tented that earth should not have offered him a home; where is the woman who would have corresponded with what we wish from his love? Where is the lot in which he could have reposed with all that grandeur of aspect in which he now appears to us? Where Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth, there may be a home for thee, Beethoven.
We will not shrink from the dark clouds which became to his overflowing light cinctures of pearl and opal; we will not, even by a wish, seek to amend the destiny through which a divine thought glows so clearly. Were there no Œdipuses there would be no Antigones.
Under no other circumstances could Beethoven have ministered to his fellows in the way he himself indicates.
“The unhappy man, let him be comforted by finding one of his race who in defiance of all hinderances of nature, has done all possible to him to be received in the rank of worthy artists and men.”
In three respects these artists, all true artists, resemble one another. Clear decision. The intuitive faculty speaks clear in those devoted to the worship of Beauty. They are not subject to mental conflict, they ask not counsel of experience. They take what they want as simply as the bird goes in search of its proper food, so soon as its wings are grown.
Like nature they love to work for its own sake. The philosopher is ever seeking the thought through the symbol, but the artist is happy at the implication of the thought in his work. He does not reason about “religion or thorough bass.” His answer is Haydn’s, “I thought it best so.” From each achievement grows up a still higher ideal, and when his work is finished, it is nothing to the artist who has made of it the step by which he ascended, but while he was engaged in it, it was all to him, and filled his soul with a parental joy.
They do not criticise, but affirm. They have no need to deny
