"The philosophy of my disappointments is, that there is so much CLEVERNESS
standing betwixt me and the public . . . Richard Wagner is
sixty years old and over, and one-half of the most cultivated artists
of the most cultivated art-land, quoad music, still think him an absurdity.
Says Schumann in one of his letters: `The publishers will not listen to me
for a moment'; and dost thou not remember Schubert, and Richter,
and John Keats, and a sweet host more?
"Now this is written because I sit here in my room daily,
and picture THEE picturing ME worn, and troubled, or disheartened;
and because I do not wish thee to think up any groundless sorrow in thy soul.
Of course I have my keen sorrows, momentarily more keen than I would like
any one to know; but I thank God that in a knowledge of Him and of myself
which cometh to me daily in fresh revelations, I have a steadfast
firmament of blue, in which all clouds soon dissolve.
I have wanted to say this several times of late, but it is not easy
to bring one's self to talk so of one's self, even to one's dearer self.
"Have then . . . no fears nor anxieties in my behalf;
look upon all my disappointments as mere witnesses that art has no enemy
so unrelenting as cleverness, and as rough weather that seasons timber.
It is of little consequence whether *I* fail; the *I* in the matter
is a small business: `Que mon nom soit fle/tri, que la France soit libre!'
quoth Danton; which is to say, interpreted by my environment:
Let my name perish -- the poetry is good poetry and the music is good music,
and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it.
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