Not all the words in all the tongues that ever were--dovetail them,
rhyme them, alliterate them, torture them as you will--can ever pierce
to the uttermost depths of the soul of man, and let in a glimpse of the
Infinite, as do the inarticulate tremblings of those sixteen strings.
Ah, songs without words are the best!
Then a gypsy-like little individual, wiry and unkempt, who looks as if
he had spent his life listening to the voices of the night in Heaven
knows what Lithuanian forests, with wolves and wild-boars for his
familiars, and the wind in the trees for his teacher, seats himself at
the great brass-bound oaken Broadwood piano-forte. And under his
phenomenal fingers, a haunting, tender, world-sorrow, full of
questionings--a dark mystery of moonless, starlit nature--exhales itself
in nocturnes, in impromptus, in preludes--in mere waltzes and mazourkas
even! But waltzes and mazourkas such as the most frivolous would never
dream of dancing to. A capricious, charming sorrow--not too deep for
tears, if one be at all inclined to shed them--so delicate, so fresh,
and yet so distinguished, so ethereally civilized and worldly and
well-bred that it has crystallized itself into a drawing-room ecstasy,
to last forever.
Pages:
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157