In 1796 or 97, Beethoven had suffered a serious illness, possibly meningitis.
My ears continue to hum and buzz day and night, He wrote, I can hear sounds, it's true, but can not make out the words.
He first noticed that his hearing was going, when he was around 28 years of age at the height of his early fame, producing great works. Suddenly he knew his hearing was beginning to go. The doctors said don't worry about it, it's a bit of wax, it'll be all right. But it kept getting worse and it lasted, in fact, I mean he was not fully deaf, stone-deaf as we would call it, until his final years.
When we were little children we hear that Beethoven was deaf, so we find that fact away early on, and then we forget about it, and then we forget sort of what that means to be deaf. And every now and then I think we need to re-acquaint ourselves with that fact and sort of rethink about it, and re-read the Heiligenstadter Testament.
The Heiligenstadter Testament is a document that was written in 1802 after months of suicidal despair. Its name comes from the village where it was written. Beethoven had gone there for the summer to rest his ears.
Oh, you men who think or say I am hostile and peevish or misanthropic, how greatly you wrong me.
It was impossible for me to say to people: Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf.
But how could I possibly admit weakness of the one sense which should be more perfect in me than another's, a sense which I once possessed, in the greatest perfection,
I would have ended my life, only my art held me back.
It seemed to be impossible to leave the world until I produced all that I felt was within me.
Careful dating the sketches has been very revealing because the first work he wrote after the Heiligenstadter testament was this Oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives. And it’s a very strange work, in that he doesn't deal with the whole of Christ's passions story, like most passions like Bach's passion. He deals with just the aspect of suffering, loneliness and isolation of Christ as he is about to be crucified the night before his crucifixion. And how Christ is going to overcome all these and save the world. And this is very much like Beethoven feeling his own isolation. And the other work he wrote straight after the Heiligenstadter Testament was the Eroica symphony.
meningitis
Inflammation of the meninges of the brain and the spinal cord, most often caused by a bacterial or viral infection and characterized by fever, vomiting, intense headache, and stiff neck.
脑膜炎:脑膜及脊椎膜的炎症,通常是由细菌或病毒感染而引起,以高烧、呕吐、剧烈头痛及脖子僵硬为特征
wax
a natural sticky substance in your ears
stone-deaf
completely unable to hear
peevish
easily annoyed by small and unimportant things
misanthropic
If you describe a person or their feelings as misanthropic, you mean that they do not like other people.
Oratorio
a long piece of music in which a large group of people sing
crucify
to kill someone by fastening them to a cross把…钉在或绑在十字架上处死
Eroica
Symphony(贝多芬的)《英雄交响曲》(即《降E大调第三交响曲》)
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