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He heard the soul of Johann Sebastian Bach roaring like the sea: hurricanes, winds howling, the clouds of life scudding, men and women drunk with joy, sorrow, fury, and the Christ, all meekness, the Prince of Peace, hovering above them, towns awakened by the cries of the watchmen, running with glad shouts, to meet the divine Bridegroom, whose footsteps shake the earth, the vast store of thoughts, passions, musical forms, heroic life, Shakespearean hallucinations, Savonarolaesque prophecies, pastoral, epic, apocalyptic visions, all contained in the stunted body of the little Thuringian cantor, with his double chin, and little shining eyes under the wrinkled lids and the raised eyebrows ... he could see him so clearly! somber, jovial, a little absurd, with his head stuffed full of allegories and symbols, Gothic and rococo, choleric, obstinate, serene, with a passion for life, and a great longing for death ... he saw him in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse, vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him a mighty thrashing ... he saw him with his family, surrounded by his twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and one was an idiot, and the rest were good musicians who gave little concerts.... Sickness, burial, bitter disputes, want, his genius misunderstood: and through and above it all, his music, his faith, deliverance and light, joy half seen, felt, desired, grasped, God, the breath of God kindling his bones, thrilling through his flesh, thundering from his lips.... O Force!
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