erms to express myself.
Let this suffice: I feel more than fully rewarded for my trials, my
sacrifices and artistic struggles, on noting the impression I have
made on you in particular. To be thus completely understood was my
only ambition; and to have been understood is the most ravishing
gratification of my longing.

--_Liszt in a Letter to Wagner_

FRANZ LISZT

In writing of Liszt there is a strong temptation to work the superlative
to its limit. In this instance it is well to overcome temptation by
succumbing to it.

That word "genius" is much bandied, and often used without warrant; but
for those rare beings who leap from the brain of Jove, full-armed, it is
the only appellation. No finespun theory of pedagogics or heredity can
account for the marvelous talent of Franz Liszt--he was one sent from
God.

Yet we find a few fortuitous circumstances that favored his evolution.
Possibly, on the other hand, there are those who might say the boy
attracted to himself the human elements that he required, and thus
worked out his freedom, acquiring that wondrous ability to express his
inmost emotions. Art is the beautiful way of doing things. All art is
the expression of sublime emotions; and there seems a strong necessity
in every soul to impart the joy and the aspiration that it feels. And
further, art is for the artist first, just as work is for the worker--it
is all just a matter of self-development. And how blessed is it to think
that every soul that works out its own freedom gives freedom to others!
Liszt is the inspirer of musicians, just as Shakespeare is the inspirer
of writers. Strong men make it possible for others to be strong. No man
of the century gave the science of music such an impulse for good as
this man. To go no further in way of proof, let the truth be stated yet
once again, that it was Franz Liszt who threw a rope to the drowning
Wagner.

On October Twenty-second, in the year Eighteen Hundred Eleven, when a
man-child was born at the village of Raiding, Hungary, the heavens gave
no sign, and no signal-flags nor couriers proclaimed the event, all as
had been done a week before when a babe was born to the Prince and
Princess Esterhazy at the same place. Now the child born last was the
son of obscure parents, the father being an underling secretary of the
Prince, known as Liszt. The child was very weak and frail, and for some
months it was thought hardly possible it co