Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/34

 HISTORY OF MENDELSSOHN'S " ELIJAH."

that the ' Elijah ' would turn out all right, but it will not, and you must seek help elsewhere. At a distance I seemed to have thought out the subject quite nicely; but whenever I come to it at close quarters I cannot clearly distinguish the separate figures. Elijah is in the society of the angels ; he is in good company, leave him there. It is unbecoming for men to drive away the angels. I have held to one point where the Lord Himself ought to or could speak to Elijah. It seemed to me that as Elijah appeared to Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew xvii.), so Christ might come to Elijah, transfigure him, and show him from afar the streams of peace, which flow over the heavenly Canaan. These three personages — Christ, Elijah, and the heavenly choir of angels — might suffice, with suitable dramatic alteration, to transform the earth into heaven, until the removal of Elijah. But you well know how sluggishly my poetical vein flows ; how, here and there, with great effort I manage to gather a few crumbs together, but then I get no farther. Unless I am in the pulpit — where the Lord usually helps me joyfully to honour Him by my preaching — the creative power fails me utterly."

For nearly seven years the subject of " Elijah " drops out of the Mendelssohn-Scluibring correspon- dence, except two unimportant references. In a letter to Mendelssohn, dated January 17, 1840, Schubring says : " How about ' Elijah '? Have you quite put him aside?" And on November 10 of the same year : " You have told my brother that for the ( 18 )

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