-
This book makes on me the effect of a pedagogic exuberance. Even
the occasional good views (on harmony, for example) that it
contains are obscured by a self-sufficiency in the tone and
manner of them, of which one may well complain as insupportable.
What Raff wishes to appear spoils four-fifths (to quote the time
which he adapts so ridiculously to "Lohengrin" of what he might
be. He is perpetually getting on scientific stilts, which are by
no means of a very solid wood. Philosophic formulas are sometimes
the envelope, the outside shell, as it were, of knowledge; but it
may also happen that they only show empty ideas, and contain no
other substance than their own harsh terminology. To demonstrate
the rose by the ferule may seem a very scientific proceeding to
vulgar pedants; for my part it is not to my taste; and without
being unjust to the rare qualities of Raff's talent, which I have
long truly appreciated, his book seems to me to belong too much
to the domain of moral and artistic pathology for it to help in
placing questions of Art in their right light.
I beg you, dear friend, not to repeat this to anybody, for I
could not go against Raff in any but the most extreme case, for
which I hope he will not give me any occasion. Against the many
charges to which he has exposed himself I even intend to shield
him as far as possible, but I am very much grieved that he has
mingled so much that is raw and untenable in his book with much
that is good, true and right.
Farewell, dear friend, and give most friendly greetings to your
wife from
Yours most sincerely,
F. Liszt
August 12th, 1854
In the "Favorita" article a great error has been allowed to
remain. "No lover, no knight behaves thus" - and not "A lover
behaves thus," etc. Send me at once the proofs of the "Weisse
Dame", and in September bring the "Fliegende Hollander", which
must not wait any longer.
I am now working at my Faust Symphony. The three-keyboard
instrument arrived yesterday from Paris. It might be well to take
the opportunity of my Catalogue appearing at Hartel's to see
about a special article on it in your paper.
119. To Anton Rubinstein
[August, 1854]
My dear Van II.,
Whatever scruple I may have in making the shadow of an attempt on
the liberty of your determinations and movements, - a scruple of
which I gave you a pertinent proof by not insisting any further
on your choosing Weymar instead of Bieberich as your villegiatura
during this last month, - yet duty (and a theatrical duty!)
obliges me to snatch you from your Rhine-side leisure, to set
yourself to work afresh at your business on the banks of the
Ilm, -
"Non piu andrai, farfalone," etc.
