Arnim, Bettina von (née Brentano).

an uninhibited confession of her feelings about Liszt and a passionate statement of her artistic credo, comparing the composer to a Byronic hero who had also suffered sudden rejection, commenting on their different characters, stating that his physical and spiritual qualities are the opposite of hers, admitting that her spirit is flooded with feelings of sensuality, averring that she poses a danger to his health, discussing in confessional manner the composer's intoxicating effect on her, describing the pleasing effect on her of city gossip concerning the two of them, noting that people pay attention to everything she does, observing that Liszt, like King Friedrich is surrounded by an elite of idlers, stating that the first requirement of her genius is independence, which she defines as the overcoming of all bodily-engendered suffering, expatiating in rapt and unbridled fashion on the nature of her genius, proffering him advice, and discussing King Frederick William IV of Prussia



 ...Ihre körperliche und geistige Anlage ist der meinen entgegen gesetzt. Sinnlichkeit strömt augenblicklich bei mir in den Geist über. - die erste Bedingung meines Genies ist Unabhängigkeit ja Überwindung aller körperlichen Leiden...der Genius bewegt mit seinen Schwingen den Aether, ich fühle, daß ich getragen bin [-] das Feuer was durch mich strömt das macht mich nicht matt und was mich matt machen könnte, das ist die Gemeinheit auch in ihrer künstlichsten Heuchelei...



4 very closely-written pages, large 4to (28 x 23cm), a few later pencil annotations at head of first page, no place or date [Berlin, 1840s?], light browning, a few tiny tears to edges, light creasing

Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. The virtuoso years 1811-1847 (London, 1983), i, pp. 373-374

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Bettina von Arnim had met Liszt for the first time in Berlin in 1842, when she was fifty-seven and he thirty one. In Liszt, as this letter shows, the ageing muse of German Romanticism had clearly found someone to whom she could pour out her soul in uninhibited fashion. The composer, for his part, is known to have treasured her recollections of Beethoven and Goethe whom she both knew, and described their friendship in a letter from March 1842, after his famously regal departure from Berlin, as "a magnetic force of two natures, which will, I believe, increase with distance". The draft is not contained in La Mara [Ida Marie Lipsius] (ed.), Briefe hervorragender Zeitgenossen an Franz Liszt, i-iii (1895 and 1904).