My Life, Volume 1 quotes

I played Ueb’ immer Treu und Redlichkeit, and my father said to her, ‘Is it possible he has musical talent?’

In the early hours of the next morning my mother came into the great night nursery, and, standing by the bedside of each of us in turn, told us, with sobs, that our father was dead, and gave us each a message with his blessing. To me she said, ‘He hoped to make something of you.’

In the afternoon my schoolmaster, Wetzel, came to take me back to the country. We walked the whole way to Possendorf, arriving at nightfall. On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, of which he gave me my first intelligent idea.

His teaching and exercises soon filled me with the greatest disgust, as to my mind it all seemed so dry.

For me music was a spirit, a noble and mystic monster, and any attempt to regulate it seemed to lower it in my eyes.

I gathered much more congenial instruction about it from Hoffmann’s Phantasiestucken than from my Leipzig orchestra player; and now came the time when I really lived and breathed in Hoffmann’s artistic atmosphere of ghosts and spirits.

the excitement with which I staked that last coin on a card was an experience hitherto quite strange to my young life. As I had had nothing to eat, I was obliged repeatedly to leave the gambling table owing to sickness.

With this last thaler I staked my life, for my return to my home was, of course, out of the question.

Already I saw myself in the grey dawn, a prodigal son, fleeing from all I held dear, through forest and field towards the unknown.

Not only had I won back all the money I had lost, but I had won enough to pay off all my debts as well. My sensations during the whole of this process were of the most sacred nature:

I felt as if God and His angels were standing by my side and were whispering words of warning and of consolation into my ears.

Once more I climbed over the gate of my home in the early hours of the morning, this time to sleep peacefully and soundly and to awake very late, strengthened and as though born again.

My sensations during the whole of this process were of the most sacred nature: I felt as if God and His angels were standing by my side and were whispering words of warning and of consolation into my ears.

Once more I climbed over the gate of my home in the early hours of the morning, this time to sleep peacefully and soundly and to awake very late, strengthened and as though born again.

No sense of shame deterred me from telling my mother, to whom I presented her money, the whole truth about this decisive night. I voluntarily confessed my sin in having utilised her pension, sparing no detail.

I had forgotten to buy a ticket, and was refused admission by the man at the door. Suddenly the tuning up of the orchestra grew louder and louder, and I thought I should have to miss the beginning of my work.

In my anxiety I revealed myself to the man at the door as the composer of the ‘New Overture,’ and in this way succeeded in passing without a ticket.

I pushed my way through to one of the first rows of the pit, and sat down in terrible anxiety.

As I was not aware of any great effort on my part, I often wondered whether I had really become a well-equipped musician. Weinlich himself did not seem to attach much importance to what he had taught me: he said,

‘Probably you will never write fugues or canons; but what you have mastered is Independence: you can now stand alone and rely upon having a fine technique at your fingers’ ends if you should want it.’

The principal result of his influence over me was certainly the growing love of clearness and fluency to which he had trained me. I had already had to write the above-mentioned fugue for ordinary voices;

… I was shown into a very lonely wing of the house and left by myself in this wilderness, I hid myself in bed with my clothes on, and lived once again through all the horrors of ghost stories as I had done in my boyhood.

The cholera stood before me like a living thing; I could see and touch it; it lay in my bed and embraced me.

My limbs turned to ice, I felt frozen to the very marrow. Whether I was awake or asleep I never knew; I only remember how astonished I was when, on awakening, I felt thoroughly well and healthy.

There I slept until awakened by the wonderful grey of dawn. On recognising where I was, I at once realised and grew ever more convinced of the fact that this morning’s sunrise marked the starting-point of an infinitely momentous period of my life.

The demon of care had at last entered into my existence.

Without any light-hearted jests, without gaiety or joking of any description, we breakfasted quietly and decorously together, and at an hour when, in view of the compromising circumstances of the previous evening, we could set out without attracting undue notice, I set off with Minna …

The firing of cannon and musketry was organised with the utmost elaboration, on both the French and English sides, by means of specially constructed and costly apparatus; while trumpets and bugles had been doubled and trebled.

Then began a battle, such as has seldom been more cruelly fought in a concert-room.

The orchestra flung itself, so to speak, upon the scanty audience with such an overwhelming superiority of numbers that the latter speedily gave up all thought of resistance and literally took to flight. Mme.

When, therefore, the English made a fresh desperate assault upon the French position, she took to flight, almost wringing her hands. Her action became the signal for a panic-stricken stampede. Every one rushed out; and

Wellington’s victory was finally celebrated in a confidential outburst between myself and the orchestra alone.

Thus ended this wonderful musical festival. Schroder-Devrient at once departed, deeply regretting the ill-success of her well-meant effort, and kindly left me to my fate.

Her action became the signal for a panic-stricken stampede. Every one rushed out; and Wellington’s victory was finally celebrated in a confidential outburst between myself and the orchestra alone.

Thus ended this wonderful musical festival.

Schroder-Devrient at once departed, deeply regretting the ill-success of her well-meant effort, and kindly left me to my fate.

Only once was this disturbed by a passing fit of jealousy on my part, for which, indeed, there was no occasion, but which fed itself in my heart on a nervous apprehension of the future, and upon the experience I had already gained of womenkind.

Yet, despite this blot, our excursion still lingers in my memory as the sweetest and almost sole remembrance of unalloyed happiness in the whole of my life as a young man.

One evening in particular stands out in bright relief, during which we sat together almost all night at the watering-place of Schandau in glorious summer weather.

… preacher, in speaking of the dark days, of which we were to expect our share, bade us look to an unknown friend, and I glanced up inquiringly for further particulars of this mysterious and influential patron who chose so strange a way of announcing himself.

Reproachfully, and with peculiar emphasis, the pastor then pronounced the name of this unknown friend: Jesus.

Now I was not in any way insulted by this, as people imagined, but was simply disappointed; at the same time, I thought that such exhortations were probably usual in nuptial addresses.

… on the whole, I was so absent-minded during this ceremony, which was double Dutch to me, that when the parson held out the closed prayer-book for us to place our wedding rings upon, Minna had to nudge me forcibly to make me follow her example.

At that moment I saw, as clearly as in a vision, my whole being divided into two cross-currents that dragged me in different directions; the upper one faced the sun and carried me onward like a dreamer, whilst the lower one held my nature captive, a prey to some inexplicable fear.

The extraordinary levity with which I chased away the conviction which kept forcing itself upon me, that I was committing a twofold sin, was amply accounted for by the really genuine affection with which I looked upon the young girl whose truly exceptional character (so …

I hurried into town to make the necessary inquiries at the hotel mentioned, and found that the man in question had been there, but had moved on again.

He had vanished, and Minna too!

I now knew enough to demand of the Fates why, at such an early age, they had sent me this terrible experience which, as it seemed to me, had poisoned my whole existence.

… we sailed through this ever-changing labyrinth of projecting rocks, the calmer the sea became, until at last the vessel’s progress was perfectly smooth and quiet as we entered one of those long sea-roads running through a giant ravine—for such the Norwegian fjords appeared to me.

A feeling of indescribable content came over me when the enormous granite walls echoed the hail of the crew as they cast anchor and furled the sails.

The sharp rhythm of this call clung to me like an omen of good cheer, and shaped itself presently into the theme of the seamen’s song in my Fliegender Holländer.

I had merely to devise a new sixth method out of these five, as all Schlesinger wanted was to publish an edition of his own.

I was racking my brains how to start, when Schlesinger, who had just obtained a new complete method, released me from the onerous task.

I was, however, told to write fourteen ‘Suites’ for the Cornet a pistons—that is to say, airs out of operas arranged for this instrument. To furnish me with material for this work, Schlesinger sent me no less than sixty complete operas arranged for the piano.

and after that we used to see rather more of her, and were often invited to dine with them on Sundays. But I no longer cared for any amusements.

I was so deeply impressed by my past experiences that I made up my mind to work through this humiliating, albeit profitable task, with untiring energy, as though it were a penance imposed on me for the expiation of my bygone sins.

To save fuel, we limited ourselves to the use of the bedroom, making it serve as a drawing-room, dining-room, and study, as well as dormitory. It was only a step from my bed to my work-table;

The supper developed into a dithyrambic orgy. When the champagne was drunk, and the punch began to produce its effects, I delivered a fiery speech which so provoked the hilarity of the company that it seemed as though it would never end.

I became so excited that I first mounted a chair, and then, by way of heightening the effect, at last stood on the table, thence to preach the maddest gospel of the contempt of life together with a eulogy on the South American Free States.

My charmed listeners eventually broke into such fits of sobs and laughter, and were so overcome, that we had to give them all shelter for the night—their condition making it impossible for them to reach their own homes in safety.

Both were sincerely astonished at my arrival in Dresden; and the same might even be said of my frequent correspondent and patron, Hofrath Winkler, who also would have preferred my remaining in Paris.

But, as has been my constant experience both before and since, help and encouragement have always come to me from humbler and never from the more exalted ranks of life.

So in this case, too, I met my first agreeable sensation in the overwhelmingly cordial reception I received from the old chorus-master, Wilhelm Fischer.

At length, towards evening, I sought out Tichatschek at the theatre. Without giving him a chance to speak, I brusquely asked him why he had interrupted the copyists’ work.

In a half-choked voice he curtly and defiantly rejoined, ‘I will have none of my part cut out—it is too heavenly.’

I stared at him blankly, and then felt as though I had been suddenly bewitched: such an unheard-of testimony to my success could not but shake me out of my strange anxiety. Others joined him, Fischer radiant with delight and bubbling with laughter.

The effect they produced upon the inner state of my soul I can only describe as an entire rebirth. Just as we feel a tender joy over a child’s first bright smile of recognition, so now my own eyes flashed with rapture as

I saw a world, revealed, as it were, by miracle, in which I had hitherto moved blindly as the babe in its mother’s womb.

But the result of this reading did not at first do much to help me in my purpose of composing part of the Tannhäuser music.

and that it would be a great pity if I yielded to any sense of discouragement as the result of the unworthy reception accorded to it by the Berlin public. My hair began to stand on end.

One of Hoffmann’s fantastic creations had entered bodily into my life.

I could find nothing to say, except to inquire the name of my visitor, at which he seemed surprised, as I had talked with him the day before at Mendelssohn’s house.

He said no more, and took up his baton. In a moment I understood why he attached such importance to its form and size.

He held it, not as other conductors do, by the end, but gripped it about the middle with his clenched fist, waving it so as to make it evident that he wielded his baton like a field-marshal’s staff, not for beating time, but for command.

Confusion arose in the very first scene, which was increased by the fact that the master’s instructions, both to orchestra and singers, were rendered almost unintelligible by his confused use of the German language.

He was forced to this request more by habit than by principle, and how very important it seemed to him not to make the slightest change in his customary arrangements, was proved to me when he explained his method of conducting.

He conducted the orchestra, so he said, only with his eyes: ‘My left eye is the first violin, my right eye the second, and if the eye is to have power, one must not wear glasses (as so many bad conductors do), even if one is short-sighted.

I,’ he admitted confidentially, ‘cannot see twelve inches in front of me, but all the same I can make them play as I want, merely by fixing them with my eye.’

In the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompaniment.

Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral tone, ‘Are the violas dying?’

The two pale and incurably melancholy old men who held on tenaciously to their posts in the orchestra, notwithstanding their right to a pension, stared at Spontini with real fright, reading a threat in his words, and I had to explain Spontini’s wish in sober …

When Berlioz tried to comfort him by saying, ‘Comment pouvez-vous penser mourir vous, mon maître, qui etes immortel!’ Spontini retorted angrily,

‘Ne faites pas de mauvaises plaisanteries!’

In spite of all the extraordinary experiences I had had with him, the news of his death, which I received in Zürich, touched me very deeply.

… I had paid no attention to their taste in writing my new work, there were may kind and judicious friends who were utterly perplexed at its inefficiency, the principal parts of which they had been unable to understand, or thought were imperfectly sketched and finished.

The critics, with unconcealed joy, attacked it as ravens attack carrion thrown out to them.

Even the passions and prejudices of the day were drawn into the controversy in order, if possible, to confuse men’s minds, and prejudice them against me.

I was therefore able to rejoice Liszt with the following laconical protest which I sent him from my Swiss resort:

‘Stahr is wrong, and Lohengrin is right.’

For the present I remained occupied with the revision of my poem, for there could be no question of planning the music to it just now.

when suddenly we both yelled as though we had gone mad, while, with horror, we tried to rid our mouths of the strong Tarragon vinegar with which we had been served by mistake.

‘Heavens!’ cried Meser, ‘nothing could be worse!’ ‘True enough,’ I answered, ‘no doubt there is much that will turn to vinegar for us.’

My good-humour revealed to me in a flash that I must try some other way of saving myself than by means of the Easter Fair.

He had no doubt that the King would listen to me with the greatest interest, and even seize upon my ideas with warmth, only I must not entertain the smallest hope of any practical result, unless I wished to expose myself to the bitterest disappointment.

‘What can you expect from a man who to-day is enthusiastic about Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris, and to-morrow mad about Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia?’ he said.

Tieck’s conversation about these and similar topics was much too entertaining and charming for me to give any serious weight to the bitterness of his views.

he himself had heard these hard words fall from the royal lips:

‘Oh bother! have you come to me again with your Rienzi?’

At this second performance I had a pleasant experience.

On her deathbed she exclaimed in humble modesty, and with a bright smile on her face:

‘Oh! how beautiful! how lovely! how divine! Why do I deserve such favour?’

It was a bitterly cold morning when we lowered the coffin into the grave in the churchyard, and the hard, frozen lumps of earth which we scattered on the lid, instead of the customary handful of dust, frightened me by the loud noise they made.

He seemed quite disposed to listen in a friendly manner to what I had to say to him; he did not, however, attempt to conceal his surprise at my direct appeals and the personal demands I made of him.

He was the first playwright I had ever seen in an official uniform.

After I had paid an unsuccessful visit to Herr Bauernfeld, relative to the same business, I concluded that Vienna was of no more use for the present, and gave myself up to the exceptionally stimulating impressions produced by the public life of the motley crowd, …

When I met him, therefore, under the humble shelter of Röckel’s roof, I was immediately struck by his singular and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age.

Everything about him was colossal, and he was full of a primitive exuberance and strength.

I never gathered that he set much store by my acquaintance. Indeed, he did not seem to care for merely intellectual men; what he demanded was men of reckless energy.

I well remember on one occasion that a Pole, startled by his theories, maintained that there must be an organised state to guarantee the individual in the possession of the fields he had cultivated.

‘What!’ he answered; ‘would you carefully fence in your field to provide a livelihood for the police again!’

This shut the mouth of the terrified Pole. He comforted himself by saying that the creators of the new order of things would arise of themselves, but that our sole business in the meantime was to find the power to destroy.

… other times an object of considerable fear, I found engaged partly in buttering pieces of bread, and cutting slices of ham and sausage, and partly in piling into baskets immense stores of provisions for the messengers sent by the defenders of the barricades for supplies.

These men had turned into veritable nursing mothers of the revolution.

As I proceeded further, I came at last upon the members of the provisional government, among whom Todt and Tschirner, after their first panic-stricken flight, were once more to be found gliding to and fro, gloomy as spectres, now that they were chained to the …

He had drawn him down to sit by his side on the couch, and every time the youth shuddered with fear at the violent sound of the cannon-shot, he slapped him vigorously on the back and cried out:

‘You are not in the company of your fiddle here, my friend. What a pity you didn’t stay where you were!’

Bakinin then gave me a short and precise account of what had happened since I had left him on the previous morning.

Finally he broke into loud sobs and tears, upon which Bakunin, regarding him with positive pleasure, called out:

‘The tears of a Philistine are nectar for the gods.’

He would not vouchsafe him a word, but Heubner and I found the scene tiresome, whereupon he asked me whether we two at least should not get out, as he could not ask it of the others.

From the time of my entering Switzerland till my arrival in Paris my spirits, which had sunk into a dreamlike apathy, rose gradually to a level of freedom and comfort that I had never enjoyed before.

I felt like a bird in the air whose destiny is not to founder in a morass; but soon after my arrival in Paris, in the first week of June, a very palpable reaction set in.

I had had an introduction from Liszt to his former secretary Belloni, who felt it his duty, in loyalty to the instructions received, to put me into communication with a literary man, a certain Gustave Vaisse, with the object of being commissioned to write an …

… meddlesomeness roused me to protest to Meyerbeer with some violence that I was concerned with anything rather than with the production of artistic work, particularly just at that time when the course of events seemed to indicate that the whole world was undergoing a reaction.

‘But what do you expect to get out of the revolution?’ he replied. ‘Are you going to write scores for the barricades?’

Whereupon I assured him that I was not thinking of writing any scores at all. We parted, obviously without having arrived at a mutual understanding.

After I had got over the first shock of her heartless behaviour, I was absolutely clear about this.

I remember that I did not suffer any great sorrow, but that on the contrary, with the conviction of being now quite helpless, an almost exalted calm came over me when I realised that up to the present my life had been built on a foundation of sand and nothing more.

At all events, the fact that I stood absolutely alone did much towards restoring my peace of mind, and in my distress I now found strength and comfort even in the fact of my dire poverty. At last assistance arrived from Weimar.

The frankness with which Feuerbach explains his views on these interesting questions, in the more mature parts of his book, pleased me as much by their tragic as by their social-radical tendencies.

It seemed right that the only true immortality should be that of sublime deeds and great works of art.

It was more difficult to sustain any interest in Das Wesen des Christenthums (‘The Essence of Christianity’) by the same author, for it was impossible whilst reading this work not to become conscious, however involuntarily, of the prolix and unskilful manner in which he dilates …