Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/38

 marvel that we do not find it in all the works; the radiant Septet (1800), the limpid First Symphony (C Major, 1800), both breathe a spirit of youthful gaiety. There is no doubt that he is determined to accustom his soul to grief. The spirit of man has such a strong desire for happiness that when it has it not, it is forced to create it. When the present has become too painful, the soul lives on the past. Happy days are not effaced at one stroke. Their radiance persists long after they have gone. Alone and unhappy in Vienna, Beethoven took refuge in the remembrances of his native land; his thoughts were always of Bonn. The theme of the Andante for the Variation in the Septet is a Rhenish Song. The Symphony in C Major is also inspired by the Rhine. It is a poem of youth smiling over its own dreams. It is gay and languorous; one feels there the hope and the desire of pleasing. But in certain passages in the Introduction, in the shading of the sombre bass passages of the Allegro, in this young composer, in the fantastic Scherzo, one feels with emotion the promise of the great genius to come. The expression calls to mind the eyes of Botticelli's Bambino in his Holy Families—those eyes of a little child in which one already divines the approaching tragedy.

Troubles of another kind were soon to be added to his physical sufferings. Wegeler says that he never knew Beethoven to be free of a love passion carried to extremes. These love affairs seemed