CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY , Ifftraic Cornell University Library ML 410.B41W13 1880 Beethoven / 3 1924 022 247 195 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022247195 BEETHOVEN. Reeves' Musical Publications. Frederic Chopin, his Life, Letters, and "WorlEB. By MoRiTZ KaRASOWSKI. 2 vols, I2S. 6d. Musical Sketches Abroad and at Home. By Professor Ella. Third edition. 8s. 6d. Robert Schumann's Life and Letters. By Wasielewski. Pre- face by W. A. Barrett. 8s. 6d. Music and Musicians. Essays and Criticism. By Schumann. Second Edition, 8s. 66. Music and Musicians. Second Series. Letters on Music to a Lady. By Louis Ehlert. 4s. Gilt edges. 4s. 6d. Life of Chopin. By Franz Liszt. 6s. History of Music, ^om. the Christian Era to the Present Time. By Dr. Ritter. New and Revised Edition. Life of Mendelssohn. By W. A. Lampadius, with additions by Benedict, Chorley, and others. 5s. Life of Cherubini. By E. Bellasis. 6s. Letters of Distinguished Musicians. Edited by Lady Wallace. 6s. 6d. Treatise on Music. By Dr. H. HiLES (a Third Edition of "The Harmony of Sounds ')• 3S. 6d. %* A work of great value to a student. Beeves* Musical Directory (I88O). 2s. 6d., cloth 3s. English Organ Music. Edited by the Editor of the Musical Standard. 3s. each number. (Vol. I. now ready.) The Organ : Hints on Its Construction, Purchase, and Preser- vation, By W. Shepherdson. is. 6d., cloth 3s. Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas. Explained by Elterlein. 3s. 6d. Beethoven's Symphonies. Critically discussed by A. T. Teet- GEN. 3s. 6d. W. REEVES, 185 FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.G. BEETHOVEN. BV RICHARD WAGNER. WITH A SUPPLEMENT FJfOM THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. T TRANSLATRD BY EDWARD DANNREUTHER. T LONDON: WILLIAM REEVES, 185 FLEET STREET, Publisher of Musical Works. 1880. BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGJ^ AND LONDON TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. Wagner's Beethoven was written and printed in 1870, the year of the Franco- Prussian war. The first part of Schopenhauer's principal work, Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung, is dated 1 8 18, the second part 1 844 ; Parerga und Paralipomena, 1851. It may perhaps not be superfluous to state here that Schopenhauer confesses his view of Music to be essentially incapable of proof; that his theory of dreams and visions is in the main hypothetical ; and that Wagner makes use of the latter by way of analogy and elucidation only. PREFACE. The author of the present work felt it in- cumbent upon him to contribute his share towards the celebration of the hundredth anni- versary of Beethoven's birth, and as no other opportunity worthy of the occasion was afforded him, he chose to offer a written exposition of his thoughts on the significance of Beethoven's music. The form of the treatise was suggested by the idea that the author was called upon to deliver an oration at some ideal celebration in honour of the great musician ; and, as such an oration was not to be spoken, he took leave to expound his thoughts at a greater length than would have been permissible had he actually addressed an audience. Thus he was enabled to submit a more thorough investiga- tion of the nature of music, i.e., a contribution vill PREFACE. towards the philosophy of music, to the con- sideration of thoughtful and cultivated readers. The supposition that the treatise was actually delivered as a speech to a German audience on a particular day of this so remarkably im- portant year, will justify a warm reference to the stirring events of the time. And as the author has been enabled to plan and execute his task under the immediate impressions of these events, he would desire a like advantage for it in the reading : may the present excita- tion of the German heart and head facilitate a more intimate contact with the depths of the German spirit than may be looked for in the sluggish course of ordinary national life ! Lucerne, September £870. BEETHOVEN. |T appears difficult to give a satisfactory- account of the true relation a great artist bears towards his nation, and the difficulty is enhanced to the highest degree as soon as one attempts to speak, not of a poet or a plastic artist, but of a musician. In judging of poets and plastic artists, the fact has probably never been lost sight of that the manner in which they take cognisance of the events and the forms of the world is, in the main, determined by the particular nature of the nation to which they belong. The language in which a poet writes will colour the perceptions he puts forth, and the peculiarities of his country and its people will assuredly, in no less degree, modify a plastic artist's form and colour. But neither by speech nor by any visible shape of his land and his people is a musician connected with the one or the other. It has, therefore, been assumed that the language of tones belongs equally to all men, and A 2 BEETHOVEN. that melody is the absolute language in which a musician addresses every heart. Upon closer exami- nation, however, it appears obvious that one may well speak of German music as distinct from Italian ; and one may point to the peculiar singing gift of the Italians as a physiological and national trait that has determined the development of their music, much as the partial absence of such a special gift has impelled the Germans towards their own musical domain. But as this distinction does not in the least touch the essentials of musical language, — as every melody, be it of Italian or German origin, is equally intelli- gible, — it is impossible to take this point, which after all is merely an external one, as though it could exert a determining influence upon a musician similar to the influence language exerts upon a poet, or the physiognomical condition of his country upon a plastic artist: for in the latter cases also, we may consider such external distinctions as natural advan- tages or the reverse, without attaching any value to them as regards the intellectual weight of an artistic organism. The peculiar trait by which a musician is known as belonging to a particular nation must, at all events. BEETHOVEN. 3 rest upon a deeper foundation than that by which we recognise Goethe and Schiller as Germans, or Rubens and Rembrandt as Netherlanders, though, in the end, we may have to accept both as springing from a common root. To make closer researches in this direction might prove as attractive as to investigate the essential nature of music itself. If we set our- selves the more definite task of examining the connection of the great musician whose hundredth birthday we are about to celebrate with the German nation, which has just entered upon so severe a test of its worth,* we may possibly hit upon something which, in the way of dialectical treatment, has hitherto had to pass for unattainable. If, to begin with, we inquire into this connection externally, it may not be easy to escape decep- tive appearances. It is already so difficult to form a true notion of a poet, that we have latterly had to put up with the most absurd assertions from a celebrated historian of literature about the develop- ment of Shakespeare's genius ; and we must therefore not be surprised to meet with still greater aberrations as soon as a musician like Beethoven is to be simi- larly treated. We can catch clearer ghmpses of * 1870. 4 BEETHOVEN. Goethe's and Schiller's development, inasmuch as we possess significant hints consciously given by them ; yet such hints only reveal the course of their sesthetic culture, which accompanied rather than directed their artistic production. As to the actual foundations of these, particularly the choice of poetical subjects, we only learn that in this respect there was more of chance than of purpose ; least of all would it be possible to point out any tendency connected with the course of external history, universal or national. With regard also to the influence of purely per- ' sonal impressions of life upon the choice and shaping of their materials, we must form conclusions with the greatest circumspection, lest it should escape our notice that such influence is never directly manifest, but only in a certain sense indirectly ; so that any process of referring a particular poetical result back to some direct influence of actual life is utterly inad- missible. On the other hand, our researches in this direction yield just one sure result: that a course of development such as theirs was open to German poets only, indeed only to the great poets of that noble period of German regeneration. Now from such of Beethoven's letters as have BEETHOVEN. 5 been preserved, and the uncommonly meagre infor- mation regarding the outer, not to speak of the inner life of our great musician, what possible conclusion can be drawn as to the connection of any particular events with his musical creations, and the course of development perceptible therein ? Supposing we had all possible information about special facts before us, microscopically distinct, even then we should see nothing beyond what is contained in the account, for instance, that the master had at first designed the " Sinfonia eroica " as an act of homage to young General Bonaparte and inscribed his name upon the title-page ; and that he had subsequently struck out the name, when he heard that Bonaparte had made himSelf Emperor. None of our poets has ever designated the ten- dency connected with one of his principal works in so marked a manner : yet what aid can such a plain indication give us in judging of one of the most wonderful of musical creations .■* Can it explain a single bar of that score ? Is it not sheer folly to think seriously of making such an attempt ? I believe the most positive information we may get about the man Beethoven will, at best, stand in the same relation to the musician Beethoven as General Bonaparte stands 6 BEETHOVEN. to the "Sinfonia eroica." From this point of view the great musician must ever remain a perfect mystery. To solve this mystery in its way we shall assuredly have to strike a different path from the one upon which it is possible to follow Goethe's and Schiller's productivity at least up to a certain point : and this point, too, will become vague exactly at the place where their productivity passes from a conscious to an unconscious stage : i.e., where the poet no longer settles the aesthetical form, but where the form is determined by his intuition of the Idea. But again : exactly on the manner of this intuition of the Idea is based the entire difference between poet and musician ; and for clearness' sake, we had better turn at once to a deeper investigation of the problem now touched. If a plastic artist be compared with a musician, the diversity referred to is obvious ; a poet stands between the two in such wise that as far as he is consciously constructing he leans towards the plastic artist, whilst he comes in contact with the musician in the obscure region of his unconsciousness. Goethe had so strong an inclination for the plastic arts that at one important period of his life he was BEETHOVEN. 7 prone to consider himself actually destined to practise them, and throughout his life he was in- clined to look upon his poetical labours as in some sort an expedient compensating for the frustrated career of a painter: his consciousness was directed towards the visible world. Whereas Schiller found much greater attraction in the exploration of that basis of inner consciousness which lies altogether apart from the visible world, the "thing per se" of Kant's philosophy, the study of which occupied him exclusively during the chief period of his higher development. The point at which the two great minds met lay exactly where, starting from either extreme, the poet reaches self-consciousness. They met also in their notions (Ahnung*) of the essential nature of ■music ; only that Schiller's view was profounder than Goethe's ; the latter, in accordance with his whole tendency, took up the pleasing, plastically sym- metrical element of artistic music, in regard to which music presents some analogy to architecture. Whereas Schiller had a firmer grasp of the problem ; and his conclusions, with Goethe's assent, came to this : that the epic inclines towards plastic art, where- • Spiritual sense, foreboding. 8 BEETHOVEN. as the drama tends towards music. The fact that Schiller was happier in the Drama proper, whereas Goethe showed unmistakable preference to epic pro- duction, coincides with the above estimate of the two poets. But Schopenhauer was the first to perceive and point out with " philolojihical clearness the proper position of music with reference to the other fine arts, inasmuch as he awards to music a nature entirely different from that of poetic or plastic art. He starts from the surprise we all feel that music speaks a language immediately intelligible to each of us without the mediation of intellectual concep- tions, in which respect it differs entirely from poetry, the sole materials of which are concepts serving to transmit the idea. According to the philosopher's lucid and convincing definition, the Ideas of the world and its essential phenomena are in a Platonic sense the object of the fine arts in general ; whilst the poet brings these Ideas home to our consciousness by the use of rational concepts in a manner peculiar to his art, Schopenhauer believes it imperative to recognise in music itself an Idea of the world, since whosoever could completely elucidate music, or rather translate it into rational concepts, would at the same BEETHOVEN. 9 time have produced a philosophy explaining the world. Schopenhauer puts forth this hypothetical elucida- tion as a paradox, seeing that music cannot, properly speaking, be explained by concepts at all. Yet, on the other hand, he furnishes the sole sufficient material for a more extended illustration of the correctness of his profound view ; to which, probably, he did not apply himself more closely, as he, a lay- man, was not sufficiently master of and familiar with the art ; and, moreover, as he could not refer his knowledge of it definitely enough to an understand- ing of the works of that musician who first revealed to the world the deepest mysteries of music ; for it is impossible to estimate Beethoven exhaustively as long as Schopenhauer's profound paradox is not correctly explained and solved.* I shall be able to make the best use of the materials placed at our disposal by the philosopher, if I begin with one of his observations, in which he says that he does not wish to have the idea which follows from the cognition of relations taken as though it represented the essential nature of "the thing per se" but rather as the revelation of the * Supplement ii. lO BEETHOVEN. objective Character of things — therefore still their phenomena only. " And we should not comprehend even that Char- acter," — continues Schopenhauer in the passage in question, — " if the essential nature of things were not otherwise known to us, at least indistinctly and by feeling. For the essential nature of things can- not be understood from the Idea, nor indeed from any objective cognition whatsoever ; hence it would eternally remain a mystery if we had not access to it from a totally different side. Only inasmuch as every cognisant thing is at the same time an indi- vidual and therefore a part of nature, does access to the interior of nature stand open, in its own self-con- sciousness, wherein the inner side of nature is most immediately manifest, and reveals itself as Will" * Now, if hereunto we add that which Schopenhauer demands as the condition for the entrance of the Idea into our consciousness, i.^. — " a temporary pre- ponderance of the intellect over the will, or physio- logically considered, a strong excitation of the perceptive cerebral activity, free from all excitation of the inclinations or passions," we have only still * " Schopenhauer : " Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ii. 3d. edit. 415. BEETHOVEN. 1 1 further to take a firm hold of the elucidation follow- ing this, viz.; that our consciousness has two sides, partly consciousness of one's own self, which is the Will; partly a consciousness of other things, and in the latter case primarily perceptive cognition of the outer world — apprehension of objects. " Now the more one side of the entire consciousness comes for- ward, so much does the other recede." * Upon closer examination of what has here been quoted from Schopenhauer's main work, it will ap- pear evident that musical conception, as it can have nothing in common with the apprehension of an Idea (for that is throughout tied to the perceptive cogni- tion of the world), can only have its origin on that side of consciousness which Schopenhauer designates as introverted. But as the introverted side has to recede entirely, for the time being, if the entrance of the purely cognitive subject into its functions {i.e., the apprehension of Ideas) is to be promoted, it follows, on the other hand, that the capacity of the intellect to apprehend the true Character of things is alone explicable from this introverted side of con- sciousness. And, again, if this consciousness is the conscious- * " Schopenhauer : " Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ii. 418. 12 BEETHOVEN. ness of one's own self, that is of the WiU, it must be assumed that the repression of the Will may be indis- pensable to the purity of the perceptive consciousness directed outwards, but that the essential nature of " the thing per se," which the perceptive cognition can- not grasp, will only be rendered apprehensible to the introverted consciousness, when it has become capable of looking inwards with the same clearness as the other looks outwards when grasping Ideas. Schopenhauer also offers the right guidance for proceeding further on this path in his profound hy- pothesis concerning the physiological phenomenon of clairvoyance, and his theory of dreams based upon it.* As, in the phenomenon just touched upon, conscious- ness turned inwards attains to actual clairvoyance — that is, to the faculty of seeing there where our con- sciousness, awake and turned daywards, is only dimly sensible of the mighty basis of our desires and efforts of will ; f so, ione forces its way from out of that night into the actually waking perception, as an immediate utterance of the Will. Now, as every one has experienced when dreaming, there appears to be a second world, quite as distinct as the world we perceive through the functions of the * Supplement i. t " Willensaffecte." BEETHOVEN. 1 3 waking brain, which as Object can, at all events, not lie outside of us, and accordingly must be brought to the knowledge of consciousness by an introverted function of the brain, under forms of perception peculiar to it alone, which Schopenhauer terms " the organ of dreams." But it is no less definitely a matter of experience that, by the side of the world which presents itself as visible in waking as well as in dreams, we are conscious of yet another world which manifests itself by sound, and is perceptible only to the hearing, a true world of soimd by the side of a world of light, of which it may be said that it bears the same rela- tion to the latter as dreaming does to waking : inas- much as the world of sound is just as distinct to us as the world of light, though we must accept it as totally different. As the perceptible world of dreams can only be formed by some special activity of the brain, so music enters into our consciousness by a similar cerebral activity ; but this is as different from the activity guided by sight, as the cerebral organ of dreams is distinct from that function of the brain which is excited, while awake, by external impressions. As the organ of dreams cannot be stimulated to act by external impressions, against which the brain 14 BEETHOVEN. is then entirely closed, the excitation must be brought about by means of changes in the inner organism, which whilst awake we recognise only as obscure feel- ings. But it is through this inner life that we are immediately allied to all nature, and thus partakers of the essential nature of things, in such wise that the forms of external cognition, time and space, are no longer applicable; and Schopenhauer convincingly surmises this to be the starting-point of prophetic or fatidical dreams, such as make the most distant things perceptible, and believes that, in most rare and extreme cases, somnambulistic clairvoyance may be referred to the same source. From the most troubled of such dreams we awake with a shriek, a cry, in which the affrighted Will ex- presses itself most immediately, and thus enters at once and definitely, through the cry, into the world of sound, in order to manifest itself outwards. Now, if we take the cry, in all diminutions of its violence down to a tender plaint of longing, as the funda- mental element of all human appeal to the hearing, and if we accept it as the most immediate of all utterances of the Will, through which it turns out- wards in the quickest and surest way, we have less occasion to wonder at the cry's being at once intelli- BEETHOVEN. I S gible, than at the fact that an Art should have arisen from such an element ; it being evident, on the other hand, that artistic production, as well as artistic per- ception, can only proceed from an alienation of con- sciousness from the excitations of the Will. To explain this marvel let us recall the profound remark of our philosopher quoted above, that we could not understand even those Ideas, which, con- formably to their nature, can only be seized by objective perception, free from any influence of the Will, if through the immediate consciousness of our own selves we had not another mode of access to the essential nature of things. In truth it is through this consciousness of self alone that we are enabled to understand the inner essential nature of external things, inasmuch as we recognise in them the self- same fundamental being, which our self-conscious- ness recognises as our own. Every allusion with regard to this proceeds solely from our seeing a world external to us, which in the gleam of light we become aware of as something entirely different from ourselves. Only through the (spiritual) percep- tion of the Ideas, that is, through remote mediation, may we become somewhat undeceived, inasmuch as we then no longer perceive separate things severed 1 6 BEETHOVEN. by time and space, but apprehend their very Char- acter ; and this is most apparent in the works of the plastic arts ; the proper function of which it is, conse- quently, to avail themselves of the illusive semblance of the world as it lies spread out in the light, and, by means of an extremely deliberate playing * with that semblance, to disclose the Ideas which it veils. This will be found to correspond with the fact, that the mere sight of objects leaves us cold and careless, whereas the excitations of the emotions arise only when we become aware of the relations the objects seen bear to our Will; for which reason it must be held, as the first aesthetic principle with regard to the plastic arts, that in their productions those relations to our individual Will must be entirely avoided, so that our sight may have that degree of repose by which alone the pure perception of the object, conformable to its proper character, becomes possible. But in this case the mere setnblance of things, to the contemplation of which we devote ourselves during the moment of sesthetical percep- tion undisturbed by the Will, always remains the effective element. Now, this calming influence accompanying the * "Hochst besonnenen Spiels.'' BEETHOVEN. I7 pure delight in semblance, has been transferred from the plastic arts to all arts, and has been set up as an indispensable portion of all aesthetic delight whatso- ever ; and in this manner an idea of beauty {Schonheit) has been evolved which, according to the root of the word, is clearly connected in the German language with Semblance (^Schein) as Object and Gaze (Schauen) as Subject. Our consciousness, which only in gazing at a sem- blance * is enabled to grasp the Idea manifested by it, might at length feel impelled to exclaim with Faust : " What a show ! But, alas ! a show only ! Where shall I grasp thee, infinite nature t " Music gives the very surest answer to such a question. Here the external world speaks to us with such incomparable distinctness, since, by the effect of sound upon the ear, it expresses the very essence ' of our relations towards it. The object of the tone heard coincides immediately with the subject of the tone emitted ; without any mediation of rational conceptions we comprehend the cry for help, or of plaint or of joy, and we answer it at once in a cor- responding sense. As the cry emitted, be it sound of sorrow or delight, * "Im Schauen des Schemes," literally, "In the seeing of a sheen." B 1 8 BEETHOVEN. is the most immediate utterance of our Will, we incontestibly understand similar sounds that reach our ear as utterances of similar emotions ; and no illusion that the fundamental nature of the world external to us is not thoroughly identical with our own, as it appears in the glare of light, is possible here ; whereby the gulf that seems to exist to the sight vanishes at once. Now, if from the immediate consciousness of the identity of our inner being with that of the outer world an art has arisen, it is, above all, evident that this art must be subject to aesthetic laws quite dif- ferent from those of any other art. It has hitherto proved a stumblingblock to all sestheticians that they should be asked to derive a true art from what appears to them simply a patho- logical element ; and, accordingly, they have accepted music as an art only from that point where its pro- ductions have appeared clothed in the somewhat frigid formality peculiar to the plastic arts.* But that the mere element of musical art as an Idea of the world, is not beheld at all, but rather felt in the depths of consciousness, we learnt, with wondrous results, direct * In einem den Gestaltungen der bildenden Kunst eigenen, kuhlen Scheine. Literally : "in the cool sheen peculiar to the plastic arts. '' BEETHOVEN. 1 9 from Schopenhauer, and we understood that Idea of the world represented by music, to be an immediate revelation of the unity of the Will ; an Idea which, starting from the identity of the essential nature of man with that of other things (which latter identity indeed we also perceive through sound), presents it- self to our consciousness in a manner that cannot be gainsayed. We are likely to attain some insight into the essential nature of music as an art by wa-tching an inspired musician's mode of production. Such production must, in many respects, be thoroughly different from that of other artists. In the case of plastic artists we saw that production was preceded by pure perception of objects, free from any influence of the Will ; a mode of perception which is to be reproduced in the spectator's mind, by the effect of the work brought forth. But no such objects, which with the aid of pure perception may be elevated to the Idea, are ever beheld by a musician ; for his music is itself an Idea of the world, wherein the world immediately exhibits its essential nature, whilst in the plastic arts that nature is exhibited through the mediation of cognition. The matter in question cannot be grasped at all 20 BEETHOVEN. unless we surmise that the individual Will, which in the plastic artist is quieted whilst pure perception takes place, awakens in the musician as universal Will, and recognises itself as such, being properly self- conscious and beyond the entire range of perception.* Hence the great difference in the state of the conceiving musician and that of the plastic artist sketching his work. Hence the fundamentally dif- ferent effect of music and of painting. Here the greatest quietude, there the highest excitation of the Will ; but this signifies only that here that Will is alluded to which is conceived as being comprised in the individual as such ; that is, hampered by the illusory notion of its difference and isolation from the essential nature of external things, and which Will is utterly unable to surmount its barriers save by that pure, unimpassioned perception of objects ; whilst, on the other hand, in the musician the Will suddenly feels itself at one, above all barriers of individuality : for in the ear, a portal is opened, through which the world finds access to the Will, and the Will to the world. This prodigious overflowing of all barriers * " Es ist nicht anders zu fassen, als dass der im bildenden Kiinstler durch reines Anschauen zum Schweigen gebrachte individnelle Wille im Musiker als universeller Wille wach wird, und iiber alle Anschauung hinaus sich als solcher recht eigentlich als selbstbewusst erkennt." BEETHOVEN. 21 of phenomenality must necessarily evoke an incom- parable ecstasy in the inspired musician, wherein the Will recognises itself as the all-powerful and universal Will ; it is not to be restrained silently before per- ception takes place, it proclaims itself aloud as a conscious Idea of the- world. There is but one state which can surpass the musician's : the state of the Saint ; and that especially because it is enduring, and incapable of being clouded, whilst the ecstatic clair- voyance of a musician alternates with an ever-recur- ring state of individual consciousness, which must be thought all the more miserable as in the inspired state he was lifted higher above the barriers of individuality. And by reason of the sufferings with which he has to compensate for the ecstasy in which he is enabled so inexpressibly to enrapture us all, the musician may appear worthier of reverence than other artists, indeed almost as possessing a claim to veneration. For his art, in truth, bears the same relation to the complexus of all other arts as Religion does to the Church. We have seen that in other arts when the Will desires to become cognition,* this is only possible so far as it remains silent in the innermost depths, as * Erkenntniss zu werden verlangt. 22 BEETHOVEN. though it awaited tidings of salvation from without ; if it is not satisfied with these, it puts itself into a state of clairvoyance, where it knows itself as the One and All of the world beyond the barriers of time and space. What it sees there, no speech can tell ; as a dream amidst deepest sleep can only enter consciousness when translated into the language of a second allegorical dream that immediately precedes one's waking, so the Will provides a second organ of communication for the immediate image of its self- contemplation ; which, whilst on the one side it is turned inwards, on the other side it comes in contact, as one wakes up, with the outer world by means of the immediately sympathetic tone. The Will calls : and it recognises itself again in the counter call ; and thus, call and counter call become a solacing, and in the end a transporting play of the Will with itself During a sleepless night I once stepped out on the balcony of my window, above the great canal at Venice : dreamlike the weird city of Lagoons lay spread out in the shade before me. From soundless silence arose the strong hoarse note of a Gondolier awakened on his barge ; at varied intervals he called into the darkness till, from furthest distance, a like call answered along the nocturnal canal. I knew the BEETHOVEN. 23 ancient melancholy melodious strain, to which Tasso's familiar verses were set in his time, but which assuredly is as old as the canals of Venice and their population. After solemn pauses the far-reaching dialogue grew livelier, and at length appeared to merge into unison, till, far and near, the sounds again softly sank to silence. What could the Venice of daytime, radiant with sunshine and motley with crowds, say of itself, which that resounding night-dream did not bring home at once, and infinitely deeper ? Another time I wandered through the sublime solitude of a high vale of Uri, when, from the side of a lofty Alpine meadow, I heard the shrill exultant call of a herdsman sent across the vale. Ere long through the vast silence a like exuberant shepherd's- call answered from thence. The echo of the tower- ing walls of rock now mingled with the shouts, and the solemn silent vale resounded in lusty strife. So the child wakens from the night of the mother's womb with a cry of longing, and the mother's sooth- ing caresses reply ; so the longing youth knows the call-song of woodbirds ; so speaks the low of animals, the moan of the air, the raging howl of hurricanes, to the musing man, who is now overcome by that 24 BEETHOVEN. dream-like state in which he perceives through the ear that about which his sight had deluded him; he perceives that his innermost nature is identical with all that surrounds him, and moreover that by this peculiar perception through the ear only, the essential nature of external things may be known. The dreamlike state induced by the effects of sympathetic hearing just pointed out, when that world arises from which the musician speaks, is easily recognisable ; every one can observe the effect of music to be such that, during its influence, our ^sion is enfeebled, until, though with our eyes open, we still do not see clearly. We can experience this in any concert-room whilst listening to a piece of music that really touches us ; the most distract- ing and unsightly things go on before our very eyes ; things which, if clearly seen, would take our attention from the music and excite laughter ; that is to say, besides the trivial aspect of an audience, we have the mechanical movements of the musicians, the entire oddly moving auxiliary apparatus of an orchestral performance. Such a sight, which alone occupies one who is not touched by the music, eventually does not in the least disturb those who are captivated by it ; and BEETHOVEN. 25 this shows clearly that we no longer consciously see it; but rather that, with our eyes open, we have arrived at a condition which bears considerable resem- blance to the, condition of somnambulistic clairvoy- ance ; and, in truth, it is only whilst in this state that we immediately partake of the musician's world. Starting from this world, which otherwise we have no means of portraying, the musician, by the disposi- tion of his tones, spreads, as it were, a net for us ; or again, he besprinkles our perceptive faculties with the miracle-working drops of his sounds, in such wise that he incapacitates these faculties as if by magic, so that they have no power to receive impres- sions other than those of our own inner world. If the musician's mode of procedure is to be made fairly clear, we had best return to the analogy such a procedure bears to those inner occurrences by means of which, according to Schopenhauer's luminous hy- pothesis, the dream of deepest sleep, which is quite removed from the waking cerebral consciousness, is, as it were, translated into the lighter allegorical dream that immediately precedes awakening.* The faculty of speech, which we now by analogy take into consideration, extends for the musician * Supplement i. 26 BEETHOVEN. ^from the cry of horror to a soothing disport with lovely sounds. Whilst making use of the superabundant grada- tions that lie between these extremes, the musician is led, as it were, by a desire to give an intelligible version of the innermost dream-image ; and, like the second allegorical dream, he comes near to the ideas of the waking brain, by which that brain is finally enabled to hold fast the dream-image. Approaching thus, the musician touches ideas of time only, these being the furthest point to which his conjmunication extends, whilst the ideas of space are kept under an impenetrable veil, the lifting of which would at once render the dream-image he perceives unrecognisable. Whilst the Harmony of tones, which pertains neither to time nor space, remains the veriest element of music, the musician, now actually mould- ing and shaping, stretches his hand, as it were, towards the waking world of phenomena, by the rhythmical succession of time in his productions, — much as the allegorical dream connects with the habitual ideas of the individual, so that the waking consciousness, which is turned towards the external world, is able firmly to retain it ; though it is aware BEETHOVEN. 2/ that the dream-image also differs greatly from the occurrences of actual life. Thus, by means of the rhythmical arrangement of his tones, the musician touches upon the perceptible plastic world ; that is to say, he does so by virtue of the similarity of the laws through which the movement of visible bodies is intelligible to our perception. Human gestures, which in the dance are rendered intelligible by expressive and regularly-alternating movement, appear to serve music in a manner akin to that in which bodies serve light, which would not shine unless it could break against them; similarly it may be said that without rhythm music would not be perceptible. And just here, at the point where the plastic arts and harmony meet, we may see that the essential nature of music, which we apprehended by analogy with dreams, differs completely from the nature of the plastic arts : for the latter can only fix a gesture in space, and must leave motion to be supplied by reflective perception, whilst the inmost nature of gestures is expressed with such direct intelligibility by music, that as soon as we are fulfilled with music, our very vision is depotentialised for the direct per- ception of gestures, so that we finally comprehend, without seeing them. 28 BEETHOVEN. - If, therefore, music withdraws those portions of the world of phenomena that are nearest related to it into its own peculiar region of dreams, it does this only in such wise that, by means of a wonderful antecedent transformation, the perceptive cognition may, as it were, be turned inwards, where it is now enabled to grasp the essential nature of things in its most immediate manifestations, and thus, in a manner, to interpret the dream-image which the musician himself beheld in deepest sleep. It is impossible to offer anything more lucid con- cerning the relation of music to the plastic forms of the world of phenomena, and to the concepts deduced from these forms, than is to be found in Schopen- hauer's work.* We shall, therefore, now turn to the proper theme of these researches, and proceed to in- vestigate the nature of the musician. Let us, however, previously consider an important point relating to the aesthetical judgment of music as an art. We shall find that, from the forms by which music appears to be connected with exter- nal phenomena, entirely senseless and preposterous demands have been made concerning the character of its manifestations. * Supplement ii. BEETHOVEN. 29 As has already been said, certain views have been transferred to music which originated solely in the criticism of the plastic arts. That this confusion could have been brought about, we must certainly ascribe to the fact latterly touched upon, that music does approach near to the perceptible side of the world and its phenomena. Musical art has actually passed through a process of development in that direction, which has exposed it to a misunderstanding of its true character, inasmuch as an effect similar to the effect of the plastic arts, i.e., the excitation of the sense of pleasure derived from the contemplation of beautiful forms, has been demanded from it. And as this demand was accompanied by an in- creasing corruption in the criticism of the plastic arts, it can easily be imagined how deeply music was degraded when, in fact, people desired that it should keep its true nature entirely subordinate, so as to excite pleasurable sensations by the presentation of its most external side alone. Music, which comes home to us only in so far as it quickens the most general ideas engendered by vague feelings,* until the greatest possible number of modi- fications thereof attain the most definite clearness, * "Den allerallgemeinsten Begriffdes an sich dunklen Gefiihles." 30 BEETHOVEN. can be judged, as far as it is properly concerned, only after the category of the Sublime, for, as soon as it touches us, we are filled with the highest ecstasy of the consciousness of illimitability. That which results from our being absorbed by the perception of a work of plastic art, i.e., the effect of Beauty, produced by the temporary emancipation of the intellect from the service of the individual Will (which takes place whilst the connection of the Will with the object perceived is severed), that effect music produces at once; for as soon as it strikes the ear, it draws the intellect away from any apprehension of the relations of external things ; and, as pure form, free from any objectivity, it shuts us off, as it were, from the outer world, and causes us to look inwards, as into the essential nature of all things. Accordingly, the verdict concerning a piece of music should be based upon the recognition of those laws according to which the most direct advance is made from the effect of the beautiful phenomenon which is simultaneous with the mere entrance of music, towards the revelation of its most proper Character, by the effect of the Sublime. The characteristics of really empty and trivial music, on the contrary, would be, that it continued playing prismatically with the " effect " of its first entrance, and thus kept us con- BEETHOVEN. 3 1 tinually within the range of those relations with which music turns towards the perceptible world. In point of fact, music has been continually de- veloped in this latter direction only, by a systematic disposition of the rhythmical structure of its sections ; which has brought it into comparison with architec- ture on the one side, and, on the other, has given it an obvious symmetry * that has exposed it to false judgment in accordance with the analogy to the plastic arts already mentioned. Here, extremely limited, under trite forms and conventionalities, it appeared to Goethe, for instance, so happily adapted to form t a scheme or ground-plan for poetic con- ceptions. To sport in conventional forms with the vast resources of music, so that its proper effect, the manifestation of the essential nature of all things, should be avoided like a danger of inundation, appeared to sestheticians, for a long time, to be the sole gratifying result of the cultivation of the art. But to have penetrated these forms in such wise that from this side he was enabled to throw the inner light of the clairvoyant outwards again, to show these forms in their inner significance, this * " Uberschauliclikeit." t " Zur Normirung poetischer Conceptionen." 32 BEETHOVEN. was the work of our great Beethoven, whom we must take as the true representative musician * If, retaining the often employed analogy of the allegorical dream, we look upon music as prompted by an innermost perception, and communicating this perception outwards, we are compelled to assume a particular cerebral capacity as the proper organ for this communication (as with the " organ of dreams "), by virtue of which the musician at first recognises the inner " thing per se" which is closed to all direct per- ception, — an eye turned inwards, which, when turned outwards, becomes hearing. Could we imagine a most faithful image of the world — of that inmost (dream) image perceived by the musician — we may do so most suggestively whilst listening to one of Palestrina's renowned pieces of Church music. Here Rhythm is only perceptible through changes in the harmonic succession of chords, whilst apart from these it does not exist at all as a symmetrical division of time. Here the successions in time f are so immediately connected with the essential nature of harmony, which is itself unconnected with time and space, that the aid of the laws of time cannot * "Den wahren Innbegriff des Musikers." t "Zeitfolge." BEETHOVEN. 33 aid us in understanding such music. The sole suc- cession of time in music of this description is hardly otherwise apparent than in exceedingly delicate changes of some fundamental colour ; which changes retain their connection through the most varied transitions, without our being able to perceive any distinct drawing of lines. But then as the colour does not appear in space we get a picture almost as timeless as it is spaceless ; a spiritual revelation throughout, that rouses unspeakable emotion, as it brings us nearer than aught else to a notion of the essential nature of Religion, free from all dogmatic conceptional fictions. Take again, by way of contrast, a piece of dance music, or part of a symphony based upon a dance figure, or finally an operatic piece proper; we shall find our fancy fettered at once by regular rhythmical periods, by means of which the melody is made more distinct and plastic. Music de- veloped on this principle has justly been called "secular" in contrast to the other "sacred."* About the principle of this development I have elsewhere -f- spoken clearly enough, and I shall * " Weltlich" im gegensatz zu jener ' ' geistlichen." •)■ I did this in brief and general terms in an essay entitled " Zukunfts- C 34 BEETHOVEN. therefore here take it up only in the sense of its analogy to the allegorical dream, touched upon above, according to which it appears as though the musi- cian's awakened sight now clung to the phenomena of the outer world, so far as their essential nature becomes intelligible to him. The external laws in conformity to which this close attention to gestures, and indeed to all motions of life, takes place, become /to him the laws of rhythm, by virtue of which he constructs contrasting and recurring sections. Now the more these sections are filled with the true spirit of music, the less they will distract our attention as architectural landmarks, from the pure effect of music. On the contrary, when the inner spirit of music is enfeebled for the sake of a regular order of rhythmical divisions akin to a row of columns, our attention will be riveted by an outward regularity only, and we shall of necessity lower the standard of our requirements as to Music itself, inasmuch as we refer it to that external regularity. Thus music descends from its state of sublime innocence ; musik," published some ten years ago by J. J. .Weber at](Leipzig, which, as I hear latterly, met with no consideration whatever, where- fore I herewith refer those few who are in earnest about my doings to that pamphlet. (A translation, "The Music of the Future,'' by E. Dannreuther, was published by Messrs. Schott & Co., London, 1873.) BEETHOVEN. 35 it loses its power to release us from the pressure of phenomenality — i.e., it no longer proclaims the essen- tial nature of things, but it becomes itself involved in the illusions pertaining to external phenomena. For with such music people want to see something ; and that which is to be seen, becomes the main concern, as the Opera shows clearly enough, when the "spec- tacle," the " ballet," etc., constitute the attraction, and thus induce the degeneracy .of the music employed to show them off. Let us now elucidate what has hitherto been said by a closer inspection of the development of Beethoveri s genms ; and, to avoid generalities, fix our attention upon the manner in which the master's peculiar style was formed. A musician's aptitude for his art is best esti- mated by the impress which other people's music leaves upon him. In what manner his capacities for inner self-contemplation, that clairvoyance of the deepest dream of theworld, are aroused by it, can only be seen when he has reached the ultimate goal of his development ; for till then he follows the laws of the reaction of external impressions ; and 36 BEETHOVEN. for a musician these are, in the first place, derived from the^ompositions of contemporary masters. Now here^ we find Beethoven moved least by operatic works, whilst impressions from the church music of his day touched him closer. The " metier " of a pianoforte player, which he had to take up so as "to be something as a musician," brought him into lasting and most familiar contact with the pianoforte compositions of the masters of the Period. In this period the " Sonata " had been developed as the model form. It may be said that Beethoven was and remained a composer of sonatas, for in far the greater number and the best of his instrumental compositions, ,xhe outline of the Sonata-form was the veil-like tissue through which he gazed into the realm of sounds ; or, through which, emerging from that realm, he made himself intelligible ; whilst other forms, particularly the mixed ones of vocal music, despite the most extraordinary achievements in them, he only touched upon in passing, as if by way of experiment. The rules of construction for the Sonata-form had been evolved for all time by Emanuel Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. That form was the result of a com- promise between the spirit of German and of Italian music. The practical use to which it was put deter- BEETHOVEN. 37 mined its external character : for with the Sonata a pianoforte player came before the public ; he amused by his digital dexterity, and gave a pleasant musical entertainment. Now, this was no longer Sebastian Bach, gathering up his congregation in church before the organ or calling upon connoisseurs and colleagues to meet him there in rivalry. There is a wide gap between the wonderful master of the Fugue and the fosterers of the Sonata. The latter learnt the art of) writing fugue as a means of solidifying their musical studies ; in the sonata fugal writing was used merely as an artificiality; the rough consistency of pure contrapuntal work gave way to the gratification of a stable Eurythmy, and to fill up this prescribed outline in the sense of Italian euphony appeared quite sufficient to nieet the demands made upon music. In Haydn's instrumental music it is as though we saw the fettered daemon of music playing before us with the childishness of one born an old man.* Beethoven's earlier works are not incorrectly held to have sprung from Haydn's model; and a closer relationship to Haydn than to Mozart may be traced even in the later development of his * "Mit der Kindlichkeit eines geborenen Greises vor uns spielen." Childishness, in English, conveys rather more than is intended by "Kindlichkeit." 38 BEETHOVEN. genius. The peculiar nature of this relationship is disclosed by a striking feature in Beethoven's behaviour towards Haydn. Beethoven would not recognise Haydn as his teacher, though the latter was generally taken for such, and he even suffered injurious expressions of youthful arrogance to escape him about Haydn. It seems as though he felt himself related to Haydn like one born a man to a childish elder. As regards form he agreed with his teacher, but the unruly daemon of his inner music, fettered by that form, impelled him to a disclosure of his power, which, like everything else in the doings of the gigantic musician, could only appear incom- prehensibly rough. Of his meeting with Mozart it is related that he jumped up from the piano in ill-humour after having played a Sonata to that master, and then, to make himself better known, asked permission to improvise ; which, we are informed, he did with such effect upon Mozart, that the latter said to his friends : " The world will hear something from that young one." This would have been an utterance of Mozart's at a time when he was well aware that he himself was maturing towards a development of his genius, the proper consummation of which had hitherto been BEETHOVEN. 39 retarded by unprecedented deviations, under the pressure of a wretchedly laborious musical career. We know how he looked forward to his death, approaching, alas ! far too early — bitterly conscious that now, at last, he might have shown the world what he really could do in music. We see young Beethoven, on the other hand, facing the world at once with that defiant tempera- ment which, throughout his life, kept him in al- most savage independence : his enormous self-con- fidence, supported by haughtiest courage, at all times prompted him to defend himself from the frivolous demands made upon music by a pleasure-seeking world. He had to guard a treasure of immeasurable richness against the importunities of effeminate taste. He was the soothsayer of the innermost world of tones, and he had to act as such in the very forms in which music was displaying itself as a merely divert- ing art. Thus he ever resembles one truly possessed ; for to him may be applied Schopjenhauer's saying of the musician in general: "he expresses the highest wisdom in a language his reason does not under- stand." The element of " Reason " in his art Beethoven 40 BEETHOVEN. encountered in the spirit which had furthered the formal erection of its external scaffolding. And it was rather a meagre " reason " that addressed him from the architectural scaffolding of these sections, when he heard how even the great masters of his youth proceeded by trite repetitions of phrases and for- mulas, by accurately divided antithesis of piano and forte, with grave introductions of so and so many bars according to prescription, through the indis- pensable portals of so and so many semi-cadences towards the beatifying noise of the final close. That was the "reason" that had constructed the operatic Aria, dictated the mode of stringing operatic pieces together, the " reason " by which Haydn had fettered his genius to the counting of the pearls on his rosary. For with Palestrina's music religion had vanished from the Church, whilst the artificial formalism of Jesuitical practice counterformed re- ligion and, together with it, music. Thus the same Jesuitical style of architecture of the last two cen- turies covers the noble and venerable Rome. Thus the glorious painting of Italy became dulcet and effeminate ; thus, under the same guidance, originated " classical " French poetry ; in the spiritless regula- tions of which one might find an eloquent analogy BEETHOVEN. 4 1 to the rules of construction pertaining to the operatic Aria and the Sonata. We know that it was " the German spirit," so much feared and hated in Ultramontane quarters, which everywhere, and in the sphere of art too, stood up against this artificially conducted corruption of the spirit of European peoples, and saved it. In other spheres we have honoured a Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, as having rescued us from that corruption ; and it is to-day our task to show with reference to this musician, Beethoven, that as he spoke in the purest language to all men, the German spirit has through him redeemed the spirit of humanity from deep ignominy. For inasmuch as he again raised music, that had been degraded to a merely diverting art, to the height of its sublime calling, he has led us to understand the nature of that art, f rom w hjch the world explains itself to every" consciousness as distinctly as. the most profound philosophy could explain it to *- thinker-well. vjsrsed in abstract conceptions. And the relation of the great Beethoven to the German nation is based upon this alone; which we shall now try to elucidate by special reference to distinctive features of his life and works. Nothing can be more instructive as to an artist's 42 BEETHOVEN. method of procedure, compared with construction according to conceptions of abstract reason, than a true picture of the course followed by Beethoven's genius. If he had consciously transformed or over- thrown the external forms of music he found extant, that would have been acting according to reason; but there is not a trace of this. There never was an artist who speculated less about his art than Beethoven. But the above-mentioned rough vehem- ence of his human nature shows how he felt the bann these forms laid upon his genius with a sense of personal suffering, almost as great as that which he felt under the pressure of any other conventionality. Still, his reaction in this matter consisted solely in the haughty, free development of his inner genius, which even these forms could not fetter. He never altered any of the extant forms of instrumental music on principle ; the same structure can be traced in his last Sonatas, quartets, symphonies, &c., as un- mistakably as in his first. But compare these works with one another : place the eighth symphony in F- major beside the second in D, and wonder at the entirely new world, almost in precisely the same form ! Here again is apparent the peculiarity of the German nature, which is inwardly so richly and BEETHOVEN. 43 deeply endowed, that it leaves its impress upon every form, remodels the form from within, and thus escapes the necessity of externally overthrowing it. So Germans are not revolutionaries, but reformers ; and thus they are enabled to retain a richer variety of forms for the manifestation of their inner nature than other nations. This deep inner fountain appears exhausted among the French, who, troubled by the external forms of their affairs, both in the state and in art, fancy themselves forced to destroy these forms, and apparently take it for granted that new and more comfortable ones would then arise spon- taneously. Thus, curiously enough, they continually rebel against their own nature ; which does not ap- pear deeper than is expressed by those very forms that so trouble them. On the other hand, no harm has accrued to the German spirit by the fact that our medizeval poetical literature was nourished by transcriptions of French poems of chivalry : the inner depth of Wolfram von Eschenbach formed everlasting types of poesy from materials which, in the original form, are preserved as mere curiosities. In like manner we adopted the forms of Roman and Greek culture, reproduced the classic mode of speech and versification, we contrived 44 BEETHOVEN. to acquire and succeeded in acquiring the antique manner of looking at things whilst expressing our own innermost spirit thereby. Thus also, we received music with all its forms from the Italians, and what we made of them is seen in the incommensurable works of Beethoven's genius. It would be a foolish undertaking to attempt to explain these works. Taking count of them in their proper order we may note, with ever increasing distinctness, how the genius of music permeates the musical forms. It is as though in the works of Beethoven's predecessors we saw a painted " trans- parency" by daylight; — a picture that in drawing and colour cannot stand against the work of a true painter; belonging to a lower form, rightly looked down upon by those who know as a pseudo work of art fit to adorn festivals, to embellish a princely table, to entertain luxurious company, &c. ; — whilst the Virtuoso placed his artistic dexterity, like the light intended for the illumination of the picture, before instead of behind it. Now Beethoven transfers this picture into the silence of night, between the world of phenomena and the deep inner nature of all things, and he places the light of the clairvoyant behind the picture ! and it revives in wondrous wise, BEETHOVEN. 45 and a second world stands before us, of which the greatest masterpiece of a Raphael can give no inti- mation. The might of the musician cannot be grasped otherwise than through the idea of magic. As- suredly it is an enchanted state we fall into when listening to a genuine work of Beethoven's ; in all parts and details of the piece, that to sober senses look like a complex of technical means cun- ningly contrived to fulfil a form, we now perceive a ghostlike animation, an activity here most delicate, there appalling, a pulsation of undulating joy, longing fear, lamentation and ecstasy, all of which again seem to spring from the profoundest depths of our own nature. For the feature in Beethoven's musical pro- ductions which is so particularly momentous for the history of art is this : that here every technical detail, by means of which for clearness' sake the artist places himself in a conventional relation to the external world, is raised to the highest significance of a spontaneous effusion. I have already said elsewhere that there are no accessories here, no " framing " of a melody ; every part in the accompaniment, each rhythmical note, indeed each rest, everything be- comes Melody. 46 BEETHOVEN. It is quite impossible to avoid falling into an ecstatic tone when speaking of the true nature of Beethoven's music. Now as we have already, under the philosopher's guidance, sought to gain closer insight into the true nature of music in general (by which we meant Beethoven's music in particular), we had better steer clear of the impossible, and turn to Beethoven in person as the focus of the rays that light up his world of wonders. Let us examine whence Beethoven derived his power — or rather, as the mystery of natural endow- ment must remain veiled, and we are bound to accept its existence from its effects without further question, — let us try to make out by what peculiarity of his personal character, and by what moral impulses the great musician was enabled to concentrate his power, so as to produce that incommensurable effect which constitutes his artistic achievement We have seen that any assumption that the growth of his artistic impulses had been led by some process of abstract reasoning should be dis- carded. On the contrary, we shall have to look solely to the manly strength of character, the in- fluence of which upon the expansion of the master's BEETHOVEN. 47 genius we have already touched upon. We brought Beethoven into comparison with Haydn and Mozart. If we consider the lives of these two and contrast them, we shall find a transition from Haydn through Mozart to Beethoven with regard to the externals of life. Haydn was and remained a prince's* atten- dant, providing, as a musician, for the entertainment of his master, who was fond of display ; temporary interruptions, such as his visits to London, changed but little in the practice of his art, for in London also he remained a musician recommended to and paid by men of rank. Submissive and devout, he retained the peace of a kind-hearted, cheerful dis- position to a good old age ; the eye only that looks at us from his portrait is filled with gentle melan- choly. Mozart's life, on the contrary, was an inces- sant struggle for an undisturbed and secure existence such as he found it so peculiarly difficult to attain. Caressed when a child by half Europe, the youth found every gratification of his lively desires impeded in a manner akin to positive oppression, and from his entrance into man's estate he sickened miserably towards an early death. He finds musical servitude with a princely master unbearable, he gives concerts * Prince Esterhazy's. 48 BEETHOVEN. and "academies" with an eye to the general public, and his fugitive earnings are sacrificed to the petty- enjoyments of life. If Haydn's Prince continuously demanded new entertainment, Mozart was none the less compelled to provide novelties day by day to attract ih.^ public ; fugitive conception, and ready execution acquired by immense practice, will, in the main, account for the character of both their works. Haydn wrote his /noblest masterpieces in old age, when he enjoyed the comforts of a foreign as well as a home reputation. But Mozart never attained that: his finest works were sketched between the exuberance of the moment and the anxiety of the coming hour. Thus a remunerative attendance on some prince, as a medium for a life more favourable to artistic pro- duction, continually hovered before his soul. What his emperor withholds, a king of Prussia offers : Mozart remains " true to his emperor," and perishes in misery. If Beethoven had made his choice of life after cool deliberation, keeping his two great predecessors in view, he could not have gone surer than he did in fact go under the naive guidance of his natural character. It is astonishing to observe how every- BEETHOVEN. 49 thing here was decided by the powerful instinct of nature. This instinct speaks plainly in Beethoven's shrinking from a manner of life akin to Haydn's. A glance at young Beethoven was probably sufifi- cient to deter any prince from the whim of making him his Capellmeister. But the peculiar complexion of his character appears more remarkable in those of its features which preserved him from a fate such as Mozart's. " — — Like Mozart, placed without means in an utilitarian world, that rewards the Beautiful only inasmuch as it flatters the senses, and wherein the Sublime re- mains altogether without response, Beethoven could not at first gain the world's suffrage by the Beautiful, A glance at his face and constitution would make it sufiSciently clear that beauty and effeminacy were almost synonymous to his mind. The world of phe- nomena had scanty access to him. His piercing eye, almost uncanny, perceived in the outer world nothing but vexatious disturbances of his inner life, and to ward them off was almost his sole rapport with that world. So the expression of his face became spas- modic : the spasm of defiance holds this nose, this mouth at a tension that can never relax to smiles, but only expand to enormous laughter. It used to be 50 BEETHOVEN. held as a physiological axiom that for high intel- lectual endowments a large brain should be enclosed in a thin delicate skull, to facilitate an immediate cognition of external things ; nevertheless, upon the inspection of his remains some years ago, we saw, in conformity with the entire skeleton, a skull of altogether unusual thickness and firmness. Thus nature guarded a brain of excessive delicacy, so that it might look inwards, and carry on in undisturbed • repose the world contemplation of a great heart. This supremely robust constitution enclosed and pre- served an inner world of such transparent delicacy, that, if left defenceless to the rough handling of the outer world, it would have dissolved gently and evapo- rated, — like Mozart's tender genius of light and love. Now let any one try to realise how such a being must have regarded the world from within so massive a frame ! Assuredly the inner impulses of that man's Will could never, or but indistinctly, modify the manner in which he apprehended the outer world ; they were too violent, and also too gentle, to cling to the phenomena upoA which his glance fell only in timorous haste, and finally with the mistrust felt by one constantly dissatisfied. Nothing involved BEETHOVEN. 5 1 him in that transient delusion which could entice Mozart forth from his inner world to search after external enjoyment. A childish delight in the amuse- ments of a great and gay town could hardly touch Beethoven ; the impulses of his Will were too strong to find the slightest satisfaction in such light motley pursuits. If his inclination to solitude was nourished hereby, that inclination, again, coincided with the independence he was destined for. A wonderfully sure instinct guided him in this particular respect and became the mainspring of the manifestations of his character. No cognition of reason could have directed him better than the irresistible bent of his instinct. That which led Spinoza to support himself by polishing lenses, which filled Schopenhauer with that constant anxiety to keep his little inheritance intact and determined his entire outer life, and which indeed accounts for apparently inexplicable traits of his character — i.e., the discernment that the veracity of all philosophical investigations is seriously en- dangered when there is any need of earning money by scientific labour : that fostered Beethoven's de- fiance of the world, his liking for solitude, and the almost coarse predilections shown in his manner of life. 52 BEETHOVEN. In point of fact Beethoven did support himself by the proceeds of his musical labours. But as nothing tempted him to strive for a pleasant life, there was less need for rapid, superficial work, or for conces- sions to a taste that could only be gratified by " the pleasing." The more he thus lost connection with / the outer world, the clearer was his inward vision. The surer he felt of his inner wealth, the more con- fidently did he make his demands outwards ; and he actually required from his friends and patrons that they should no longer pay him for his works, but so provide for him that he might work for himself regardless of the world. And it actually came to pass, for the first time in the life of a musician, that a few well - disposed men of rank pledged themselves to keep Beethoven independent in the sense desired. Arrived at a similar turning-point in his life, Mozart perished, prematurely exhausted. But the great kindness conferred upon Beethoven, although he did not enjoy it long without inter- ruption or diminution, nevertheless laid the founda- tion to the peculiar harmony, which was hence- forth apparent in the master's life, no matter how strangely constituted. He felt himself victorious, and knew that he belonged to the world only as a BEETHOVEN. 53 free man. The world had to take him as he was. He treated his aristocratic benefactors despotically, and nothing could be got from him save what he felt disposed to give, and at his own time. But he never felt inclined for anything save that which solely and continually occupied him : the magician's disport with the shapes of his inner world. For the outer world now became extinct to him ; not that blindness robbed him of its view, but because deafness finally kept it at a distance from his hearing. The ear was the only organ through which the outer world could still reach and disturb him ; it had long since faded to his eye. What did the enraptured dreamer see, when, fixedly staring, with open eyes, he wandered through the crowded streets of Vienna, solely animated by the waking of his inner world of tones ? The beginning and increase of trouble in his ear pained him dreadfully, and induced profound melan- choly, biit after complete deafness had set in, no particular complaints were heard from him ; none whatever about his incapacity to hsten to musical performances ; the intercourse of daily life only, which never had attracted him much, was rendered more difficult, and he now avoided it the more. 54 BEETHOVEN. A musician without hearing ! could a blind painter be imagined ? But we know of a blind Seer. Tiresias, to whom the phenomenal world was closed, but who, with inward vision, saw the basis of all phenomena, — and the deaf musician who listens to his inner harmonies undisturbed by the noise of life, who speaks from the depths to a world that has nothing more to say to him — now resembles the seer. Thus genius, delivered from the impress of external things, exists wholly in and for itself. What wonders would have been disclosed to one who could have seen Beethoven with the vision of Tiresias ! A world, walking among men, — the world per se as a walking man ! And now the musician's eye was lighted up from within. He cast his glance upon phenomena that answered in wondrous reflex, illuminated by his inner light. The essential nature of things now again speaks to him, and he sees things "displayed in the calm light of beauty. Again he understands the forest, the brook, the meadow, the blue sky, the gay throng of men, the pair of lovers, the song of birds, the flight of clouds, the roar "of storms, the beatitude of bhssfully moving repose. All BEETHOVEN. 55 he perceives and constructs is permeated with that wondrous serenity which music has gained through him. Even the tender plaint inherent in all sounds is subdued to a smile : the world regains the inno- cence of its childhood. " To-day art thou with me in Para(^se." Who does not hear the Redeemer's word when listening to the Pastoral Symphony ?- — '' The power of shaping the incomprehensible, the never seen, the never experienced, in such wise that it becomes immediately intelligible, now grows apace. The delight in exercising this power becomes humour; all the pain of existence is shattered against the immense delight of playing with it ; Brahma, the creator of worlds, laughs as he perceives the illusion about himself; innocence regained plays lightly with the sting of expiated guilt, conscience set free banters itself with the torments it has under- gone. Never has an art offered the world anything so serene as these symphonies in A and F major, and - all those works so intimately related to them which the master produced during the divine period of his total deafness. Their effect upon the hearer is that of setting him free from the sense of guilt, just as their after-effect is a feeling of " paradise lost," with which 56 BEETHOVEN. one again turns towards the world of phenomena. Thus these wonderful works preach repentance and atonement in the deepest sense of a divine revelation. The aesthetic idea of the Sublime is alone applic- able here: for the effect of serenity passes at once far beyond any satisfaction to be derived from mere beauty. The defiance of reason, proud in its powers of cognition, is wrecked upon the charm that subdues our entire nature: cognition flees, confessing its error, and in the immense joy over this confession we exult from the depth of our soul ; no matter how seriously the fettered mien of the listener may betray astonishment at the insufficiency of human sight and thought in the presence of this most veritable world. What could the world see and realise of the human nature of the genius thus raised above and beyond the world 1 What could the eye of a man of the world perceive of him 1 Assuredly nothing but what was easily misunderstood, just as he himself mis- understood the world in his dealings with it ; for to his simple great heart there was continuous contra- diction in the world — that he could only resolve harmoniously in the subhme fields of art. As far as his reason sought to comprehend the BEETHOVEN. 57 world, his mind was soothed with optimistic views, such as the visionary enthusiasm of the last century's humanitarian tendencies had developed into a creed held in common by the middle-class religious world. Every feeling of doubt, which experience of life aroused against the correctness of that doctrine, he fought against by loudly asserting fundamental reli- gious maxims. His innermost self said to him : Love is God; and accordingly he too decreed : God is Love. Whatever touched upon these dogmas with any em- phasis in the writings of our poets met with his ap- probation. " Faust " always had the strongest hold of him ; yet he held Klopstock, and many a weaker bard of Humanitarianism, worthy of special veneration. His morality was of the strictest domestic exclusive- ness : a frivolous mood put him into a rage. He certainly did not display, even to the most attentive observer, a single trait of wit; and, in spite of Bet- tina's sentimental fancies about Beethoven, Goethe probably had a hard time of it in his conversations with him.* But the same sure instinct which, as he felt no need of luxury, led him to be frugal and watch (Jiis income to the verge of parsimony, was also shown in his strict religious morality ; and bj'' virtue * They met at Toplitz in the summer of 1812. 58 BEETHOVEN. of it he preserved his noblest treasure, the freedom of his genius, from subjugation by the surrounding world. He lived in Vienna and knew Vienna only : that tells its own tale. The Austrians, who after the eradication of every trace of German Protestantism, were educated in the schools of Roman Jesuits, had even lost the correct pro- nunciation of their language ; which, like the classical names of Antiquity, was pronounced to them in an un-German Italianised fashion. German spirit, Ger- man habits and ways, were explained from text- books of Spanish and Italian origin ! A people, joyous and gay by nature, had been drilled on the basis of falsified history, falsified science, falsified religion, into a species of scepticism, calculated to undermine all clinging to the true, the genuine, and the free ; a scepticism that in the end appeared as downright frivolity. Now it was this spirit which had imparted to music, the only art cultivated in Austria, the direc- tion and the verily degrading tendency we have already commented upon. We have seen how Beethoven's mighty nature protected him from this tendency, and we may now recognise in him a BEETHOVEN. 59 similar power to aid us energetically in warding off frivolity in life and mind. Baptized and brought up as a Catholic, the entire spirit of German Protestant- ism lived in his disposition. And that spirit also led him as an artist into the path where he was to meet the only colleague in his art, before whom he might bow reverentially, and whom he could greet as a revelation of the profoundest mystery of his own nature. If Haydn passed for the teacher of his youth, the great Sebastian Back became a guide for the man in the mighty development of his artistic life. Bach's wondrous work became the Bible of his faith ; he read in it, and forgot the world of sounds, which he heard no longer. There he found the enigma of his profoundest dream, which the poor Leipzig precentor had once written down as the eternal symbol of another and a new world. These were the same enigmatically entwined lines and marvellously intricate characters, in which the secret of the world and its shapes had been seen in the sheen of light by the great Albrecht Durer; the charmed book of the necromancer who illumines the microcosm with the light of the macrocosm. What only the eye of the German spirit could behold, and 6o BEETHOVEN. its ear only could hear, what, from inmost percep- tion, forced that spirit to irresistible protestation against alien things, that Beethoven read clearly and distinctly in its saintliest book, and — became himself a saint. But how, again, in actual life, would such a saint stand with regard to his own sanctity, seeing that he was indeed enlightened "to speak the highest wisdom, but in a language which his reason did not understand " .' Must not his intercourse with the world resemble the condition of one who, awakening from deepest sleep, in vain endeavours to recall his blissful dream .-' We may assume a similar condition to obtain in the religious Saint, when, driven by dire necessity, he applies himself in some degree to the affairs of common life ; only, in the very distress of life, a saint of religion clearly recognises the atonement for a sin- ful existence, and, in the patient endurance of sad distress, he enthusiastically grasps the means of redemption ; whilst that sainted Seer accepts the sense of an atonement as though it simply meant the endurance of pain, and pays the debt of existence solely as a sufferer. And the error of the optimist is thereupon revenged by enhanced sensitiveness, and a BEETHOVEN. 6 1 corresponding increase of suffering. Every want of feeling, every instance of selfishness or hardness of heart, such as he meets with again and again, incense him as an incomprehensible corruption of that original goodness of man to which he clings with religious faith. Thus he continually falls from the paradise of his inner harmony into a hell of fearfully discordant existence, and this discord again he can only resolve harmoniously as an artist. ^^ If we wish to picture to ourselves a day in the life of our Saint, one of the master's own wonderful pieces may serve as a counterpart. Only, to avoid deceiving ourselves, we shall have to adhere strictly to the mode of procedure by which we analogically applied the phenomena of dreams to throw light upon the origin of music, without ever identifying the one with the other. I shall choose, then, to illustrate such a genuine " Beethoven day " by the light. of its inmost occurrences, his great string- quartet in C-sharp minor : premising that if we rest content to recall the tone-poem to memory, an illus- tration of the sort may perhaps prove possible, at least up to a certain degree ; whereas it would hardly be feasible during an actual performance. For, whilst listening to the work, we are bound to eschew 62 BEETHOVEN. any definite comparisons, being solely conscious of an immediate revelation from another world. Even then, however, the animation of the picture in its several details, has to be left to the reader's fancy, and an outline sketch must therefore suffice. The longer introductory Adagio, than which pro- bably nothing more melancholy' has been expressed in tones, I would designate as the awakening on the morn of a day that throughout its tardy course shall fulfil not a single desire : * not one. None the less it is a penitential prayer, a conference with God in the faith of the eternally good. The eye turned inwards here, too, sees the comforting phenomena it alone can perceive (Allegro |), in which the longing becomes a sweet, tender, melancholy disport with itself,-f the inmost hidden dream-picture awakens as the loveliest reminiscence. And now, in the short transitional Allegro Moderato, it is as though the Master, conscious of his strength, puts himself in position to work his spells ; with renewed power he now practises his magic (Andante |) in bann- ing a lovely figure, the witness of pure heavenly innocence, so that he may incessantly enrapture * " Den Tag zu sehen, der mir in seinem Lauf Nicht einen Wunsch erfuUen wird, nicht Einen." — Faust. t Ein wehmiithig holdes Spiel. BEETHOVEN. 6^ himself by its ever new and unheard-of transforma- tions, induced by the refraction of the rays of light he casts upon it. We may now (Presto |) fancy him, profoundly happy from within, casting an inexpressibly serene glance upon the outer world ; and, again, it stands before him as in the Pastoral Symphony. Everything is luminous, reflecting his inner happiness. It is as though he were listening to the very tones emitted by the phenomena, that move, aerial and again firm, in rhythmical dance before him. He contemplates Life, and appears to reflect how he is to play a dance for Life itself; (Short Adagio f) — a short, but troubled medita- tion, — as though he were diving into the deep dream of his soul. He has again caught sight of the inner side of the world ; he wakens, and strikes the strings for a dance, such as the world has never heard (Allegro Finale). It is the World's own dance : wild delight, cries of anguish, love's ecstasy, highest rapture, misery, rage ; voluptuous now, and sorrowful ; lightning's quiver, storm's roll ; and high above the gigantic musician ! banning and compelling all things, proudly and firmly wielding them from whirl to whirlpool, to the abyss. — He laughs at himself; for the incantation was, after all. 64 BEETHOVEN. but play to him. Thus night beckons. His day is I done. / It is not possible to consider the man, Beethoven, in any sort of light, without at once having recourse to the wonderful musician, by way of elucidation. We noted how the instinctive tendency of his life coincided with a tendency towards the emancipation of his art ; he could not be a servant of luxury, and his music had to be cleared of all traces of sub- ordination to a frivolous taste. Moreover, as to the way in which his optimistic religious faith went hand in hand with the instinctive proclivity towards widening the sphere of his art, we have testimony of the noblest simplicity in the Choral Symphony, the genesis of which it now behoves us to consider more closely, so as to throw light upon the wonderful connection between the designated fundamental tendencies in the nature of our Saint. The identical impulse which led Beethoven's rea- son to construct the Idea of the Good Man, guided him in the quest of the melody proper to this Good Man. He wished to restore to melody that purity which it had lost in the hands of trained musicians. One has but to recall the Italian operatic melody of the last century, to perceive how curiously vapid a BEETHOVEN. 65 tone-spectre, exclusively devoted to fashion and its ends, that melody was. By it, and through its use, music had become deeply degraded, so that men's eager taste constantly hankered after some new tune, as the tune of yesterday was no longer fit to be heard to-day. Yet, in the main, instrumental music, too, drew its sustenance from that sort of melody ; and we have already seen how it was made use of for the ends of a social life, anything rather than noble. Haydn forthwith took up the sturdy and jolly dance- tunes of the people, which, as is sufficiently obvious, he often appropriated from the dances of the neigh- bouring Hungarian peasants. So far he remained in a lower sphere, closely confined within the limits of its local character. But from what sphere was melody to be taken, if it was to bear a noble, enduring character? For those peasants' dance- tunes of Haydn's were chiefly attractive as piquant oddities ; they could not be expected to form a purely human art-type, valid for all times. Yet it was impossible to derive such melody from the higher sphere of society, for that sphere was ruled by the vicious, cockered, curlicued melody of the opera-singer and ballet-dancer. 66 BEETHOVEN. Beethoven, too, took Haydn's course ; only he was no longer content to treat popular dance-tunes so as to furnish entertainment at a princely table, but he played them, in an ideal sense, to the people them- selves. It was now a Scotch, then a Russian, or an Old French people's-tune, in which he recognised that nobility of innocence he dreamt of, and at whose feet he did homage with his whole art. And with an Hungarian peasant's-dance he played (in the last movement of his A-major symphony) a tune to all nature, so that whoever should see her dancing to it might deem he saw a new planet arise before his very eyes in the prodigious circling vortex. But the problem was to find the arch-type of purity, the ideal " good man " of this creed, and to wed him to his " God is love." One might almost trace the master upon this track already in his " Sinfonia Eroica ; " it is as though he meant to use the uncommonly simple theme of the last movement, which he also carried out elsewhere, as the groundwork for this purpose ; but, whatever of transporting Melos he built upon that theme, belongs rather too much to the senti- mental Mozartian cantabile, which he expanded and BEETHOVEN. dj developed in such a peculiar way,* to serve as a type of an achievement in the sense intended. The trace is more distinct in the jubilant final movement of the C-minor symphony, in which the simple march melody, based almost entirely upon tonic and dominant and the natural notes of horns and trumpets, moves us so much the more by its grand simplicity, as the preceding symphony now appears as a protracted preparation, holding us in suspense, like clouds, moved now by storms, now by delicate breezes, from which at length the sun bursts forth in full splendour. But the C-minor symphony (we introduce this apparent digression as important to the subject) engages our attention as one of the rarer con- ceptions of the master in which, from a ground of painful agitation, passion soars upwards on a scale of consolation, exultation, to a final outburst of consciously triumphant joy. Here the lyric pathos almost touches upon an ideal dramatic sphere ; and, whilst it may appear dubious whether the purity of musical conception might not thus be impaired — as it must lead to the introduction of ideas which seem quite ahen to the spirit of music — it should, on the * See "tJber das Dirigiren.'' 68 BEETHOVEN. Other hand, not be overlooked that the master was by no means led thither by any aberration of aestheti- cal speculation, but solely by an instinct, altogether ideal, which germinated in the true domain of music. This instinct coincided, as we have shown at the outset of this latter investigation, with an effort to rescue the faith in the primitive goodness of man, or perhaps to regain it, in the face of all protests of experience that might be referred to mere delusion. Those conceptions of the master's which originated mainly in the spirit of sublime serenity, belonged, as we saw above, for the most part to that period of his beatific isolation which, after complete deafness had set in, seems to have entirely removed him from the world of suffering. There is, perhaps, no need to assume a decline of that inner serenity on the ground of the. more painful mood, which now appears in certain of Beethoven's most important conceptions ; for we should assuredly err were we to believe that an artist can ever conceive save in deep serenity of soul. The mood expressed by the conception must therefore pertain to the idea of the world itself, which the artist apprehends, and interprets in the work of art. But then, as we positively assumed that an Idea of the world is revealed in music, so the BEETHOVEN. 69 conceiving musician must above all be taken as himself included in that Idea ; and what he utters is not his view of the world, but rather the world itself, wherein weal and woe, grief and joy alternate. The conscious doubt, also, of the man Beethoven, was included in this world, and thus that doubt speaks immediately y and in no wise as the object of reflec- tion from within him, when he expresses the idea of the world in such a manner as in his ninth sym- phony, the first movement of which certainly dis- plays the Idea of the world in its most appalling light. But, on the other hand, the deliberately regulating will of its creator especially prevails in that work ; we meet with it openly where he addresses the rage of despair that constantly recurs after each quieting, with actually spoken words, as with the cry of anguish emitted by one awakening from frightful dreams ; and the ideal sense of those words is none other than " Man is good, for all that." Not only criticism, but unbiassed feeling, has always taken offence at seeing the master as it were drop from out of his music, step forth from the magic circle he had drawn, and thus appeal, of a sudden, to a mode of conception quite other than the musical. This unheard-of artistic 70 BEETHOVEN. event does, in truth, resemble the precipitous waken- ing from a dream ; but, at the same time, we feel its beneficent action after the uttermost fright of the dream; for never before had a musician led us so to realise the appalling torments of the world. It was actually a plunge of despair, through which the divinely naive master, fulfilled with his own magic, entered the new world of light, in the soil whereof bloomed the long sought, divinely sweet, innocently pure melody of humanity. But the master had not lost his way ; with the regulating will, just pointed out, that led him to this melody, we see him still remaining in the realms of music as the Idea of the world ; for in truth, it is not the sense of the words that takes hold of us when the human voice enters, but the tone of the human voice itself. Nor do the thoughts expressed in Schiller's verses occupy us henceforth, but rather the cordial sound of choral singing in which we feel invited to join, as was actually done in Bach's great "Passion music" at the entrance of the Chorale, and to partici- pate, as congregation, in the ideal divine service. It is quite evident that Schiller's words have only been made to fit the main melody as best they could ; for that melody is at first fully developed, and emitted BEETHOVEN. 71 by instruments alone, when it inspires us with inex- pressible emotions of joy at the "paradise regained." The most consummate art has never produced anything artistically more simple than that melody, the childlike innocence of which, when it is first heard in the most equable whisper of the bass stringed in- struments, in unison, breathes upon us as with a saintly breath. It now becomes the plain song (Cantus firmus), the Chorale of the new congregation, around which, as in the church-chorale of Sebastian Bach, the harmonic voices form contrapuntal groups as they severally enter ; there is nothing like the sweet fervour to which every newly-added voice further animates this prototype of purest innocence, until every embellishment, every glory of elevated feel- ing, unites in it and around it, like the breathing world round a finally revealed dogma of purest love. If we survey the progress which music has made under Beethoven from an historical point of view, we may briefly describe it as the attainment of a faculty which had previously been denied to it : by virtue of this faculty music, from the confines of aesthetical beauty, strides into the sphere of the Sublime; and in this sphere it has been released from all constraint 72 BEETHOVEN. of traditional or conventional forms, and it completely penetrates and animates these forms with its proper spirit. And this achievement appears evident to every human heart and mind by the character Beet- hoven has imparted to the chief form of all music, Melody : for melody has now regained the highest natufaTsimplicity, as the source from which it can be renewed and invigorated at any time, and for any requirement, and expanded to the highest, richest variety. And we may group all this under one head, intelligible to every one. Melody, through Beethoven, has become emancipated from the influ- ence of fashion and fluctuating taste, and elevated to an ever valid, purely human type. Beethoven's music will be understood at any time, whilst the music of his predecessors will, for the most part, remain intelligible only through the medium of light thrown upon it by the history of art. But still another advance is perceptible upon the path in which Beethoven reached his decisively important goal of ennobling Melody ; it is the new significance Vocal music attained, in relation to purely instrumental music; — That significance was hitherto alien to the forms of mixed vocal and instrumental music. BEETHOVEN. 73 The species of mixed vocal and instrumental music one meets with chiefly in compositions for the Church Service, may unhesitatingly be taken for deteriorated vocal music, inasmuch as the orchestra is employed only to strengthen or to accompany the voices. Bach's church music is only intelligible through the chorus ; but then he treats the chorus with the freedom and mobility of an orchestra of instruments ; which actually led to the use of the orchestra to strengthen and support it. By the side of that mingling of choral and in- strumental forces, and in connection with the ever increasing decline of the spirit of church music, we meet with an admixture of Italian opera-singing, with orchestral accompaniments, after the different fashions in vogue for the time being. It was reserved for the genius of Beethoven to employ the art-complex re- sulting from such mixtures, simply in the sense of an orchestra of enhanced capabilities. His Missa Solemnis is a purely symphonic work of the most genuine Beethovenian spirit. The vocal parts are treated entirely in that sense of " human instruments," which Schopenhauer, quite correctly, wished to see accorded to them : one does not take the text which is set to them in this grand sacred composition in its 74 BEETHOVEN. conceptional significance,* for it serves the musical work solely as material for singing ; and it does not disturb our musical sensations, because it in no wise arouses concepts of reason, but rather, in keeping with its religious character, it only leaves upon us the impression of well-known symbolical formularies of faith. We are all aware that Music loses nothing of its character even when very different words are set to it; and this fact proves that the relation of music to the art of poetry is an entirely illusory one; for it holds true that when music is heard with singing added thereto, it is not the poetical thought, which, especially in choral pieces, can hardly be articulated intelligibly, that is grasped by the auditor; but, at best, only that element of it which, to the musician, seemed suitable for music, and which his mind trans- muted into music. A union of music with poetry must, therefore, always result in such a subordina- tion of the latter, that one can but be surprised at seeing how our great poets considered and re- considered the problem of a union of the two arts, or actually tried to solve it. Evidently they were enticed by the effect of music in the opera; and it * " Seiner begrifBichen Bedeutung.'' BEETHOVEN. 75 certainly appeared as though this was the sole field upon which a solution of the problem might be looked for. Now, whether the expectation of our poets referred more to the formal regularity in point of structure, or to the power of deeply touching heart and mind which pertains to music, it still remains obvious, that they could have intended nothing else than to make use of the powerful auxiliaries apparently at hand, so as to give a more precise and incisive expression to their poetical conceptions. It might well appear to them that music would gladly per- form this service, if in place of trivial opera-subjects and opera-texts they were to supply it with some genuine poetical conception. But they may have, been deterred from serious attempts in this direction by a vague but rightly deduced doubt as to whether a poem, if combined with music, would be noticed as such at all. On careful reflection it could not have escaped them that in the opera, apart from the music, the scenic occurrences only, and not the poeti- cal thoughts explaining them, occupy the auditor's attention — and that the opera engages, alternately, sight and hearing only. That neither the one nor the other receptive faculty can get complete aesthe- 76 BEETHOVEN. tical satisfaction in the opera, obviously arises from the fact explained above, that operatic music does not produce that devoutly attentive state which is alone in keeping with music, a state wherein the eye is depotentialised in such wise that it no longer perceives objects with its customary intensity; on the other hand, we found that, in the opera, music touches us but superficially, excites rather than fills us, and that accordingly we desire to see something, — but by no means to think about something; for we are deprived of any power to think, by that very oscillation of the desires for amusement, which at bottom are but struggles against tedium. After the foregoing reflections we are sufficiently acquainted with Beethoven's peculiar nature easily to understand his position regarding the opera, whdn he most emphatically declined ever to set an opera-text of frivolous tendency. Ballets, shows, fireworks, sensual love-intrigues, &c., to write music for such he refused with horror. Give him an entire, high-hearted, and passionate action, and his music will permeate it completely. What poet was to lend him a hand .' An attempt once made brought him in contact with a dramatic situation, that was at least free from the frivolity he hated BEETHOVEN. 7/ SO much, and which moreover, by the glorification of woman's fidehty, chimed with the master's humanitarian dogma. Still that operatic subject embraced so much that is alien and unassimilable to music that, properly speaking, only the great Overture to Leonora shows clearly what Beet- hoven would have us understand by a drama. Who can listen to this transporting piece of music without feeling convinced that music also embraces the most perfect drama? Is not the dramatic action of the text of the opera " Leonora " an almost repulsive dilation of the drama presented in the Overture .-' akin, perhaps, to one of Gervinus' tedious explanatory comments on a scene of Shakespeare's .-' We all feel this to be so, but we can make it clearer by returning to the philosophical explanation of music itself. Music which does not represent the ideas con- tained in the phenomena of the world, but is itself an Idea, indeed, a comprehensive Idea of the world, embraces the drama as a matter of course, seeing that the drama, again, represents the only Idea of the world adequate to music. The drama reaches beyond the confines of poetic art, as music reaches beyond those of other arts, the 7 8 BEETHOVEN. plastic arts especially, since its effects lie solely in the region of the Sublime. As the drama does not describe human characters but exhibits them im- mediately, so the motives (figures) of a piece of music give the character of the world's phenomena in the abstract. The movement, changes, and shape of these figures are not only related analogically to the Drama, but the Drama representing the Idea can in truth be understood with perfect clearness only through those very musical motives that thus move, change and take shape. We might recognise in music man's a priori qualification for constructing the Drama in general. As we construct the world of phenomena by the laws of time and space which are prefigured d priori in our brain, so, again, the conscious exhibition of the Idea of the world in the drama would be pre- figured by those inner laws of music, which uncon- sciously make themselves valid in a dramatist's mind,* just as the laws of causality are unconsciously applied for the perception of the phenomenal world. It was a presentiment of this that occupied our great German poets; and perhaps it might have * Schiller to Goethe, Corresp. March iSth, 1796. "With me the poetical Idea is preceded by a certain musical mood," BEETHOVEN. 79 furnished them with the mysterious key to Shakes- peare who, on other grounds, was deemed inex- plicable. By no analogy with any other poet could that mighty dramatist be grasped, and no aesthetic esti- mate of him has, as yet, been fully established. His dramas appear as so immediate an image of the world, that the artist's mediation in the presentation of the Idea is not perceptible, and can certainly not be adduced by criticism; wherefore, taken as the products of a superhuman genius, they became to our great poets (almost like wonders of nature) a study for the discovery of the laws of their produc- tion. How far Shakespeare stood above the poet proper is often shown crudely enough by the uncommon fidelity of his delineation; for instance when, during the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar, the poet is simply treated as a silly creature; whilst the supposed "Poet" Shakespeare is nowhere to be found, save in his dramatic char- acters. Shakespeare, therefore, remained wholly incom- parable, until German genius produced in Beethoven a being that can only be analogically explained by comparison with him. 80 BEETHOVEN. Take Shakespeare's dramatic world with the un- common pregnancy and distinctness of characters that move and meet in it, compress it to get a total impression upon your innermost feeling ; then take Beethoven's world of musical motives with their irre- sistible penetrativeness and precision, and you wilL perceive that either of these worlds completely covers the other, that each is contained in the other, though they seem to move in entirely different spheres. To get a better notion of this, let us take the Overture to Coriolanus for an example in which Beethoven and Shakespeare come in contact on the same subject. If we call to mind the impression left upon us by the Coriolanus of Shakespeare's drama, and retain such details of the complicated action only as were impressive with regard to the chief character, the single figure of a Coriolanus defiant will arise before us, in conflict with an inner voice, which, again, in the person of his mother, speaks louder and stronger to his pride ; and the dramatic development will appear to consist in the mastering of his pride by that voice, in the breaking of the defiance of his extraordinarily powerful nature. Beethoven chose for his drama these two chief motives only, and they induce us to feel the essen- BEETHOVEN. 8 1 tial nature of those two characters more distinctly than any conceptional presentation thereof. Now, if we devoutly follow the movement which develops from the juxtaposition of these motives and belongs solely to their musical character, and if we permit the purely musical details which comprise the modi- fications, the contact, the divisions, increase, and climax of these motives, to act upon us, we shall then be on the trace of a drama which, in its peculiar way, contains all the complicated action and attri- tion of lesser characters, that engage our interest in the work of the stage-poet.* What moved us there as an action so displayed that we almost lived through it ourselves, we apprehend here as the in- most kernel of that action ; for the characters there determine the action like powers of nature; and, similarly here, the movement is determined by the musician's motives which are essentially identical with those that move the characters of the poet. Only in that sphere those, and in this sphere these laws of expansion and motion prevail. As we have called music the revelation of the inmost dream-image of the world, Shakespeare might * Beethoven's overture was v^ritten for a play entitled CoHolan by Von Collin ; but the master was familiar with Eschenbach's translation of Shakespeare. 82 BEETHOVEN. be taken as Beethoven dreaming on, while awake. Their two spheres are kept asunder by the formal condition of the laws of perception prevailing in each. It appears to follow, therefore, that the most perfect artistic form would spring from the point whereat the laws might touch. Now that which makes Shakes- peare so incomprehensible, so incomparable, is the fact that with him the forms of the drama (which still tinged the plays of the great Calderon with brittle conventionality, and turned them into " artist's work " proper) are filled by Shakespeare with such buoyant life, that they appear taken direct and perforce from nature : we appear to see real men before us, not artificially formed ones ; and yet they stand at such a wonderful distance that any real contact with them seems as impossible as though they were apparitions. Now, in his relations to the formal laws of his art, and in his free penetration of them, Beethoven was just Hke Shakespeare ; and we may hope to reach the point of contact, or of transition already touched upon, if we again take our philosopher for a guide, and return to the object he aims at in his hypo- thetical theory of dreams, the explanation of ap- paritions. The question will turn, not on the BEETHOVEN. 8 3 metaphysical, but upon the physiological explana- tion of the so-called " second sight." * The organ of dreams was there taken as having its function in that part of the brain which is excited by impressions from the organism during deep sleep (whilst that organism is occupied with its internal affairs) in a manner analogous to that in which the extroverted part of the brain directly connected with the organs of sense, and for the time being perfectly quiet, becomes excited when awake by impressions of the external world. The dream-communication con- ceived by virtue of that inner organ could only be transmitted allegorically by a second dream just before waking, since, during the preparation for the final wakening of the extroverted brain, the form of cognition of the world of phenomena, time and space, had to be applied, and in consequence an image was constructed in every respect akin to the common experiences of life. We then compared the musi- cian's work to the vision of a somnambulist who had reached the stage of clairvoyance ; as though the musical work appeared to us like the immediate image of the somnambulist's innermost dream, which is now communicated to the outer world, during the * Supplement i. 84 BEETHOVEN. most excited state of clairvoyance ; and we dis- covered the channel through which this communica- tion takes place in the direction of the origin and the formation of the world of sounds. By the side of this physiological phenomenon of somnambulistic clairvoyance, which we took up by way of analogy, let us now place the phenomenon of apparitions ; and in doing so let us again make use of Schopenhauer's hypothetical explanation ; accord- ing to which it is a clairvoyance which takes place whilst the brain is awake ; i.e., he asserts that it takes place in consequence of a depotentialisation of the waking sight ; which sight, being as it were under a veil, is employed by the inner impulse to convey a communication to consciousness (which is on the very verge of waking) in order to exhibit the image that appeared to it in the deepest dream. The image thus projected from the interior before the eye in no wise pertains to the real phenomenal world ; yet it lives before the spirit-seer with all the indicia of an actual being. By the side of this projection of the image beheld by the inner Will, and which only in the rarest and most extraordinary cases it succeeds in holding up to the eyes of one awake, let us now place Shakespeare ; let us take him as one who sees BEETHOVEN. 8 5 and banns, apparitions, one who knows how to take the shapes of men of all times from his innermost vision, and place them before his own and our eyes so that they shall seem actually alive. As soon as we have mastered this analogy and its fullest consequences we may designate Beethoven, whom we compared to a clairvoyant Somnambulist, as the active fundament,* the motive power, of Shakespeare seeing apparitions : tJiat which brings forth Beethoven's melodies, also projects the spirit- shapes of Shakespeare ; they will permeate one another, and unite into one identical being, if we allow the musician, when he enters the world of sound, simultaneously to enter the world of light. And this might happen in a manner analogous to the physiological occurrence which, on the one hand, becomes the basis of apparitions and, on the other, produces somnambulistic clairvoyance ; and with regard to which it is to be assumed that an inner excitation penetrates the brain in an outward direc- tion (being the reverse of what takes place in a waking state), and thus, passing outward, touches upon the organs of sense and induces them to attest outwards that which, as Object, has made its way * "Den wirkenden Untergrund des geistersehenden Shakespeares." 86 BEETHOVEN. from the interior. Now we have also affirmed the indisputable fact that when sympathetically listen- ing to music our vision is depotentialised in such wise that objects are no longer perceived distinctly : accordingly this would be the state induced by the inmost world of dreams, which, depotentialising the vision, renders the phenomena of apparitions possible. This hypothetical explanation of an otherwise in- explicable physiological occurrence can be employed in various ways to solve the artistic problem now before us, and with the same result in each case. By the complete awakening of the inner organ of music Shakespeare's spirit-shapes would be made to speak in tones : Beethoven's musical motives would inspire the depotentialised vision clearly to recognise those spirit-shapes ; and these shapes again would now appear as though they were Beethoven's musical motives embodied, and actually moving before the clairvoyant eye. In the one as well as in the other of these essentially identical cases, the enormous power which here, contrary to natural law, moves from within towards the exterior (in the sense of the formation of spirit-phenomena already dwelt upon), must spring from some deepest need ; and this need would probably prove identical with that which in BEETHOVEN. 8 J common life produces the cry of anguish of one suddenly waking from an oppressive vision of deep sleep ; only that here in an extraordinary, prodigious case, a case shaping the life of the genius of human- ity, the need conducts to a new world of clearest cognition and highest capacity, that could not have been laid open in any other way than through such an awakening. But we have witnessed an awakening caused by deepest need in that remarkable leap from instru- mental into vocal music, in Beethoven's ninth sym- phony, which has remained such a stumbling-block to ordinary assthetical criticism, and from which we started upon our extensive investigation. This leap causes us to feel that there was a certain excess, a violent necessity for a discharge outwards, entirely comparable to the impulse to waken from a deeply disquieting dream ; and it is significant for the art- genius of humanity that an artistic deed was called forth by that impulse through which a new power, the capability of generating the highest work of art, was imparted to it. We may surmise that that work of art would be the most complete Drama, reaching far beyond the work of poetic art proper. Having recognised the 88 BEETHOVEN. identity of Shakespeare's drama with Beethoven's, we may be permitted to conclude that the work of art we have in mind would bear the same relation to the " opera " as a Shakespearian piece to a " drama of Hterature,'' i.e., a printed play, or a symphony of Beethoven's to an operatic piece. Our estimation of that remarkable leap from instrumental into vocal music, should not be dis- turbed by the fact that in the course of his ninth symphony, Beethoven simply returns to the regular choral cantata with orchestral. We have already taken account of this choral part of the symphony, and recognised it as belonging to the proper field of music : apart from the ennobling of the melody, upon which we entered above, there is nothing un- precedented in it as regards form; it is a cantata with words, and the music bears no relation to the verses other than it would bear to any " vocal text." We know that the verses of " text writers," though they were Goethe's or Schiller's, cannot determine the music ; the Drama only can do this, and indeed not the dramatic poem, but the drama actually mov- ing before our eyes, as the visible counterpart of the music ; wherein word and speech belong to the action, and no longer serve to express a poetical thought. BEETHOVEN. 89 It is therefore not Beethoven's particular -work, but the musician's unheard-of artistic deed contained in it, that we should take as the culminating point in the development of his genius ; and we declare that the work of art entirely formed and quickened by that deed, would also present the most complete artistic form ; for in that form, as regards the drama, and especially as regards music, every conventionality would be entirely abolished. This then would be the sole new Art-form ade- quate to the German spirit so powerfully individual- ised in our great Beethoven ; a purely human form, yet indigenous, and originally German, a form that the modern world, in comparison with the antique, has hitherto lacked. Whoever is influenced by the views I have advanced regarding Beethoven's music, cannot escape being held to be phantastic and extravagant. Such reproach will be cast upon him not only by our educated and uneducated musicians of the day who have expe- rienced the dream-vision .of music referred to, in the shape of Bottom the weaver's vision in A Mid- summer-Night's Dream, but especially by our literary poets, and even plastic artists in so far as these 90 BEETHOVEN. trouble themselves at all about questions that appear to lead entirely away from their sphere. But it is easy to make up one's mind to bear such reproaches calmly, even if they should be put forth contemptu- ously, in a manner meant to be insulting, and with an ignoring of all we have actually done and said ; for it is clear enough that such people are quite unable to realise what we see, or at best see only so much of it as might be needful to throw a light on their own sterility ; and it need not remain dubious why they should shrink from such a light. If we consider the character of our present literary and artistic public life, a notable change, that has taken place within about a generation, is perceptible. It would nowadays appear not only possible, but to a considerable extent certain, that the great period of German regeneration, with its Goethe and Schiller, will henceforth be looked down upon, though perhaps with a " well-tempered " depreciation. A generation ago this was not quite so : the character of the age was then openly proclaimed " essentially critical." People designated the spirit of the time as a " paper spirit " — and thought it advis- able to accord even to the plastic arts a merely repro- ductive activity, deprived of every trace of origin- ality, and content with the use and combination of BEETHOVEN. 9 1 inherited types. One must assume that people saw more clearly, and spoke more frankly then, than they do nowadays. Whoever therefore, despite the confident bearing of our literati, sculptors, builders, and others who have intercourse with the public mind, still adheres to the opinion that formerly ob- tained, will be more inclined to agree with us, when we undertake to place the incomparable significance music has attained with regard to the growth of our culture, in its proper light. For this purpose let us turn from the inner world that has so far absorbed us, to the aspects of the outer world in which we live, and under the pressure of which that inner being has become possessed of its present reactionary power towards the exterior. But not to lose our way in a wide-spread maze among the facts of the history of culture, let us take up a trait, characteristic of the spirit of the immediate present. Whilst German forces are victoriously penetrating to the centre of French civilisation,* a feeling of shame has of a sudden risen amongst us about our depend- ence upon that civilisation, and it appears publicly in the shape of an appeal to lay aside the fashion- able costumes of Paris. Patriotic feeling seems at * 1870. 92 BEETHOVEN. last to have found that objectionable, which the nation's aesthetic sense of propriety not only endured so long without the slightest protest, but which our public spirit eagerly and zealously emulated. What, indeed, did a plastic artist see when looking at our public life ? a life that furnished nothing but materials for the caricatures of the comic papers, whilst our poets imperturbably reiterated their congratulations to " German womanhood ! " — Surely this singularly complicated phenomenon needs no comment ! — It might perhaps be taken as a passing evil : one might expect that the blood of our sons, brothers, and husbands poured out for the boldest aspirations of the German spirit upon the most murderous battlefields history records, would at least cause our daughters, sisters, and wives to blush with shame, and that a noble need might rouse their pride, so that they would no longer care to present themselves to men as ridiculous caricatures. Now, to the honour of German women, we may gladly believe that a worthy feeling moves them in this direction ; yet pro- bably no one could avoid a smile when he first heard of an appeal made to them to provide themselves with a new costume. Who did not feel but that the matter turned upon a new, and perhaps very awk- BEETHOVEN. 93 ward masquerade ? For it is not an accidental whim of our public life, that we are under the sway of fashion ; just as there are valid reasons in the history of modern civilisation why the caprices of Parisian taste should dictate to us in matters of conventionality. In fact French taste, the spirit of Paris. and Versailles, has for two centuries been the sole productive ferment of European culture ; whilst no nation's spirit proved capable of forming types of art, the French spirit produces at least the external form of society, and to this day, the fashionable costume. Now these phenomena may perhaps be undigni- fied, still they are indigenous in France, and suit the French spirit ; they express it as distinctly and obviously as the Italians of the Renaissance, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians and Assyrians have expressed themselves in their types of art ; and there is nothing more significant as to the fact that the French are the ruling people of the civilisation of our day, than that our fancy at once stumbles upon the ludicrous if we only imagine ourselves trying to get rid of their fashions. We see at a glance that a " German fashion " opposed to a French fashion would be something utterly absurd; and as our feeling nevertheless revolts against that rule, we have finally 94 BEETHOVEN. to confess ourselves fallen under a veritable curse, from which only a regeneration infinitely deep could redeem us. That is to say, our entire nature would have to change, so that the very idea of fashion would become utterly meaningless, even as regards our external life. We may now with great caution draw our con- clusions as to what this regeneration would have to consist in, after having first inquired into the cause of the deep decay of public taste for art. As the use of analogies has already, in connection with the main subject of our investigation, led, with some degree of success, to results otherwise hard to attain, let us again try a province of reflection apparently remote, but wherein we may at all events gain a complement to our views concerning the plastic character of our public life. If we want a notion of a true paradise of mental productivity, we must turn to times before letters were invented, or written upon parchment or paper. We shall find that the entire elements of culture, that now only continue to exist as a matter for speculation, or as means to be adapted to ends, were then born. Poetry was nothing else than the actual invention of myths, i.e., of ideal occurrences. BEETHOVEN. 95 wherein human life was reflected in objective reality, according to its varying character, in the sense of immediate apparitions. We notice every nobly dis- posed people in possession of that capability, up to the time when written characters are introduced. From that time forwards the poetical power wanes ; language, hitherto steadily and naturally developing, falls into a process of crystallisation and grows rigid ; poetry becomes the art of adorning the old myths, now no longer to be invented, and it ends as rhetoric and dialectics. Let us now realise the leap from writing to the art of printing. From a costly written book, the master of the house formerly read to his family and guests ; but now every one reads printed books in silence, for himself, and authors write for readers. One must recall the religious sects of the Reforma- tion, their disputations and petty tracts, to catch a glimpse of the raging delirium that took hold of the heads of men possessed v^x'Ca. printer's type. It may be assumed that the healthy spirit of the Reforma- tion was saved by Luther's glorious chorale, for it swayed heart and mind, and cured the cerebral typomania. Still, the genius of a people could come to an understanding with the printer, wretched as it 96 BEETHOVEN. might find the intercourse ; but since the invention of newspapers, and the full bloom of journalism, the good spirit of the people has been forced to retire altogether from public life. For now opinions * only rule — " public opinions ; " and they can be had for money, like public women : whoever takes in a newspaper has procured its " opinions " over and above the waste paper; he need not think or reflect any further ; what is to be thought of God and the world lies ready before him in black and white. And why should not a Parisian " Journal des Modes " tell " German womanhood " how it is to dress ? For Frenchmen have acquired a full right to tell us what is correct in such matters since tliey have risen to be the proper "illustrators in colour" of our journal- istic paper-world. Compare the transformation of a poetical world into a journalistic-literary world, with the transforma- tion the world has undergone with regard to form and colour, and you will get the same result. Who would be presumptuous enough to declare he could really form a conception of the grandeur, the divine sublimity of the plastic world of Grecian Antiquity? Every glance at a single fragment of * "Meinung-en." BEETHOVEN. 97 its ruins, causes us to feel with awe, that we stand before an aspect of life, for the estimation of which we cannot even find the slightest standard. That world has acquired the prerogative to teach all times, from its very ruins, how the remaining course of life in the world might, in some measure, be made endurable. We are thankful to the great Italians, that they revived that teaching, and nobly introduced it to our later world. We see the Italian people, so highly endowed with rich fancy, actually exhaust themselves in the passionate fostering of that teaching ; after a wonderful century the Italians vanish like a dream from history; and history now, by mistake, takes hold of an apparently kindred people, as though it were to see what could be got from them, with regard to the world's form and colour. After the Protes- tant spirit had been completely eradicated from the French people, an astute statesman and ecclesias- tical Prince sought to innoculate their spirit with Italian art and culture : they had seen their noblest heads fall, and what was spared at the Parisian mar- riage of blood * had finally been exterminated, burnt down to the very stump. Thereafter the remainder of the nation was treated * "St. Bartholomew's Eve." gS BEETHOVEN. " artistically ; " but as fancy was not forthcoming, or had expired among them, productivity was likewise not forthcoming, and they remained peculiarly inept to create a type of art. The attempt to make an artificial being of a Frenchman personally, succeeded better ; the artistic conceptions, which'did not enter into his fancy, could be turned into an artificial presentation of the entire man himself. This might even pass for antique : i.e., if it be assumed that a man should be made to deal artistically with his proper person, ere he can be asked to bring forth works of art. If then an adored and gallant king set the proper example by an uncommonly delicate demeanour towards everybody and everything, it was easy to start from that climax and, descending through the courtiers, at length induce the entire people to accept "gallant" manners, the cultivation of which was fostered till it became quite a second nature, and a Frenchman might in the end deem himself superior to an Italian of the Renaissance, inasmuch as the latter had produced works of art only, whereas the Frenchman had made a " work of art " of his proper person. One may say of a Frenchman that he is the pro- duct of a special art of expressing, moving, and BEETHOVEN. 99 dressing himself. His rule for this is " taste," a word derived from the lowest function of the senses, and used for an intellectual capacity. With that "taste" a Frenchman relishes himself, after the manner of his " dressing," like a well-concocted sauce. And assuredly, he has become a virtuoso in the matter : he is thoroughly " modern ; " and if he sets himself up as a model to the civilised world, it is not his fault, if he should be imitated awkwardly ; it does him steady credit rather, that he is original, in that wherein others feel bound to imitate him. This sort of man is thoroughly "journalistic" too ; plastic art, and music no less, is a matter of " Feuilleton " to him. As a thoroughly modern person he has arranged his plastic arts like his costume ; he is fond of change, and proceeds accordingly. Here the furniture is the chief consideration ; for its sake the architect constructs the building. The spirit accord- ing to which this was formerly accomplished was, up to the Revolution at least, original in the sense that it suited the character of the reigning classes of society, much as their costume sat well on their bodies, and their wigs on their heads. Since then, however, this spirit has waned ; for the upper classes left the initiative to the broader strata 100 BEETHOVEN. of society, which (we still keep Paris in view) have since attained importance. The so-called demi- monde, with its supporters, now sets the example. A Parisian lady seeks to make herself attractive to her husband by imitating its customs and costumes ; for here, at least, everything is still original, since customs and costumes belong together, and complete one another. The demi-monde renounced all at- tempts at influencing the plastic arts, until these, at length, have passed over to the domain of the dealers in artistic fashions, bric-a-brac and uphol- sterer's work — almost like the first beginnings of art among nomadic peoples. There is a constant demand for novelty ; and as fashion never produces anything really new, its sole expedient lies in changes from one extreme to the other. And in point of fact it is this tendency of which our strangely advised artists have finally caught hold, in order again to bring to light noble artistic forms — of course not of their own invention. Thus Antique and Rococco, Gothic and Renaissance, alternate ; the factories furnish Laocoon-groups, Chinese porcelain, copies after Raphael and Murillo, Etruscan vases, mediaeval hangings; furniture a la Pompadour, Stuccaturi a la Louis XIV., are added ; and an architect encloses BEETHOVEN. lOI the whole in Florentine style, and puts an Ariadne group on top. " Modern Art '' thus becomes a new principle for sestheticians : its originality consists in the utter lack of originality, and its incommensurable gain in the bartering of all styles of art, which can now be dis- tinguished by the commonest intelligence, and used to suit everybody's taste. But a new humanitarian principle is also attributed to modern art: the democratisation of a taste for art. We are invited to hope for a better education of the people by vir- tue of this phenomenon, and are told that art and its productions no longer exist for the delight of the privileged classes, that now the meanest citizen has a chance to put the noblest types of art upon his chimney-piece, and that even a beggar may regale himself at the show windows of the art shops. In any case we are advised to rest satisfied with things as they are ; since now, that everything lies pell-mell before us, it seems downright incomprehensible that even the most gifted intelligence should hit upon a new style either for plastic art, or literature. We can but concur in such a judgment; for we are dealing with an outcome of history fully as con- sistent as is that of our civilisation in greneral. 102 BEETHOVEN. It might be conceivable that this outcome should become blunted, i.e., in the downfall of our civilisa- tion ; which might perhaps be deemed possible, supposing all history were thrown of a heap, as a result of social communism, should that power ever master the modern world in the sense of a practical religion. In any case the true productivity of our civilisation, at least as regards its plastic forms, has come to an end ; and we shall finally do well to accustom ourselves not to expect anything in this department approaching the antique world, which remains an unattainable prototype. We shall prob- ably have to remain content with these strange, and, to some people, estimable results of modern civilisa- tion, conscious that any protest against them is as much a vain reaction against the spirit of our civilisation, as an attempt to set up a new German costume for ourselves or our wives. For as far as the eye reaches, we are ruled by Fashion. But by the side of the world of fashion another world has simultaneously arisen. As Christianity arose from under the universal civilisation of Rome, so from the chaos of modern civilisation Music bursts forth. Both affirm: "our kingdom is not of BEETHOVEN. 103 this world." That is to say : we come from within, you from without ; we spring from the essential nature of things, you from their semblance. Let every one experience for himself how the entire modern world of phenomena that, to his despair, everywhere impenetrably hems him in, suddenly vanishes away as soon as he. hears the first bars of one of those divine symphonies. How could we possibly listen with any devotion to such music at one of our concert rooms (where Turcos and Zouaves might doubtless feel at ease !) if the physical surroundings did not vanish from our optical per- ception .'' Yet this is, taken in its most serious sense, the uniform effect of music over and against our entire modern civilisation ; music extinguishes it as sunshine does lamplight. It is difficult to form a distinct idea in what manner music has always manifested its special power in the presence of the world of phenomena. The music of the Hellenes appears to have thoroughly permeated the phenomenal world, and blended with the laws of its perceptibility. Assuredly Pythagoras' numbers are explicable only through music; the architect built according to the laws.of Rhythm and proportion ; after those of Harmony the plastic 104 BEETHOVEN. artist took up the human form ; the laws of melody made a singer of a poet, and from the midst of the choral song the drama was projected upon the stage. Everywhere the inner law, interpreted through the spirit of music, determines the outer law which regulates the perceptible world : the idea of a true antique Doric State which Plato tried to fix as a philosophical conception, the order of war, the battle, all were conducted by the rules of music with the same certainty as the dance. But that paradise was lost : a world's primitive source of motion became exhausted. It moved on in the vortex of radiation, as a ball moves from an impetus received, but no impelling soul moved within it ; and so the move- ment slackened in the end ; — till the world's soul was wakened anew. The spirit of Christianity reanimated the soul of music. It transfigured the eye of the Italian pain- ters, and inspired their vision to pierce through the semblance of things to their soul ; i.e., to the spirit of Christianity, otherwise existing in the Church. Nearly all the great painters were musicians, and it is the spirit of music which leads us; while absorbed in the contemplation of their Saints and Martyrs, to forget that we are seeing. BEETHOVEN. I OS But the rule of fashion came round : as the spirit of the Church decayed under the artful discipline of the Jesuits, so music, together with the plastic arts, sank to soulless artificiality. Now we have followed the wonderful process of the emancipation of melody from the rule of fashion under our great Beethoven, and found that with incomparable originality he made use of all the ma- terials which his glorious predecessors had painfully wrested from the influence of fashion ; that he had given to melody its ever valid type, and restored to music its immortal soul. Moreover, our master with his peculiar divine naivetd, impressed upon his vic- tory the seal of the perfect consciousness with which he had won it. In Schiller's poem, which he set to the wonderful closing movement of his ninth symphony, he saw above all things the joy of nature free from the thraldom of " Fashion." Let us look at the remark- able interpretation he gives to the poet's words : — ' ' Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng getheilt." (Thy magic unites again What fashion has sternly severed.) As we have seen above, Beethoven set the words I06 BEETHOVEN. to the melody only as a vocal text, in the sense of a general harmony between the character of the poem and the spirit of the melody. In doing so he almost entirely disregards what one is accustomed to understand by correct declamation, particularly in a dramatic sense ; when the three first stanzas of the poem are sung he allows the verse " Was die Mode streng getheilt " (What fashion has sternly severed) to pass without any particular emphasis on the words. But then, after an unheard-of increase of dithyrambic exaltation he takes up the words of this verse with full dramatic passion, and as he re- peats them in menacing, almost furious unison, the word " streng " (strict, stern) does not suffice for his anger. — Curiously enough, this more moderate epithet for the action of fashion is due to a change by which the poet later in life weakened his verse ; for in the first edition of his " Ode to Joy " Schiller had printed " Was der mode Schwert getheilt ! " (What the sword of fashion has sundered.) Now this " sword " did not appear to Beethoven to be the right thing either; as applied to fashion he deemed it too noble and heroic. So on his own sovereign authority he inserted " frech " (insolent, BEETHOVEN. 10/ impudent), and we now sing " Was die Mode frech * getheilt." Can anything speak plainer than this remarkable, passionately vehement artistic act ? One sees Luther in his indignation against the Pope ! We may deem it certain, that our civihsation, as far as it determines artistic Man, can only be reani- mated by the spirit of music, — of that music which Beethoven released from the fetters of Fashion. And the task of leading the way in this sense to the new and more soulful civilisation, which per- haps may shape itself under that spirit, as well as to the new religion permeating that civilisation — this task must be reserved for the German spirit which we shall ourselves learn to comprehend properly, if we relinquish every false tendency ascribed to it< Self-knowledge, however, is difficult, particularly * In H artel's complete edition of Beethoven's works, so worthy of thanks in every way, a member of what I have elsewhere designated as the musical "Temperance Society," who was entrusted with the " criticism " of that edition, has eradicated this striking feature (page 260, etc., of the score of the ninth symphony), and for the "frech" of Schott's original edition, on his own responsibility substituted the highly respectable and modestly-moderate " streng." I have just, by accident, discovered this corruption which, on reflecting upon the motives that prompted it, might well fill one with shuddering presenti- ments as to the fate of our great Beethoven's works, if in time to come, they are to fall under a species of criticism progressively developed in this spirit. I08 BEETHOVEN. for an entire nation, as we have just learnt, with surprise and horror, from our hitherto so powerful neighbours, the French ; let this be a serious induce- ment to examine ourselves; for which purpose we have happily only to follow the earnest endeavours of our great poets, whose fundamental desire, conscious or unconscious, was this very self-knowledge. It must have been a matter of doubt to them how the uncouth and clumsy nature of Germans was to maintain itself, with any degree of advantage, by the side of the sure and lithe form of our neighbours of Romanic origin. As, on the other hand, the German spirit showed an undeniable superiority in the depth and warmth with which it apprehended the world and its phenomena, the question remained always, how that superiority was to be guided towards a happy development of the national character; and how, from this point onward, a favourable influence upon the spirit and character of neighbouring peoples might be hoped for ; whereas hitherto influences of that sort from without had, in a very obvious manner, acted injuriously rather than beneficially upon Ger- many. If we rightly understand the two chief poetical plans which run like main arteries through the life of BEETHOVEN. 109 our greatest poet, Goethe, we shall get the best guid- ance for the solution of the problem which occupied that freest of German men, from the very beginning of his incomparable poetical career. We know that the conceptions of "Faust," and "Wilhelm Meister," belong to that early period, when his poetical genius brought forth its first superabundant blos- soms. The profound fervency of the thought that filled him, prompted the execution of the rudimentary beginning of "Faust": as though frightened by the excess and incommensurability of his own conception, he turned from that mighty project to attack the problem in a calmer form, in " Wilhelm Meister." In ripe manhood he executed that smoothly-flowing Romance. His hero is the young German citizen's son, who passes by way of the stage, through aris- tocratic society, towards a useful cosmopolitanism, always in search of the forms of good manners and firm behaviour. A genius is given to him, which he understands but superficially : Wilhelm Meister sees in " Mignon " something similar to what Goethe then saw in music. The poet leads us to feel distinctly that a revolting crime is committed against " Mignon ;" but he conducts his hero, beyond reach of a similar feeling, towards calm culture, and into a sphere free from all -no BEETHOVEN. vehemence and tragical eccentricity. He takes him to contemplate paintings in a gallery. Music accom- panies Mignon's interment, and was actually com- posed later on by Robert Schumann. It appears Schiller revolted at the last book of Wilhelm Meister ; still, he probably did not know how to help his great friend out of the strange aberration ; especially as he had to assume that Goethe, who after all had created Mignon and called to life a wondrous new world in that creation, must have fallen into a state of deep inward distraction, from which a friend was powerless to awaken him. Only Goethe could rouse himself from it ; and — he did arise : for in extreme old age he completed his Faust. All that had ever distracted him, he here gathered together into one prototype of beauty. He exorcises the entire, full, antique ideal — Helen herself from the realm of shades, and weds her to his Faust. But the bann does not confine the Spirit: it becomes evanescent in a lovely fleeting cloud, and Faust gazes after it in thoughtful but painless melancholy. Gretchen only could redeem Faust : from the world of the Blessed, the early sacrificed one, who had ever tenderly hved on unheeded in the depths of his soul, reaches her hand to him. And if we may now be permitted an attempt to interpret that pro- BEETHOVEN. 1 1 1 roundest of poetical works, as we have before used analogical comparisons of a philosophical and physio- logical kind, let us take " Alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichniss " (All that is transient is but an alle- gory) for that spirit of the plastic arts which Goethe pursued so long and so well, — "Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan " (The eternal-womanly draws us on and upwards) for the spirit of music, that arose from the poet's deepest consciousness, and now pends above him, and leads him on the way of redemp- tion.* * " Chorus mysticus " {ai the close of Goethe^ s Faust, Part II.). " Alles Vergangliche Ist nur ein Gleichniss, Das Unzulangliche Hier wird es Ereigniss Das Unaussprechliche Hier wird es gethan Das Ewig- Weibliche Zieht uns hinan ! " (Bayard Taylor's version. ) " All things transitory But as symbols are sent : Earth's insufficiency Here grows to event : The Indescribable Here it is done : The Woman-Soul leadeth us Upward and on ! " 112 BEETHOVEN. And forward upon this way, starting from inner- most experience, the German spirit must lead its people, if it will bless the nation, as it is called upon to do. Ridicule us who may, whilst we attribute this great significance to German music ; we shall swerve as little, as the German people swerved when, with well calculated doubt as to its solidity and solidarity, its enemies ventured to insult it. And our foremost poet knew this too ; when Germans appeared so null and silly in their manners and ways, sprung from awkward imitation of others, his consolation was this : " Germans are brave." And that is something ! Let the German nation be brave in peace as well ; let it conserve its real worth, and cast off false sem- blance ; may it never desire to pass for what it is not, but rather recognise that in its own nature by which it stands alone. The gracefully pleasurable is denied to it ; but its true thought and action are heartfelt and sublime. And nothing can more inspiringly stand beside the triumphs of its bravery in this wonder- ful year 1870 than the memory of our great Beetho- ven, who just a hundred years ago was born to the German people. There, at the high seat of " insolent fashion," whither our weapons are now penetrating. BEETHOVEN. 1 1 3 his genius has already begun the noblest con- quest. What our thinkers, our poets, hampered by inadequate translations, have there touched unclearly, as it were with inarticulate sound, Beethoven's sym- phonies have already roused from the depths; the new religion, the world-redeeming announcement of sublimest innocence, is already understood there as with us. Let us then celebrate the great path-finder in the wilderness of degenerate paradise ! But let us cele- brate him worthily, — not less worthily than the vic- tories of German bravery : for the world's benefactor takes precedence of the world's conqueror ! H SUPPLEMENT I. FROM ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S " VERSUCH USER DAS GEISTERSEHEN UND WAS DAMIT ZUSAM- MENHANGT." (AN ESSAY ON VISIONS AND MATTERS CONNECTED THEREWITH.) "Parerga imd Paralipomena, I." — Berlin, 1851. Unb tag t>tr i:at:^en, IjaBe ©ie Sonne vX&ji ju Ucb unb ni^t bie ©tecne, ^omm, fotge mir in8 bunfle giei(i^ :§inabl (Soet^c. (And be advised, Love not the sun too much, nor yet the stars, Come, follow me to the realms of Night !) ( "7 ) Apparitions and magic, which the last century, over-wise and defiant of all its predecessors, banished rather than banned, appear to have been rehabili- tated in Germany d^Jring the last twenty-five years. Perhaps not without some show of reason. For the arguments against their existence were partly metaphysical and, as such, stood upon insecure ground; partly empirical, proving only that in the cases where no accidental, or purposely contrived delusion was discovered, there was nothing present that could have acted upon the retina by reflection of the rays of light, or upon the tympanum by vibrations of the air. But this speaks against the presence of bodies only, a presence which no one had maintained, and the manifestation of which in the said physical way, is not what is implied by an apparition. For properly speaking the idea of Il8 SUPPLEMENT I. a spectre, already includes the notion that its presence is known otherwise than as that of a body. One who sees spectres, if he understood and could express himself rightly, would simply maintain the presence of a picture in his perceptive intellect, altogether in- distinguishable from the picture which bodies pro- duce there through the mediation of light and of his eyes, and yet without the actual presence of such bodies ; similarly with regard to what may be heard, noises, tones and articulations, altogether like those produced through vibrating bodies and air in his ear, yet without the presence or movement of such bodies. Just here lies the source of the misunder- standing that permeates all that is said for and against the reality of spectral phenomena : i.e., spectral phenomena present themselves entirely like bodily phenomena ; but they are not such, and are not supposed to be such. This distinction is difficult, and requires knowledge of the matter, and even of philosophy and physiology. For it is needful to comprehend that an influence like that of a body does not necessarily involve the presence of a body. To begin with, we shall therefore have to recall and steadily keep in view what I have repeatedly ON VISIONS. 119 shown at length,* that our perception of the external world is not only sensual, but principally intellectual, i.e., expressed objectively, cerebral. The senses never' give more than a mere sensation in the organ of sense, in itself a very scanty supply, from which, subsequently, the understanding constructs this world of phenomena, by the application of the law of causality, which it knows h priori, and of the forms of space and time, which are also a priori inherent in it. The excitation to this act of perception certainly starts, in a waking and normal condition, from sen- sations, for sensation is the effect, towards which the understanding suggests the cause. But why should it not be possible that for once an excitation should reach the brain, starting from a totally dif- ferent side, from within, from the organism itself, and then, by means of the peculiar function of the brain and its mechanism, be worked up to a percep- tion like the other .? But after such a working up the diversity of the original matter would no longer be obvious; just as the victuals from which chyle has been prepared can no longer be distinguished. Sup- * Abhandlung liber den Satz vom zureichenden Grunde, p. 21. Ueber das Sehen und die Farben, p. i. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I. p. 12-14 — II. chap. 2. 120 SUPPLEMENT I. posing a case of this kind had actually occurred, the question would then arise, whether the more remote cause that brought about the phenomenon is never to be searched for further than the interior of the organ- ism ; or whether, barring all impressions of the senses, it could nevertheless be an external cause, which of course could not, in any case, have acted physically or bodily ; and, if this were so, in what relation does the given phenomenon stand to the nature of such a remote external cause; does the phenomenon contain indicia about such a cause, or even is the essential nature of such a cause expressed in the phenomenon. Accordingly we should here also, as with the bodily world, be led to the question of the relation of phenomena to " the thing per se." But this is the transcendental standpoint, from which it might result that spectral phenomena have neither more nor less ideality than bodily phenomena, which latter, as is well known, are inevitably subject to the idealistic view, and can be referred, only after a wide ditour, to the " thing per se" i.e., the truly real. As we have recognised this thing per se {pi Kant's) to be Will, we might take occasion to conjecture that Will is the basis of spectral phenomena, as it is of bodily phenomena. ON VISIONS. 121 All explanations of spectral phenomena hitherto attempted have been spiritualistic : and as such they are subject to Kant's criticism, in the first part of his " Dreams of a Spirit-seer." I am here attempting an idealistic explanation. The first question, then, would be whether per- ceptible pictures can really arise in our perceiving intellect, quite like, and undistinguishable from,'those pictures which are produced by the presence of bodies acting upon the outward senses, yet without such influences. Luckily a familiar phenomenon dis- poses of every doubt in this direction : the dream. To represent dreams as mere play of thought, mere pictures of the fancy, shows want of consideration or of candour : for obviously there is a specific differ- ence. The pictures of the fancy are weak, dim, incom- plete, onesided and evanescent, to such a degree that one can hardly retain the picture of absent persons for a few seconds, and even the liveliest play of the fancy cannot stand comparison with that palpable reality, which a dream exhibits. Our capacity for represen- tation whilst dreaming is immeasurably superior to our imaginative faculty. During a dream every perceptible object is really complete, universally con- 122 SUPPLEMENT I. sistent, down to the most accidental details, like actuality itself, from which fancy remains immeasur- ably distant ; for which reason dream-pictures would afford us the most wonderful views, if we could only choose the object of our dreams. It is quite in- correct to attempt to explain this by the fact that pictures of the fancy are disturbed and weakened by simultaneous impressions of actual surroundings : for in the deepest stillness of the darkest night fancy is unable to produce anything that shall in any way approach to that objective perceptibility and corpor- ality of a dream. Besides the pictures of the fancy are always brought about by association of ideas, or through motives, and are accompanied by the consciousness of their arbitrariness. But the dream appears as something quite extraneous, which forces itself upon us like the external world without our aid, yea even against our desire. The unexpected manner of its events, even of the most insignificant, stamps them with the character of objectivity and actuality. All its objects appear decided and distinct, like actual- ity, not only with regard to ourselves, that is super- ficial, onesided, or only indicated in the main and in general outlines ; but rather carried out accurately, to the smallest and most accidental details, and down ON VISIONS. 123 to accessory circumstances that often hinder us and stand in our way : here each body throws its shadow, each falls with the gravity pertaining to its specific weight, and every obstruction must first be cleared away, just as in actuality. The thoroughly objective character of a dream is furthermore apparent, in- asmuch as what happens generally turns out other than we expect, often against our wish and, at times, even excites our astonishment ; that the persons act- ing in the dream behave with revolting indiscretion towards us; in a general way also in the purely objective dramatic correctness of the characters and actions ; which has called forth the apt remark that every one whilst dreaming can be a Shakespeare. For the same omniscience in us, which brings it about that in a dream each natural body acts in precise accordance with its essential qualities, also brings about, that each man acts and speaks fully accord- ing to his character. In consequence of all this the deception which a dream produces is so strong, that actuality itself, which stands before us on awakening, has often to take time and strive, ere it can speak and convince us of the delusions of the dreams that already have ceased to exist. Similarly with respect to memory we doubt at 124 SUPPLEMENT I. times whether insignificant occurrences were dreamt of or did actually take place : but if, on the other hand, a man doubts whether a thing took place or whether he merely imagined it, he puts himself under the suspicion of insanity. All this proves that the dream is a function of our brain quite peculiar and thoroughly different from mere fancy and its ruminations. Aristotle also says : to evvirviov icrriv ai(T07]/Ma, rpoTrov TWO.,* and he further observes, delicately and cor- rectly, that whilst dreaming, we are capable of fancy- ing absent things. From which it may be concluded that during a dream fancy is still at our disposal, and therefore cannot itself be the medium, or the organ of the dream. On the other hand again the dream bears an undeniable resemblance to insanity. For the main difference between dreaming and waking conscious- ness consists in a lack of memory, or rather of connected, considerate recollection. We dream our- selves into odd, even impossible positions and circumstances, and it does not occur to us to inquire into the relations they may bear to what is absent or to seek for their causes; we commit inconsistent * " Dreaming is in a manner sensation." ON VISIONS. 125 actions because we do not recollect what might oppose them. People long dead figure in our dreams as living again ; whilst dreaming we do not recollect that they are dead. We often see ourselves in circumstances that existed in our earliest youth, surrounded by the persons of that time as of old ; all changes and reconstructions that have since come to pass are forgotten. It seems accordingly that in dreams, whilst all the powers of the mind are active, memory alone is not quite at our disposal, and here- on rests the resemblance to insanity, which latter, as I have shown,* is essentially a certain disorder of the powers of memory. From this point of view there- fore the dream may be designated as a short insanity, insanity as a long dream. On the whole then, in dreams the perception of present reality is quite per- fect, and even minute. Whilst our horizon is limited inasmuch as we are little conscious of that, which is absent and past, even if it is but an imaginary past. As every change in the real world can absolutely not take place except as, the consequence of a pre- ceding change, its cause; so the entrance of all thoughts and perceptions, into, our consciousness * Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I. p. 36, and II., chap. 32. 126 SUPPLEMENT I. depends altogether upon the law of causality ; hence they must be brought about either by an outward impression upon the senses, or, according to the laws of the association of ideas,* by a preceding thought. This law of causality, this exclusive principle upon which all existing objects whatsoever depend and to the condition of which they conform, must also necessarily cover dreams in some way, with regard to the manner of their occurrence; but it is very diffi- cult to make out in what way dreams are subject to it. For it is characteristic of dreams that they take place during sleep : i.e., whilst the normal action of the brain and the senses is suspended; just as the pictures of a magic lantern can appear only after the light in the room has been exterminated. Accordingly the occurrence, and therefore the matter of the dream, is in the first place not brought about by outward impressions upon the senses : single cases, wherein, during slight slumber, outer tones, or also smells, have entered the sensorium and gained an influence upon the dream, are special exceptions, which I do not take into account here. But now, it is also well worth remark that dreams are not brought about by association of ideas. For they arise either in the * See Chap. 14, vol. II., of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. ON VISIONS. 127 midst of deep sleep, the true repose of the brain, which we have every reason to accept as complete, and without consciousness; so that here even the possibility of an association of ideas is done away with : or, again, they arise during the transition from waking consciousness to sleep, that is whilst we are going to sleep : when, in fact, they are never quite absent, and thereby give us a chance to gain the full conviction that they are not connected with our wak- ing perception by any association of ideas, but leave the thread of these untouched, getting their matter and their occasion from somewhere else, we know not whence. It may easily be observed that these first dream-pictures of one just beginning to sleep, are always without the least connection with the thoughts he had whilst going to sleep, nay, they are so surprisingly heterogeneous, that it appears as though they had purposely chosen of all things in the world that particular thing furthest from his thoughts ; and if one reflects upon this, the question is inevitable, what should induce their choice and condition .-• Moreover they are distinguished (as Burdach delicately and correctly remarks in the third volume of his Physiology) by this, that they do not represent connected occurrences and for the most 128 SUPPLEMENT I. part we do ourselves act in them, as in other dreams ; they are rather a purely objective spectacle, consist- ing of single and separate pictures that arise of a sudden as we begin to sleep, or very simple occur- rences. As we often wake again during their action, we can convince ourselves completely, that they have not the least likeness, the remotest analogy, or other relation, to that which had just been present; that they rather surprise us by their unexpected import, which is as alien to the previous course of our thoughts, as any object of actuality that may sud- denly enter our perception in the most accidental manner whilst we are awake, nay, that should ap- pear so far fetched, so oddly and blindly chosen, as though it had been fixed upon by lot or dice. The thread therefore, which we hold by the law of causality, appears here to be cut at both the inner and the outer end. But this is impossible, incon- ceivable. Necessarily there must be some cause, which brings about those dreams and controls their shapes throughout ; so that it ought to be possible from such a cause to explain why I, for instance, who have been occupied with quite other thoughts up to the moment of going to sleep, should suddenly behold a blossoming tree, softly moved by the wind, ON VISIONS. 129 and nothing beyond, or at another time a maid- servant with a basket on her head, again another time a row of soldiers, &c. As therefore, when dreams arise, be it whilst going to sleep or after sleep has set in, the sole seat and organ of all perceptions, the brain, is cut off from all excitation by the senses from without and by thoughts from within, no other supposition remains open than that the brain receives some purely phy- siological excitation from the inner organism. There are two ways open for such an influence : through the nerves, and through the blood vessels. During sleep, i.e. the cessation of all animal functions, the vital power is entirely thrown upon the organic life, where, during a slight diminution of the breath, the pulse, and of the bodily temperature, also of nearly all secretions, it is mainly occupied with gradual reproduction, restoration of all that has been used up, healing of all that is damaged, and getting rid of all disorder; for which reason sleep is the time during which the vis naturce medicatrix brings about the salutary crisis in all illnesses, where it gains the decisive victory over the existing evil, and after which the patient wakens disburdened and cheerful, with the sure sense of coming recovery. With I 130 SUPPLEMENT I. men in health it acts similarly though in a far lesser degree, at all points where there may be need ; hence one awakens feeling restored and renewed : the brain, particularly, has received nutrition during sleep, which could not be accomplished in a waking state; and the recovery of clear consciousness is the result. All these operations are led and controlled by the plastic system of nerves, i.e., the entire great ganglia, or nerve knots, which for the whole length of the trunk are connected by leading nerve-strings, and constitute the great sympathetic nerve, or the inner nerve- centre. This is quite separate and isolated from the outer nerve-centre, the brain, which conducts the out- ward relations, and therefore has a nerve apparatus turned outward supplying the data for its percep- tions ; so that, in a normal state the operations of the inner nerve-centre do not reach consciousness and are not felt. Still, however, it has a mediate and weak connection with the cerebral system through thin anastomosing nerves: by way of these, during abnormal conditions, or more in case of injury to inner parts, that isolation is, in a certain degree, broken through, after which such injury is consciously felt more or less clearly as pain. But in a normal and healthy state, on the other hand, these nferves ON VISIONS. 131 convey to the sensorium only an extremely weak and vague echo of occurrences and movements in the complicated and active workshop of organic life, showing its progress to be easier or more difficult. This is hardly noticed in a waking state, when the brain is fully occupied with its own operations, i.e. with the reception of impressions from without, in perceptions occasioned by these, and in thinking; at best it has but a secret unconscious influence, from which those changes of mood arise, of which no account based on objective causes can be given. But whilst we go to sleep, when outward impressions cease to touch us and the activity of thoughts in the interior of the sensorium gradually dies away, then, those vague impressions that rise from the inner nerve-centre in an intermediate way, as also every slight modification of the circulation of the blood, come to be felt — as the candle begins to shine when twilight sets in ; or as by night we hear the ripple of a spring that was inaudible during the noise of day. Impressions that are too weak to act on the waking, i.e. active brain, are enabled to produce a slight excitation of its component parts and their percep- tive powers ; as a harp does not vibrate in sympathy with a strange tone, whilst it is being played upon, 132 SUPPLEMENT I. but does so if it stands still. Here, then, the cause of the origin of those dream-shapes that arise as we begin to sleep must lie, and, collaterally, of their nearer determination throughout ; as also of those dreams that rise up from the absolute mental repose of deep sleep and show dramatic connection; only that these latter, as they occur when the brain is already in deep repose and occupied with its nutri- tion, must require a far stronger stimulation from within ; for which reason these dreams only, in single and very rare cases, show prophetic or fatidical sig- nificance, and Horace says quite correctly: Post medium noctem, cum somnia vera. For, in this respect, the last morning dreams stand on the same footing as those that occur when we begin to sleep, inasmuch as the brain, rested and nourished, is now again easily excitable. So then, those vague echoes from the workshop of organic life penetrate to the sensorial activity of the brain, when it is sinking towards apathy or has already reached apathy, and stimulate it slightly in an unusual way and from a different side than when it is awake : yet, as all other stimulations are excluded, the sensorial activity of the brain must take both the occasion and the matter for its dream- ON VISIONS. 133 shapes from these vague echoes, however heterogene- ous they may be to such impressions. For, as the eye can receive sensations of brightness and light, through mechanical concussion, or through inner convulsions of nerves, that shall be quite like those caused by external light ; as the ear, in consequence of abnormal occurrences in its interior, at times hears all sorts of sounds ; as similarly the olfactory nerve, without external cause, has a sensation of specifically distinct smells ; as also the gustative nerves are analogously affected; as therefore all the nerves of sense can be stimulated to their peculiar sensations from within, as well as from without; thus, in a similar way, the brain may be stimulated by means of irritations arising from the interior of the organism to exercise its function of perceiving shapes in space ; whereby then, the phenomena thus arisen will not be distinguishable from such as have been called forth by external causes. Just as the stomach produces chyme from all that it can master, and the intes- tines from this produce chyle, at which stage the original matter is no longer perceptible ; j ust so the brain reacts upon all stimulations that reach it by the exercise of its peculiar function. This function consists, primarily, in the projection of 134 SUPPLEMENT I. pictures in space (in all the three dimensions), which is the form of its perception ; secondly, in the moving of these pictures in time and under the guidance of causality, which is also a function of its peculiar activity. For at all times the brain will only speak its own language ; and therefore it also interprets those vague impressions which reach it from within during sleep in this language ; just as it interprets the strong and distinct impressions that reach it from without whilst awake : Hence, those impressions also furnish it with matter for pictures that entirely re- semble such pictures as arise from the excitation of the external senses, although there may hardly be any resemblance at all between the two kinds of causal impressions. But its conduct in these cases may be compared to that of a deaf person, who constructs an entire phrase, though a false one, from a few vowels that reached his ear; or even to that of a madman, whose fancy is put upon the track of his fixed ideas by some word, accidentally used. In any case those vague echoes of certain occurrences in the interior of the organism which lose their way upwards to the brain, become the occasion of its dreams: and dreams are therefore more especially determined by the manner of those impressions, as they have ON VISIONS. 13s at least received their cue from them; indeed, no matter how entirely different dreams may be from these impressions, they will still be found to corres- pond with them in some manner analogically or at least symbolically; and in fact the correspondence will be closest to those impressions that are able to excite the brain during deip sleep ; because such, as has been said, must already be considerably stronger. As, moreover, these internal occurrences of organic life also act upon the sensorium intended for the perception of the external world after the manner of something alien and extraneous to it, it follows that the perceptions arising upon such an occasion will be quite unexpected, and entirely heterogeneous and alien to the train of thought that may have occupied the sensorium a moment before; and we have a chance to observe this, when going to sleep and waking again soon after. So far this entire exposition shows nothing be- yond the immediate cause of the occurrence of dreams, which may influence their import, but must itself be so heterogeneous to them that the manner of their kinship remains a mystery. The physiological process within the brain, which con- stitutes dreaming proper, is still more of a riddle- 136 SUPPLEMENT I. For sleep is the repose of the brain, and dreaming nevertheless a certain activity of it ; so to avoid a con- tradiction we must take sleep as relative repose, and dreaming as a limited and partial activity only. And again we do not know in what sense it is a partial activity, if with regard to parts of the brain, or to the degree of its stimulation, or to the manner of its internal motion, nor in what sense it properly differs from the waking state. There is no power of the mind that is never active in dreams : still the course of dreams, as also our own behaviour in them, often shows extraordinary lack of judgment, and similarly of memory as ■pointed out above. With respect to our chief object the fact remains that we possess a faculty to perceive objects in space, and to hear and comprehend sounds and voices of every sort, both without axxy external excitation of our senses; which faculty, on the other hand, supplies our waking perception with the occasion, the matter, or the empirical foundation, yet is by no means identical with that perception ; for our perception is throughout intellectual and not sensual only, as I have frequently demonstrated and have above referred to. Now we must retain a firm hold of that fact : a fact open to ON VISIONS. 137 no doubt ; for it is the ORIGINAL PHENOMENON,* back to which all our further explanations will point, as they will only show a more extended activity of that faculty of perception without external excitation of the senses. The best way to designate it would be to use the expression so happily chosen from a par- ticular mode of its manifestation, or application, by Scotchmen, led by the sure tact experience affords : they call it second sight. For the capacity to dream here treated of is indeed a second faculty of perception ; this perception takes place not, like the first, through the mediation of the senses, but its objects are, nevertheless, as regards their manner and form, the same as those of the first ; from which it is to be concluded that the one as well as the other are functions of the brain. That Scotch expression would consequently be the most suitable to designate the genus of the phenomena here under consideration and to refer them to a fundamental faculty ; but as its inventors have- made use of it to designate a particular, rare, and highly remarkable manifestation of that faculty, I cannot make use of it, though I would like to do so, to designate the entire genus of those per- * " Das Urphanomen." 138 SUPPLEMENT I. ceptions ; or, properly, the subjective capability which appears in them all. For this purpose no more fitting designation than the organ of dreams" seems to remain ; it designates the entire manner of perception we are dealing with, by that manifesta- tion of it which every one knows and is familiar with. I shall therefore employ it to designate that faculty of perception I have shown to be independent of external impressions upon the senses. We are accustomed to look upon the objects which it represents to us in ordinary dreams as alto- gether illusory, since they disappear on waking ; yet this is not always the case, and it is very important with regard to our theme, to get some personal ex- perience of the exception, which perhaps every one could do, if he were to give proper attention to the matter. There is, in fact, a state in which we sleep and dream ; but we dream only the reality surround- ing us. Thus we see our bedroom, together with all its contents ; we are aware of people that enter, we know ourselves in bed, all correctly and accu- rately. And yet we are asleep, with firmly closed eyes: we dream; only what we dream is true and real. * '• Das Traumorgan." ON VISIONS. 139 It is just as though our skull had become trans- parent, so that the external world could now enter the brain directly and immediately, instead of taking the roundabout way and entering through the narrow gate of the senses. It is much more difficult to distinguish this state from the waking one, than in the case of ordinary dreams ; because on waking from it there is no change in the surroundings, that is, no objective change whatever takes place. But now, waking is the sole criterion between the waking state and the dream,* and accordingly here this sole criterion is not forthcoming, as far as the objective and chief half of it is concerned. That is to say, on waking from a dream of the sort in question a subjective change only takes place with us, which consists in this, that we feel a sudden transformation of the organ of our perception ; the transformation, however; is felt but faintly, and may, as it is not accompanied by any objective change, easily remain unnoticed. Hence, for the most part, we become acquainted with such dreams as represent actuality, only when particular shapes have intermixed with them which do not belong to actuality, and conse- quently disappear on waking, or also when such a * See Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Vol. I. § 5. I40 SUPPLEMENT I. dream has received the still higher potentiality of which I shall speak presently. The kind of dreaming just described has been called sleep-waking (Schlafwachen), not that it is an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking, but because it can be described as a waking within sleep. I would therefore prefer to call it a truth -dreaming (Wahrtraumen). Indeed one will generally notice it early in the morning only, perhaps also of an evening, some time after falling asleep ; but this is solely owing to the fact that then when sleep was not deep, waking took place with sufficient ease to admit of a remembrance of what had been dreamt. Assuredly this kind of dreaming takes place more frequently during deep sleep, according to the rule that the somnambulist becomes more clairvoyant the deeper she sleeps; but then no recollection of it remains. On the other hand, that recollection nevertheless remains occa- sionally, is to be elucidated by the fact that even from magnetic sleep, when it has been quite slight, some faint recollection may pass into the waking consciousness ; an example of which is to be found in Kieser's " Archiv fiir thierischen Magnetismus," iii. p. 139. According to all this a recollection of dreams ON VISIONS. 141 such as are immediately and objectively true remains only when these have taken place during slight sleep, for instance, of a morning, when we may immediately wake from them. Now furthermore, this kind of dream, the peculiar- ity of which consists in the fact that one dreams the nearest present actuality, occasionally becomes still more mysterious, inasmuch as the horizon of the dreamer is somewhat widened, so that it extends be- yond the bedroom, — when curtains or shutters cease to be obstructions to sight, and one then sees quite distinctly what lies behind them, the yard, the garden, or the street with the houses opposite. Our wonder at this will abate somewhat if we remember that here no physical vision takes place, but mere dreaming ; still it is a dreaming of that which actually exists, consequently a " truth - dreaming," a perception through the organ of dreams, which, as such, is of course not tied down to the condition of the unin- terrupted passage of the rays of light. As has been said, the skull was the first partition through which in the outset this singular sort of perception took place unhindered ; if this perception is further en- hanced, then curtains, doors, and walls are no barriers for it. Now, how this takes place is a profound 142 SUPPLEMENT I. secret ; we only know that truth is dreamt here, that a perception takes place through the organ of dreams. For our consideration, the extent of the matter so far is an elementary fact. What we can do towards elucidating it, if such a thing be at all possible, consists, to begin with, in collecting and arranging in proper gradations all the phenomena connected with it, in the hope of finding a nexus between them, and in due course perhaps to attain closer insight into it. Meanwhile any one who has no personal experi- ence whatever in these matters may get an incon- trovertible corroboration of the facts described as " a perception through the organ of dreams " in som- nambulism proper, or sleep-walking. That those who suffer under this mania sleep firmly, and that they are absolutely unable to see with their eyes, is quite certain ; still they take account of everything in their immediate vicinity, avoid every obstacle, walk long distances, climb along the most danger- ous declivities, upon the narrowest paths, accom- plish wide leaps, without missing their aim ; some among these also conduct their daily domestic busi- ness, whilst asleep, accurately and correctly, others conceive and write without mistakes. Similarly ON VISIONS. 143 somnambulists, who have been put into magnetic sleep artificially, notice their surroundings, and even the most remote things, if they become clairvoyant. Furthermore, the perception which certain appa- rently dead persons have had of all that occurred near them, whilst they lay numb and unable to move a limb, is undoubtedly also of this kind. They also dream their present surroundings, becoming con- scious of them in a way different from that of the senses. Great exertions have been made to get at a trace of the physiological medium, the seat of this perception, but hitherto they have failed. It cannot be gainsayed that when the somnambulistic state is completely at hand, the external senses have ceased to exercise their functions ; as even the most subjec- tive sense, bodily feeling, disappears so completely, that the most painful surgical operations have been performed during magnetic sleep, without the pa- tient's showing the least sensation of pain. The brain appears then to be in the state of deepest sleep, that is, of complete inactivity. The following hypothesis relating to the explanation of our mode of perception whilst dreaming appears to me to have a considerable degree of probability. 144- SUPPLEMENT I. Since the brain during sleep gets the stimulation to produce a perception of shapes in space from with- in, instead of from without as it does whilst waking, this stimulation must touch it in a direction opposite to the one coming from the senses. And the entire activity of the brain, that is, the internal vibration or agitation of its fibres, consequently takes a direction opposite to the usual one, and gets into an antiperis- taltic action. That is to say, instead of proceeding as usual in the direction of sensuous impressions, i.e. of the nerves of sense, to the interior of the brain, it is now performed in reversed direction and order, and occasionally by other sections; so that now, although perhaps the lower brain section does not act for the upper, yet, possibly, the white marrow substance acts in lieu of the grey cortical substance, or vice versa. Thus the brain now acts as though it were reversed. This would seem to explain at the outset why no recollection of the somnambulistic activity passes into the waking state, for which the vibration of the brain fibres in the opposite direction is indispensable, and which consequently obliterates every trace of the former vibration. As a special corroboration of this one might take the common but strange fact, that, when we waken quickly from ON VISIONS. 145 the first beginning of sleep, we are frequently quite out of our reckoning as to space, in such sort that we now conceive everything reversed, that is to say, we imagine what is to the right of the bed as being to the left and what is behind as being before, and this with such decision that, in the dark, the false imagin- ing is hardly to be got rid of by reasoning, and we must have recourse to the touch. That remark- able vivacity of the dream-perception, that apparent reality and corporality of all objects perceived in dreams pointed out above, is rendered conceivable by this hypothesis : it would appear that the stimu- lation of the brain's activity, coming from the interior of the organism, starting from the cerebral nerve- centre, and which acts in a direction opposite to the usual one, in the end penetrates entirely, that is, extends at last to the nerves of the organs of sense, which, now excited from within as formerly from without, actually begin to work. Accordingly, in dreams, we really have sensations of light, colour, sound, smell and taste, solely owing to interior excitation, and as the consequence of influences reaching the brain in reversed direction and reversed order of time. This may explain that corporality of dreams, by which they differ so greatly from mere 146 SUPPLEMENT I. fancies. The pictures of the fancy (in waking) are always merely in the brain : for they are only a reminiscence, though a modified reminiscence, of former, material, excitation of the perceptive cerebral activity by means of the senses. But the dream- vision, on the other hand, is not only in the brain, but also in the nerves of sense, and has arisen in consequence of a material excitation of the senses acting for the time being, coming from the interior of the organism and penetrating the brain. As, accordingly, we actually see whilst dreaming, the saying of Apulejus' Charite, when she is about to pierce the eyes of the sleeping Thrasyllus, appears particularly apt, nay profound : vivo tibi morientur oculi, nee quidquam videbis, nisi dormiens* The organ of dreams, then, is identical with the organ of waking consciousness and the perception of the external world, only, as it were, grasped at the other end and used in reversed order, and the organs of sense, which act in both, can be set going from their inner as well as from their outer end ; as a hollow iron ball can be made red hot from within as well as from without. Since during this procedure, the nerves of sense are the last things that become * Metam. viii. p. 172, ed. Bip. ON VISIONS. 147 active, it may happen that their activity has only just begun, and is still going on, when the brain already wakens, that is to say, when it changes the dream-perception for the ordinary mode of percep- tion ; in that case, when just awake, we may hear sounds, for example, voices, a knocking at the door, a firing of guns, &c., with a degree of distinctness and objectivity entirely and without deduction like actu- ality, and we may then firmly believe them to be actual sounds, from without, in consequence of which we have just woke up ; or, in rarer cases, we shall see shapes, with complete empirical reality ; which latter are already mentioned by Aristotle.* And it is through the organ of dreams here described, that somnambulistic perception, clairvoyance, " second sight," and visions of every sort take place. Let us now return from these physiological con- siderations to the phenomenon of "truth dreaming" demonstrated above, which may occur already in the ordinary nocturnal sleep, where mere waking corroborates it at once, if it has been an imme- diate phenomenon, i.e., one that has extended only as far as next present surroundings ; although, in cases already more rare, it extends a little be- * De insomniis, c. 3 ad finem. 148 SUPPLEMENT I. yond the nearest barriers. Such widening of the horizon may, however, extend very much further, not only in space, but also as regards time. The proof of this is furnished by clairvoyant somnambulists, who, during the period when their state has reached its climax, can bring any place chosen at random, towards which they are directed, at once within range of their perceptive dream-cognition, can indi- cate the occurrences that take place there correctly, and at times are enabled to announce beforehand that which does not yet exist, but is still lying in the lap of futurity, and will only attain reality in course of time, by means of innumerable intermediate causes that meet accidentally. For all clairvoyance, in the somnambulistic " sleep-waking " that occurs naturally, as well as in that produced artificially, all perceptions of hidden, absent, distant, even of future things, that have become possible during this state, are throughout nothing else than a truth-dreaming; the objects of which are presented to the intellect as perceptible and corporal, just as our dreams are ; for which reason the somnambulists speak of having seen them. Meanwhile this phenomenon, as also that of spontaneous sleep-walking, affords a sure proof, that the mysterious perception, entrusted ON VISIONS. 149 to US by the dream and controlled by no impressions from without, may also stand in the relation of a perception to the real external world ; though the intermediate links of this connection remain a riddle. The difference between the ordinary nocturnal dream and clairvoyance or " sleep- waking " in general lies, primarily, in the absence of this relation to the outer world, that is, to reality ; and secondly, in the fact that a recollection of the dream often passes to the waking state, whilst such a recollection does not pass from somnambulistic sleep. These two qualities might, however, form some connection, and might be referred one to the other. For we only have some recollection of the common dream in case we immediately wake from it : and this recollection probably rests solely upon the fact that waking from actual sleep is very easy, as ordinary sleep is far less deep than somnambulistic sleep; from which latter an immediate quick waking cannot take place for this very reason ; whereas a return to waking consciousness is only possible by means of slow intermediate transitions. For somnambulistic sleep is only a much deeper, far-reaching, and more complete sleep; during which the organ of dreams comes to develop the entire capacity by which it ISO SUPPLEMENT I. attains correct relations to the external world, that is to say, it attains the possibility of persistent and con- nected " truth-dreaming." Probably this occasionally takes place during ordinary sleep,' but then only, when sleep is so deep that we do not immediately wake from it. On the other hand, the dreams from which we do waken are those of slighter sleep : Their origin, finally, lies in somatic causes that per- tain to the dreamer's organism, and consequently do not pertain to the external world. That there are ex- ceptions to this we have already seen in the case of dreams that represent the immediate surroundings of the sleeper. But, exceptionally, a recollection of dreams which announce things that occur at a distance, nay even things that are about to occur in future does exist, and it depends mainly upon our waking immediately from such dreams. On this account, all peoples at all times have taken it for granted that there are dreams of real objective significance ; and in ancient history dreams are taken up in earnest, and play a considerable role ; still fatidical dreams have always been looked upon as rare exceptions in the countless multitude of empty and merely deceptive dreams. ON VISIONS. 151 In order to refer prophetic dreams to their immediate cause, we may make use of the fact that though both natural and magnetic somnambulism, and what takes place under their influence, do not leave traces in the waking consciousness, yet, occasionally, a trace of such events passes into the dreams of natural ordinary sleep, and on waking from them we after- wards remember it ; so that, in such a case ordinary dreams act as a connecting link, a bridge, between the somnambulistic and the waking consciousness. We must therefore ascribe prophetic dreams to this, in the first instance, that during deep sleep a dream may attain somnambulistic clairvoyance : but since, as a rule, no immediate waking, and con- sequently no recollection takes place, those dreams which constitute the exception and prefigure that which is to come immediately and sensu propria are the rarest of all, and these have been called theorematic dreams. On the other hand, if the im- port of a dream of this sort should touch the dreamer's personal interests, he may be able to retain a recollection of it, by including it in a dream of slighter sleep, from which he may wake at once ; but then this cannot be done immediately, but solely by means of translating its import into an allegory. 152 SUPPLEMENT I. in which guise the original prophetic dream now reaches the waking consciousness ; where, con- sequently, it still requires elucidation, interpretation. This then is the other and more frequent kind of fatidical dream, the allegorical. Artemidoros already, in his Oneiro-criticon, the oldest of dream-books, has distinguished the two kinds and called the first the theorematic. Mere forebodings, presentiments, should be added as the last and weakest outcome of this source. They are more frequently of a sad, than of a gay sort ; the misery of life exceeds its joy. A dark mood, an anxious awaiting of things to come, has fallen upon us, after sleep, without apparent cause. According to the above demonstration, this may be explained in such wise that the theorematic true dream of deepest sleep, which announced evil, has not been successfully translated into an allegorical dream during slighter sleep, and that consequently, nothing has survived but its impression upon our feelings, that is upon the Will itself, that last and proper kernel of man. This impression then reverberates as a prophetic misgiving, a dark foreboding. At times such a mis- ON VISIONS. 153 giving may only master us when the first circum- stances pertaining to the evil seem in the theorematic dream actually come to be present ; for instance, if a man is on the point of going on board a ship which is to perish, or if he comes near to the store of gun- powder which is to explode ; many a one has saved himself by giving way to the anxious forebodings, the internal fright, that suddenly befell him. We must explain this as arising from a faint reminiscence, a vague recollection that remained over from a theo- rematic dream, and which could not distinctly enter consciousness, but the trace of which was quickened by the actual view of things, which in the forgotten dream had acted so frightfully. The Dsemonion of Socrates, that inner voice of warning which dissuaded him when he was about to undertake anything disadvantageous, but always dis- never /^r-suaded, was of this kind. SUPPLEMENT 11. ON THE METAPHYSICS OF MUSHC. FROM ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S "DIE WELT ALS WILLS UND VORSTELLUNG." (1818.) Vol. I. § 52. ( 157 ) §52. We have hitherto considered all fine arts in that degree of generality suitable to our point of view ; we began with Architecture, the end of which, as such, is to render clear the objectivation of the Will on the lowest degree of its visibility, where it manifests itself as an endeavour of the mass, dull, undiscerning, but according to law; yet already at variance with itself and exhibiting strife, i.e., between gravity and inflexibility ; — and we ended with the Tragedy, which, on the highest degree of the objectivation of the Will, reveals the dissen- sions of that Will with itself in frightful grandeur and distinctness; we now find that one fine art has nevertheless been excluded from our considera- tion, and had to remain so, as there was no fit place whatever for it in the system of our exposi- tion : it is Music. It stands apart from all other arts. IS8 SUPPLEMENT II. In it we do not recognise any imitation, reproduc- tion of an Idea of the things in the world ; yet it is an art so great and surpassingly glorious, it acts so mightily upon the innermost being of man, is there understood so completely and profoundly, as an entirely universal language, even more distinct than the language of the perceptible world ; — that we assuredly have more to look for in it than an exercitimn arithmeticce occultum nescientis se nume- rare animi, for which Leibnitz held it,* and yet was quite right, inasmuch as he only considered its immediate and outward significance, its husk. But if it were nothing beyond, the satisfaction it affords would have to be like that which we feel at the correct solution of an arithmetical problem, and could not be that heartfelt joy with which we listen to the speech of our deepest innermost self. From our point of view, when our attention is directed to the sesthetical effect, we must accord a much more earnest and deep significance to music, a significance relating to the essential nature of the world and ourselves, with regard to which the numerical proportions, into which it can be Leibnitii epistolae, coUectio Korthoiti : op. 154. METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 59 resolved, do not stand as the thing designated, but merely as the symbol. That it must relate to the world in some sense or other as a representation to the thing represented, as copy to model, we may conclude from the analogy to the remaining arts, to all of which this character pertains, and to the effect of which upon us its effect is on the whole akin ; only stronger, quicker, more inevitable, more infallible. Moreover its relation as copy to the world as model, must be deep and delicate, infinitely true and strikingly correct, for it is understood immediately by every one, and shows a certain infallibility, inasmuch as its form can be reduced to rules expressible in figures, and from which it cannot swerve without entirely ceasing to be music. Still the point of comparison between music and the world, the respect in which that stands to this in the light of an imitation or reproduction, lies very deeply hidden. Men have practised music at all times, without being able to account for it in this sense. Content with immediately understanding it, they renounce an abstract comprehension of the manner of this immediate understanding. l6o SUPPLEMENT II. Whilst I gave my mind entirely to the impres- sions of musical art in its manifold forms, and then again returned to reflection and the train of thoughts laid down in the present work, a disclosure pre- sented itself to me concerning the inner nature of the art, and the manner of its relation to the world as a reproduction thereof, such as by analogy we necessarily assume it to be ; but it is a disclosure which, though fully sufficient to my mind and satisfactory for my researches, and probably also equally convincing to one who has followed me so far, and agreed with my view of the world, is nevertheless a disclosure which I recognise as essen- tially impossible to prove; for it assumes, and takes for granted, a relation of music as a conception to that which can essentially never be a conception,* and requires music to be regarded as a copy of a model which in itself can never be immediately perceived. I can therefore do nothing further here, than state the view which satisfies me concerning the wondrous art of tones ; and I must leave the reader's assent or dissent to be determined by the effect which in part * Vorstellung, idea. METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. l6l music, and in part the sole and single thought that constitutes my book, have had upon him. Moreover, if the account of the significance of music here given is to be accepted with genuine conviction, I hold it necessary that music should be heard frequently with prolonged reference to it, and here again it is desirable that the whole of the thought I submit should already be familiar. The (Platonic) Ideas are the adequate objectiva- tion of the Will. It is the end of all the arts, except music, to facilitate the cognition of the Ideas by means of the representation of single things — for works of art are after all always such ; and the cognition of the Ideas can only take place under a corresponding change in the perceiving subject. — Accordingly, all the arts except music objectivate the Will under mediation only, i.e. by means of the Ideas : and our world is nothing else than the appear- ance of the Ideas in multeity, whilst they enter the principium individuationis,* — the form of cognition possible to an individual as such; thus music, as it ignores the Ideas, does not in the least depend on the perceptible world ; it ignores it unconditionally ; and it could still exist, in a certain measure, even if * I.e., time and space. 1 62 SUPPLEMENT II. the world were not here at all ; which cannot be said of the other arts. For music is as immediate an objectivation and image of the universal Will as the world itself is, even as the Ideas also are, the diversi- fied appearance of which constitutes the world. Thus music is by no means an image of the Ideas as the other arts are ; but an image of the Will itself, which is also the Objectivity of the Ideas ; and therefore the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of other arts : for these speak of shadows only, whilst it speaks of essentials. As, however, the same identical Will shows itself in the Ideas as well as in music, only in each of the two in a totally different way, there must consequently be a parallelism, an analogy, though by no means an immediate likeness, between music and between the Ideas, whose appearances in diversity and in com- pleteness constitute the visible world. A reference to this analogy may act as an elucidation, and facili- tate the comprehension of an explanation difficult because of the inherent darkness of its object. In the deepest tones of harmony, in the fundamen- tal bass-notes, I recognise the lowest degrees of the objectivation of the Will, inorganic nature, the mass of the planet. All the higher tones, easily moving METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 63 and expiring more quickly, are to be regarded, as is well known, as the accessory vibrations of the deep fundamental tone, at the sound of which they are always to be heard softly vibrating, and it is a rule of harmony that only those high notes shall meet upon a bass-note which actually sound with it as accessory vibrations (its sons harmoniques). This again is analogous to the view which requires that all bodies and organisations of nature shall be taken as arising in course of gradual evolution from the mass of the planet : this development is their support as well as their source : and the same relation holds good between the higher notes and the fundamen- tal bass. There is a limit as to depth beyond which no tone is audible : this corresponds to the fact, that no matter is perceptible without form and quality, i.e. without showing a power that cannot be further explained, in which an Idea expresses itself; in more general terms, that no part of matter can be entirely without Will ; accordingly, as a certain degree of height is inseparable from a tone, so every part of matter in a certain degree shows Will. Thus the ground bass is to us in harmony, as inorganic nature is in the world, the rudest mass, upon which everything rests and from which every- 164 SUPPLEMENT II. thing arises and is developed. And further in the complex of ripieno parts that piroduce the harmony, between the bass and the leading melody-singing part, I would recognise the entire gradation of the Ideas in which the Will objectivates itself Those that stand nearer to the bass being the lower of those gradations, inorganic bodies still, yet express- ing themselves in manifold ways : those that lie higher represent to me the world of plants and animals. The fixed intervals of the scale are parallel to the distinct grades of the objectivation of the Will, the distinct species in nature. The devia- tions from an arithmetical correctness of the in- tervals, by means of any sort of " Temperament," or brought about by the Key chosen, are analogous to the deviations of individuals from the type of the species ; and even the impure sounds that give no distinct interval may be compared to the monstrous malformations that arise from a connection between two species of animals, etc. In the high principal part, that leads the whole and progresses as one consistent thought from be- ginning to end with unfettered freedom in the Melody, I would recognise the highest grade of the METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 165 objectivation of the Will, the conscious life and strife of man. As than alone is gifted with under- standing and ever looks before and behind him upon his actual path and the innumerable possibilities, and thus pursues a conscious and therefore, as a whole, consistent course, similarly Melody alone possesses significant connection, exhibiting a con- scious design from beginning to end. Accordingly it tells the story of the Will in the light of con- sciousness (the impress of the Will in reality being the succession of its deeds) ; but melody reveals more, it relates the most hidden history of the Will, paints each emotion, each endeavour, each move- ment, all that reason gathers together under the wide and negative conception of feeling, and which it can no longer grasp as abstractions. Therefore, also, it has always been said that music is the speech of feeling and of passion, as language is of reason : Plato already explains it as t) t&v /jiiXwv Kivrja-i^ fie/iifirifievrj, iv rol<; iraOij/Maa-tv orav ■<^v)(fi ryivTjTai, {melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans, De leg. vii., and Aristotle also says : Zm tX m pv6iJt,6t KoX TO, fj-ekr], ^covrj ovcra ijOecriv eoiKe; {cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus similes sese exhibent?), Probl. c. 19. 1 66 SUPPLEMENT II. Now as the essential nature of man consists in this that his Will strives, is satisfied and strives again, and so on for ever, nay that happiness and well-being consist of this only, that the transition from a wish to its satisfaction, and from this again to a new wish, should go on rapidly, as the failing of that satisfaction produces suffering, just as the absence of a new wish produces longing, languor, emiui. Thus, in accordance with this, the essentials of melody consist in a continuous deviation, swerv- ing from the keynote, in a thousand ways, not only to the nearest harmonic notes, to the third or dominant, but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh and to the augmented intervals ; yet fol- lowed, in the end, by a return to the starting point : in all these ways. Melody expresses the manifold strivings of the Will ; whilst, by the final return to some harmonic note, or more definitely, by a return to the keynote, its satisfaction is expressed. The invention of Melody, the exposition of all the deepest secrets of human desires and feelings, is the work of genius, whose work is here, more obviously than elsewhere, free from all reflection and conscious purpose, and may be called an in- spiration. Here abstract notions are sterile, as METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 67 elsewhere in art: the composer reveals the inner- most essential being of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language his reason does not understand ; as a magnetic somnambulist gives account of things of which she has no notion when awake. Therefore with a composer, more than with another artist, the man is separate and different from the artist. It is not to be forgotten, however, that music has no direct, but only a mediate relation to such analogies ; as it never expresses phenomena, but solely the inner being, the essence of phenomena, the Will itself. It expresses, therefore, not this or that single and particular joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or exultation, or hilarity, or repose of mind itself, but as it were in abstracto, the essentials of these, without their concomitants, there- fore without their motives. Nevertheless, in such quintessence we understand it perfectly. Hence our fancy is so easily excited by it, and tries to clothe this invisible spirit world, that speaks to us so immediately and eloquently, with flesh and blood, i.e., to embody it in an analogous example. We may take the perceptible world, or nature, and 1 68 SUPPLEMENT II. music as two different expressions of the same thing, which thing itself acts as mediator of the analogy of the two, and the cognition of which is required if the analogy is to be seen. Accordingly music, regarded as an expression of the world, is a language possess- ing the highest degree of generality, which even stands to the generality of abstract conceptions much as these stand to single things. But its generality is by no means that empty generality of abstraction, but of a totally different sort, and is throughout consistent, clear, and distinct. In this respect it resembles geometrical figures and numbers, which as the general forms of all possible objects of experience, and applicable to all i priori, are nevertheless not abstract, but distinct throughout. All possible endeavours, excitations and manifestations of the Will, all those occurrences in the interior of man, which reason comprises under the wide negative concept Feeling, can be expressed by the infinite number of possible melo- dies, but always in the generality of mere form, without matter, always as essentials, but not as externals, as it were the inner soul of things with- out their body. This delicate relation in which music stands to METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. l6g the true nature of all things, will also explain the fact that if suitable music be heard to any scene, action, event, environment, it will seem to reveal the most secret sense of these, and act as the most correct and clearest comment upon them ; similarly, it explains how one who gives his mind entirely to the impressions of a symphony, will deem all possible events of life and the world to be passing before him ; still, on reflection, he cannot point out any likeness between the play of tones and the things that hovered before his fancy. For, as has already been said, music differs from all other arts in this : that it is not an image of phenomena, or more correctly, of the adequate objectivity of the Will, but an immediate image of the Will itself, and represents accordingly the metaphysics of all that is physical in the world, the thing per se, which lies behind all appearance. Accordingly one might call the world embodied music, as well as embodied Will: which explains why music at once enhances the significance of every picture, indeed of every scene of actual life ; the more so, of course, the closer the analogy of its melody comes to the inner spirit of the given phenomena. The fact that a poem can be sung, or a pantomimic I/O SUPPLEMENT II. representation can be adapted to music or both united in an opera, rests on this. The connection of such single and separate pictures of human life set to the general language of music, is never a thoroughly necessary, or an adequate one; they stand to it rather in the relation of an example chosen at random to a general concept ; they re- present, with the distinctness of actuality, that which music expresses in the generality of mere form. For in a certain measure, melodies are, like general concepts, an abstrac tof actuality — i.e. actuality, the world of separate things, furnishes the perceptible, the particular and individual, the single case, for the generality of concepts, as well as the generality of melodies ; which two generalities, however, are in a certain degree opposed to one another; for concepts contain only the forms just abstracted from per- ceptions, as it were the husk of things, and are therefore ahstracta in the full sense ; whereas music gives the inmost kernel of things, that precedes all formation, the very heart of things. This relation might quite well be expressed in the language of the Scholiasts, if one were, to say : Concepts are universalia post rem, whereas music gives universalia ante rem, and actuality universalia in re. METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. I7I The generaK sense of a melody that is set to a poem, might be covered quite as well by other examples also chosen at random to meet its general sense : hence the same tune will fit many stanzas, hence also the Vaudeville. That a relation between a composition and a perceptible representation is possible at all, rests, as said above, upon the fact, that both are but totally different expressions of the same essential nature of the world. If then in a particular case such a relation actually exists, if the composer has succeeded in expressing the emo- tions of the Will, which constitute the kernel of the event, in the general language of music: then the melody of the song, the music of the opera is expressive. But the analogy between the two, found by the composer, must have arisen from the immediate cognition of the essential nature of the world, and should not be an imitation conscious of its purpose, and under the mediation of abstract notions : else the music does not express the inner being, the Will itself; but it only produces an unsatisfactory imitation of its phenomena; as all actually imitative music does, for instance many bits in Haydn's "Seasons" and in his "Creation," 172 SUPPLEMENT II. where phenomena of the perceptible world are imi- tated directly ; and this is quite reprehensible. The inexpressibly tender and heartfelt quality of all music, by virtue of which it touches us as a paradise quite familiar yet ever distant, quite com- prehensible yet so inexplicable, rests upon this : that it reproduces all emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without actuality and far from its pain. Similarly, the seriousness peculiar to it, which entirely excludes the Ludicrous from its immediate domain, is to be explained from the fact that its object is not the idea (perception, Vorstellung) with regard to which deception and the Ridiculous are alone possible ; but rather the Will, which is its immediate object. And the Will is essentially most serious, inasmuch as all depends upon it. Even the marks of repetition, and the Da capo attest the richness and significance of musical language, for they would be insufferable in works written with words, whilst they serve the ends of music and are pleasant : for to grasp music entirely one should hear it twice. In presenting these views of music I have en- deavoured to show that in its most general lan- guage it expresses the inner being, the essence of the world, which, under its clearest manifestation, METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 73 we think of as Will ; that it expresses this with the greatest distinctness and truth through a single medium, mere tones : — and further, as, according to my view and endeavour, philosophy is nothing else than a complete and correct reproduction and ex- pression of the essential nature of the World, in very general terms, as in such terms only a view of the world is possible that shall be wholly sufficient and universally applicable; it will not be found very paradoxical, by one who has followed me so far, and entered into my way of thinking, if I say that, sup- posing an explanation of music, perfectly correct, ex- haustive, and descending to minute details, should be possible, that is to say, if a comprehensive reproduc- tion of that which music expresses could be given in abstract terms, this would at once be a sufficient reproduction and explanation of the world in con- cepts, or an exact equivalent of the same, and therefore the true philosophy; and we should con- sequently be able to turn Leibnitz' saying quoted above (which, from a lower point of view, is quite correct) into the following parody, chiming with our higher view of music : Musica est exercitium. metaphy sices occultum nescientes se philosophari animi. For scire everywhere means, deposited in abstract 174 SUPPLEMENT 11. concepts. And as furthermore, by virtue of the truth of Leibnitz' saying, that meets with such mani- fold corroboration, music, apart from its aesthetic or inner significance, and considered in its outward and purely empirical aspect only, is nothing else than the means to grasp those larger numbers and more complicated relations of numbers direct and ill concreto which otherwise we can only conceive through the mediation of abstract concepts : we might thus, by combining these two different and yet correct views of music, form a conception of the possibility of a philosophy of numbers, such as that of Pythagoras was, and that of the Chinese in the Y-king ; and we would in this sense interpret the Pythagorean saying which Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., L. VII.) quotes : t^ api6/j,co Be to, •navr errkot,- Kzv (numero cuncta assimilantur). And if finally we connect this view with our interpretation of harmony and melody given above we shall find a mere philosophy of morals without explanation of nature, such as Socrates wished to introduce, quite analogous to melody without harmony, which Rous- seau desired exclusively; and, contrariwise, mere Physics and Metaphysics without Ethics would be equivalent to harmony without melody. METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 75 One might add a good deal as to the manner in which the perception of music takes place : i.e. solely and exclusively in and through time, with the total exclusion of space, also without any influence of the perception of causality, i.e. of the understanding ; for the sesthetical impression is the immediate effect of musical sounds, to realise which we have not to turn back to its cause, as in the case with percep- tion. ...... Ibid. Vol. ii. Chap. 39. The music of an opera, as the score presents it, has a totally independent, separate, as it were abstract existence, to which the actions and persons of the play are alien, and which follows its own laws ; wherefore it is quite effective even without the words. Music which has been composed with reference to the drama is, as it were, the soul of it; inas- much as the music in its combination with the action, persons, and words, becomes the expression of the inner significance, upon which the final and hidden necessity of their action rests. And it is a vague feeling of this that causes the delight of the spectator if he is not a mere gaper. Here, in the opera, music shows its heterogeneous nature and higher being by its total indifference to- 176 SUPPLEMENT II. wards all that is material in the action ; in conse- quence of which it everywhere expresses the storm of passions and the pathos of feelings by the same means and accompanies them with the same pomp of its tones, no matter whether Agamemnon and Achilles, or the dissensions of a citizen's family, furnish the matter of the piece. For nothing but passions, the emotions of the Will, exist for music, and, godlike, it sees the heart only. It never assimilates to the matter : con- sequently, even when it accompanies the most ridiculous and extravagant drollery of the comic opera, it still retains its essential beauty, purity, and sublimity ; and though blending with those actions, it retains its elevation, alien to all that is ludicrous. Thus the deep and earnest significance of our existence pends above the farce and the endless miseries of human life, and never leaves it for a single moment. If we look at merely instrumental music, we shall see, in one of Beethoven's symphonies, the greatest confusion, at the bottom of which nevertheless there is the most perfect order, the most violent strife, that in the next moment grows into loveliest concord : it is rerum concordia discors, a true and complete image of the essential nature of the world, that rolls on in METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC. 1 77 the immeasurable complication of countless shapes, and supports itself by constant destruction. At the same time all human passions and emotions speak from this symphony : joy, sorrow, love, hate, fright, hope, &c., in countless gradations, all however, as it were, in the abstract only, and without any particu- larity ; it is mere form, without materials, a mere spirit world, without matter. It is true, however, that we are inclined to realise it while listening, to clothe it in our fancy with flesh and bone, and to see all manner of scenes of life and nature in it. Yet on the whole, this neither facilitates its comprehension, nor enhances its delight, giving rather a heterogeneous and arbitrary alloy : it is therefore better to receive it directly and in its purity. PRINTED BY BALLANTVNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON M