After rambling over Weimar and burrowing in the Liszt museum, one feels
tempted to pronounce Liszt the happiest of composers, as Yeats calls
William Morris the happiest poet. A career without parallel, a
victorious general at the head of his ivory army; a lodestone for men
and women; a poet, diplomat, ecclesiastic, man of the world, with the
sunny nature of a child, loved by all, envious of no one--surely the
fates forgot to spin evil threads at the cradle of Franz Liszt. And he
was not a happy man for all that. He, too, like Friedrich Nietzsche had
daemonic fantasy; but for him it was a gift, for the other a curse. Music
is a liberation, and Nietzsche of all men would have benefited by its
healing powers.
In Weimar Liszt walked and talked, smoked strong cigars, played,
prayed--for he never missed early mass--and composed. His old
housekeeper, Frau Pauline Apel, still a hale woman, shows, with loving
care, the memorials in the little museum on the first floor of the
Wohnhaus, which stands in the gardens of the beautiful ducal park.
[Illustration: Pauline Apel