| Abstract |
Since the early years of the nineteenth century when French critics wrote their first bewildered comments on the first works of Beethoven, his influence in France has reached far beyond the realm of music, penetrating to the roots of the nation's intellectual and political life. The French ideas of Beethoven form a story unique in the development of the modern European mind. The French romantics, among them the most prominent figures of the literary world, were the first to arrive at an "understanding" of the composer, through the power of poetry, exaltation, and the idea of the Infinite. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in their search for unity between art and life, the French intellectuals looked to Beethoven for the answer. In the period after 1871, a time of unbroken gloom and pessimism, they believed in a Beethoven who could save them from despair and bring about their salvation. Around 1900 the story reached its climax. The founding of the "Cahiers de la Quinzaine" by Peguy, partly because of the Dreyfus affair, initiated a movement which the French themselves called their religion, to renew "the old virtues of France," and Beethoven was its god. |
