He used to read the Augsburg newspaper, and he was fond of talking of
politics. It was a time of political unrest. Beethoven revered the heroes
of Plutarch; the leaders in the American revolution; Napoleon Bonaparte
as long as he was First Consul. A bronze statue of Brutus was on his
work-table. It is not necessary, then, to add that he was a republican by
sentiment. He dreamed of a future when all men should be brothers, and the
finale of the Ninth Symphony is the musical expression of the dream and
the wish. We have seen his fondness for women. There is no proof however
that he was ever under the spell of an unworthy passion. A wife was to
him a sacred being; and in an age when unlimited gallantry was regarded
as an indispensable characteristic of a polished gentleman, Beethoven was
pure in speech and in life. He was even prudish in his desire to find an
untainted libretto for his music, and he could not understand how Mozart
was willing to accept the text of "Don Giovanni." He was born in the Roman
Catholic faith, and just before his death he took the Sacrament; but in
his life he was rather a speculative deist. His prayer book was "Thoughts
on the works of God in Nature," by Sturm. It was difficult for him to
separate God from Nature. Many passages in his letters show his sense of
religious duty to man and God, and his trust and his humility. He copied
out and kept constantly on his work-table these lines found by Champollion
Figeac on an Egyptian temple:
I am that which is,
I am all that is, that has been, and that shall be; no mortal
hand has lifted my veil.
He is by himself and it is to him that everything owes existence.
Although his education had been neglected sadly in his youth, he was not
without literary culture. He could not write a legible hand;--indeed, he
himself described his chirography as "this cursed writing that I cannot
alter"; his letters are often awkwardly expressed and incorrect; but they
also abound in blunt directness, in personal revelation, and in a rude
and overpowering eloquence. In his reading he was first enthusiastic
over Klopstock; he soon wearied of the constant longing of that poet
for death and abandoned him for Goethe. He was familiar with Schiller
and the German poets that were his own contemporaries. His literary
idols were Homer, Plutarch, and Shakespeare. He read the latter in the
translation by Eschenburg, which he preferred to that by Schlegel; this
translation was in his library, and it was thumbed by incessant reading.
Schindler says that Plato's "Republic" was "transfused into his flesh
and blood." He was an insatiable reader of histories. At the house of
Mrs. Von Breuning in Bonn he was guided in a measure by the brother of
his hostess. He knew Milton, Swift and other English writers in the
translations, and he was kindly disposed thereby toward England and
Englishmen. It is not so easy to discover his opinions concerning music
from the few works found in his library, nor would it be wise to argue
from the chance collection. There was a volume of pieces taken from the
compositions of Palestrina, Vittoria, Nanini and other Italians. He had
but little of Sebastian Bach, who was then known chiefly as the author
of "The Well-tempered Clavichord." He owned a portion of the score of
"Don Giovanni" and a few of Mozart's pianoforte sonatas; he preferred,
however, the sonatas of Clementi, which he praised extravagantly. He
was not ashamed to call himself the pupil of Salieri. He held Gyrowetz
and Weigl in sincere esteem. Prejudiced at first against Weber, who had
written violent critical articles against him, he changed his opinion
after a more careful examination of "Der Freischütz," in which he found
"the claw of the devil" side by side with "singular things." "I see what
he intends, but in reading certain pages, such as the infernal chase, I
cannot help smiling. After all, the effect may be right; it is necessary
to hear it; but alas, I can no longer hear!" He was undoubtedly jealous
of Rossini; "Fortune gave him a pretty talent and the gift of inventing
agreeable melodies"; but he thought him no better than a scene-painter
and accused him of a want of learning. Of all composers he appears to
have most admired Handel dead and Cherubini, his contemporary. In a letter
that was written by him to that great Italian-French composer, who is too
much neglected in these restless days, Beethoven assured him that he put
his operas above all other works for the stage; that he took a more lively
interest in one of his new compositions than in his own; that he honored
and loved him; that if it were not for his deafness, he would go to Paris
that he might see him; and he begged him to consider him as worthy of
ranking in the number of true artists. Of Handel he said, and shortly
before his death, "This is the incomparable master, the master of masters.
Go to him, and learn how to produce, with few means, effects that are like
a thunder-clap."
[Illustration: PEN AND INK SKETCH OF BEETHOVEN
As he appeared on the streets of Vienna; drawn by J.P. Lyser, probably
about 1820-25.]
[Illustration: An ancient Egyptian inscription found in a temple at Saïs,
dedicated to the Goddess Neith, which impressed Beethoven so much that he
copied it, as above, and kept it framed under glass on his desk.]
But no collection of Beethoviana, no affidavits to the truth of anecdotes
and conversations, no photographic, no phonographic record of his daily
life can give a just idea of the character of this extraordinary man. Its
grandeur, titanic in its aspirations, is best seen or felt in the music
that was to him the true organ of speech. To comprehend, to appreciate
Beethoven, the full knowledge of his compositions is necessary; and to the
temperament of the composer must be added the corresponding temperament
of a fit hearer. The Beethoven that has voiced the longings, the joys and
the sorrows of humanity was not merely the man who walked in the streets
of Vienna, not even the being to whom each tree sang the trisagion.
The petty failings and the personal virtues of the individual assume
in his music gigantic, supernatural proportions. In his life passion,
tenderness, pride, arrogance, despair, tumultuous joy, fancy that was at
times grotesque, gayety that often was clowning were strangely mingled;
just as in "King Lear" the broken-hearted old man and the faithful fool
defy together the raging of the elements. To the easy-going, amour-hunting
citizen of Vienna Beethoven no doubt appeared, as to Rochlitz, "a very
able man, reared on a desert island and suddenly brought fresh into the
world," But to the faithful student of his life and works he seems one of
the great high-priests of humanity. To the Beethoven of later years, shut
off from the world, lonely and full of sorrow, the conceiver of unearthly
music such as was never heard before, the sonorous hymn of the Opium Eater
over the mystery known among men as Shakespeare might well be chanted:
"O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely
great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the
sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and
dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission
of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be
no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther
we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and
self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but
accident!"
[Illustration: Signature: Philip Hale]