Many years ago, I heard someone quote these words on the radio. I have never forgotten them.
Vom Herzen,
möge es wieder, zu Herzen gehen.
This reads, literally:
From the heart,
might it again, to the heart go.
My reading of it is this:
This comes from my heart.
Would that it might, in your heart, find a home.
Where does the desire to write, sculpt, paint, compose come from? Who knows!
All we can say, if we have that desire, is that it is there and longs to be fulfilled.
Our lives may be crazy, mixed up, certainly far from perfect in all sorts of ways, as was Beethoven's, but this does not seem to prevent us from wanting and being able, to some extent at least, to bring some small or large, or in his case, achingly beautiful, powerful and moving work of art into being.
I can think of no words that, for me, could possibly come closer to the heart of artistic creation than those of Beethoven's. He encapsulates, in eight short words, all that I could ever hope for; that is that words which have come from my heart could find their way into another's.
