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Der Unempfindsamkeit zum Hohn Hielt er auf eine Mück’ im Glase Beweglich einen Leichsermon, Purrt’ eine Flieg’ ihm an der Nase, Macht’ er das Fenster auf, und sprach: Zieh Oheim Toby’s Fliege nach! Durch Mops ist warlich meine Magd Nicht mehr bey Trost, nicht mehr bey Sinnen So sehr hat ihr sein Lob behagt, Dass sie empfindsam allen Spinnen Zu meinem Hause, frank und frey Verstattet ihre Weberey.
"Latein, ich vor geschrieben hab Das war ein jeden nicht bekannt; Jetzt schrei ich an das Vaterland, Teutsch Nation in ihrer Sprach Zu bringen diesen Dingen Rach."
I dropped the book and I went to the library, and I was back with "Also sprach Zarathustra" in an hour. I have been reading it for two days reading it in a state of excitement, forgetting everything. Here is a man! Here is a man! The first night that I read it I kicked my heels together and laughed aloud in glee, like a child. Oh, it was so fine!
Andreev himself says that he has learned much from Tolstoi, the great Tolstoi of the sixties and seventies, also from Nietzsche, whom he reads with enthusiasm, and whose most characteristic book, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," he translated into Russian. He has read Poe with profit, but he testifies that his greatest teacher in composition is the Bible.
The first is an Albumblatt of curious dun colors; the second is a Capriccietto, a strange whim; the third is a beautiful bit called "May Blossom." Gesegnet ist die Stunde, sprach sie mit süssem Munde, mir ist kein Leid geschehn den Himmel fühl' ich stehn in meines Herzens Grunde.
Indeed, Strauss has done for the symphonic poem something of what Wagner did for the opera. And not an overwhelming number of classical symphonies contain music more eloquent than, say, the "sunrise" in "Also Sprach Zarathustra," or the final variation of "Don Quixote" with its piercing, shattering trumpets of defeat, or the terrifying opening passage of "Tod und Verklärung."
Also sprach Tolstoy in that madman's book called What is Art? a work wherein he tried to outvie Nordau's abuse of beautiful art. The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, Hamlet, Macbeth, Dante, and Goethe, are all consigned to the limbo of bad art; bad because not "understanded of the people."
The attacks of sick-headache, diagnosable symptomatically as migraine, were so devastating that in 1883, after the printing of his masterpiece, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," he wrote "My life has been a complete failure." Extracts from his letters, collected by Gould, provide some idea of his suffering.
And there are always certain rare but intensely interesting anticipations. Michael Angelo could not very well believe in Julius II or Leo X, or in much that they believed in; but he could paint the Superman three hundred years before Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra and Strauss set it to music.
Whatever fate is reserved for Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Hero's Life, and Don Quixote, there is no denying their significance during the last decade of the nineteenth century. For me it seemed a decided step backward when Strauss entered the operatic field.
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