Page:Bohemia; a brief evaluation of Bohemia's contribution to civilization (1917).pdf/29

 every Bohemian heart. His works are the Bohemian music par excellence. He gained his victory only after a long and tragic struggle: Smetana’s opponents asserted that the progressive ideas of the world’s music were incompatible with the national idea, but Smetana proved the contrary. And so he wrote eight operas and many other works which after half a century are as fresh and brilliant as if they had been written yesterday. They reached, as the works of all epoch-makers, far into the future, and until today they are unsurpassed and of unrivaled popularity—for instance, The Bartered Bride, Smetana’s second opera, (first performance in Prague May 30, 1866) celebrated on January 1, 1915, in the first year of the present war, its 600th performance at the National Theater in Prague.

A hero,—because many of his most beautiful works, full of grace and brilliancy, were written in complete deafness, in a state much worse than that in which Beethoven had written. For years a mysterious affection of his ears brought this ever-increasing malady in its train. No doctor could explain the pathological basis of this affliction, which was aggravated by the nervous strain of the long fight with his malignant enemies. All remedies applied were in vain, and on October 20, 1874, Smetana entirely lost the sense of hearing. He was stone-deaf, nor did he ever hear again. Yet he wrote without interruption. It was his desire that Bohemia should be glorified in his art, that he should shed lustre upon the music of his land and hold up before the entire world the glories of its history and the strength and power of its race. Smetana describes his own tragedy in a letter of December 11, 1881, in the following pathetic words: “The loud buzzing and roaring in my head, as though I were standing under a great waterfall, remains today and continues day and night without interruption, louder when my mind is employed actively, weaker when I am in a calmer condition of mind. When I compose, the buzzing is noisier. I hear absolutely nothing, not even my own voice. Shrill tones, as the cry of a child or the barking of a dog, I hear very well, just as I do loud whistling, and yet I cannot determine what the noise is, or whence it