeling. The Blind Boy and the Melody.
[Illustration]
Thus the dark mind of the child was gradually enriched by new images. By
means of his abnormally keen sense of hearing he was enabled to penetrate
deeper and deeper into the secrets of Nature. The dense, impenetrable
gloom that veiled his brain like a heavy cloud still enfolded him, and
although he had felt this from his birth, and one might suppose that
he would have become accustomed to his misfortune, yet such was the
temperament of the child that he instinctively strove to free himself
from this dark curtain. His perpetual though unconscious efforts to gain
that light of which he knew not, had left upon his face the impress of
his vague and painful struggle.
Yet the blind boy enjoyed moments of quiet satisfaction, even of childish
delight, which came to him whenever he received a keen sensation from
certain outward impressions, revealing unfamiliar manifestations of
the unseen world. Nature in all her grandeur and power was not wholly
inaccessible to him. Once, for instance, when he was led to a high cliff
above the river, he listened with a peculiar expression to the far-away
splashing of the water below, and when he heard the stones slipping from
beneath his feet he seized his mother’s dress and held his breath in
fear. From that time depth was represented to him by the gentle murmuring
of water at the foot of a cliff, or by the startling sound of stones
falling.
A remote and indistinct song conveyed to the mind of the boy the idea
of distance; but when during a storm in the spring-time the pealing
thunder rang out, filling all the air with its reverberations and angry
mutterings, gradually dying away amid the clouds, he listened with awe,
his heart swelling with emotion, and in his mind arose a grand conception
of the magnitude of the firmament. Thus sound embodied for the child the
immediate expression of the outside world; all other impressions were
merely supplementary to that of hearing, by whose aid his ideas took form
as if poured into a mould.
Sometimes during the heat of noonday, when all around was quiet,
when human life seemed at a standstill, and Nature had lapsed into
that peculiar repose beneath which the noiseless current of life is
felt rather than seen, the face of the blind boy likewise assumed an
expression peculiar to himself. He seemed like one absorbed in listening
to sounds inaudible to all the world beside,—sounds issuing from the
depths of his own soul, impelled to utterance by the universal calm. One
who observed him at such moments might fancy that his vague thoughts had
found an echo in his heart, like the uncertain melody of a song.