Mozart Died at 35
Nov 16 2022
Mozart died at 35.
Woolf and Plath
by suicide.
And the romantic poets
who drank themselves to death,
tragic, and hollow-eyed
in some cold dark garret.
Beethoven lost his hearing.
Orwell struggled to breath.
And the self-destructing artists
from Van Gogh to Basquiat.
But we remember them;
posterity has the last word.
I think about my own minor maladies,
the whining
and lame excuses.
How I never sacrificed
by going to war,
never fought fascists
denounced the philistines
attacked the powerful.
How I still can't make music,
beautiful, or otherwise.
I am listening to a recording
of Concerto # 5
for violin and orchestra,
a virtuoso performance
and one of his most admired.
When I was that young
I had no idea,
and looking back
cringe at who I was.
Too old
to die young
and still no great poetry.
If art requires suffering
I'm condemned to mediocrity.
Can only hope
great art can also come
through hard experience
and the passage of time.
That I'll live long enough
to eventually stumble
on just the right words;
leave behind
at least a single line
worthy of posterity.
There is the stereotype of the artist as tormented and suffering. There is the tragic romance of dying young that makes an artist so much more memorable: the precocity; the lost potential. Is the admiration deserved? Is it the work itself, or more the story? And why do so many great artists have their lives cut short?
If I were to flatter myself my calling myself an artist, I can't claim any of that: no great suffering; still alive (at an age I'd rather not mention!) Any work worth remembering? That's for the reader to decide.
This poem started with the title. I read that Mozart suffered from smallpox, pneumonia, rheumatism, and typhoid fever; and died at the ridiculously young age of 35. How did he produce so much great music in so short a time? Does creativity require struggle and overcoming? And alternatively, can a quiet bourgeois life like mine produce anything worthwhile?
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