Jean Sibelius - His Life And Personality
Cód:
491_9781443723633
JEAN SIBELIUS - His Life and Personality by EDWARD BIRSE. Originally published in 1935. FOREWORD: THERE have been biographies of Sibelius before this of Karl Ekmans, but his is the first to pre sent us with something like the essentials of the portrait of the man. I say something like the essentials be cause we know, from previous experiences of the kind, that the first official or quasi-official biographies of great men are apt to be as remarkable for their reti cences as for their revelations. We have to resign our selves to that, for if it were not for these reticences there could be no first biographies at all. I am not, of course, suggesting that there is anything in Sibeliuss life that needs to be hushed up I doubt whether a world avid for scandal about Queen Elizabeth will ever have the thrill, blent of horror and delight, of learning that he ever robbed a bank, forged a cheque, or even committed a minor homicide. All I mean is that experience in these matters has shown us that in a first biography of any great artist a good deal that concerns his opinions of other . people and his relations with other people has to be discreetly touched in with the lightest of strokes, if only because there are intimacies and susceptibilities on all sides to be considered. I am not contending, then nor, I fancy, would either the author or the subject himself do so that this book of Karl Ekmans will be the final biography of Sibelius fifty years hence. But I do contend that it is a work of high value. All first biographies should be written by someone with the entree to the inner circle of the subject able, consequently, not only to extract illu minative reminiscences and avowals from the subject himself but to tap, before it is too late, the memory of those who were intimate with him in the formative early and middle periods of his life. Ekman has had special facilities for doing this and so his book con tains a mass of hitherto inaccessible information that is of the highe
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