x.com/deanwball/status/2091723826052599900
1 correction found
He wrote a letter to himself where he said, "no, I will go on for the sake of my art,"
The Heiligenstadt Testament was addressed to Beethoven’s brothers, not to himself, and that quoted line is not what standard translations of the document say.
Full reasoning
Authoritative texts of the Heiligenstadt Testament identify it as a letter to Beethoven’s brothers Karl and Johann, not a note to himself. The Beethoven-Haus Bonn source labels the passage: "Beethoven to his brothers Kaspar Karl and Johann van Beethoven ('Heiligenstadt Testament'), Heiligenstadt, 6 and 10 October 1802." The National Arts Centre’s full translation likewise begins, "For my brothers Carl and [Johann]."
The quoted wording in the post is also not the wording found in standard translations of the testament. The key passage is usually translated along the lines of:
- "only she, art, held me back"
- "it seemed impossible to me to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt myself capable of"
or, in the NAC translation, "only art it was that withheld me" and "it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce."
So the post turns a real sentiment in the testament into an invented direct quote and misdescribes the recipient of the letter.
2 sources
- Beethoven-Haus Bonn
"es fehlte wenig, und ich endigte selbst mein Leben - nur sie die Kunst, sie hielt mich zurück," / 'little was missing and I ended my life myself - only she, art, held me back.' Beethoven to his brothers Kaspar Karl and Johann van Beethoven ('Heiligenstadt Testament')
- Beethoven's complete Heiligenstadt Testament | National Arts Centre
"For my brothers Carl and [Johann]" ... "but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce"