Then it
expands the realm of its conquests, and chants its successes. It founds
a kingdom, it constructs a system of nature. But the typhon rises from
the yawning gulf, and the Titans beat upon the gates of the new empire.
A battle of giants begins. You hear the tumultuous efforts of the powers
of chaos. Life triumphs at last, but the victory is not final, and
through all the intoxication of it there is a certain note of terror and
bewilderment. The soul of Beethoven was a tormented soul. The passion
and the awe of the infinite seemed to toss it to and fro from heaven to
hell, Hence its vastness. Which is the greater, Mozart or Beethoven?
Idle question! The one is more perfect, the other more colossal. The
first gives you the peace of perfect art, beauty, at first sight. The
second gives you sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second impression.
The one gives that for which the other rouses a desire. Mozart has the
classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic
grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul
of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of
Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed
be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us
good.
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