nother, in a kind of fever, fifty-three Moerike _Lieder_, fifty-one
Goethe _Lieder_, forty-four Spanish _Lieder_, seventeen Eichendorff
_Lieder_, a dozen Keller _Lieder_, and the first Italian _Lieder_--that
is about two hundred _Lieder_, each one having its own admirable
individuality.

And then the music stops. The spring has dried up. Wolf in great anguish
wrote despairing letters to his friends. To Oskar Grohe, on 2 May, 1891,
he wrote:

"I have given up all idea of composing. Heaven knows how things
will finish. Pray for my poor soul."

And to Wette, on 13 August, 1891, he says:

"For the last four months I have been suffering from a sort of
mental consumption, which makes me very seriously think of quitting
this world for ever.... Only those who truly live should live at
all. I have been for some time like one who is dead. I only wish it
were an apparent death; but I am really dead and buried; though the
power to control my body gives me a seeming life. It is my inmost,
my only desire, that the flesh may quickly follow the spirit that
has already passed. For the last fifteen days I have been living at
Traunkirchen, the pearl of Traunsee.... All the comforts that a man
could wish for are here to make my life happy--peace, solitude,
beautiful scenery, invigorating air, and everything that could suit
the tastes of a hermit like myself.[187] And yet--and yet, my
friend, I am the most miserable creature on earth. Everything
around me breathes peace and happiness, everything throbs with life
and fulfils its functions.... I alone, oh God!... I alone live like
a beast that is deaf and senseless. Even reading hardly serves to
distract me now, though I bury myself in books in my despair. As
for composition, that is finished; I can no longer bring to mind
the meaning of a harmony or a melody, and I almost begin to doubt
if the compositions that bear my name are really mine. Good God!
what is the use of all this fame? What is the good of these great
aims if misery is all that lies at the end of it?...

"_Heaven gives a man complete genius or no genius at all. Hell has
given me everything by halves_.

"O unhappy man, how true, how true it is! In the flower of your
life you went to hell; into the evil jaws of destiny you threw the
delusive present and yourself with it. O Kleist!"