SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Conquerors of the world
Poor beings! Conquerors of the world, conquered and broken!
But of the two deaths, how much sadder is that of the artist who was without a faith, and who had neither strength nor stoicism enough to be happy without one; who slowly died in that little room in the rue de Calais amid the distracting noise of an indifferent and even hostile Paris;[51] who shut himself up in savage silence; who saw no loved face bending over him in his last moments; who had not the comfort of belief in his work;[52] who could not think calmly of what he had done, nor look proudly back over the road he had trodden, nor rest content in the thought of a life well lived; and who began and closed his Mémoires with Shakespeare’s gloomy words, and repeated them when dying:–
«Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.»[53]
[Footnote 51: «I have only blank walls before my windows. On the side of the street a pug dog has been barking for an hour, a parrot screaming, and a parroqueet imitating the chirp of sparrows. On the side of the yard the washerwomen are singing, and another parroqueet cries incessantly, ‘Shoulder arrms!’ How long the day is!»
«The maddening noise of carriages shakes the silence of the night. Paris wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet … she is sleeping the sleep of the unjust» (Written to Ferrand, Lettres intimes, pp. 269 and 302).]
[Footnote 52: He used to say that nothing would remain of his work; that he had deceived himself; and that he would have liked to burn his scores.]
[Footnote 53: Blaze de Bury met him one autumn evening, on the quay, just before his death, as he was returning from the Institute. «His face was pale, his figure wasted and bent, and his expression dejected and nervous; one might have taken him for a walking shadow. Even his eyes, those large round hazel eyes, had extinguished their fire. For a second he clasped my hand in his own thin, lifeless one, and repeated, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, Aeschylus’s words: ‘Oh, this life of man! When he is happy a shadow is enough to disturb him; and when he is unhappy his trouble may be wiped away, as with a wet sponge, and all is forgotten'» (Musiciens d’hier et d’aujourd’hui).]
this was: Conquerors Of The World
go to next chapter: Unhappy And Irresolute Heart
