Joyce Maier wrote:

>Walter Meyer wrote:
>
>>I checked out the "Immortal Beloved" correspondence, which I found in
>>English only, and while Kinderman's suggestion has its attraction, they
>>speak too much of matters relating to persons, such as baths, postal
>>schedules, transportation problems, etc., to sound convincingly as
>>addresses to Art itself.
>
>Exactly. See, for instance, Beethoven's preoccupation with the post
>services. A post service to a non-existing woman??? And he writes that
>he hopes to meet her soon. A meeting with a non-existing woman???

Well what about Dante and his Beatrice? They never met, yet Dante has
immortalized her.  The Romantic Ideal probably reached its zenith in the
era Beethoven lived, when Georges Sand would pronounce that "everything
excessive [in love] is poetic," and Goethe himself would describe such
narcissistic preoccupation with a member of the opposite sex, real or
imagined, as a disease.  It was said that young Frenchman of the period,
learning they would be parted for three whole monstrous weeks from the
object of their desire, would "rush out into the woods howling, and roll
on the ground, grinding snapped-off branches between their teeth." I don't
imagine Beethoven would have gone that far.  Still, pacing the floor pining
"Please Mr.  Postman, send me a letter" doesn't translate for me into proof
of a live flesh-and-blood affair.

John Dalmas
jdalmas@capecod,net