Goethe and Beethoven
I
1811-1812. A rich autumn of grape harvesting, of golden forests and red sunset skies. The last but two symphonies and the last violin sonata. Lovely declining days and latter-day loves. And the encounter of two suns, Beethoven and Goethe. It was a brief meeting. For centuries the Fates had been preparing the syzygy of these two stars in the firmament of poetry and music. The hour arrives, and the hour passes; their paths have crossed, and each has gone his way. We must wait another thousand years before such an event can occur again. How I envy those who saw them. I even borrow the eyes of such people, and imagine that I too can see the slumbering images of these men reflected as in a pool.
They had long known each other from a distance, but with unequal knowledge; and it was Beethoven whose comprehension was the greater. Ever since childhood he had been nourished on Goethe, and had devoted a cult to him. He read him every day.
In his first conversation with Bettina Brentano,1 in May 1810, Beethoven had spoken of the fascination that Goethe’s poetry exercised over him, not only as to content, but also as to rhythm. ‘I am ordained and impelled
1 Bettina Brentano was the daughter of the lovely Maximilienne La Roche, a Rhenish German with whom Goethe was in love as a young man. Her father, of Italian birth, lived in Frankfort, where Bettina was born in 1785. -EDITOR to compose by the very force of his speech, for it is constructed on a grand scale, like some piece of architecture reared by spiritual hands. It bears within it the secret of harmony. . . . Melody is the sensual life of poetry. Is it not through melody that the spiritual content of a poem penetrates our senses? . . . But mention me to Goethe. Tell him that he ought to hear my symphonies. He will agree with me that music is the one immaterial medium through which we canenter a higher world of knowledge, a world which envelops man although man cannot grasp it. What the spirit receives from that world through the senses is an incarnated spiritual revelation. Write to Goethe about me if you understand me, for I wish with all my heart that he may instruct me.’
But before going further we must pause a moment and weigh the value of Bettina’s testimony. Now that her real correspondence with Goethe has been published, we are able to see clearly into her soul. Critics have minutely compared various texts, and, in spite of certain lacunæ due to the disappearance of important letters, we can definitely disengage the actual from the impossible and the erroneous from the imaginary, particularly during the period under discussion.
Between 1807 and 1810, Bettina was no Northern sibyl, as certain modern historians have asserted. Later her traits modified. From twenty to forty her artistic capacity may not have increased much, — it was always great, — but at least her accuracy improved. It is, however, of the little Mignon between twenty and twentyfive that we are speaking here.
She was a short girl, with a dull complexion and dark bottomless eyes. She seemed to be a perfect mass of black curls, and usually wore a long flowing robe with a heavy girdle, like a pilgrim. Independent of fashion, she could not adapt herself to the strict dictates of society. It irked her to sit on a chair, and she would generally crouch on a low footstool or perch on a window ledge. Sometimes she was full of wild life and laughter; sometimes she was plunged into depths of melancholy. Fundamentally she was a dreamer, dreaming of life.
Eighteen hundred and ten was the year when Goethe was most captivated by her, although he was never able to resist her charms; and it was during this same year that she, whose whole life was devoted to the love of Goethe, felt herself closest to him and loved him most ardently. Her letters of January and February 1810 show that she was absorbed in him in the same way that Saint Theresa of Avila was immersed in her amorous visions. And there is no reason to believe, as I once did, that Goethe was bored by this excessive adoration. He drank it in as a cat drinks sugared milk. Not only did he express his gratitude, but when a month passed without his receiving any new outburst of affection he grew anxious and wrote to her again. Never did he separate himself from Bettina’s letters, but carried them with him wherever he traveled.
II
It was under these conditions that Bettina saw Beethoven for the first time. What reason would she have had beyond the imperious dictates of truth to write to Goethe that she was much taken with Beethoven; that he had subjugated her; that she had passionately espoused his cause, although she could well foresee that Goethe would not be agreeably disposed to the man?
First of all, let me outline the famous story that Bettina later published. She had been spending some time in Vienna with her brother, Franz Brentano, who had married Toni Birkenstock, both of whom were faithful friends of Beethoven. It was during a glorious month of May, and Bettina’s letters to Goethe were redolent of hothouse odors. She had just heard a sonata of Beethoven’s, and it had overwhelmed her. She wanted to see the musician. Everyone tried to dissuade her, telling her that Beethoven was unapproachable. No one even knew where he lived. But Bettina was determined. She found his house, and entered. He was seated at the piano and did not see her. Leaning over him, she whispered in his ear, ‘My name is Brentano.’ Turning quickly, he saw a pretty girl with wild eyes that seemed to penetrate his thoughts, and he sang her Kennst du das Land, his soul afire with religious enthusiasm. How could she have failed to conquer him?
And she was just as overwhelmed as he — more so, in fact. ' When I saw him I forgot the whole world, and when I think of him again the world disappears.’ She was so wrapped up in Beethoven that his terrible solitude took possession of her spirit. She felt that his burning desert of loneliness was hers also, and she took refuge in Goethe’s paternal tenderness. All the first part of her letter to Goethe would be a fit subject for psychoanalysts to study, for it strikingly exemplifies the phenomenon of the medium. Bettina’s soul drank in the electric rays generated by genius. She had the luck to surprise Beethoven during a passionate crisis in a state of creative trance — or raptus, as he was to call it when she reminded him of the words he had spoken.
Their conversations continued, for Beethoven would not let Bettina depart alone, but accompanied her to the Brentanos’ house; and later on he went for walks with her. Bettina was fascinated. She forgot everything but this one man — society, picture galleries, theatres, and even the spire of St. Stephen’s Church. They had a succession of grand conversations, concerning which Schindler was later skeptical, for the naïve reason that Beethoven had never mentioned them to him; but, as someone once said, Schindler was not Bettina.
What really concerns us here in our account of the relations between Goethe and Beethoven is the accuracy of the facts and the sincerity of Bettina’s impressions. There can be no doubt on either score. Her letter to young Alois Bihler written July 9, 1810, absolutely establishes her meeting with Beethoven and the devastating impression that he made upon her. In spite of his extreme ugliness, which struck her more than anything else about him and prevented her from ever falling in love with him, she was fascinated from the first, and this fascination remained always. 'Ich habe diesen Mann unendlich lieb gewonnen. (I have come to feel an infinite affection for this man.)’ The thing about Beethoven that conquered her was the unparalleled sovereignty (Herrlichkeit) and sincerity (Wahrheit) of his art. The way the world treated him revolted her, and from the moment she first met him she was devoted to his cause.
That she made a conquest of Beethoven is no less certain. Her letter to Bihler is a confirmation of Beethoven’s assiduous devotion to her. During his last days at Vienna he never left her. He could not be separated from her, and when he left he begged her to write to him at least once a month, for she was his only friend. The unquestioned letter from Beethoven to Bettina dated February 10, 1811, informs us that Bettina wrote to him twice, and that Beethoven carried her letters about with him all summer.
One simple fact will show what an impression Beethoven made on Bettina’s life. When her brother Clemens came to rejoin her in June with young Arnim, her prospective husband, they were amazed at the change that had set in. Arnim, who had been sure of being accepted, now found her absorbed and remote. She talked about her duty and about devoting herself to music as the great mission of the time; and when Arnim had gone away again, desolate at heart, and begged her in his letters to love him, Bettina replied, affectionately and sincerely, that she wanted to make him happy, but that she could not clearly tell what was in her heart, alluding obscurely to certain musical ties with which she was bound.
Her next meeting with Goethe occurred sooner than either of them had expected. By chance Goethe was called to Teplitz by his Grand Duke at just the time that Bettina stopped there on her way to Berlin. She learned of Goethe’s presence, hastened to see him, and in two beautiful days of happy intimacy — the tenth and eleventh of August, 1810 — she poured out in a torrent everything that had been revealed to her and described how her life had been enriched and revolutionized.
‘She talked to me endlessly,’ said Goethe, ‘about new and old adventures.’
These new adventures consisted of her meeting with Beethoven. Goethe did not wish to name him, nor did he wish to attach any importance to Bettina’s enthusiasm. What was his opinion of Beethoven? Not much at this time, but he was too sensitive then to the charms of this pretty girl not to let her rattle on. He watched her mouth, but did not follow her meaning.
What did he really think, he who knew them both? Realizing the dangers involved, he dismissed them from his horizon. Interested and provoked, he refused to take seriously what he called Bettina’s wunderliche Grillen. But his psychological curiosity, ever on the alert, was at once repelled and attracted.
He came to a halt before the amazing figure that Bettina had described. Never had she made a stronger impression. Never had he esteemed her spiritual value more highly. At this moment Beethoven almost broke in upon Goethe’s intellectual sympathy, and he would have done so had there not been a third party who undid Bettina’s efforts — Zeller. What did this excellent musician, this perfect Philistine, this faithful Achates, say to his friend Goethe about Beethoven? On the twelfth of November, 1808, he wrote as follows: ‘People are looking with admiration and terror at certain will-o’-the-wisps on the slopes of Parnassus, talents — some of them — of the greatest importance, that are using statues of Hercules to kill flies with.’
Later he spoke more harshly, mentioning certain of Beethoven’s works. He described his art as unbalanced, monstrous, shameless, and inverted. Within ten lines he unconsciously said everything that would separate Goethe from Beethoven irremediably. On August 11, 1810, Bettina met Zelter in Goethe’s presence at Teplitz, and went away with a deep-seated rancor against him. By going over this episode in her mind all winter, she again showed her loyalty. It made no difference that she knew how dangerous it was to question Zeller’s authority in Goethe’s presence, that it was a waste of time, and that she was running a risk of falling into her godhead’s bad graces. In spite of everything, she would not pardon this Philistine, as she called him, for his crass stupidity and maliciousness.
Goethe bridled. He had imagined that these musical whims were mere caprices of a pretty woman and would presently vanish. But when he saw that they had come to stay, he pulled a sour face. At first he was prudent, for he needed Bettina to help him write his reminiscences. These were to be her childhood memories of the things her mother had told her when the two of them used to spend ecstatic hours living over in their imagination the early youth of their young god. For, strangely enough, Goethe himself had no recollection of his early years. For this reason he had to accept everything, and his bad humor was merely expressed by silence. Nevertheless, his rancor kept growing, and a few words in a letter written on the eleventh of January, 1811, betrayed it. ‘You often show pig-hendedness, particularly in musical matters. Your little noodle concocts the most extraordinary fancies, but I don’t want to scold you about them or to hurt your feelings.’ In other words: ‘You may speak, but I shan’t do you the honor of discussing what you say.’
During the winter of 1810-1811 Goethe drifted away from Bettina. He believed that he was the sole lord and master of that seductive soul of hers, half Italian and half RhenishGerman. She had come to him and had apparently given herself to him utterly; but here she was only doing Up service to the god of Weimar, proving a false companion, and following new revelations of Beethoven and the young German Romantic Movement.
After long hesitations, Bettina became engaged to von Arnim on the fourth of December, 1810, and married him on the eleventh of March. The letter to Goethe announcing this event and written two months afterward is more full of Goethe than of Arnim, and her sincere affection for Arnim was in all truth but a pale flame compared with her passion for Goethe. Nevertheless, Goethe felt betrayed, and suffered from spite. The wound was chiefly of an intellectual nature. Achim von Arnim, a young literary gentleman, was worthy of all esteem both for his talent and for his character, and he showed old Goethe a respect and regard of which Goethe was aware; but in the spiritual field Arnim, like Beethoven, — though on a far lesser scale, — was hostile.
III
To understand Goethe’s feeling of revulsion toward his contemporaries, let us come down to our own day — to the present crisis in European art, which has been knocked off its bearings by the World War; to the social upheavals; to the outbursts of false enthusiasm, false religion, and false poetry; and to those unconstrained outbursts of excitement which cause us to oscillate between anarchy and slavery, between excessive liberty and excessive tyranny. Perhaps it is a fruitful epoch by reason of its very incoherence and its destructive tendencies; it may be the necessary transition between a world that is dying and a world that is being born. But a Goethe, who would know what it had cost him to order his art and his life, cannot but look on with disgust when all his conquest is threatened, even ruined. Goethe seldom laughed, for he took life and art seriously. He was not disposed to pardon people who gayly upset his own order and his own harmony. Therefore, if the inoffensive young Arnim made him thunder, what would Beethoven do?
Goethe was not enough of a musician to see in Beethoven what we easily see to-day and what Bettina divined — his imperial artistic mastery of the unchained elements. On the twelfth of April, 1811, Beethoven wrote a letter to Goethe full of touching modesty and bordering on love and respect. It told Goethe that the music of Egmont was being sent to him shortly, and begged for his judgment. 'Even your blame will be of assistance, both to me and to my art, and I shall receive it with as open a heart as I should the highest eulogy.’ See how humble this great man is — although only with Goethe, for he disdained all others. The year before he had sent by Bettina three admirable Lieder to poems by Goethe, but Goethe had said nothing. Nevertheless, Beethoven uttered no word of disguised reproach or impatience. He renewed his offering with the same humility.
Goethe, however, was a man of the world, and he knew what he owed the conventions and what he owed the appeals of an illustrious musician who was offering him his veneration. He decided to reply, and did so on June politely maintaining his distance. He did Bettina justice, and congratulated Beethoven on the warmth of such an advocate. He was pleased, he added, to receive the music Beethoven had announced, because he had often heard him mentioned with the highest praise. He had never heard his pieces played by artists or skillful amateurs without wanting to admire Beethoven himself at the keyboard and to enjoy his extraordinary talent. . . . And even more than a full year after the music of Egmont had first been played in Germany, Goethe still lacked the curiosity to hear it, and seemed to look upon Beethoven as a mere piano virtuoso.
On the twenty-third of January, 1812, this note appears in his journal: ‘Evening, Beethoven’s music for Egmont.’ Not until the twenty-ninth of January, 1814, was Egmont first produced with music at Weimar. Goethe wrote on this occasion: ‘Evening, Egmont.’ He did not even think of writing Beethoven’s name.
In the summer of 1811 a catastrophe occurred. Beethoven lost the support of his little patroness at Weimar. In September Goethe definitely broke with Bettina. The von Arnims were shown the door, shortly before an unlucky fate brought Beethoven and Goethe together.
While Goethe was staying at Karlsbad in July 1812 he received an invitation from his Grand Duke to come at once to Teplitz, where the Empress of Austria wanted to speak with him. He went to Teplitz, and Beethoven was there. Goethe had not made the journey on Beethoven’s account, but, having come so close, he perhaps recalled the striking portrait that Bettina had drawn, and also Beethoven’s ardent desire to meet him. His curiosity overcame his artistic repulsion and he called on Beethoven. Teplitz was full of emperors and empresses and their hangers-on, but Beethoven was a bird of a different plumage. He wrote solemnly, ‘Few people, and of these few no one striking. I live alone, alone.’ But on the same day, in the course of a business letter to his publishers, he interrupts himself and writes, ‘Goethe ist hier! (Goethe is here!)’ You can feel his heart leap.
Goethe behaved nobly. He was the first to come, and he, like Bettina and so many others, was subjugated by the first glance. On the same day he wrote to his wife, ‘I have never seen a more powerfully concentrated, more energetic, more fervid (inniger) artist.’ This is no small praise. In all his life Goethe never admitted another man’s superiority to such a degree. What a profound view it was! Goethe’s subjugation is proved by the fact that the next day, July 20, the two men went walking together. On the day after, Goethe returned to Beethoven’s house in the evening; and there again on the twenty-third Beethoven played for him on the piano.
Four days later, however, Beethoven left Teplitz, as his doctor had ordered him to Karlsbad. It was over. During all the rest of their lives these two men were never to meet again.
IV
What happened? We are enlightened by two letters from Bettina, and by two other letters all too true — one from Beethoven to Breitkopf, written on the ninth of August, 1812, and the other from Goethe to Zelter on the ninth of September, 1812. I shall try to look at these two men and describe them as they were in all their grandeur and all their pettiness. For pettiness exists in geniuses just as much as in ordinary mortals — in fact, more so; and Beethoven, like Goethe, had his share of it. The most generous at the start was Goethe. He extended his hand to Beethoven; he was as cordial as his nature permitted, though he was always a little formal when he was not expressing himself artistically or in strict intimacy. Beethoven had not taken him in at t lie start, for the second impression did not contradict the first. It seems, however, that Beethoven’s impressions were less satisfying. This poet of whom he had dreamed since childhood as a wide-winged eagle flying against the wind looked like a Geheimrat, punctilious in etiquette and respectful toward high rank, a silly society dude. And after this same man had listened to Beethoven improvising on the piano, — and everyone knows how torrential these improvisations were, — he said to him politely that he had played charmingly. No doubt he was embarrassed in expressing his appreciation of music and was merely complimenting the musician on the agility of his fingers; but the æsthetic judgment, the intellectual judgment, that Beethoven had expected was not forthcoming, because at bottom Goethe had had no thoughts on these matters and no understanding of music.
Beethoven burst out, and Bettina has described the scene, for, although she herself was not present, Beethoven told her about it, boiling with excitement. And there is no doubt that she helped to throw oil on the flames. Bettina had arrived at Teplitz on the evening of July 23. She did not suspect that she would find Goethe and Beethoven there; but the encounter that she had desired so ardently, and for which she had worked with such tenacity, had already occurred, and she was excluded. It was a bitter pill.
Here is the written or spoken description of this strange scene done in Beethoven’s most typical style — a scene in which the two artists find themselves in unexpected attitudes, for on this occasion there is a tear in Goethe’s eye, and Beethoven is berating him rudely for his sentimentality. ‘He had finished playing,’ wrote Bettina, ‘when he saw that Goethe was profoundly moved, and said, “Ah, sir, I had not expected that of you. Long ago in Berlin I gave a concert. I worked hard, and thought that I had given a good performance. I was expecting a success, but after I had given everything in me I was not even greeted by the feeblest sign of appreciation. It was really too painful, and I could not understand. Soon, however, the puzzle was explained. The whole Berlin public was delicately cultivated, and they were saluting me with handkerchiefs to their weeping eyes. I saw that I had been playing to a romantic audience, not an artistic one. But from you, Goethe, I do not like it. When your poems penetrate my brain I proudly desire to raise myself to your height. No doubt I have failed; otherwise you would have expressed your enthusiasm differently. You yourself must know how good it is to be applauded by hands that understand. If you do not recognize me, if you do not esteem me as your equal, who will?”’
This was Goethe’s first lesson. Who had ever spoken in this way to him before? Bettina depicts Goethe’s embarrassment, for he ‘felt clearly that Beethoven was right.’
From this time on Beethoven was goaded by Bettina into an antipathy toward Goethe, and let no opportunity slip by to show his feelings. Out walking, Beethoven took Goethe by the arm although they kept meeting aristocrats. Goethe was full of salutations that irked Beethoven, and when the former spoke of the Court and the Empress it was with humble solemnity. 'Ei was!’ Beethoven groaned. ‘You ought not to do that. You do no good that way. You ought to throw what is in you at their heads; otherwise they will pay no attention.’
The second lesson continued in this fashion, until suddenly the Empress and all her Court appeared in their path. Beethoven said to Goethe, ‘Keep hold of my arm; they ought to give way to us, not we to them.’ ‘Goethe was not of this opinion,’ Bettina remarked. He dropped Beethoven’s arm and drew to one side, hat in hand. Beethoven, his arm swinging, plunged through the middle of the crowd of princes like a ball of fire, merely touching the edge of his hat. They made way politely, and all saluted him in a friendly fashion. When the company had passed Beethoven stopped and waited for Goethe, who was still paying his respects. Then he said to him, ‘I waited for you because I honor and esteem you as you deserve to be honored and esteemed, but you have paid them too much honor.’
This was the third lesson, and this time it was a practical one, for the precept was accompanied by the example. Perhaps the reprimand was deserved, but a Goethe will not allow himself to be dragged about by the ear like a schoolboy. Goethe wrote to Zelter on the second of September: 'I have come to know Beethoven, and his talent astounds me. Unfortunately, however, he is quite mad. No doubt he is not mistaken if he finds the world a detestable place, but in acting as he does he does not increase its richness or pleasure either for himself or for others. Yet he is much to be excused and pitied, for he is losing his hearing, which perhaps does less harm to the musical part of him than it does to the social part of him. Laconic by nature, he is becoming doubly so now as a result of his deafness.' The tone of this judgment is very measured. It is the least that Goethe could have said against Beethoven, and we must give him credit for his just spirit.
Beethoven, after this encounter, expressed himself unrestrainedly, for he was certainly a less reserved man than Goethe. ‘Goethe likes the Court atmosphere too much. He likes it more than a poet should. Let us not even mention the ridiculous aspects of certain virtuosi if our poets, who ought to be the chief teachers of the nation, are able to forget all else for these false lights.' He wrote this to his publishers — and it is always imprudent to confide one’s impressions to strangers. Beethoven had a great defect. When he made a remark that hurt someone’s feelings, he was not satisfied to keep it between himself and that person; he communicated it to the world at large. After he had, in his own words, washed Goethe’s head for him, he rushed to the Arnims and described the whole farce to them.
Silence is a mortal weapon, and it was Goethe’s great arm. He did not mention Beethoven again for years. In 1813 Zelter had at last discovered the overture to Egmont, and spoke of it to Goethe, who did not reply; and Zelter was not the man to impose on Goethe an admiration that they could not share. In April 1820, when Johann Christian Lobe, a timid young man who nevertheless had the courage of his convictions, dared to express respectfully in Goethe’s presence the shortcomings of Zelter’s music and its fossilized character, and to announce his preference for the new generation and for the music of Beethoven and Weber, Goethe begged him to give his reasons, which Lobe did very intelligently. Goethe listened to him in attentive silence, with his head bent. Then he went to the piano and opened it, saying, ‘Give me an example. People ought to be able to prove what they say by facts.' Lobe played Zelter’s accompaniment to a poem, and then a tune from Egmont. No doubt Goethe was too easily convinced and too quickly salisfietl by this one rudimentary example, which was perhaps inadequately executed. In any case, he condemned the new tendencies, though it was a big step forward for him to inform himself on the subject.
Some months later, however, toward the end of September, 1820, when he was receiving Foerster, the Berlin musician, Goethe took issue with the erroneous interpretation offered by Prince Radziwill, who had set a Faust monologue to music, and at the same time pointed out the perfect appropriateness of Beethoven’s music for the Egmont monologue. He recited the monologue with emotion, and added, ‘I indicated that the music should express the lassitude of the hero, and Beethoven showed marvelous genius in his grasp of my intentions.’
Next year the poet, Ludwig Rellstab, a great admirer of Beethoven, conversed with Goethe. ‘We often spoke of Beethoven, whom he knew personally. He was proud to possess some of his manuscripts. On this particular occasion he invited Geheimrat Schmidt to play a Beethoven sonata for us.’ Beethoven’s music was therefore by no means proscribed in Goethe’s salon.
V
How, then, can we explain Goethe’s incredible silence in 1823 when Beethoven, sick, and tormented by financial worries, wrote him, on the eighth of February, a devoted letter begging Goethe to intervene in his behalf with the Grand Duke of Weimar and persuade him to subscribe to the edition of the Missa Solemnis? What a touching effort it was to gain Goethe’s interest in his humble domestic life and in his sixteen-year-old nephew, whose education and knowledge of Greek he proudly exaggerated! Yet Goethe never replied to this request for assistance. His enemies conveniently explain that he was a poor lot, while his embarrassed admirers dodge the issue and excuse him on the grounds of ill health.
The truth is that, during February 1823, Goethe had fallen grievously sick. Beethoven’s letter arrived on the fifteenth of the month and after the thirteenth Goethe was subject to attacks, until on the eighteenth his sickness broke out in a violently dangerous form, as it had often done before at certain periods, bringing about extremely serious but rather brief crises. For eight days and nights he never left his armchair, where he lay in a state of delirious fever. The two doctors that attended him feared the worst, and he himself cried out to them, ‘You will not save me. Death awaits me and lurks in every corner. I am lost.' But he struggled. After ten days his returning health expressed itself in an access of fury directed against the doctors for forbidding him to drink. 'If I have to die, I want to die in my own way.’ He drank, and felt better. Within another month he was talking about his sickness as if it had happened long ago.
Although seventy-five years old, he promptly fell in love with a girl of nineteen, Ulrich von Levetzow. During June and July he danced attendance on her at Marienbad. Love overwhelmed him as if he were an adolescent. It took no provocation to make his tears flow, and music broke him down completely. A month of separation was more than he could stand, and he again attached himself to the Levetzows in Karlsbad, where this old septuagenarian danced with young girls. When he asked the Levetzows for their daughter’s hand in marriage, they skillfully rejected his offer, and he was overwhelmed. At the close of the year a serious sickness laid him low once more. In his home no one paid any attention to him. ‘If Goethe had died at this time,’ writes Emil Ludwig, 'he would have died defeated.'
It is clear, however, that, if his sickness during the previous February was an insufficient excuse for forgetting Beethoven’s letter, his agitations during the rest of the year and the feverish weakness of his disordered heart explain his disregard of Beethoven’s request.
For my own part, I confine my severity to his faithful but weak-spirited friend, Zelter. Mediocrity cannot be excused as genius can, for, if mediocrity is not good and loyal, what else can it be? It was Zelter’s peculiar duty to remind Goethe of Beethoven’s supplication, for he himself had received it and understood its pathos. Ever since he had met Beethoven in 1819 his feelings had been entirely changed. Zelter was an excellent fellow at bottom, in spite of his rude exterior, and the physical misery and the goodness of Beethoven moved him to tears. From this day on he expressed feelings of brotherly devotion. He subscribed to the Missa Solemnis; he put his Singchor of one hundred and sixty voices, the best choral society in Germany, at Beethoven’s disposal, and regularly inscribed Beethoven’s programmes with comparisons to Michelangelo.
But, alas, human weakness is such that he never spoke to Goethe of the Missa Solemnis, and when Beethoven died Zelter, doing secret obeisance to the vanished demigod, did not run the risk of evoking his memory to Goethe. It seems that for an entire year the name of Beethoven was never mentioned between the two men.
I myself own a splendid letter from Goethe to Wilhelm von Humboldt written on October 22, 1826, some months before Beethoven’s death. Humboldt was trying to combat his friend’s apparent distaste for Indian philosophy, and Goethe replied to him in these words: ‘I have absolutely nothing against India, but I am afraid of it, for it drags my imagination into the realm of the formless and misshapen, against which I must defend myself more than ever.’
As death came closer, this secret attraction and terror of the abyss kept growing, and Beethoven was Goethe’s abyss. The famous scene Mendelssohn has described reveals him to us. It shows us the anxiety of the old man, driven half mad with his efforts to keep in check the same wild demons that were going to overwhelm old Tolstoy in his Kreutzer Sonata. The scene occurred in 1830, three years after Beethoven’s death.
‘That morning I devoted an hour to playing all the great composers in their historic order. He [Goethe] was seated in an obscure corner like some thundering Jupiter, and lightning flashed from his old eyes. He did not want to hear Beethoven mentioned, but I told him I could n’t help it, and played him the first passage from the Symphony in C Minor. It moved him strangely. First he said, “That does not move me at all. It merely astonishes me. It is grandiose.” He grumbled on in this tone for a short time, and then, after a long stretch of silence, he began talking again. “It’s very great; it’s absolutely crazy. It makes you afraid the house will fall.” And when we sat down at the table later he kept on groaning while we talked about other subjects. The blow had struck home, and he should have cried “Hit!” but he refused. In order that his philosophic destiny might be fulfilled, he had to cheat.’
VI
Here is my conclusion regarding these two men. Beethoven was an exalted and often staggering Dionysus, and Goethe was an Olympian; but Goethe was the one who showed more moral weakness. Yet spiritual force consists of knowing one’s weakness and fixing the limits of one’s interior empire. Beethoven’s empire lay in the infinite heavens. 'Mein Reich ist in der Luft.’ This is what creates his wild appeal, his generosity, and his danger. The next century of music succumbed to him. Only Wagner was strong enough to grasp in his hand the sceptre that the ‘Apprenticed Sorcerers’ had let fall!
But Beethoven never suspected the dangers that he was releasing. Nor did he understand — and let us hope that he did not suspect — the secret revulsion that came between him and the man whom he venerated more than anyone in the world. We can imagine how he suffered from Goethe’s obstinate silence and his failure to answer letters. Such a fiery man would not tolerate anyone, even the great ones of the earth, failing to give him his due. Yet he never betrayed any rancor against Goethe’s inconceivable attitude; not a single complaint did he utter.
The memory of those days at Teplitz had not vanished, though only his pride remained. The shadows had entirely disappeared. He no longer remembered Goethe’s weaknesses, his railing and joking. With perfect innocence, he had forgotten these incidents, and all he remembered of Goethe was his glory and his goodness.
‘You know the great Goethe?’ he exclaimed to Rochlitz in 1822, and beat his chest, beaming with joy. ‘I know him too; I met him at Karlsbad — God knows how long ago. I was n’t as deaf then as I am now, but even so I had a hard time hearing. How patient the great man was with me, and how happy it made me. I would kill myself ten times for his sake.’
Thus they pass — close together, yet without seeing each other. And the one whose love was greater was only able to wound the other. And the one whose understanding was greater would never again have at his side his only equal, the only man worthy of himself!