In my many readings on Beethoven for
our current film and book, I was struck by mentions of virtual love letters that the influential writer, feminist and transcendentalist Margaret Fuller wrote to Ludwig--long after he died. I'm reminded of it this week, with the Pulitzer Prize win for biography to Megan Marshall for her Fuller book. Here's Fuller's letter to Beethoven on November 15, 1843, after returning from a concert in Boston:
My only friend,
How shall I thank thee for once more breaking the chains of my sorrowful slumber?
My heart beats.
I live again, for I feel that I am worthy audience for thee, and that my being would be reason enough for thine. I have no art, in which to vent the swell of a soul as deep as thine, Beethoven,
and of a kindred frame.
Thou wilt not think me presumptuous in this saying, as another might.
I have always known that thou wouldst welcome and know me, as would no
other who ever lived upon the earth since its first creation.
Thou wouldst forgive me; master, that I have not been true to my
eventual destiny, and therefore have suffered on every side ‘the pangs
of despised love.’
Thou didst the same; but thou didst borrow from those errors the
inspiration of thy genius.
Why is it not thus with me?
Is it because, as a woman, I am bound by a physical law, which prevents
the soul from manifesting itself?
Sometimes the moon seems mockingly to say so,—to say that I, too, shall
not shine, unless I can find a sun. O, cold and barren moon, tell a
different tale!
But thou, oh blessed master!
dost answer all my questions, and make it my privilege to be. Like a
humble wife to the sage, or poet, it is my triumph that I can understand
and cherish thee: like a mistress, I arm thee for the fight: like a
young daughter, I tenderly bind thy wounds.
Thou art to me beyond compare, for thou art all I want.
No heavenly sweetness of saint or martyr, no many-leaved Raphael, no
golden Plato, is anything to me, compared with thee.
The infinite Shakspeare, the stern Angelo, Dante,—bittersweet like thee,—are no longer seen in thy presence.
And, beside these names, there are none that could vibrate in thy crystal sphere.
Thou hast all of them, and that ample surge of life besides, that great winged being which they only dreamed of....
If thou wouldst take me wholly to thyself——! I am lost in this world,
where I sometimes meet angels, but of a different star from mine.
Even so does thy spirit plead with all spirits.
But thou dost triumph and bring them all in.
Master, I have this summer envied the oriole which had even a swinging nest in the high bough.
I have envied the least flower that came to seed, though that seed were strown to the wind.
But I envy none when I am with thee.
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