sharpenxu

On woodsouth

 

On July 5th, 1812, Beethoven arrived in Teplitz from Prague, and over three days wrote a passionate love letter.

 

"My angel, my all, my very self, only a few words today…Can our love endure except through sacrifices? Through not demanding everything? Can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine? I’m not wholly thine? Oh, God!...my heart is full of so many things to say to you. Others are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all. Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my immortal beloved. Oh, continue to love me, never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved, ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.”

 

We know her only as the immortal beloved. He never named the woman of the heart of this extraordinary passion. Her identity remains a mystery.

 

"A lot of people question whether there is ever going to be enough evidence to settle the immortal beloved letter to everyone’s satisfaction. In Germany and on the Continent, people tend to believe that it's Josephine Brunsvik, and in the United States and England, people tend to believe it is Antonie Brentano. So the controversy continues.”

 

Antonie Brentano, a married woman with four children was in the right places at the right times. For example, she was in Prague with her husband just before the letter was written. And then she went to Carlsbad, so she fits the clues found in the letter. Emotionally though the evidence favors an old love, Josephine Brunsvik. The letters which survived from her earlier relationship with Beethoven, match the 1812 letter in passion, vocabulary and style.

 

"Interestingly, both of the women that are candidates for the immortal beloved had children 9 months or 8 months after the immortal beloved letter was written, and so there is this possibility that one of these two children could have been Beethoven’s child. And since Beethoven didn’t have any children that we know about this would be quite interesting. Antonie’s child turned out to be a boy, who had a very tragic life. He was epileptic and prone to seizures. Josephine Brunsvik had a daughter, and she turned out to be exquisitely musical, and in fact she made her living as a piano teacher. One of the things that is curious is in that one of the conversation books which are from the last decade of Beethoven's life, there is a statement that says: If you talk about the child so much, people would know that it’s yours. And unfortunately there is no gender of the child mentioned. But there is something about this that suggests that Beethoven thought that he had a child at some point. So there is a mystery here sort of waiting to be uncovered.