The Austrian State, the
town of Vienna, his native town Windischgratz, the Conservatoire that
had expelled him, the _Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde_ who had been so
long unfriendly to his works, the Opera that had been closed to him, the
singers that had scorned him, the critics that had scoffed at him--they
were all there. They sang one of his saddest melodies, _Resignation_, a
setting of a poem of Eichendorff's, and a chorale by his old friend
Bruckner, who had died several years before him. His faithful friends,
Faisst at the head of them, took care to have a monument erected to his
memory near those of Beethoven and Schubert.
* * * * *
Such was his life, cut short at thirty-seven years of age--for one
cannot count the five years of complete madness. There are not many
examples in the art world of so terrible a fate. Nietzsche's misfortune
is nowhere beside this, for Nietzsche's madness was, to a certain
extent, productive, and caused his genius to flash out in a way that it
never would have done if his mind had been balanced and his health
perfect. Wolf's madness meant prostration. But one may see how, even in
the space of thirty-seven years, his life was strangely parcelled out.
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