Clara Schumann: An Artist's Life Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters - Vol II

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 Eduard Bendemann 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.