Beethoven

NOTES (on Beethoven)


One of the most extraordinary books in world literature is Goethe's "Correspondence with a Child". The child was Bettina Brentano. Born in 1785, she married in 1811 the poet von Arnim. Her genial but rather unnatural precocity fascinated other great men besides Goethe, but her writings are altogether too hyper romantic for present taste.


Bettina to Goethe:- "When I saw him of whom I shall now speak to you, I forgot the whole world - as the world still vanishes when memory recalls the scene - yes it vanishes.... It is Beethoven of whom I now wish to tell you, and who made me forget the world and you; I am still in my nonage, it is true, but I am not mistaken when I say - what no one, perhaps, now understands and believes - he stalks far ahead of the culture of mankind. Shall we ever overtake him? - I doubt it, but grant that he may live until the mighty and exalted enigma lying in his soul is fully developed, may reach its loftiest goal, then surely he will place the key to his heavenly knowledge in our hands so that we may be advanced another step towards true happiness.
All human activities toss around him like mechanism, he alone begets independently in himself the unsuspected, uncreated."



Beethoven to Bettina:- "When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am the Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. When they again become sober they have drawn from the sea all that they brought with them, all that they can bring with them to dry land. I have not a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to other artists;

I associate with him without fear; I have always recognised and understood him and have no fear for my music - it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must be freed by it from all the miseries which the others drag about with themselves."



Some commentator: "His misanthropic disposition created a fanciful world bearing no positive relation to human nature and social conditions."