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O God! let me find her who will keep me in the path of virtue, the one I may rightly call my own." Again, he could coldly rejoice that he had not sacrificed any of his individuality, or any of his devotion to music, to Giulietta Guicciardi. And the diary of Fanny Giannatasio, whose father took care of Beethoven's nephew, quotes a conversation Beethoven held on the subject of wedlock.
So says the profuse Ludwig Nohl in his reprint of the diary of a young Spanish-Italian woman, Fanny Giannatasio del Rio, who knew Beethoven well and loved him well, and as mutely as "a violet blooming at his feet in utter disregard." Beethoven the man would be voted altogether impossible either as friend or as lover, if he had not had so marvellous, so compulsive, a genius.
I, alas, have none; I have found but one, and her I can never possess." Years later he said to his friend Giannatasio that five years before he had loved unhappily; he would have considered marriage the happiness of his life, but it was "not to be thought of for a moment, almost an utter impracticability, a chimera."
To this cynic wisdom, the poor Fanny Giannatasio del Rio, whose love for Beethoven would never have been known had not her diary enambered it for publication after her death, adds the words: "I will not repeat my answer, but I think I know a girl who, beloved by him, would not have made his life unhappy." Ay, there's the rub!
In conversation with Giannatasio del Rio, who kept the school at which the nephew was placed, he stated, "I will never be able to form a closer tie than the one which now binds me to my nephew." He took lodgings near the school and visited Giannatasio's family frequently.
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