by Stefan Zweig
This time the impression is quite different. The image offered us concerning Beethoven’s creative method seems as in stark a contrast with Mozart’s as a Norwegian fjord with an Italian sea. Contrary to what we have just learnt from the Mozart example, where we saw the creative state as a passive one to which the personal will of the artist is excluded, we now discover after that light-footed, winged genius the laborious human struggle, the gradual shaping of man into artist.
Here first are some pages from a notebook of drafts, a few bars scribbled hastily in pencil, almost hurled onto the paper with feverish impatience. Beside them we find bars which appear to bear no relation to those preceding them. Nothing is properly finished; there is no orderly process. It’s like a series of rocks some Titan is raining down from on high. Now we know from the testimony of contemporaries how Beethoven composed. He dashed across fields, oblivious to where he was, humming and crooning and singing and beating time with his hands. Now and again he would draw a notebook from the deep pockets of his coat-tails, in which he scribbled with a pencil what had just entered his head. Back home, at his work table, he would resume some of these themes. Now we observe a different kind of sketch, something more serious, written in ink, his first themes. But this is a long way from the fully achieved form. With the stroke of a pen, so violent that it spatters and leaves blots on the paper, he underlines, crosses out and starts all over again. But it’s still not quite what he is after. He changes things again, makes corrections. With such fury does he score and strike at the paper that the whole page is torn apart—and one sees here the enraged man at his labours, the man who stamps, groans, curses, because the ideal musical form cannot be expressed from where it originates in his head. It is only after countless drafts like these, each one a field of battle, that the first manuscript is finally written, then the second. And in each of the following, and even in the proofs, he still makes constant changes. Whilst with Mozart the act of creation seems a jubilant, light-hearted act, with Beethoven it is all torture, which brings to mind the convulsions, the agony of a woman in labour. Mozart plays with art as the wind with leaves; Beethoven struggles with himself like Hercules with the 1,000-headed Hydra.
Another example, this time from the world of poetry, shows the direct contrast during the birth of a work, in this case between two distinguished poems of world literature, ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘The Raven’ by Poe. Let us compare their development processes. Rouget de l’Isle is not a poet proper, nor a composer. He was an officer of genius who during the French Revolution found himself in Strasbourg. On 25th April 1792 at midday came the news that the Republic had declared war on the kings of Europe. An atmosphere of drunken exaltation flooded the city. In the evening the mayor laid on a dinner for the officers. During the meal he turned to Rouget de l’Isle, to whom he said: why not write some jubilant verses, and in friendly fashion asked him to compose a song which the troops could sing as they marched into battle. And why not? Until midnight the officers remained assembled, then Rouget de l’Isle set off for home. He had fully participated in the general merriment and had drunk enough; his head rang with toasts and speeches, words such as “Allons, enfants de la Patrie!” and “Le jour de gloire est arrivé”. He sat at the table and wrote straight out the required lines. Then he took up his violin and struck a melody. In two hours it was finished. The next morning at six, he went to find the mayor and presented him the finished song, the completed composition. Ignoring fatigue, and in a kind of trance, he had somehow created one of the most immortal poems in the world, one of the most immortal melodies, through sheer inspiration. It was not of course he himself who was author, but rather the genius of the hour.
Let us now glance at those few pages where Edgar Allan Poe charts the birth of his famous poem ‘The Raven’. How he celebrates himself for having calculated with mathematical precision every effect, every rhyme, every word; how he has, with steely precision and without inspiration, one might say manufactured this poem. Here, a great work was created thanks to an extreme tension of the will, whereas with ‘La Marseillaise’ there was no conscious plan, and the will did not participate.
So we have already performed our little overture in the doorway leading to the artist’s studio. We have seen that in two cases, Mozart and ‘La Marseillaise’, a work of art can be an act of pure inspiration, where the poet or musician, resembling the Latin “vates”, the seer or prophet, receives from divinity a message which he transmits to other men without grafting his own labours onto it, and we have seen the contrasting example with Beethoven and Poe—and we might add Balzac, Flaubert and a number of other writers—of the artist who creates a masterpiece through studied work, total application, a conscious effort of thought.
We should not be too surprised at this contrast and remember that in physics one can obtain the same effects with the highest degrees of cold as with the highest degrees of heat. In itself, it is of complete indifference whether the perfect work of art was produced in such and such manner, in the fire of rapture or the icy cold of reflection, by pure inspiration or mundane effort. In reality, with artistic creation, as with nature, the elements are mixed up. There are very few people who are wholly good or wholly evil, only a few who are completely optimistic or pessimistic. What I have tried to show is that there are two extreme poles in artistic creation and what is happening here is in essence a tension between these two poles, whose creative spark is the result. In the same way as in nature the masculine and feminine must unite to procreate, so in the act of artistic creation two elements always come together: unconsciousness and consciousness, inspiration and technique, drunkenness and sobriety. For the artist, production means to realize, to transpose from interior to exterior, and bring into our world, through the resistant material of speech, of colour, of sound, an inward vision, a dream image that he saw fully formed in his mind. The artist begins by dreaming his vision, she resides in him and he follows her, in a way he plucks her from the invisible world and bears her into the sensory world. After the vision comes reflection, rather like those Persian warriors who lay out their battle plan in a fog of wine and drunkenness and then next morning with clear heads completely revise it.
If we are going to establish any formula for the process of artistic creation, we should not call it “inspiration or work”, but “inspiration plus work”. To create is a constant struggle between the unconscious and the conscious. Without these two elements the creative act cannot happen. They constitute the indispensable foundation; it is within the law of contrast, the final compromise between conscious and unconscious that the artist is imprisoned. Within the limits of this law he remains free. This captivity and freedom the artist experiences you could compare to a game of chess. In a chess game there are likewise two opposing groups, the white and the black. In this case the game is played out on sixty-four squares whereas in the artistic case there are 50,000 or 100,000 words, a veritable rainbow of colours or musical tones. But, like these sixty-four squares which allow countless combinations between white and black, and because no game can ever be exactly the same as another, the process of creation is different for every artist. Perhaps the title of my piece is not quite accurate and it should have been called ‘The thousand secrets of artistic creation’. For every artist has, within the limits I have mentioned, his particular secret, each work of art its particular history and we have no other means of explaining them than considering in succession a large number of artists of the most diverse hues. It is only from the sum of these variants that we will gain any clear idea of the creative law common to all.
In fact, if we wished to study all the plausible variations of this process it would take an eternity. What infinite contrasts in space and time, what differences in technique and method! There is Lope de Vega, who writes a drama in three days, whilst Goethe begins his Faust at age eighteen and does not complete it until he is eighty-two! There are artists like Johann Sebastian Bach or Haydn who, with the diligence and devotion of an official,
compose regularly each day, and then there is Wagner, who either experiences a sudden flash of inspiration or languishes for five years without writing a single note. With one the production flows smoothly like a majestic river; while with the other it’s a volcanic eruption. Each creates in distinctive conditions: one can work only in the morning and the other only at night; one has need of external incitement, in the stimulus of alcohol or the indulgence of his surroundings; another by contrast needs bromide to ensure clarity of thought, another still takes opium or nicotine to bring about the dreamy state that encourages visions. One has need of absolute calm to marshal his thoughts; the other can only prepare himself inwardly in bars and cafés, amidst the throng of chatting, laughing people. Each creative man has his peculiarities, his characteristic process that belongs to him and him alone; and as little as one hour of love shares its mystery in common with another, so just as little does one hour of creation. And only he who observes closely can get any idea of the infinite variety of art and life; only he who watches an artist at his labours can know the unique character of his personality. It is not enough to have eaten at his table and chatted with him, to have accompanied him on walks or to have travelled in his company. It is only in the work that his true character is revealed; only in that ultimate secret will we really know a man and a work of art. Goethe, one of the wisest sages of his times, provided a pertinent formula: “We cannot know a work of art only when we see it completed, we must know how it came into being.” Only he who has penetrated this creating of the artist can have any hope of properly understanding his creation.
You may perhaps object: this representation of the method of artistic creation, does it not interfere with the sheer joy of experiencing a work of art? Is it not reckless and indiscreet to lift the veil which conceals the creative artist’s powers? Is it not better to stand unknowing before a painting and admire it like a landscape of God, to listen to a symphony without asking in what particular conditions and thanks to what inward labours did such a marvel come to fruition? Is it not preferable to leave the artist’s studio door firmly shut, not to pose such questions, and remain silent in gratitude as we cast our gaze over some definitive work? I realize that there is something in this way of seeing things which is seductive, but on the other hand I do not believe in a purely passive enjoyment. I doubt that someone who visits a gallery of paintings for the first time or hears a symphony of Beethoven knows how to appreciate right away the masterpieces they are experiencing. A work of art does not reveal itself at the first glance; like a woman it desires courtship before giving anything more away. To sense fully we must follow on from what the artist sensed. To understand better his intentions we must grasp the difficulties, the resistance that he encountered and was obliged to surmount before he could realize his work. We must recreate his soul in our own—genuine pleasure is never mere passive reception, but an interior coexistence with the work. The aim of my explanations is to show that it is in fact possible, up to certain point, even for the unproductive man to place himself in the creative state of the artist and relive with him the very tensions, the pivotal moments that have accompanied him from the birth to the realization of the work. But we must not make it easy for ourselves as regards this struggle, like Jacob and the Angel, that eternal struggle of the artist who says to the angel of perfection: “I will not let go of you until you have blessed me.” We should not abandon ourselves to first impressions, not be too quickly satisfied, for the artist never was with his first plan, his first vision. If we hold in our hands one of the famous engravings by Rembrandt, we think immediately that we have something perfect. But how much our admiration, our knowledge of this magician of shadow and light could still grow, alongside the finished work, if we were to place it alongside the proofs, or rather the sketches and drafts which preceded it! We note that Rembrandt has here toned down a light which is too bright, here deepened a shadow; here a figure is placed farther back where in the first version it was more prominent. From proof to proof the composition emerges as more harmonious, and whilst we view the first as the definitive draft, we now see with the eyes of the artist and realize that a still higher degree of perfection is possible. Instead of embracing with a single glance a landscape as if from the summit of a tower, we see things degree by degree and slowly our eyes become accustomed and more knowledgeable. We learn here to relive the creative act through all its phases, the lesson and vision of the process, as no book, no conference, no science ever can. In the same way as the plastic arts, the poetic arts and composition can also reveal themselves to us if we follow the work of the artist from its most primitive form to its final achievement. We are able to see in a manuscript how the composer or the poet is halted by a phrase or a word. We see him searching for the precise form. One attempt, two attempts, he rejects them. He edges closer to the idea he senses. He starts over again. Finally the dyke is breached, the words flow, the melody takes her limpid course and in us too something flows; the creator has discovered the definitive form and we have found it with him. We have participated in the creation of the work and assisted its birth.
To allow the greatest number possible to experience this rare pleasure, it would be something, to my mind, if the museums would display not only the finished article but the preparatory studies, the sketches, the plans which preceded them, so that people did not regard the finished work as something which just dropped out of the sky, but instead realized that these masterpieces were created by their brothers, men just like them, created through great pain, with suffering, with joy, torn from the raw material of life at the highest price to the soul. The beauty of the stars, the majesty of the sky are not diminished just because we try to search for laws to explain this unfathomable space, to measure the distances which separate us and to calculate the speed with which those silvery beams of starlight reach our eyes. Knowledge does not diminish true enthusiasm; on the contrary, it can only increase and reinforce it. So I hope that, without irreverence, we will in our searching draw closer to the secret of artistic creation, that unique moment where the transient terrestrial limits common to our kind disappear and the immortal begins.
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF TOMORROW
HOWEVER AT ODDS our opinions might be, there is one fact on which we all agree wherever we may dwell on this earth: that presently our world finds itself in an extraordinary situation, in the midst of a deep moral crisis. In the case of Europe particularly, one has the sense that all its peoples and nations are currently locked in a state of unhealthy nervous tension. The merest inducement is sufficient to provoke a surge of emotion. We welcome bad news far more easily than good. Individuals as much as races, classes as much as states appear more disposed to hate than to listen to one another. No one it seems has any faith in calm and rational processes. On the contrary, the whole world lives in fear that a massive eruption of some kind will occur at any moment.
So what are the origins of this state of angst? I believe it is a leftover of the war, a residue of bacteria resisting in the blood. Let us not forget: the war years in all countries accustomed people to living at a higher and more intense level of feeling. Wars cannot be conducted coolly, coldly. There has to be a tremendous outpouring of passion in order to prolong a war of four years to its bitter end. Without respite they must arouse feelings of hate, anger, fury, passion, and we might here recall Goethe: “Inspiration is not a herring, which can be pickled for many years.” Hate, anger, bellicosity are brief-lived emotions and that is why they invented this terrible science known as propaganda in order artificially to prolong these emotional states. Millions of indifferent, peaceful, ordinary people, perhaps three or four hundred million—no one knows the true figure—became accustomed to producing and consuming more hate and hostility than was possible under normal circumstances. Then came peace and immediately they brought a halt to this obligatory hatred and murder, as if simply turning off a gas tap. That too is altogether extraordinary. When an organism is accustomed to drugs and stimulants—co
ffee, morphine or nicotine—it cannot suddenly be deprived of them, and that is why the need for militarization, for hatred, for combat, has continued to reveal itself in this generation. Only the object has changed. We no longer hate the same enemy. But we continue to hate with the same dangerous passion. It has become a hatred of regime for regime, party for party, class for class, race for race, ideology for ideology. But fundamentally the forms are still those of 1914, determined by the need to establish groups to oppose other groups. In the midst of this so-called peace, our world is dominated by a deep-seated war mentality.
How can we bring an end to this menacing situation? How can we bring down this relentless fever, humanize the atmosphere again, purify an organism blighted by hate, alleviate this moral depression which oppresses the world like a thundercloud? There lies the crucial problem we face, and I do not pretend to have heard of a definitive solution; nor have I come with any proposal for one. I know, we all know, what has happened, and so we especially welcome the American democracy and its government repeatedly reiterating the need for a genuine peace and a lasting entente between peoples. But we have also become rather mistrustful of all these conferences, proclamations and demonstrations. They might have momentarily prevented or shifted from view the maleficent deeds being committed, but they have not managed to transform the moral condition, or rather the immoral, in which the world finds itself. It seems that the calm, reflective voice of reason is just too weak in the face of the loudspeakers that propaganda uses to bark its commands, and moreover it is the nature of reason not to produce immediately noticeable results. What distinguishes the bestial impulse is that it is always concerned with the long term, and therefore we should perhaps divest ourselves of the current generation, that of 1914–18, which wields power in the majority of countries, due to its perennial taste for violence and hatred, its war mentality and glorification of might. Perhaps our own true calling is to focus our strengths on the youth, so that at least the young people of today might be protected from this contagion, this fever. Adults cannot be taught much more: they never seem to learn from bad experiences, and that is why our efforts must be to reach out to the younger generation, whose clay can still be shaped by the hand of the educator. To improve the state of this coming generation and above all to make its lot happier than our own, which in the midst of life was suddenly imperilled by war and practically had its heart ripped apart, we must ensure it is better educated and more humane. And what seems to me most crucial here is to elaborate a new form, a new conception of history rather than the one drummed into us at school. A history that shows the development of humanity, that of their individual country and its neighbours, would help a young person better construct their future image of the world. Nothing has a more profound effect on their moral standpoint as regards life, than the way in which they have learnt and understood history.