Lucerne, August 27th, 1831.
I wish to offer you my thanks, but I really do not know where to
begin first; whether for the pleasure your songs caused me in
Milan, or for your kind letter which I received yesterday; both
however are closely connected, and so I think we have already made
acquaintance. It is quite as fitting that we should be presented to
each other through the medium of music-paper, as by a third person
in society; indeed I think that in the former case you feel even
more intimate and confidential. Moreover, persons who introduce any
one often pronounce the name so indistinctly, that you seldom know
who is standing before you; and they never say one word as to
whether the man is gay and good-humoured, or melancholy and gloomy.
So we are infinitely better off. Your songs have pronounced your
name clearly and plainly; they also disclose what you think and
what you are; that you love music, and wish to make progress; so
thus perhaps I know you better than if we had frequently met.
What a source of pleasure it is, and how cheering, to know there is
another musician in the world who has the same purposes and
aspirations, and who follows the same path as yourself; perhaps you
cannot feel this so strongly as I do at this moment, who have just
come from a country where music no longer exists among the people.
I never before could have believed this of any nation, and least of
all of Italy, with such rich and luxuriant nature, and such
glorious, inspiriting antecedents. But alas! the occurrences I
latterly witnessed there, fully proved to me that even more than
harmony is dead in that land; it would indeed be marvellous if any
music could exist where there is no solid principle. At last I was
really bewildered, and thought that I must have become a
hypochondriac, for all the buffoonery I saw was most distasteful to
me, and yet a vast number of serious people and sedate citizens
entered into it. When they played me anything of their own, and
afterwards praised and extolled my pieces, I cannot tell you how
repugnant it was to me; I felt disposed to become a hermit, with
beard and cowl, and the whole world was at a discount with me. In
Italy you first learn to value a true musician; that is, one whose
thoughts are absorbed in _music_, and not in money, or decorations,
or ladies, or fame; it is doubly delightful when you find that,
without your being aware of it, your own ideas exist and are
developed elsewhere; your songs therefore gave me especial
pleasure, because I could gather from them that you must be a
genuine musician, and so let us mutually stretch out our hands
across the mountains.
I beg that you will also look on me in the light of a friend, and
not write so formally as to my "counsel" and "teaching." This
portion of your letter makes me feel almost nervous, and I scarcely
know what to say; the most agreeable part however is your promise
to send me something to Munich, and to write to me again. I will
then tell you frankly and freely my honest opinion, and you shall
do the same with regard to my new compositions, and thus I think we
shall give each other good counsel. I am very eager to see those
recent works of yours that you have promised me, for I do not doubt
that I shall receive much gratification from them, and many things
which are only foreshadowed in the former songs, will probably in
these become manifest and distinct. I shall therefore say nothing
to-day of the impression your songs have made on me, because
possibly any suggestion or question may be already answered in what
you are about to send me. I earnestly entreat of you to write to me
fully, and in detail, about yourself, in order that we may become
better acquainted. I can then write to you what I purpose and what
I think, and thus we shall continue in close connection.
Let me know what you have recently composed and are now composing;
your mode of life in Berlin, and your plans for the future; in
short all that concerns your musical life, which will be of the
greatest interest to me. Probably this will be obvious in the music
you have so kindly promised me, but fortunately both may be
combined. Have you hitherto composed nothing on a greater scale;
some wild symphony, or opera, or something of the kind? I, for my
part, feel at this moment the most invincible desire to write an
opera, and yet I have scarcely leisure even to commence any work,
however small. I do believe that if the libretto were to be given
to me to-day, the opera would be written by to-morrow, so strong
is my impulse towards it. Formerly the bare idea of a symphony was
so exciting, that I could think of nothing else when one was in my
head; the sound of instruments has such a solemn and glorious
effect; and yet for some time past I have laid aside a symphony
that I had commenced, in order to compose on a cantata of Goethe's
merely because it included, besides the orchestra, voices and a
chorus. I intend now, indeed, to complete the symphony, but there
is nothing I so strongly covet as a regular opera.
Where the libretto is to come from I know less than ever since last
night, when for the first time for more than a year I saw a German
aesthetic paper. The German Parnassus seems in as disorganized a
condition as European politics. God help us! I was obliged to
digest the supercilious Menzel, who presumed modestly to depreciate
Goethe,--and the supercilious Grabbe, who modestly depreciates
Shakspeare,--and the philosophers who proclaim Schiller to be
rather trivial! Is this new, arrogant, overbearing spirit, this
perverse cynicism, as odious to you as it is to me? and are you of
the same opinion with myself, that the first and most indispensable
quality of any artist is to feel respect for great men, and to bow
down in spirit before them; to recognize their merits, and not to
endeavour to extinguish their great flame, in order that his own
feeble rushlight may burn a little brighter? If a person be
incapable of feeling true greatness, I should like to know how he
intends to make _me_ feel it? And as all these people, with their
airs of contempt, only at last succeed in producing imitations of
this or that particular form, without any presentiment of free,
fresh, creative power, unfettered by individual opinion, or
aesthetics or criticism, or the whole world besides; as this is the
case, do they not deserve to be abused? and I do abuse them. Pray
do not take this amiss; perhaps I have gone too far. But, it was
long since I had read anything of the kind, and it vexes me to see
that such folly still goes on, and that the philosopher who
maintains that art is dead, still persists in declaring that it is
so; as if art could in reality ever die.
These are truly strange, wild, and troubled times; and let those
who feel that art is no more, allow it for Heaven's sake to rest in
peace; but however roughly the storm may rage without, it cannot so
quickly succeed in sweeping away the dwelling; and he who works on
quietly within, fixing his thoughts on his own capabilities and
purposes, and not on those of others, will see the hurricane blow
over, and afterwards find it difficult to realize that it ever was
so violent as it appeared at the time. I have resolved to act thus
so long as I can, and to pursue my path steadily, for at all events
no one will deny that music still exists, and that is the chief
thing.
How cheering it is to meet with a person who has chosen the same
object and the same means as yourself! and I would fain tell you
how gratifying each new corroboration of this is to me, but I
scarcely know how to do so. You must imagine it for yourself, and
your own thoughts must supply any deficiencies; so farewell! Pray
let me hear from you soon, and frequently. I beg to send my kindest
wishes to our dear friend Berger;[22] I have been long intending to
write to him, but have never yet accomplished it. I shall certainly
however do so one of these days. Forgive this long, dry letter,
next time it shall be more interesting, and now once more
farewell.--Yours,