  Although Beethoven lived to see happy days and happy times in beautiful Vienna, other days and other times succeeded them, darkened by a terrible fate which only a strong and lofty spirit like his could endure and even overcome. One fine summer evening Beethoven and his pupil, Ries, took a pleasant ramble among the beautiful fields around Vienna. The setting sun flooded the earth with a sea of gold and purple. Rosy clouds slowly floated in the sky. High in air the lark sang its sweet-toned evening song. On a green hillock sat a shepherd lad, filling the fields and woods around with the pretty melody of his flute, which he had fashioned out of elder. Beethoven and Ries stopped and quietly enjoyed the wonderful beauty of the dying day. “How beautifully the song of the lark blends with the shepherd’s melody,” said Ries. Beethoven leaned forward and listened. “Flute and lark? I do not hear them,” he said, with an expression of painful suspense on his face. He had lost his hearing. Ries tried to console and calm him “There is the young shepherd, playing on his pipe. Do you not see him?” “I see him,” said Beethoven in a pitiful tone. “I see him—but—I do not hear him.” On that spot his distressing fate was pronounced. Beethoven, the musician, who lived only in the realm of music, had lost his hearing! He could no longer hear his own beautiful melodies! He would never hear again the song of the nightingale, or the orchestra’s surging volume of tone. His misfortune did not come suddenly, like a bolt out of the clear sky. For years Beethoven had observed the gradual loss of his hearing, and had sought medical help for it; but it was during this walk that the conviction was at last forced upon him that there was no hope he would ever be better. Silent, sad, and absorbed in gloomy thought, he went home. Ries tried to console and calm him, but for such an artist, with such an affliction, there could be no consolation, no relief except in humble submission to the divine will. An extract from a letter written by him to his old true friend, Wegeler, in Bonn, dated May 2, 1810, shows how keenly Beethoven felt this affliction. He writes: “I, however, should have been happy, perhaps the happiest of men, had not that demon taken possession of my ears. I have read somewhere that man should not wilfully part from this life so long as he can do even one good deed; and but for this I should ere now have ceased to exist, and by my own hand too.” It could not well be otherwise. His total deafness could not but exercise a depressing influence upon Beethoven’s disposition, even though it could not completely dominate his strong character. Usually frank, cordial, and confiding in his friends, Beethoven soon became suspicious and distrustful, irritable and passionate. It was easy for any outsider to slander his truest friends and set him against them. On such occasions—and, alas, they were not rare—Beethoven would show no outward sign of his enmity, utter no reproaches, make no complaints, and not even call the suspected one to account. But from that time he would exhibit the utmost contempt for him. At the same time he would feel the deepest sorrow, and yet make no explanation of his conduct. When by some chance the misunderstanding was cleared up, then Beethoven sought to make reparation for his injustice in every possible way. He would offer apologies, and not rest until reconciled to his injured friend. Then he was as usual the truest friend, ready to help in every time of trouble as much as it was in his power to do so. Even those nearest to him bitterly felt the pain of his capricious disposition. “You cannot believe,” writes Stephen von Breuning, one of Beethoven’s devoted friends at Bonn, “what an indescribable impression the decay of his hearing has made upon Beethoven. Think what the feeling of unhappiness must be in one of such earnest character, besides his reserve and frequent distrust of his best friends and his irresolution in many things. For the most part, when he expresses his original feeling freely, intercourse with him is an actual exertion, as one can never feel absolutely free.” True indeed; but was not the unfortunate one the most to be pitied? Let us hear what he says about it himself. Early in 1802 Beethoven was attacked by an illness so dangerous that for the first time he had serious doubts whether he should recover. His friend, the celebrated Doctor Schmidt, checked the progress of the disease, and when he was fully restored sent him to Heiligenstadt, a village in the suburbs of Vienna. There in solitude, his mind busy with thoughts about death, he wrote the following document, a kind of will, addressed to his two brothers:
And he has been admitted to those ranks. Notwithstanding the malignant disease which dispelled every outward joy of life, Beethoven created those immortal symphonies, overtures, and sonatas, in which he proved himself the greatest master of music and inscribed his name indelibly in the history of the art. Misfortune could not overcome him. His splendid genius made him superior to it. “I will clutch fate by the throat,” he once wrote to a friend. “It never shall make me bow to it.” And it never did. He wrestled manfully with it, and subjected it to his powerful will. That in spite of this he was unsociable to the end, and often alienated his nearest friends, is easily explained by the nature of his ailment, which made conversation extremely difficult. It was due to this also that Beethoven, always good-hearted and generous to the suffering, experienced the ingratitude of his own brothers in various ways. He had suffered them to come to Vienna, supported them in every way, and sacrificed a considerable part of his income in their maintenance for a year. They treated him with shameful ingratitude, and broke open his chest and stole all the jewels, snuff-boxes, watches, rings, and other souvenirs which had been given to Beethoven by high personages, in recognition of his performances. Beethoven, that great, noble heart, made no allusion to the theft; but the knowledge that those who were nearest to him, who owed their very existence to him, upon whom he had absolutely heaped benefactions, had lied to him, cheated him, and robbed him,—such knowledge could not contribute to his happiness, cheerfulness, and affability. And yet, notwithstanding all this, with all his misfortune, was Beethoven actually unhappy? Was he alone in his gloomy solitude? He may have been at first, but in his later life certainly not. The happiness of knowing he could create sublime masterpieces was greater than the unhappiness of being deaf and misunderstood. He was not solitary, for the divine genius of art always was his companion. Beethoven was really happy because he was greater than his misfortunes. Upon his heroic brow rests a more splendid ornament than the crown of any king,—the laurel-wreath of everlasting fame, the radiant diadem of immortality. |
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