SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Lieder on poems of Goethe
He had hardly finished the Mörike-Lieder when he began a series of Lieder on poems of Goethe. In three months (December, 1888, to February, 1889) he had written all the Goethe-Liederbuch–fifty-one Lieder, some of which are, like Prometheus, big dramatic scenes.
The same year, while still at Perchtoldsdorf, after having published a volume of Eichendorff Lieder, he became absorbed in a new cycle–the Spanisches-Liederbuch, on Spanish poems translated by Heyse. He wrote these forty-four songs in the same ecstasy of gladness:
«What I write now, I write for the future…. Since Schubert and Schumann there has been nothing like it!»
In 1890, two months after he had finished the Spanisches-Liederbuch, he composed another cycle of Lieder on poems called Alten Weisen, by the great Swiss writer Gottfried Keller. And lastly, in the same year, he began his Italienisches-Liederbuch, on Italian poems, translated by Geibel and Heyse.
And then–then there was silence.
* * * * *
The history of Wolf is one of the most extraordinary in the history of art, and gives one a better glimpse of the mysteries of genius than most histories do.
Let us make a little résumé. Wolf at twenty-eight years old had written practically nothing. From 1888 to 1890 he wrote, one after another, in a kind of fever, fifty-three Mörike Lieder, fifty-one Goethe Lieder, forty-four Spanish Lieder, seventeen Eichendorff Lieder, a dozen Keller Lieder, and the first Italian Lieder–that is about two hundred Lieder, each one having its own admirable individuality.
And then the music stops. The spring has dried up. Wolf in great anguish wrote despairing letters to his friends. To Oskar Grohe, on 2 May, 1891, he wrote:
«I have given up all idea of composing. Heaven knows how things will finish. Pray for my poor soul.»
And to Wette, on 13 August, 1891, he says:
«For the last four months I have been suffering from a sort of mental consumption, which makes me very seriously think of quitting this world for ever…. Only those who truly live should live at all. I have been for some time like one who is dead. I only wish it were an apparent death; but I am really dead and buried; though the power to control my body gives me a seeming life. It is my inmost, my only desire, that the flesh may quickly follow the spirit that has already passed. For the last fifteen days I have been living at Traunkirchen, the pearl of Traunsee…. All the comforts that a man could wish for are here to make my life happy–peace, solitude, beautiful scenery, invigorating air, and everything that could suit the tastes of a hermit like myself.[187] And yet–and yet, my friend, I am the most miserable creature on earth. Everything around me breathes peace and happiness, everything throbs with life and fulfils its functions…. I alone, oh God!… I alone live like a beast that is deaf and senseless. Even reading hardly serves to distract me now, though I bury myself in books in my despair. As for composition, that is finished; I can no longer bring to mind the meaning of a harmony or a melody, and I almost begin to doubt if the compositions that bear my name are really mine. Good God! what is the use of all this fame? What is the good of these great aims if misery is all that lies at the end of it?…
«Heaven gives a man complete genius or no genius at all. Hell has given me everything by halves.
«O unhappy man, how true, how true it is! In the flower of your life you went to hell; into the evil jaws of destiny you threw the delusive present and yourself with it. O Kleist!»
[Footnote 187: Wolf was living there with a friend. He had not a lodging of his own until 1896, and that was due to the generosity of his friends.]
this was: Lieder On Poems Of Goethe
go to next chapter: Wolf’s genius flowed again
