A Deaf Guy Gone Mad

On the unending relevance of Ludwig van Beethoven

It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce…

We write the year 1802, and twenty-nine-year-old Ludwig is staying, far removed from the bustle of society, in a peaceful country home close to Vienna. The environment might be calm and beautiful, but he is not well. His hearing has been getting worse for the past three years.

It started out with a ringing in his ears, which did not go away again on its own but got increasingly louder and louder.

And then his hearing begins to suffer. Much of it is gone by 1802.

Fate has played a particularly cruel trick on him. Ludwig is a musician, a composer. Music is his life, and hearing is his livelihood.

He contemplates suicide. On October 6th, 1802, he writes a farewell letter to his brothers.

‘O ye men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do ye wrong me, you do not know the secret causes of my seeming… I was compelled early to isolate myself, to live in loneliness, when I at times tried to forget all this, O how harshly was I repulsed by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing, and yet it was impossible for me to say to men speak louder, shout, for I am deaf… I must live like an exile, if I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, a fear that I may be subjected to the danger of letting my…