A Letter to Ludwig Van Beethoven

 

Guest post by Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Dear Ludwig,

You titan and creator among men. We, the citizens of the free republics, have irrevocably cast you as the top of all monuments in our concert halls and on countless recordings. Kneeling before your music, we repeat it like a mantra. Oh you lighthouse that blinds everyone!

You were feared, but in the meantime, you have almost been played to death, wreathed with laurel, and safely placed in the cemetery of our glorious past.

Prometheus was the hope of your time, symbol of invention and of emancipation from the tyranny of church and kings, symbol of the rule of reason and human rights. He was your hero.

We, the creatures of Prometheus made out of clay, who were so stupid and numb at first, from Muses and Apollo we learned music and dance, reason and insight. And Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, taught us how death ends people's days.

Do you want to know what has happened to us creatures of Prometheus? We were hardworking and fruitful and have procreated innumerably. We have used the reason taught to us to use fire for warmth, force, comfort, and abundance of modern times. Nothing is enough. Nature is strangled. Nor is our reason sufficient to follow the insight that fire continues to give birth to fire, from California, Australia, Siberia, up into the Arctic until fire ends hopes and days of mankind.

And we finally have to realize that Prometheus and we, his creatures who thought that we did not have to respect Zeus, we were not gods. And was the bringer of fire really the titan Prometheus or was it not rather a creature from hell - Lucifer?

Greetings into the afterlife!

Patricia Kopatchinskaja