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PARTISAN REVIEW
vincing, and imbued with tremendous knowledge. But-I said to
myself-first of all the writer of the book has to translate his musical
impressions and analyses into language, expressing in words something
that the music itself, by its very nature, does not contain. These words,
which are intended to embody the essence of Beethoven's last style,
are notably "authority," "power," "monumentality," "gigantic," "tec–
tonic solidity," and, on the other hand, "weightless," "floating,"
"ethereal," "ultimate spirituality"- i.e., all words belonging to the
emotive vocabulary we found in descriptions of the late works of
painters and which we should presumably also come across now and
then in descriptions of great works by younger men. Riezler begins this
last chapter of his with the assertion that it is possible to find general
terms for the description of a characteristic late style in all the arts
throughout all periods, since "the modes of expression used in the vari–
ous arts are
all
subordinate to the supreme fact of the 'universal artis–
tic principle.' " And what is this universal artistic principle, this final
hieroglyph? Would it not be just as easy to say that quite apart from
music, painting, and poetry there is a linguistic medium that serves
the purposes of criticism, providing the learned with the terminology
they need in order to set up their systems?
But now another question-what is it like for the artist himself
to grow old, to be old? How does he experience it himself? Take
Flaubert-there in his house on the high ground, in Rouen, not leav–
ing his room for days on end, and night after night the light from
his windows shining out on to the river, so that the Seine boatmen
take their bearings from it. He is not old, he is only fifty-nine, but
he is worn out, he has bags under his eyes and his eyelids are wrinkled
with bitter scorn-scorn of the
gent l piciere}
those shopkeepers, the
middle classes- to be sure, the court did not pronounce
Madame
Bovary
immoral, but it did recommend him to exercise his gifts of
observation on nicer people, people with more goodness of heart. And
did that make him write about goodness of heart? When his
Educa–
tion sentimentale
was published, they wrote: A cretin, a pimp, one
who dirties the water in the gutter where he washes.
In his youth he wrote that anyone who wanted to create some–
thing permanent must take care not to laugh at fame. But how was it
later on? Was there anything he did not laugh at? And most of all
