In 1816 Franz Schubert kept a diary, which he wrote in from time to time. He was very much in love with a woman named Therese Grob, but because he didn't make enough money as an assistant schoolteacher to get married (there was a law in Vienna that required a man to make a certain amount of money if he wanted to marry), they had to part ways.Here are a few extracts from his diary, taken from Elizabeth Norman McKay's Franz Schubert biography:
"Man resembles a ball in play, subject to chance and passions. . . . He is like an actor on a stage who plays his part as best he can. If the part suits him, he plays it well; but his success in the eyes of others is of no matter, as their response is colored by their mood at the time rather than by the excellence of the performance."The drawing, by the way, was made on Schubert's 200th birthday in 1997 by our then eight-year-old son Ben.
"Happy is the man who finds a true man-friend; but happier still he who finds a true friend in his wife."
"These days matrimony is an alarming thought to an unmarried man; if he does not marry, he has to settle for misery or gross sensuality [one could read that to mean either being celibate or going to prostitutes]. Monarchs of today, you see what is happening an do nothing. Or are you blind to it? if so, O God, shroud our senses and feelings in numbness; but remove the shroud again one day without lasting harm."
"A light mind accompanies a light heart; yet too light a mind usually conceals too heavy a heart."
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1 comment:
Wow! That picture takes me back; it also makes me wonder if the "twenty-five cent drawing lessons" I used to give were overpriced. I hope not.
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