Shall I read one more in here?
Yes, I'll read one more in here.
Because I thought mainly because this
was my big obstacle to get around in this book.
And that was Ludwig van Beethoven,
who is the marble bust on the piano
as you practice your scales.
And the book really didn't begin to happen until I managed
to get into Ludwig's skin.
In this poem, I'm going to skip several years.
In fact, George is a young man of 20.
He's well known in London, but he wants more.
And so he decides to travel to the continent
to meet this bad boy of music.
You know, Ludwig van Beethoven.
He heard that he was incredible and that he was
composing impossible things.
And that's what he wanted to play, impossible things.
And when they meet, it's quite incredible.
I'm not going to go there tonight.
I'll let you get the book, and then you can go there.
But this is right before that.
Now, as George Bridgetower is going toward Vienna,
not knowing if he's going to be able to get an audience
with Beethoven or not.
Beethoven has just decided to come back to Vienna.
He is going deaf, the worst thing that could possibly
happen to a composer.
And he had had to make this decision about
whether he could come back to this society
and fake it for a little while longer.
"Ludwig van Beethoven's Return to Vienna.
Three miles from my adopted city lies a village
where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place.
Even the great Danube, no more than a pale ribbon
tossed onto the landscape by a girl's careless hand.
Into this stillness, I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer.
My rooms were two plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs
in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward,
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning.
And I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle
the silence around me.
At first, I raged.
Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I
could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling.
I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed--
larks flying to nest, church bells,
the shepherd's home-toward-evening song--
rushed in, and I would rage again.
I am, by nature, a conflagration.
I would rather leap than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts,
I reentered, burning toward her greater constant light.
Call me rough, ill tempered, slovenly.
I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent
and deep the lightest touch awakens it.
It is impossible to care enough.
I have returned with a second symphony and 15 piano
variations, which I've named 'Prometheus,' after the rogue
titan, the half-a-God who knew the worst sin is to take what
cannot be given back.
I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout,
'Can't you see that I'm deaf?'
I also cannot stop listening."