wonderful to follow, I was in on the whole scene. great fluidity
KS
On 29/03/2008, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I Resurrect Hans Rott
>
>
> With a gesture, I fix
> the error in the inferior frontal cortex, the mix
> of neurotransmitters, the wounds (as real
> as brain events) of memory –
> poverty, insult, his parents' deaths – though not
> the facts. And the TB
> that killed him. He stands before me,
> twenty-six,
> still terribly thin, incurably strained
> and earnest. I urge him to sit,
> and shake his hand and thus forestall
> kneeling or other nonsense. I tell him
> how pleased I am to have him as my guest;
> and, immediately, that Brahms
> was out of line to say of the E-major symphony,
> "You didn't write this" or "You should give up music."
> He begins, stammering, to explain
> which version happened, for now he's sure.
> I wave this off. It's clear
> he's as moved as one must be
> when the voice of authority
> is also that of justice. But that he's embarrassed –
> despite his mistreatment
> at the hands of the Provincial Asylum – by the incident
> that put him there: a fellow-passenger
> about to light a cigar, he
> pulling a revolver,
> crying that Brahms
> had packed the train with dynamite … "Forget it," I say,
> setting before him
> fragments he wrote and burnt.
> We spend the afternoon
> discussing where he might go
> from this measure, how he would orchestrate
> that chord. "You needn't feel,"
> I say somewhat wistfully,
> "you have to revive these works.
> You'll probably want to catch up
> with Mahler – he loved you, you know –
> and what came after. But I hope
> you'll have something for us soon."
> I ring for the staff
> to show him to his quarters. "Are you God?"
> he cries. With Victorian
> or rather Hapsburg heaviness, I thunder,
> "No! Merely an admirer
> of genius." He takes his sketches, hurries out,
> his mood between a heel-click and a grin.
> The palace is large enough
> that he won't, before the concerts,
> encounter Sibelius
> completing the Eighth Symphony, or Duparc
> atoning for long silence,
> or those who wrote their last at Terezin.
>
>
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