Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXXII. The Beginning of the End
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his favourite. Schubert never saw the sea and
yet no composer, no painter, no poet except
Homer has ever made us understand its calm
splendour, its mystery and its anger as he did.
He had never seen the Nile and yet the opening
bars of his wonderful Memnon might have
sounded in the temple of Luxor. Hellenic art
and literature were unknown to him, except
what little his friend Mayerhofer might have
told him, and yet his Die Götter Griechenlands,
his Prometheus, his Ganymede, his Fragment aus
Aeschylus are masterpieces from the golden age
of Hellas. He had never been loved by a woman
and yet no more heartrending cry of passion has
ever reached our ears than his Gretchen am
Spinnrade, no more touching resignation than
his Mignon, no sweeter love-song has ever been
sung than his Ständchen. He was thirty-one
when he died, wretchedly poor as he had lived.
He who had written An die Musik had not even
a piano of his own! After his death all his
earthly belongings, his clothes, his few books,
his bed were sold at auction for sixty-three
florins. In a dilapidated bag under his bed
were found a score of other immortal songs more
worth than all the gold of the Rothschilds in
their Vienna where he lived and died.
* * *
Spring has come once more. The air is full of
it. The ginestra is in bloom, the myrtle is
budding, the vines are sprouting, flowers
everywhere. Roses and honeysuckle are climbing the
stems of the cypresses and the columns of the
pergola. Anemones, crocuses, wild hyacinths,
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