..."[12] To
love, to be loved--he would give up all for that.
[Footnote 12: "Music and love are the two wings of the soul," he wrote
in his _Memoires_.]
But his love was that of a youth who lives in dreams; it was never the
strong, clear-eyed passion of a man who has faced the realities of life,
and who sees the defects as well as the charms of the woman he loves,
Berlioz was in love with love, and lost himself among visions and
sentimental shadows. To the end of his life he remained "a poor little
child worn out by a love that was beyond him."[13] But this man who
lived so wild and adventurous a life expressed his passions with
delicacy; and one finds an almost girlish purity in the immortal love
passages of _Les Troyens_ or the "_nuit sereine"_ of _Romeo et
Juliette_. And compare this Virgilian affection with Wagner's sensual
raptures. Does it mean that Berlioz could not love as well as Wagner? We
only know that Berlioz's life was made up of love and its torments. The
theme of a touching passage in the Introduction of the _Symphonic
fantastique_ has been recently identified by M. Julien Tiersot, in his
interesting book,[14] with a romance composed by Berlioz at the age of
twelve, when he loved a girl of eighteen "with large eyes and pink
shoes"--Estelle, _Stella mentis, Stella matutina_.
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