Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 20
TO HERE ADVOCAT CONRAD SCHLEINITZ AT LEIPSIC.
Berlin, 1st August, 1838.
Dear Schleinitz,—What you say of your increased occupation gives me great pleasure. You know how often we have talked over the question, but still I cannot admit your opinion that one profession is to be preferred to another. I persist in thinking that anything which the ordinary right sort of man can put his heart into and get well hold of is in itself a noble calling. The only things I could not feel a very strong interest in are precisely those in which there is no personal element, in which the individual disappears, such as the military career in times of peace, and of that Berlin has sufficient examples. But your whole contention is more or less untrue. In comparing one profession to another, people generally take the naked reality of one, and the most imposing ideal of the other, so, naturally, the decision is easy. And how easy it is for an artist to feel the bare realities of his trade, and then perhaps to envy practical men who have the chance of observing all the relations of life, and knowing all the diversities there are among men, to envy them especially when one considers all the actual, useful, beneficent things they may accomplish. And then, just because the man of honour has the hardest task in dealing with a public which is more concerned about appearances than realities, therefore one cannot suffer the needs of the moment to guide or perturb one’s conscience, but above all external considerations must always maintain in one’s heart a something that can raise and sustain it. This tells very directly for my view, for that higher impulse is the best thing in every calling, and it is common to all—shared equally by yours and mine and every other. After all, what is the beauty you find in a quartette or a symphony that I have worked into shape? Surely it is nothing but the piece of myself that I have put into it, given voice to in that fashion. You do the same in your defence of a pickpocket or a claim for damages, or whatever it may be that makes you exert yourself, just in the same measure that any man can do it, and that is the great point of concern. If only what is within a man can get issue and declare itself, and if this inward part of him can become more and more worthy of declaration, that is all; the rest is indifferent. With many thanks for news of all your doings.
Yours,
Felix Mendlessohn Bartholdy.