CLARA SCHUMANN AN ARTIST'S LIFE BASED ON MATERIAL FOUND UN DIARIES
AND LETTERS by BERTHOLD LITZMANN. Originally published in 1913.
AUTHORS PREFACE TO VOL. II. That the second volume has been so long
delayed is ac counted for, and I hope excused by, the fact that it
was im possible to find any time for the work except during the
leisure of my spring and autumn holidays. These have been devoted
to it, almost without a pause, and by this means alone has it been
possible for the continuation to appear even now: the continuation,
not the conclusion for the latter a third volume will be necessary.
The over-abundance of material, the full mass of which revealed
itself only as I worked through the preceding volume which grew
into a dual biography of Robert and Clara Schumann has necessitated
this deviation from the original plan. Those to whom the former
volume appealed will find the continuation a surprise and possibly
a disappointment, since in the second volume the actual letters of
Robert and Clara, which gave the first a peculiar character, have
far less pro minence, and in their place the biographer speaks, if
not ex clusively, yet to far greater extent The critical reader
will, however, realise that this was necessitated not only by the
difference in the material available for this period of their
lives, but also by the peculiar artistic problems of these years.
In conclusion it is scarcely necessary to state that in the third
volume which is to come which includes a period of 40 years the
present system of following the heroine step by step through her
life will have to give way to a method of grouping events in larger
masses. The portrait of Robert Schumann is from a drawing by
EduardBendemann made in 1859 from the Hamburg Daguerreo type of
March 1850; tho frontispiece is from Sohn's painting, with which
Clara surprised her husband at Christmas 1868. Dated the 65*
wedding-day of Robert and Clara Schumann, Sept 12* 1905.
Rlnggenberg on the Lake of Brien*. Berthold LiUmann, AUTHOR'S
PREFACE TO VOL. III. The third volume has also been delayed longer
than all those concerned in it author, publisher, and readers could
have wished, and for the same reason as that which made the
production of the two former volumes so difficult This time, in
addition, my holidays in Interlaken where alone the material was at
my disposal were thrice interrupted by ill-health. The subject
itself, and the material for this third volume, wsre not without
their influence on the pace of the work. In one place in her diary,
Clara writes: In an artist's life, as in every other, things repeat
themselves more or lass, so that there if much on which I barely
touch. If she herself ia her diary feels a certain monotony in the
externals of a life which goes on in the same groove year after
year, naturally the biographer, who has to represent forty such
years, is still more conscious of it. But though it was plain from
the first that on no account was each one of Clara's tours to be
followed in her diary from place to place; yet, on the other hand,
the positive side of the work was by no means so clearly defined.
For in these isolated, constantly recurring episodes lay the chief
meaning of her life.
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