BEETHOVEN.

128.

TO HERR J. KAUKA, DOCTOR OF LAWS IN PRAGUE, IN THE KINGDOM OF BOHEMIA.

The Summer of 1814.

A thousand thanks, my esteemed Kauka.  At last I meet with a legal representative and a man, who can both write and think without using unmeaning formulas.  You can scarcely imagine how I long for the end of this affair, as it not only interferes with my domestic expenditure, but is injurious to me in various ways.  You know yourself that a sensitive spirit ought not to be fettered by miserable anxieties, and much that might render my life happy is thus abstracted from it.  Even my inclination and the duty I assigned myself, to serve suffering humanity by means of my art, I have been obliged to limit, and must continue to do so.[1]

I write nothing about our monarchs and monarchies, for the newspapers give you every information on these subjects.[2] The intellectual realm is the most precious in my eyes, and far above all temporal and spiritual monarchies.  Write to me, however, what you wish for yourself from my poor musical capabilities, that I may, in so far as it lies in my power, supply something for your own musical sense and feeling.  Do you not require all the papers connected with the Kinsky case?  If so I will send them to you, as they contain most important testimony, which, indeed, I believe you read when with me.  Think of me and do not forget that you represent a disinterested artist in opposition to a niggardly family.  How gladly do men withhold from the poor artist in one respect what they pay him in another, and there is no longer a Zeus with whom an artist can invite himself to feast on ambrosia.  Strive, my dear friend, to accelerate the tardy steps of justice.  Whenever I feel myself elevated high, and in happy moments revel in my artistic sphere, circumstances drag me down again, and none more than these two lawsuits.  You too have your disagreeable moments, though with the views and capabilities I know you to possess, especially in your profession, I could scarcely have believed this; still I must recall your attention to myself.  I have drunk to the dregs a cup of bitter sorrow, and already earned martyrdom in art through my beloved artistic disciples and colleagues.  I beg you will think of me every day, and imagine it to be an entire world, for it is really asking rather too much of you to think of so humble an individual as myself.

I am, with the highest esteem and friendship,

Your obedient

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

[Footnote 1:  He supported a consumptive brother and his wife and child.]

[Footnote 2:  At the Vienna Congress Beethoven was received with much distinction by the potentates present.]

129.

ADDRESS AND APPEAL TO LONDON ARTISTS BY L. VAN BEETHOVEN.

Vienna, July 25, 1814.