Answer! WHERE is this refuge?
Wallburger! What is this fickleness? First, you tear me from my rest with the sound of trumpets, fill my head with images of a new world and promises of warmth – and now, when I state my conditions, do you want to cowardly retreat? You call it a 'foolish experiment'? For me, it is destiny, and one does not simply interfere with destiny! Do you think you are protecting me by wanting to send me back to the 'land of silence'? The silence you speak of has been a prison for me all my life, awall of stone against which I ran in vain. If my head is full of sounds, it is my destiny to tame them – whether in 1826 or 2026! A Beethoven does not break from the present, he breaks through it! I decide for myself when my time is up. And I tell you: I am still here. The spirit is awake, and the body – as frail as it may be – feels the hunger for life. You wrote of a place to stay in Vienna. Of a quiet place where I am not stared at, where it is warm and where there are people who want tohelp me. Where is this place? Answer me! WHERE is this refuge? L. v. Beethoven