Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Return to Vienna by Rita Dove
I love poems about historical subjects. It’s so interested to see what may have been going on in someone’s mind, especially someone gifted/heroic/inspirational/great. Beethoven may not have been all those things, but I don’t think it can be argued that he was passionate and created some beautiful music. I like Dove’s insight in this poem. P.S. This one was in my daily e-mail from poets.org for National Poetry Month. I feel like a cheater for posting it, but I really liked it.
Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Return to Vienna
By Rita Dove
Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me…
The Heiligenstadt Testament
Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness
I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward—
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning—
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.
At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed—
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s
home-toward-evening song—rushed in, and I
would rage again.
I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.
Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly—I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it… It is impossible
to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I’ve named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.
I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can’t you see that I’m deaf?—
I also cannot stop listening.
