This gift is recognised even by his enemies--by
Wagner, who seeks with some unfairness to restrict his genius within
narrow limits, and to reduce it to "a structure with wheels of infinite
ingenuity and extreme cunning ... a marvel of mechanism."[70]
But though there is hardly anyone that Berlioz does not irritate or
attract, he always strikes people by his impetuous ardour, his glowing
romance, and his seething imagination, all of which makes and will
continue to make his work one of the most picturesque mirrors of his
age. His frenzied force of ecstasy and despair, his fulness of love and
hatred, his perpetual thirst for life, which "in the heart of the
deepest sorrow lights the Catherine wheels and crackers of the wildest
joy"[71]--these are the qualities that stir up the crowds in _Benvenuto_
and the armies in the _Damnation_, that shake earth, heaven, and hell,
and are never quenched, but remain devouring and "passionate even when
the subject is far removed from passion, and yet also express sweet and
tender sentiments and the deepest calm."[72]
[Footnote 70: "Berlioz displayed, in calculating the properties of
mechanism, a really astounding scientific knowledge.
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