Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14

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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 glass. Poe shortened his days and flung away a valuable
fag-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 Laureateship, 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--God will not have it so.

* * * * *

As a violinist Paganini far surpassed 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 God 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 Titian and his wonderful
color effects, and then again of Rembrandt with his mysterious limpid
shadows--their competitors 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 superstition 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 assignment with the creepy
vividness of Heinrich Heine. The rest of this chapter is Heine's. I make
the explanation because the passage 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 assured
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
principally to escape the damnable 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 fashion, 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 God! 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 hell had engraved
their lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure,
elegantly prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright gray little
coat with steel buttons, 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 bloody contract binds him to that
companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude,
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 gods of coffee and
sugar by the side of their fat goddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and
Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A religious silence reigned through the
assembly. 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 compassion 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 buttons; 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 butterflies, 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 butterflies!

Did the young heart anticipate 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.
"Divine!" cried my neighbor, the furrier, as he scratched his ears;
"that piece alone was worth two thalers."

When Paganini began to play again a gloom came before my eyes. The
sounds were not transformed into bright forms and colors; the
master's form was clothed in gloomy shades, out of the darkness of
which his music moaned in the most piercing tones of lamentation.

Only at times, when a little lamp that hung above cast its
sorrowful light over him, could I catch a glimpse of his pale
countenance, on which the youth was not yet extinguished. His
costume was singular, in two colors, yellow and red. Heavy chains
weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy
indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands
seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was
playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a
bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from
the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies
which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the
daughters of earth, and being exiled from the kingdom of the
blessed, sank into the underworld with faces red with shame. They
were melodies in whose bottomless depths glimmered neither
consolation nor hope. When the saints in heaven hear such melodies,
the praise of God dies upon their paled lips, and they cover their
heads weeping. At times when the obligate goat's laugh bleated in
among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of
a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with
wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonizing sounds came from the
violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon
earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again, unless in
the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of doom shall
ring out, and the naked corpses shall crawl forth from the grave to
abide their fate. But the agonized violinist suddenly made one
stroke of the bow, such a mad, despairing stroke, that his chains
fell rattling from him, and his mysterious assistant and the other
foul, mocking forms vanished.

At this moment my neighbor, the furrier, said, "A pity, a pity! a
string has snapped--that comes from constant pizzicato."

Had a string of the violin really snapped? I do not know. I only
observed the alternation in the sounds, and Paganini and his
surroundings seemed to me again suddenly changed. I could scarcely
recognize him in the monk's brown dress, which concealed rather
than clothed him. With savage countenance half-hid by the cowl,
waist girt with a cord, and bare feet, Paganini stood, a solitary
defiant figure, on a rocky prominence by the sea, and played his
violin. But the sea became red and redder, and the sky grew paler,
till at last the surging water looked like bright, scarlet blood,
and the sky above became of a ghastly corpse-like pallor, and the
stars came out large and threatening; and those stars were
black--black as glooming coal. But the tones of the violin grew
ever more stormy and defiant, and the eyes of the terrible player
sparkled with such a scornful lust of destruction, and his thin
lips moved with such a horrible haste, that it seemed as if he
murmured some old accursed charms to conjure the storm and loose
the evil spirits that lie imprisoned in the abysses of the sea.
Often, when he stretched his long, thin arm from the broad monk's
sleeve, and swept the air with his bow, he seemed like some
sorcerer who commands the elements with his magic wand; and then
there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea, and the
horrible waves of blood sprang up so fiercely that they almost
besprinkled the pale sky and the black stars with their red foam.
There was a wailing and a shrieking and a crashing, as if the world
was falling into fragments, and ever more stubbornly the monk
played his violin. He seemed as if by the power of violent will he
wished to break the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron
vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise
king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices
of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most
wrathful bass.

But at last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out
of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered
demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings,
snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals
with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green
camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long,
fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter,
however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back
and the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in
ringlets, like black snakes.

So maddening was this vision that to keep my senses I closed my
ears and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the specter had
vanished, and I saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making
his ordinary bows, while the public applauded in the most rapturous
manner.

"That is the famous performance upon G," remarked my neighbor. "I
myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master the
instrument." Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else
the musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long
conversation upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his
chin, and with the first stroke of his bow the wonderful
transformation of melodies again began.

They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and corporeally.
The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing and
swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything
around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal
space which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit
could seize. In the midst of this space hovered a shining sphere,
upon which, gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played
the violin. Was that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the
man's features I recognized Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely
glorious, with a reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of
powerful manhood, a bright blue garment enclosed his noble limbs,
his shoulders were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as
he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the
violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He
was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured
solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights,
which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven,
and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it
the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so
many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavored to gaze out into
the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments floating
ground, in which colossal pilgrims passed muffled along with white
staves in their hands, and singular to relate, the golden knob of
each staff was even one of those great lights which I had taken for
stars. These pilgrims moved in a large orbit around the great
performer, the golden knobs of their staves shone even brighter at
the tones of the violin, and the chorale which resounded from their
lips, and which I had taken for the song of the spheres, was only
the dying echo of those violin tones. A holy, ineffable ardor dwelt
in those sounds, which often trembled scarce audibly, in mysterious
whisper on the water, then swelled out again with a shuddering
sweetness, like a bugle's notes heard by moonlight, and then
finally poured forth in unrestrained jubilee, as if a thousand
bards had struck their harps and raised their voices in a song of
victory.

* * * * *

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, Niccolo Paganini was born at Genoa.
His father was a street-porter who eked out the scanty exchequer by
playing a violin at occasional dances or concerts. That his playing was
indifferent is evident from the fact that he was very poor--his services
were not in demand.

The poverty of the family and the failure of the father fired the
ambition of the boy to do something worthy. When he was ten years old he
could play as well as his father, and a year or so thereafter could play
better. The lad was tall, slender, delicate and dreamy-eyed. But he had
will plus, and his desire was to sound the possibilities of the violin.
And this reminds me that Hugh Pentecost says there is no such thing as
will--it is all desire: when we desire a thing strongly enough, we have
the will to secure it--but no matter!

Young Niccolo Paganini practised on his father's violin for six hours a
day; and now when the customers who used to hire his father to play
came, they would say, "We just as lief have Niccolo."

Soon after this they said, "We prefer to have Niccolo." And a little
later they said, "We must have Niccolo." Some one has written a book to
show that playing second fiddle is just as worthy an office as playing
first. This doubtless is true, but there are so many more men who can
play second, that it behooves every player to relieve the stress by
playing first if he can. Niccolo played first and then was called upon
to play solos. He was making twice as much money as his father ever had,
but the father took all the boy's earnings, as was his legal right. The
father's pride in the success of the son, the young man always said, was
because he was proving a good financial investment. It does not always
pay to raise children--this time it did. It was finally decided to take
the boy to the celebrated musician, Rolla, for advice as to what was
best to do about his education. Rolla was sick abed at the time the boy
called and could not see him; but while waiting in the entry the lad
took up a violin and began to play. The invalid raised himself on one
elbow and pantingly inquired who the great master was that had thus
favored him with a visit.

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