An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Beethoven (After May 20th, 1804)
Beethoven
After May 20th, 1804
My own, an emperor? And unto him
My Third, my dearest child I dedicated.
And Bonaparte is now Napoleon.
Swashbuckler, Jenghiz Khan. How mad I was.
How loathsome art thou to me now, my Third.
How do I hate thee, O thou errant dream.
Dost thou deride me, misbegotten child?
O thou, my grief, my straying hope. My hero
In glory now will enter Notre Dame
And set a glittering bauble on his head,
The while the people shout his fame aloud,—
O, Revolution’s children will exult
That once again a tyrant wears the crown.
O, ill-starred music, O, accursed Third.
It is the end, the end. I shall depart
From this abode, where I in foolish faith
Cherished these dreams. The graveyard of our dreams
Is hateful and more loathsome than all others.
But wait, O Bonaparte. In this, my Third
There is a funeral march, wait, O thou traitor,
Thine shall it be,—I shall not burn thee, Third,
Because of this march. It was to be the ending
Of deeds victorious,—the hero’s life
Wanes in a swift splendour, like a mighty star
Which soars, still blazing, from the firmament,—
But on this field of fame thou shalt not die,—
Tyrants die in their beds,—then shall this march
Have power to tell thee what things might have been. . . .
Out awhile, out to yonder peaceful vineyards,
Which rest in sunshine. My head throbs and aches
With burial pangs. . . . My hero’s now a tyrant. . . .
Away from men, there’s not a man among them,
Away from all things,—all things are deception,
Out to the sunshine and the cooling wind.
He (1921)
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
