Signs of deafness had given him great anxiety as early as 1798. For a long time he success
fully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness. But neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has been pointed out that the root of the evil lay deeper than could have been supposed during his lifetime. Although his constitution was magnificently strong and his health was preserved by his passion for outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated state of disorder, evidently dating from childhood (if not inherited) and aggravated by lack of care and good food. The touching document addressed to his brothers in 1802, and known as his "will" should be read in its entirety. No verbal quotation short of the whole will do justice to the overpowering outburst which runs in almost one long unpunctuated sentence through the whole tragedy of Beethoven's life, as he knew it then and foresaw it. He reproaches men for their injustice in thinking and calling him pugnacious, stubborn, and misanthropical when they do not know that for six years he has suffered from an incurable condition aggravted by incompetent doctors. He dwells upon his delight in human society from which he has had so early to isolate himself, but the thought of which now fills him with dread as it makes him realize his loss, not only in music but in all finer interchange of ideas, and terrifies him lest the cause of his distresses should appear. He declares that, when those near him had heard a flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his art, but it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out all that he felt to be in his power. He requests that after his death his present doctor, if surviving, shall be asked to describe his illness and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world may be as far as possible reconciled with him. He leaves his brothers property, such as it is, and in terms not less touching, if more conventional than the rest of the document, he declares that his experience shows that only virtue has preserved his life and his courage through all his misery.
During the last twelve years of his life, his nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress. His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given him trouble--for example, by obtaining and publishing some of Beethoven's early indiscretions, such as the trio variations, op. 44, the sonatas, op. 49, and other trifles. In 1815, after Beethoven had quarreled with his oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the guardianship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the law courts. The boy turned out utterly unworthy of his uncle's persistent devotion and gave him every cause for anxiety. He failed in all his examinations, including an attempt to learn some trade in all his ecaminations, including an attempt to learn some trade in the polytechnic school, whereupon he fell into the hands of the police for attempting suicide, and after being expelled from Vienna, joined the army. Beethoven's utterly simple nature could neither educate nor understand a human being who was not possessed by the wish to do his best. His nature was passionately affectionate, and he had suffered all his life from the want of a natural outlet for it. He had often been deeply in love and made no secret of it. But Robert Browning had not a more intense dislike of "the artistic temperament" in morals, and though Beethoven's attachments were almost hopelessly above him in rank, there is not one that was not honorable and respected by society as showing the truthfulness and self-control of a great man. Beethoven's orthodoxy in such matters has p
A．A Great Genius
B．Beethoven's Deafness
C．Tribulations of a Genius
D．An Undeserving Nephew
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