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BEETHOVEN.

A LETTER TO GOETHE.

IT

BY BETTINA VON ARNIM

T is Beethoven of whom I will now speak to you, and with whom I have forgotten the world and you: true, I am not ripe for speaking, but I am nevertheless not mistaken when I say (what no one understands and believes) that he far surpasses all in mind, and whether we shall ever overtake him? -I doubt it! may he only live till that mighty and sublime enigma which lies within his spirit be matured to its highest perfection! Yes, may he reach his highest aim, then will he surely leave a key to heavenly knowledge in our hands which will bring us one step nearer to true happiness.

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To you I may confess, that I believe in a divine magic, which is the element of mental nature; this magic does Beethoven exercise in his art; all relating to it which he can teach you is pure magic; each combination is the organization of a higher existence: and thus, too, does Beethoven feel himself to be the founder of a new sensual basis in spiritual life. You will understand what I mean to say by this, and what is true. Who could replace this spirit? from whom could we expect an equivalent? The whole business of mankind passes to and fro before him like clock-work; he alone produces freely from out himself the unforeseen, the uncreated. What is intercourse with

the world to him who ere the sunrise is already at his sacred work, and who after sunset scarcely looks around him, - who forgets to nourish his body, and is borne in his flight on the stream of inspiration far beyond the shores of that every-day life? He says himself: "When I open my eyes, I cannot but sigh, for what I see is against my religion, and I am compelled to despise the world, which has no presentiment that music is a higher revelation than all their wisdom and philosophy. Music is the wine which inspires new creations; and I am the Bacchus who presses out this noble wine for mankind, and makes them spirit drunk; and then, when they are sober again, what have they not fished up to bring with them to dry land? I have no friend; I must live with myself alone; but I well know that God is nearer to me in my art than to others. I commune with him without dread; I have ever acknowledged and understood him; neither have I any fear for my music; it can meet no evil fate. He to whom it makes itself intelligible must become freed from all the wretchedness which others drag about with them." All this did Beethoven say to me the first time I saw him. A feeling of revence penetrated me, as, with such friendly openness, he uttered his mind to me, who could have been only very unimportant to him. I was surprised, too, because I had been told he was very shy, and conversed with no one.

They were afraid to introduce me to him, and I was forced to find him out alone. He has three dwellings, in which he alternately secretes himself; one in the country, one in the town, and the third upon the bulwarks. Here I found him upon the third floor; unannounced, I entered, - he was seated at the piano; I mentioned my name: he was very friendly, and asked if I would hear a song that he had just composed; then he sung, shrill and piercing, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the hearer, Kno'st Ithou the land.” "It 's beautiful, is it not?" said he in

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spired, "most beautiful! I will sing it again." He was delighted at my cheerful praise. "Most men," said he, are touched by something good, but they are no artist-natures; artists are ardent, they do not weep." Then he sung another of your songs, to which he had a few days ago composed music, "Dry not the tears of eternal love." He accompanied me home, and it was upon the way that he said so many beautiful things upon art; withal he spoke so loud, stood still so often upon the street, that some courage was necessary to listen; he spoke passionately and much too startlingly for me not also to forget that we were in the street. They were much surprised to see me enter, with him, in a large company assembled to dine with us. After dinner, he placed himself, unasked, at the instrument, and played long and wonderfully: his pride and genius were both in ferment; under such excitement his spirit creates the inconceivable, and his fingers perform the impossible. Since this he comes every day, or I go to him. For this I neglect parties, picture-galleries, theatres, and even St. Stephen's tower itself. Beethoven says, "Ah! what should you see there? I will fetch you, and towards evening we will go through the Schönbrunn alley." Yesterday, I walked with him in a splendid garden, in full blossom, all the hot-houses open; the scent was overpowering. Beethoven stood still in the burning sun, and said, "Goethe's poems maintain a powerful sway over me, not only by their matter, but also their rhythm; I am disposed and excited to compose by this language, which ever forms itself, as through spirits, to more exalted order, already carrying within itself the mystery of harmonies. Then, from the focus of inspiration, I feel myself compelled to let the melody stream forth on all sides. I follow it, passionately overtake it again; I see it escape me, vanish amidst the crowd of varied excitements, - soon I seize upon it again with renewed passion; I cannot part from it, with quick

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rapture I multiply it, in every form of modulation, and at the last moment, I triumph over the first musical thought, see now, - that's a symphony; - yes, music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life. I should like to speak with Goethe upon this, if he would understand me. Melody is the sensual life of poetry. Do not the spiritual contents of a poem become sensual feeling through melody? Do we not in Mignon's song perceive its entire sensual frame of mind through melody? and does not this perception excite again to new productions? There, the spirit extends itself to unbounded universality, where all in all forms itself into a bed for the stream of feelings which take their rise in the simple musical thought, and which else would die unperceived away; this is harmony, this is expressed in my symphonies; the blending of various forms rolls on as in a bed to its goal. Then one feels that an Eternal, an Infinite, never quite to be embraced, lies in all that is spiritual; and although in my works I have always a feeling of success, yet I have an eternal hunger, -that what seemed exhausted with the last stroke of the drum with which I drive my enjoyment, my musical convictions, into the hearers, to begin again like a child. Speak to Goethe of me, tell him he should hear my symphonies; he would then allow me to be right in saying that music is the only unembodied entrance into a higher sphere of knowledge which possesses man, but he will never be able to possess it. One must have rhythm in the mind to comprehend music in its essential being; music gives presentiment, inspiration of heavenly knowledge; and that which the spirit feels sensual in it is the embodying of spiritual knowledge. Although the spirits live upon music, as one lives upon air, yet it is something else spiritually to understand it; but the more the soul draws out of it its sensual nourishment, the more ripe does the spirit become for a happy intelligence with it. But few attain to this; for.

as thousands engage themselves for love's sake, and among these thousands love does not once reveal itself, although they all occupy themselves of love, in like manner do. thousands hold communion with music, and do not possess its revelation: signs of an elevated moral sense form, too, the groundwork of music, as of every art. All genuine invention is a moral progress. To subject one's self to music's unsearchable laws; by virtue of these laws to curb and guide the spirit, so that it pours forth these revelations, this is the isolating principle of art; to be dissolved in its revelations, this is abandonment to genius, which tranquilly exercises its authority over the delirium of unbridled powers; and thus grants to fancy the highest efficacy. Thus does art ever represent divinity, and that which stands in human relation to it is religion; what we acquire through art is from God, a divine suggestion, which sets up a goal for human capacities, which the spirit attains.

"We do not know what grants us knowledge; the firmly enclosed seed needs the moist, warm, electric soil to grow, think, express itself. Music is the electric soil in which the spirit lives, thinks, invents. Philosophy is the precipitation of its electric spirit; and its necessity, which will ground everything upon a first principle, is supplied by music; and although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet is it blessed in this creation; in this manner, too, is every creation of art independent; mightier than the artist himself, and returns by its appearance back to the divine; and is only connected with men, in so much as it bears witness to the divine mediation in him.

"Music gives to the spirit relation to harmony. A thought abstracted has still the feeling of communion, of affinity, in the spirit; thus each thought in music is in the most intimate, inseparable affinity with the communion of harmony, which is unity.

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