Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 5
TO HIS FATHER.
Dear Father,—It is a year to-day since we kept your birthday at the Hensels; let me keep a sort of celebration of it now and relate you something from Rome, as then from London. To-morrow I hope to finish writing down my old overture to the “Lonely Island”[1] for a present, and when I date it “December 11th” it will seem as if I was going to lay it actually in your hands. You may say that you cannot read it, but I give you the best I can create, and though indeed one has to do one’s best every day, still a birthday stands by itself; I wish only I could be with you. About my wishes for you let me be silent. You know it all and know how we all feel ourselves bound up with your happiness and contentment, and that I can wish you nothing which would not so return to us twofold. It is a festival to-day; I rejoice in thinking how gladsome everything must look with you; and, in telling you how pleasant my life is here. I have a sense that this also is to send you a felicitation. A time like this in which seriousness and pleasure unite does indeed strengthen and refresh one. Every day when I enter my room I feel delighted afresh at the thought of not having to travel on to-morrow—that so much can be quietly postponed—that I am in Rome. Everything that my time of travel put into my head was soon driven out by something else, and my impressions chased each other through my mind, but here everything has time to expand calmly. Never, I think, was my work so much a pleasure; and to accomplish all the plans I have now, I must stick close to them the whole winter. To be sure, I must do without the great satisfaction of communicating what one has done to others who could appreciate and take part in it, but just that drives me to work again, because it all pleases me more than it could another, as long, that is, as I am in the thick of it. •••••• I wish you would lecture P. It makes me angry at heart to see men of no vocation take on themselves the office of judging men who have aims of their own, even the most limited, and to the best of my capacity I lately did a musical person here the service of making that clear. He began talking about Mozart, and as Bunsen and his sister admire Palestrina, he sought to ingratiate himself with them; among other things, by asking me what I thought of the good Mozart and his various offences. But I replied that for my part I would gladly throw my virtues overboard and take Mozart’s sins in their place, at all events, it was not for me to measure his virtues. The people around us were a good deal amused. What a thing it is that such fellows should not hesitate before the greatest names. Still, it is a consolation that it is the same with all the arts. The painters here are no better; it is terrible to see them at their Café Greco. I seldom go there, for I am rather afraid of them and the place they haunt. It is a small dark room about eight paces wide; on one side it is permitted to smoke tobacco, on the other not. They sit round on the benches with their brigand-hats and their big bloodhounds; their throats, chins, and faces are entirely covered with hair, and they pour out dense volumes of smoke and exchange incivilities with one another while the dogs are exchanging their insects. A necktie or a frock-coat would be a modern weakness; all the face that’s left by the beard is concealed by their spectacles; they swill their coffee and discourse of Titian and Pordenone as though these persons were sitting there with beards and brigand-hats like themselves. Their business is to paint sickly madonnas, rickety saints and effeminate knights, things one longs to dash one’s fist through. As for Titian’s picture in the Vatican, which you ask about, these infernal critics have no respect for it. According to them it has neither subject nor conception, and it never occurs to one of them that a master who gave laborious days of love and reverence to a picture, may still have seen as far as they can through their glistening spectacles, and if all my life I never contrive to do anything else, I am resolved, at least, to be as rude as I can to people who have no respect for the great masters; that will be one good work accomplished. Then they stand before all the wonderful visions of which they have no true inkling, and pretend to criticise them. In this picture there are three zones or planes, whatever you please to call them, much as there are in the “Transfiguration.” Below stand saints and martyrs, with figures expressing suffering and weariness; pain, despair almost, is stamped upon their features; one, clad in the richly-coloured robes of a bishop, gazes upward with a keen, bitter longing; he seems almost to weep, yet he cannot see the presence actually hovering above him. The spectator may see it, however—in the cloud above is seated the Madonna with the Child; her countenance is bright, and round her are angels carrying many crowns; the Child holds one of these, and seems about to crown the saints below, but the mother holds it back for a moment. The contrast between the sorrowful region below, where St. Sebastian gazes with a stern almost indifferent expression before him, and the radiant calm above where the crowns stand ready in the clouds, is indeed very noble. High again above the group of the Madonna hovers the Paraclete, with brilliant light radiating from his form; and this is the key-stone to the arch. It just occurs to me that Goethe, during his first stay in Rome, admired this picture and describes it, but I have not the book by me, and so cannot consult it to see how far he concurs with my description. He speaks of it at length. Then it was in the Quirinal, and was afterwards brought to the Vatican. Whether it was painted by commission, as these people say, or not, makes no difference; he has put his own feeling and poetry in it, and therefore it is his own. Schadow, whom I am often glad to spend my time with, a truly modest artist with a clear, calm understanding of great work, lately said to me that Titian had never painted a meaningless or dull picture, and I believe he is right, for all the master’s works speak of life and inspiration and the power of health; where these are is great art.
To-day I was in St. Peter’s, where the ceremonies of the “Absolution” at the Pope’s death have begun. They last till Tuesday, and then the Cardinals will enter the conclave. The edifice is beyond all conception. It seems to me like some great wonder of Nature, a forest, or a mountain of rock; one loses sight of the human contrivance. It seems to tax the sight to look up to the roof; it is like looking up to the sky. You start on a journey in the interior and soon find yourself tired of walking. The services are being said and sung in one part, and one only becomes aware of it on arriving there. The angels of the font are uncouth giants, the doves huge as eagles; one forgets all the relations of perspective, yet it is a grand sensation to stand beneath the dome and let the eye pierce the unbroken height above. At present a monstrous catafalque stands in the nave, shaped something like the drawing I send. The coffin is placed in the centre beneath the pillars, a tasteless arrangement, but with a weird effect. The two biers and their decorations are thickly studded with lights, an altar lamp hangs above the bier, and beneath the statues again are countless tapers. The whole pile is a hundred feet high, and rears itself in front of you on going in. The guard of honour and the Swiss are formed about it in a square, at each angle of which is stationed a cardinal in deep mourning with his attendants, holding vast flaming torches; then begins the chant with the monotonous responses. This is the only occasion on which they sing in the centre of the church, and the effect is very wonderful.
It is very striking to stand among the choir, as I am allowed to do, and watch them all grouped round the colossal book they sing from. An enormous taper throws its light upon the page, and it is most interesting to see how they all press round in their vestments to read the music, Baini, with his monastic face, beating time with his hand, and at intervals coming in with his deep sonorous voice, and to observe all the play of the strongly-marked Italian faces. One passes from one spectacle to another in Rome, and so it is in St. Peter’s; one takes a few steps and the whole scene is changed. I went to the farther end, and there it was a wonderful picture to look down between the twisted pillars of the high altar, which one knows to be equal in height to the Schloss at Berlin, to see across the floor of the dome the catafalque with its crowded lights, strangely diminished by the distance, and the throng of people about it like so many dwarfs.
If the music begins when one is at this distance, the notes only reach one after a long interval, then re-echo and obliterate each other so that one catches the strangest indefinable harmonies. Changing position again, so as to stand in face of the catafalque, one sees, beyond the glow of the many lights and the flashing splendour, the great twilight of the dome filled with purple vapour; and that is the most indescribable thing of all. That is, precisely, Rome!
This letter has got too long. I will end it now, and it will arrive just at Christmas. A happy festival to you all! I am sending some presents too, which will get off to-morrow morning, and reach you for the silver wedding. We are having many great days together, and I cannot tell whether to think of you to-day and wish you all happiness, or to let myself travel with the letter and come to you for Christmas, and then mother will refuse to let me through into your study. Well, at least I send my thoughts. Farewell, with all good wishes.Felix.
Your letter has just come with the news of Goethe’s illness. I cannot describe what I feel about it. All the evening I seemed to hear his last words, “I will do my best to keep up till your return;” they blot out all other thoughts from my mind. If he is gone, Germany will have another aspect for all artists. I have never thought of our country but with delight and pride in the knowledge that it contained Goethe; all else that has grown up there seems so weak and ineffectual that one’s heart is saddened. He is the last, and closes our fortunate era. The year ends heavily.
- ↑ “Overture to the Hebrides.”