-
Friendly greetings, and faithfully your
F. Liszt
165. To Dr. Adolf Stern in Dresden
[Poet and man of letters, now professor at the Polytechnikum at
Dresden, a member of the Committee of the Allgemeine Deutsche
Musikverein since 1867.]
Very Dear Sir and Friend,
A long and protracted illness has kept me in bed for a fortnight
past - and I owe you many apologies for my delay in sending you my
warmest thanks for the very kind remembrance with which you
adorned the 22nd of October. The beautiful poem, so full of
meaning, and soaring aloft with its delicately powerful flight,
goes deeply to my heart, and my dreams hear the charm of your
poetry through Lehel's magic horn tones! Perhaps I shall be able
shortly to tell you what I have heard, when the disjointed sounds
have united in shaping themselves harmoniously into an artistic
whole, from which a second part of my Symphonic Poem "Hungaria"
might well be formed.
Meanwhile I have ventured to send your poem to a couple of my
friends in Pest, who will delight in it like myself.
In spite of my illness I am spending glorious days here with
Wagner, and am satiating myself with his Nibelungen world, of
which our business musicians and chaff-threshing critics have as
yet no suspicion.
