heavily trembling on the thrumming tightrope the art is lit & seemingly still a twitch away from farce on the edge of the credible prone to misinterpretation the memory is still in my throat of the Funeral & Triumphal Symphony to mark ten years since the 1830 Revolution
the remains of those who died over the Three Days would be moved to the new monument in the Place de la Bastille we’d crane our necks to look at Liberty with wings outstretched at the top of the column moving with the souls of the dead to heaven
2
I asked as many as I could to the final rehearsal I knew nothing would be audible on the day itself in the windy vastness of the Place de la Bastille where the great crowd stood as scraps of music flapped about their heads & disappeared or the march to the square
but the music played along the Boulevard Poissonnière sang with great clarity
the band augmented by the great trees that are no longer there
3
I wish you could have been with me in Germany it is so not-Paris the musicians turn up early the people love music as music not as just another symphony as handbag fashion accessory I loved Prague deeply Liszt became breathtakingly drunk & at two in the morning was dead set on a duel with some local drinker his noon concert approached he moved gingerly from bed at 11.35 towards the piano & played like a god
4
I wrote Faust swaying on trains & boats rattling along on a stage-coach by gaslight in a shop one night lost in Bupapest before dawn in Prague & in every corner of Paris I staked all I had on two performances at the Opéra-Comique & no-one came go to Russia I am deeply moved when I remember how many people helped me pay my debts
5
I left Paris in deep snow on Valentine's Day 1847 & for a fortnight rocked hissing through snow to St. Petersburg occasionally smiling at the prophecy of Balzac the night before I left you'll return a wealthy man Balzac couldn't look out of a window without seeing earnings occasionally
6
once past the Russian frontier the very air was torture I was dragged swaying through deep frozen ruts that kicked my teeth around my head in a frozen box on runners battered travel-sick frost-bitten to the icy edge of death in a day-nightmare I saw soldiers crossing this terrain without shoes or supplies dead men walking towards another freezing night what does it cost to die occasionally
7
when I saw crows fall on the horses’ droppings for food & warmth I wondered why they stayed instead of flying south one hour into thawing out my head in a hotel room an invitation came to a glittering short-term future while back in France men & women did everything that men & women do some die fast some die slow
8
after six months of disgusting suffering I lost my sister Nanci she died of breast cancer my sister Adèle stayed with her & almost died herself from the tearing pain of watching I grind my teeth at the cruelty of her prolonged incurable Godless torture when a simple anaesthetic could have swallowed her pain for good she died in early May my wife died with less pain a few came to the funeral a quarter of a century earlier when she was one of the star of Paris the city would have ground to a halt to ease her to the grave
9
millions of details of scintillating satisfactions & successes mostly in Germany add up to nothing in my cupboard I smell failure even in the mirror as you go downhill the world does too the evidence is overwhelming as I stumble through the outskirts of town even when sat in the centre I know my name & art will not survive
