Marx gives them, Vol. II. pp. 121-135, and we turned eagerly to them,
expecting to find, from one who has for thirty years or more lived in
the same city with the authoress, the _questio vexata_ fully put to
rest Nothing of the kind. He quotes them from Schindler with
Schindler's remarks upon them, to which he gives his assent. As to the
letters of Beethoven to Bettine, he has not even done that lady the
justice to give them as she has printed them, but rests satisfied with
a copy confessedly taken from the English translation! Of these Marx
says,--"These letters,--one has not the right, perhaps, to declare them
outright creations of fancy; at all events, there is no judicial proof
of this, no more than of their authenticity,--if they are not imagined,
they are certainly translated... from Beethoven into the Bettine
speech. Never--compare all the letters and writings of Beethoven which
are known with these Bettine epistles--never did Beethoven so
write..... If he wrote to Bettine, then she has poetized [ueberdichtet]
his letters,--and she has not done even this well; we have in them
Beethoven as seen in the mirror Bettine." He adds in a note, "In the
highest degree girl-like and equally un-Beethovenlike are these
constant repetitions: 'liebe, liebste,--liebe, liebe,--liebe,
gute,--bald, bald'!"
What does Marx say to this beginning of a letter to Tiedge,--"Jeden Tag
schwebte mir immer folgende Brief an Sie, Sie, Sie, immer vor"? Or to
these repetitions from a series of notes written also from Toeplitz in
the summer of 1812? "Leben Sie wohl liebe, gute A.
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