[187] And yet--and yet, my
friend, I am the most miserable creature on earth. Everything
around me breathes peace and happiness, everything throbs with life
and fulfils its functions.... I alone, oh God!... I alone live like
a beast that is deaf and senseless. Even reading hardly serves to
distract me now, though I bury myself in books in my despair. As
for composition, that is finished; I can no longer bring to mind
the meaning of a harmony or a melody, and I almost begin to doubt
if the compositions that bear my name are really mine. Good God!
what is the use of all this fame? What is the good of these great
aims if misery is all that lies at the end of it?...
"_Heaven gives a man complete genius or no genius at all. Hell has
given me everything by halves_.
"O unhappy man, how true, how true it is! In the flower of your
life you went to hell; into the evil jaws of destiny you threw the
delusive present and yourself with it. O Kleist!"
[Footnote 187: Wolf was living there with a friend. He had not a lodging
of his own until 1896, and that was due to the generosity of his
friends.
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