s
genius. Settled at Perchtoldsdorf, near Vienna, in February, 1888, in
absolute peace, he wrote in three months fifty-three _Lieder_ to the
words of Eduard Moerike, the pastor-poet of Swabia, who died in 1875, and
who, misunderstood and laughed at during his lifetime, is now covered
with honour, and universally popular in Germany. Wolf composed his
songs in a state of exalted joy and almost fright at the sudden
discovery of his creative power.

In a letter to Dr. Heinrich Werner, he says:

"It is now seven o'clock in the evening, and I am so happy--oh,
happier than the happiest of kings. Another new _Lied_! If you
could hear what is going on in my heart!... the devil would carry
you away with pleasure!...

"Another two new _Lieder_! There is one that sounds so horribly
strange that it frightens me. There is nothing like it in
existence. Heaven help the unfortunate people who will one day hear
it!...

"If you could only hear the last _Lied_ I have just composed you
would only have one desire left--to die.... Your happy, happy
Wolf."

He had hardly finished the _Moerike-Lieder_ when he began a series of
_Lieder_ on poems of Goethe. In three months (December, 1888, to
February, 1889) he had written all the _Goethe-Liederbuch_--fifty-one
_Lieder_, some of which are, like _Prometheus_, big dramatic scenes.

The same year, while still at Perchtoldsdorf, after having published a
volume of Eichendorff _Lieder_, he became absorbed in a new cycle--the
_Spanisches-Liederbuch_, on Spanish poems translated by Heyse. He wrote
these forty-four songs in the same ecstasy of gladness:

"What I write now, I write for the future.... Since Schubert and
Schumann there has been nothing like it!"

In 1890, two months after he had finished the _Spanisches-Liederbuch_,
he composed another cycle of _Lieder_ on poems called _Alten Weisen_, by
the great Swiss writer Gottfried Keller. And lastly, in the same year,
he began his _Italienisches-Liederbuch_, on Italian poems, translated by
Geibel and Heyse.

And then--then there was silence.

* * * * *

The history of Wolf is one of the most extraordinary in the history of
art, and gives one a better glimpse of the mysteries of genius than most
histories do.

Let us make a little _resume_. Wolf at twenty-eight years old had
written practically nothing. From 1888 to 1890 he wrote, one after
a