BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, April 26, 1825 (approximately)
Despite his happiness at his leavetaking of Beethoven yesterday, Rellstab nevertheless cannot shake the dire sadness that Beethoven’s profound deafness at the piano impressed upon him. His trip to Pressburg appears to be delayed a day, which we believe would give him the opportunity to make the visit today that he describes below to poet Franz Grillparzer, though it may have occurred yesterday as Rellstab hints. However, the mood described here is not at all consistent with his elation at Beethoven’s kiss yesterday, suggesting this visit to Grillparzer probably occurs today instead.
Rellstab’s own account follows: “Completely filled with this melancholy impression, I left Beethoven. Under this gloomy sky, under this oppressive atmosphere, even the blossoms of my hope for a new, great work of art withered. This deeply bowed, sick spirit could not possibly, unless a miracle of recovery occurred, muster the courage for a creative spirit that would last for years. Anyone who saw Beethoven during this period will never be able to shake the conviction that his last works are deeply immersed in this gloomy fog, less of melancholy than of bitter discontent. Even if they are less beautiful, less free, even if they may in certain respects even frighten and torment us, because they lack the health that a work of art absolutely requires, they are all the more shocking for that reason when one considers their innermost connection with the dark states of suffering of their Creator. Accordingly, the pure judgment of Art often takes issue with this: the human judgment finds other points of contact, and sees in the observed aberrations symptoms of illness and dark confusions just as many reasons for loving sympathy for the creator. But woe to him who confuses the viewpoints here, and which are a warning and act as a signpost for the true artist. Unfortunately, we have seen the saddest examples and consequences of this perversity in the latest theories of art and works of art, which for us, so far as Beethoven is concerned, only prove that his true greatness has never been understood by his successors, his admirers.”
“I went from here to Grillparzer to hear from him, who had kindly received me as a younger, unknown writer, some details about what Beethoven would want from the opera poem. But here too, I met someone who was at least half-ill. What he told me about the undertaking of composing an opera for Beethoven was certainly not likely to arouse great hopes. It gave me the conviction that the noble spirit was too exhausted for constant exertion by the heavy burden of Fate that he had borne for so many years.”
“That Grillparzer could not reach an agreement with Beethoven may well have been due to this and the poem that he had chosen. At least, if it was the same one that he later entrusted to Conradin Kreutzer to compose [the libretto to Melusine,] then I fully understand that Beethoven, despite all the beauty it contained, could not warm to it and always found fault with it, even though he himself may not have fully realized the real reason why he always had to regard this poem as a stranger. It was a necessary idiosyncrasy, which need not be explored further here.”
“I firmly resolved to begin the work with all my might. However, I had previously sensed how necessary faith was to ignite poetic enthusiasm in order to reach the goal, however distant and lofty it might be; how paralyzing and deadly, on the other hand, the spectre of suspecting the opposite could be. Free desire and inclination die, and just as little as willpower can command them, just as little can they compel the warmth and fervor necessary to bring a living product of the spirit to maturity. Only faith produces them. Without it, the world will forever be a dead one!”
Rellstab, Beethoven. Ein Bild der Erinnerung aus meinem Leben in Garten und Wald. Novellen und vermischte Schriften, vol.4, Leipzig: Brockhaus 1854, pp. 102-104.