Note 35 — HIS LIFE

"Goethe's poems give me great happiness," he wrote to Bettina Brentano on 19th February, 1811. And also "Goethe and Schiller are my favourite poets, together with Ossian and Homer, whom, unfortunately, I can only read in translations." To Breitkopf & Härtel, 8th August, 1809, Nohl, New Letters, LIII.

It is remarkable that Beethoven's taste in literature was so sound in view of his neglected education. In addition to Goethe, who he said was "grand, majestic, always in D major" (and more than Goethe) he loved three men, Homer, Plutarch and Shakespeare. Of Homer's works he preferred the Odyssey to the Iliad; he was continually reading Shakespeare (from a German translation) and we know with what tragic grandeur he has set Coriolanus and the Tempest in music. He read Plutarch continually, as did all who were in favour of the revolution. Brutus was his hero, as was also the case with Michael Angelo; he had a small statue of him in his bedroom. He loved Plato, and dreamed of establishing his republic in the whole world. "Socrates and Jesus have been my models," he wrote once on his note-books (Conversations during 1819 and 1820).