Part 3 (1/2)
”Go away!” cried Bliss Carman, when he had opened the door in reply to my sprightly knock. ”Go away! I am giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. This is my busy night--do you not see?” And fully understanding the conditions, for I am a poet myself, I went away and left the author to his labors.
It is a mistake to a.s.sume that genius is the capacity for evading hard work. ”La Vie de Boheme” is a beautiful myth that was first worked out with consummate labor by a man of imagination named Murger, and told again with variations by Balzac and Du Maurier. Boheme is not down on the map, because it is not a money-order post-office. It is only a Queen Mab fairy fabric of a warm, transient desire; its walls being constructed of the stuff that dreams are made of, and its little life is rounded with a pipe and tabor, two empties and a bra.s.s tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect.
Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful.
Sometimes these young persons give lectures on ”Art as I Have Found It”; but do not be deceived by this--the art that lives is probably being produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom you can only find with the help of a search-warrant. One sort talks of art, the other kind produces it. One tells of truth, the other is living it.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the most gruesome stories that have ever been told, just to prove that life is a tragedy and not worth living. But who ever lived fuller and applied himself to hard work more conscientiously in order to make his point? Poe wrote and rewrote, and changed and added and interlined and balanced it all on his actor's tongue, and read it aloud before the gla.s.s. Poe shortened his days and flung away a valuable f.a.g-end of his life, trying to show that life is not worth living, and thus proved it is. Gray spent thirteen years writing his ”Elegy,” and so made clear the point that the man who does good work does not at the last lay him down and rest his head upon the lap of earth, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Gray secured both fame and fortune. He was so successful that he declined the Laureates.h.i.+p, and had the felicity to die of gout. Gray's immortality is based upon the fact that his life gave the lie to his logic. The man who thinks out what he wants to do, and then works and works hard, will win, and no others do, or ever have, or can--G.o.d will not have it so.
As a violinist Paganini far surpa.s.sed all other players who ever lived; and when one follows the story of his life, the fact is apparent that he succeeded because he worked.
And yet behold the paradox! The idea existed in his own day, and is abroad yet, that ”the devil guided his hand,” for the thought that the devil is more powerful than G.o.d has ever been held by the majority of men--more especially if a fiddle is concerned.
Such patience, such persistency, such painstaking effort as the man put forth for a score of years would have made him master at anything. The public knows nothing of these long years of labor and preparation--it sees only the result, and this result shows such consummate ease and naturalness--all done without effort--that it exclaims, ”A genius--the devil guides his hand!” The remark was made of t.i.tian and his wonderful color effects, and then again of Rembrandt with his mysterious limpid shadows--their compet.i.tors could not understand it! And so they disposed of the subject by attributing it to a supernatural agency.
Things all men can do and explain are natural; things we can not explain are ”supernatural.” Progress consists in taking things out of the supernatural pigeonhole and placing them in the natural. As soon as we comprehend the supernatural, we are a bit surprised to find it is perfectly natural.
But the limitations of great men are seen in that when they have acquired the skill to do a difficult thing well, and the public cries, ”Genius!” why the genius humors the superst.i.tion and begins to allow the impression to get out mysteriously that he ”never had a lesson in his life.”
Any man who caters to the public is to a great degree spoiled by the public. Actors act off the stage as well as on, falling victims to their trade: their lives are stained by pretense and affectation, just as the dyer's hand is subdued to the medium in which it works. The man of talent who is much before the public poses because his audience wishes him to; one step more and the pose becomes natural--he can not divest himself of it. Paganini by hard work became a consummate player; and then so the dear public should receive its money's worth, he evolved into a consummate poseur--but he was still the Artist.
A large number of writers have described the appearance and playing of Niccolo Paganini, but none ever did the a.s.signment with the creepy vividness of Heinrich Heine. The rest of this chapter is Heine's. I make the explanation because the pa.s.sage is so well known that it would be both indiscreet and inexpedient for me to bring my literary jimmy to bear and claim it as my own--much as I would like to.
Says Heinrich Heine:
I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy upon paper--a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has with a few strokes of chalk so well hit the great violinist's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. ”The devil guided my hand,” the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with a good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music in the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And yet is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colors and forms.
I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be seized, features which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of life. ”Indeed, the devil guided my hand,” the deaf painter a.s.sured me, as we stood before the pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert there. ”Yes, my friend, it is true that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and princ.i.p.ally to escape the d.a.m.nable galley where he had already languished many years. For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the theater, was jealous of some little abbate, was perhaps deceived by the faithless amata, stabbed her in approved Italian fas.h.i.+on, came in the galley to Genoa, and as I said, sold himself to the devil to escape from it, became the best violin-player, and imposed upon us this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise G.o.d! There in the avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious impresario.”
It was Paganini himself whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark gray overcoat, which reached to his heels, and made his figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius and h.e.l.l had engraved their lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright gray little coat with steel b.u.t.tons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's presentation of ”Faust” and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipzig. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. ”Does it not seem,” said he, ”as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk forever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he can not separate himself from him; a b.l.o.o.d.y contract binds him to that companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant mult.i.tude, indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris' form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form--namely as a black poodle.”
But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him walking in bright midday under the green trees of the Hamburg Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this concert, and the art-loving public had flocked there so early, and in such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in the first row of boxes the whole educated commercial world, a whole Olympus of bankers and other millionaires, the G.o.ds of coffee and sugar by the side of their fat G.o.ddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the a.s.sembly. Every eye was directed towards the stage. Every ear was making ready to listen. My neighbor, an old furrier, took the dirty cotton out of his ears in order to drink in better the costly sounds for which he had paid his two thalers.
At last a dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the underworld, appeared upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black costume--the black dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible cut, such as is prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpine. The black trousers hung anxiously around the thin legs.
The long arms appeared to grow still longer, as, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the floor with them, while displaying to the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh.
But his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring, so simply humble, that a sorrowful compa.s.sion repressed one's desire to smile. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an automaton, or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death, or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions?
Or is it one risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets?
Such questions crossed our minds while Paganini was performing his strange bows, but all those thoughts were at once still when the wonderful master placed his violin under his chin and began to play.
As for me, you already know my musical second-sight, my gift of seeing at each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so Paganini with each stroke of his bow brought visible forms and situations before my eyes; he told me in melodious hieroglyphics all kinds of brilliant tales; he, as it were, made a magic lantern play its colored antics before me, he himself being chief actor. At the first stroke of his bow the stage scenery around him had changed; he suddenly stood with his music-desk in a cheerful room, decorated in a gay, irregular way after the Pompadour style; everywhere little mirrors, gilded Cupids, Chinese porcelain, a delightful chaos of ribbons, garlands of flowers, white gloves, torn lace, false pearls, powder-puffs, diamonds of gold-leaf and spangles--such tinsel as one finds in the room of a prima donna.
Paganini's outward appearance had also changed, and certainly most advantageously; he wore short breeches of lily-colored satin, a white waistcoat embroidered with silver, and a coat of bright blue velvet with gold b.u.t.tons; the hair in little carefully curled locks bordered his face, which was young and rosy, and gleamed with sweet tenderness as he ogled the pretty young lady who stood near him at the music-desk, while he played the violin.
Yes, I saw at his side a pretty young creature, dressed in antique costume, the white satin swelled out above the waist, making the figure still more charmingly slender; the high raised hair was powdered and curled, and the pretty round face shone out all the more openly with its glancing eyes, its little rouged cheeks, its tiny beauty-patches, and the sweet, impertinent little nose. In her hand was a roll of white paper, and by the movements of her lips as well as by the coquettish waving to and fro of her little upper lip she seemed to be singing; but none of her trills was audible to me, and only from the violin with which young Paganini led the lovely child could I discover what she sang, and what he himself during her song felt in his soul.
Oh, what melodies were those! Like the nightingale's notes, when the fragrance of the rose intoxicates her yearning young heart with desire, they floated in the twilight. Oh, what melting, languid delight was that! The sounds kissed each other, then fled away pouting, and then, laughing, clasped each other and became one, and died away in intoxicating harmony. Yes, the sounds carried on their merry game like b.u.t.terflies, when one, in playful provocation, will escape from another, hide behind a flower, be overtaken at last, and then, wantonly joying with the other, fly away into the golden sunlight. But a spider, a spider can prepare a sudden tragical fate for such enamored b.u.t.terflies!
Did the young heart antic.i.p.ate this? A melancholy sighing tone, a sad foreboding of some slowly approaching misfortune, glided softly through the enrapturing melodies that were streaming from Paganini's violin. His eyes became moist. Adoringly he knelt down before his amata. But, alas! as he bowed down to kiss her feet, he saw under the sofa a little abbate! I do not know what he had against the poor man, but the Genoese became pale as death. He seized the little fellow with furious hands, drew a stiletto from its sheath, and buried it in the young rogue's breast.
At this moment, however, a shout of ”Bravo! Bravo!” broke out from all sides. Hamburg's enthusiastic sons and daughters were paying the tribute of their uproarious applause to the great artist, who had just ended the first of his concert, and was now bowing with even more angles and contortions than before. And on his face the abject humility seems to me to have become more intense. From his eyes stared a sorrowful anxiety like that of a poor malefactor.