XIII
THE YEAR 1870–1871
Resumption of music study in Milan · Outbreak of the Franco-German War · My double existence in the world of books · Return of the victorious troops to Berlin
Prince Achille Murat was an officer in the French army; in this capacity he received orders to take up garrison duty at Algiers. Of course his wife went with him, and consequently Paris once more became empty for me. My heart also was empty, and the plans for the future had gone to wrack and ruin. Our small property had dwindled sadly with all these costly lessons and the other expenses of a luxurious existence ... and so it came about that I turned my attention to singing again. We journeyed to Milan for the purpose of studying opera parts under Maestro Lamperti and, if possible, to make my début at the Scala. Lamperti gave me an examination—found my voice marvelously beautiful—but I should have to study with him for at least a year before I could venture to think of appearing in concert or opera. Very good—on then with the do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si....
I studied and practiced diligently, but the “one important thing,” the world-filling thing so to speak, which at the beginning of my apprenticeship I found in hoped-for mastery of my art, had vanished from me.
And now the Franco-German War broke out. I received word from Salomé Murat that she had given birth to a son in Algiers, and that he was born on the first of July, the very day when war was declared. I had not seen the tempest coming, and when it broke it aroused as little interest in me as did the storm of 1866. I was occupied with far more serious troubles: I could not make a success of my artistic career. Whenever I sang at a test, nervousness closed my throat and I made a failure. The “Singsang” was becoming a torment. But I struggled on, for the others kept assuring me that this nervousness could be conquered, and that then my talent would come out victorious. Under the stress of this I paid little heed to the mighty tragedy which was at that time convulsing the world. Other woes than mine were there suffered; my contemporaries there were trembling with other anxieties! Once more did I let this elemental event pass over the horizon without any inward revolt. The repeated victories won by Germany filled me with great respect, while at the same time the fall of the Napoleonic dynasty, with which I had come into such close contact, aroused my sincere sympathy; on the other hand, I was glad for my delightful royal vis-à-vis that he was to wear the proud imperial crown.
About all the distress and the horrors which followed in the wake of the Franco-German War I heard little—or would not hear anything; I put it aside with my habitual fatalistic C’est la guerre. Politics did not interest me in the least; I did not read the newspapers. This gave me all the more time for books. Books carried me into another world in which, along with my own individual life, I led a second life. In my early childhood I had been seized by the passion for reading and learning; through my intercourse with Elvira, poetess and daughter of a savant, it was still more fanned into flame, and never, under any circumstances, has it left me. Whether at home in Baden or off traveling; whether studying at the opera school or moving in high life amid joys and festivities; whether in love and engaged and disengaged again; whether my existence was offering me splendor and pleasures or care and worriments,—I always spent many hours every day in the company of books.
At the time of which I am now speaking, what I had read would have filled a stately library. All of Shakespeare, all of Goethe, all of Schiller and Lessing, all of Victor Hugo. The last-named,—a world in himself,—who had already made such a mighty impression upon me as a child with his Ruy Blas, I felt called upon to know in all his works; and I was intoxicated with his command of language, with the sunward flight of his genius. Anastasius Grün, Hamerling, Grillparzer, Byron, Shelley, Alfred de Musset, Tennyson, among poets; and of the novelists I knew all of Dickens, all of Bulwer,—better say at once, all of the Tauchnitz collection. In French the novels of George Sand, Balzac, Dumas; the dramatic works of Corneille, Racine, Molière, Dumas fils, Augier, Sardou.
Yet scientific writings interested me as much as elegant literature, perhaps even more. I read works on ethnography, chemistry, astronomy; but my favorite branch was philosophy. Kant, Schopenhauer, Hartmann (“The Philosophy of the Unconscious”), Strauss, Feuerbach, Pascal, Comte, Littré, Victor Cousin, Jules Janet, Alfred Fouillée,—the three last named in the Revue des deux mondes, which I regularly read from the first page to the last,—these and many others, all of whose names I cannot here enumerate, were my intellectual comrades, in whose company I led a happy double existence quite apart from my personal doings, and in this my soul expanded most comfortably.
The period of iconoclasm had not then arrived, with immense zeal to throw discredit on the works of the earlier poets, and one could rejoice with undiminished pride in the lofty circle. In science, on the other hand, the really noblest of all—I mean natural science—had not as yet attained to the height, the influence, and the revolutionary effect on intellects which it has since won through the theory of evolution. Its application to spiritual and social phenomena was still unknown to me. I knew nothing then of social philosophy and sociology. To be sure, Darwin had already published his “Origin of Species”; the economic problems had already been propounded in the works of Lassalle and Engels; Buckle had already brought out his “Introduction to the History of Civilization”; the battle over Büchner’s “Force and Matter” was already on; Herbert Spencer’s principal works were already issued; yet thus far nothing of all this had reached me. I received with avidity whatever books told me of nature and human society as things existent, but I did not conceive them as things nascent; and, above all, I lacked the idea that social conditions are destined to become different and that man with his eyes open can militantly coöperate toward this evolution.
When the Franco-German War was ended we chanced to be sojourning in Berlin. My studies had brought me to the Prussian capital, for the reason that I desired to make some experiment also in the German method of singing. From an Unter den Linden balcony I saw the entrance of the victorious troops returning from France. The picture remains in my memory full of sunshine, enthusiasm, fluttering banners, scattered flowers, triumphal arches,—a lofty, historic festival of joy. How different would my impression of it be at the present time—but the history of this change will come much later.