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The good and the evil that merge, mix, roll together. The good and the evil that stain each other with their respective colors until the edges vanish, losing the sense of everything life teaches. Anguish for what one should be and sorrow for what one is.
When Schiller - overwhelmed by the Sturm und Drang, with Shakespeare and Rousseau in his heart - wrote The Robbers, he was my age. There is strength in his words. So much violence and so much love, such a desire for life and such a will to seize it at any cost. It makes me uneasy to think I could have continued on my path without having read it. It intimidates me to think that everything I would have wanted to say and do has already been written and said in this German drama that demands Kant and his critical phase, that demands Nietzsche and Dostoevsky.
The strength to be oneself, for better or worse, with virtues and savagery, in search of one's own dimension, one's own land, one's own corner to retreat from the world. The world, the cynical and wicked world, untethered from morality, lost in its perversions and own wickedness. The revolt to feel alive and beating, to break the barricade that the world places between us and our happiness, to rise above the ever-the-same crowd, yesterday as today. An evil brother lost in utility, thirsty for powers he does not have and can never have. Blinded by envy, he exiles his brother to kill the father, preys on the hearts of lovers. Franz is ugly. His heart makes him ugly, disgusting, while Karl wanders the world, beautiful as an unhappy God, and kills those he believes he must kill, as his betrayed heart compels him. He will strive for the good despite knowing he will never grasp it. He may brush against it, but he will never reach it because every moral action is chained to the positive and profane law that man decides to share. All his predictions are wrong, his very being is wrong. Thus, Karl, with his head bowed, will kill one last time. He will kill his own heart before killing what he has been.
When he wrote these words, he knew they would mark him. No performance, the plebeians would not understand, no one is ever ready to witness the desolation of their life, but then he lets himself be convinced by events, by success. There will be a premiere, everyone at the premiere that will remain just a premiere. Schiller in chains, arrested. He is forbidden to write more plays. There is too much strength in his words.
I had promised myself never to publish anything under my name again, but Schiller demanded, imposed these words on me - beautiful or ugly, it doesn't matter. I could not remain silent, I could not remain indifferent to the sound his words, clashing, have in my mind. No one remains indifferent to Schiller, to his ode to life and the impossibility of life. Good or evil is just an ode to joy. The ode to joy born from the absolute power that Schiller's words impressed upon Beethoven's imagination, upon him as upon everyone else.
Brother... I have seen men, their bee-like worries and their immense projects... their divine plans and their mouse-like deals, their strange and marvelous race towards happiness; one trusts in the speed of his steed, another in the scent of his donkey, a third in his own legs. This multifaceted lottery of life in which some wager their innocence and heaven itself to catch the winning number... But zeros are drawn... and in the end, there are no winning numbers. It's a comedy, brother, that makes tears come out of your eyes while making you want to laugh.
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