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In one letter he suggests that Lenau might perhaps be induced to write a few poems for composers, to be printed in "The Zeitschrift:" "the composers are thirsting for texts." In several other letters we become familiar with some of his plans which were never executed, owing, apparently, to the shortcomings of the librettists.
Indeed, men like Hoffmann, Herwegh, and Kinkel could not deny the strong influence of the romantic motives and tones upon much of their best poetry. A gifted musician, Lenau was also a master of the melody of words, and his nature-feeling was unusually deep and true.
For the song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; but it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before it came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had much hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated bass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand.
Each of these two has attempted the same subject, and the treatment in each case embodies, in a similar manner, modern ways of thinking about it. The first is from the 'Albigenses' of young Lenau, who has since died lunatic, we have heard, as he was not unlikely to have died with such thoughts in him.
The next novel, The Sons of Haindl , a collection of similar types of character in Viennese surroundings, is too much of a repetition not to have proved a disappointment; as was also The German Sorrow . In the later Viennese novels Elisabeth Kött and The Story of Hannah and her Four Lovers Bartsch lost much of his original vivacity and purity of style, and the novel Schwammerl , which revolves about the figure of the composer Schubert, falls in with the vogue of that novel of the artistic life which has of late been cultivated in somewhat routine fashion and to which to mention only a few names Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer, Lenau, Wagner, and Heine in his last years, succumbed.
I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, René, Obermann, Thomson, Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard men burdened with wisdom rather than with knowledge. And there are, I believe, peoples who possess this tragic sense of life also. It is to this that we must now turn our attention, beginning with this matter of health and disease.
He studied Goethe profoundly; and the notes which he has appended to the score show a most intimate knowledge of the Faust legend. His text is in one sense polyglot, as he has made use of portions of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," as well as excerpts from Blaze de Bury, Lenau, Widmann, and others who have treated the legend.
"Strangely enough, I had happened to think of Lenau during the afternoon." "Another echo of your dream. And now I shall demonstrate to you another subordinate wish-fulfillment in your dream. You walk in front of your house with the lady on your arm. So you take her home, instead of spending the night at her house, as you do in actuality.
The picturesque and the tragic fascinated Lenau; he could sing with genuine sympathy the fate of dismembered Poland, or the lawless freedom of Hungarian rebels and gipsies; but for the great political movements of the day he had little regard. In the melodious interpretation of nature in sad and quiet moods he had no rival.
Abnormally proud, self-centred and sensitive as he was, Lenau was born to unhappiness and disillusionment; his journey to America, begun with the most generous anticipations, ended in homesickness and bitter disappointment. Before he had reached middle life, his genius went out in the darkness of insanity.
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