Péter Bozó
Liaison Dangereuse
Franz Liszt
and Agnes Street-Klindworth: A Correspondence, 1854-1886. Introduced, translated,
annotated and edited by Pauline Pocknell. Franz Liszt Studies Series No.8,
ed. by Michael Saffle. New York, Pendragon Press, 2000.
...c'étaient les lettres mêmes qu'on voulait faire
connaître, et non pas seulement un ouvrage fait
d'aprés elles....
Choderlos de Laclos
Those who do not know who Agnes Street-
Klindworth was will probably find it difficult to understand why a full century
had to pass before this correspondence was made accessible in full. It also
calls for an explanation why it was necessary to publish these documents again
when the pioneering publisher of the Liszt's correspondence, Marie Lipsius,
better known as La Mara, had already devoted a full volume to this relationship.1
There have been several precedents in Liszt studies showing that new research
viewpoints and results often call for a thorough revision as well as revised
new editions of earlier works after a while. For instance, important and outstanding
as the earlier publication of the exchange of letters between Liszt and the
Countess d'Agoult was in the 1930s,2 that edition had to
be complemented and revised after seventy years. This in itself justified
the publication of a new edition by Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas.3
The situation is similar in the case of the correspondence of the composer
with his mother, which, after La Mara's German-language variant,4
has been published at long last in the original.5 The Street-Klindworth
letters had been crying for a revision even more, but they represent a unique
case of research and document publishing. It was not only the outdated character
of the editor's methods of La Mara that made a new edition necessary.
It has been known for a long time that
La Mara deliberately censored the letters, although she knew the complete
contents of the sources.6 She deleted or amended paragraphs
without indicating this in her editions. Her reason for doing so is easy to
understand: the correspondence included details severely compromising for
both Liszt and Agnes Street-Klindsworth.
Agnes operated as a secret agent all her life. She inherited this profession
from her father, Georg Klindworth, who had written confidential reports for
a number of leading European politicians from Metternich to Bismarck. On top
of her adventurous profession, during her stay in Weimar in the mid-1850s,
she became intimately involved with Liszt.
The date of Agnes's arrival in Weimar and the beginning of her affair with
Liszt is enshrouded in mystery. She stayed there until April 1855 and, according
to Pauline Pocknell, all that can be taken for certain after a thorough study
of the correspondence of Liszt and his acquaintances is that she must have
arrived sometime between March 1853 and July 1854. Agnes's seeming reason
for visiting Liszt was to take piano lessons. What the real assignment calling
her to the German principality may have been can only be guessed at. Since
her father was working for the Russian court at the time, two explanations
seem to be handy. One of her purposes may have been to spy on Liszt's second
companion, Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Russian exile, and to use
her charms to win the composer over from her to herself. In the light of what
happened later, this is very likely, but it points to the wider diplomatic
context of her arrival that it coincides conspicuously with the Crimean War.
It is also likely that the beginning of the affair can be dated to one particular
piano lesson, one of the subjects of which, according to the confidential
references of the letters, was Chopin's Étude in A Flat Minor. The relationship
continued after Agnes's departure too. The correspondence evidences several
encounters between 1855 and 1858 in Köln, Düsseldorf and Aachen. Later on
their complicated love affair turned into friendship, which, with some minor
pauses, lasted until the death of Liszt. The documents published by Pauline
Pocknell read like a true 19th-century epistolary novel, a romance coupled
with conspiracy and passion.
When La Mara's book was published,
Agnes herself was still alive and, if only because of Liszt's heirs, it would
have been risky to reveal every detail of a correspondence of this type. It
is less easy to understand why the sources were never used by such important
Liszt scholars as Peter Raabe or Emil Haraszti, even though, as Pocknell's
work makes it quite clear, they were fully aware of the contents of the original
documents.7 Anything that had been accessible in print before
the present edition came out either bears the prettifying marks of the editor
(La Mara), is not based on the original, and is therefore inaccurate (Huré - Knepper)8,
or publishes some of the details of the letters only in translation (Winklhofer).
Thus the importance of Pocknell's edition consists mainly in the manner in
which the originals are handled. Her book is the first to include every surviving
piece of the correspondence of the composer and Agnes Street-Klindworth, as
well as containing them in full, in their original form, unabridged. The correspondence
is somewhat one-sided, but that is not the editor's fault. Liszt in fact fulfilled
the request of his lover and carefully destroyed her letters. Consequently,
of the 160 documents found in the book, only one comes from Agnes's hand.
Another conspicuously disproportionate feature of the correspondence is that
its vast majority was written after Agnes's departure from Weimar. Only two
short, fairly formal messages survived from the early stages of the affair.
Nevertheless, many details of this intimate relationship can be reconstructed
from the available sources, providing a great deal of interesting information
on Liszt's mental and physical condition, family affairs and, most important,
on compositions in the making, completed or still planned. Some of these works
contain obvious references to Agnes's person or to Liszt's feelings about
her. A good example is the Dante Symphony, the first movement of which recalls
the history of the eternal punishment in hell of Paolo and Francesca, the
adulterous lovers of the Divina Commedia. Street-Klindworth was able to follow
the birth of the symphony, moreover, according to all signs, she was actually
one of its inspirers.9 She also inspired a piano adaptation
by Liszt of a song by Eduard Lassen (Ich weil in tiefer Einsamkeit), which,
because of its lyrics, was clearly regarded by the composer as a Liebesbotschaft
to Agnes (Letter 70).
The main topic of the correspondence, however, is politics. The first few
letters make Liszt's avid interest in contemporary writings on political topics
quite apparent. For instance, in Letter 3, he recommends to her a section
of the book Les soirées de Saint Pétersbourg by the philosopher, writer and
diplomat Joseph Marie de Maistre. This book must have been one of his favourites
because he makes reference to it in other letters as well (Nos. 17 and 60).
In Letter 5, he requests information from Agnes on L'Equilibre européen, the
planned periodical of another French statesman, François Guizot, one of the
Klindworths' employers, because, as he points out, he cannot find the time
for reading. Printed information, though, made up only a part of Liszt sources
of news, and not even the most important part. Thanks to her strange occupation,
Agnes was able to provide fresh information on current political events. She
made copies of her father's reports, which she regularly passed on to Liszt.
Only one dispatch of this type survived, but this particular document (attachment
to Letter 139), left out of La Mara's edition, adds interesting information
on the origins of a Liszt composition. It is known that that the composer
wrote a memento to the memory of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, accompanied
by a quote from Propertius, at the head of the piece Marche funèbre in Volume
III of the cycle Années de pèlerinage. The emperor, a brother of the Emperor
Francis Joseph, was executed by Mexican revolutionaries in July 1867. Liszt
received fast and accurate information on the background of the incident.
Agnes's letter and the attached account, written on the following day, reported
in detail on the diplomatic efforts made by the Austrian government to save
the life of Maximilian, albeit with no success.
Readers will like this book not only
for its contents but also for its logical structure and its systematic presentation
of sources. The editorial work is exemplary. Beside the English translation,
every single document is also printed in its original form, in French, with
the exception of one, the manuscript of which seems to have been lost. The
transcriptions follow Liszt's original spelling and punctuation with great
precision. The book is both a source publication and a comparative study.
In the transcripts in the original language, Pock-nell precisely marks the
parts which are missing in La Mara's edition, enabling the reader to measure
the extent of La Mara's editorial intervention. The exchanges between Agnes
and the composer are complemented with a number of other sources, including
a facsimile of a complete manuscript of a song by Liszt (Anfangs wollt ich
fast verzagen). Interpretation of the documents is aided by an abundance of
explanatory notes, showing the impressive knowledge of the editor. Pauline
Pocknell made a thorough study of historical documents, like the diplomatic
notes in the archives of the French foreign ministry, or Georg Klindworth's
secret reports found in a number of archives all over Europe. The only mildly
uncomfortable point one might mention is that the reader of the French texts
has to turn the pages forward to the English translations to find the editor's
comments. The translations and original text publications are preceded by
extensive and highly informative introductory studies. In the first part of
the Introduction, Pocknell provides an overview of the current state of the
publishing of Liszt's correspondence and, while examining the history of the
study of the letters, offers a surprisingly objective critique of the frequently
questionable work and methods of her predecessors. This is followed by a description
of the importance of the surviving letters and various problems related to
them. In the second part, she gives an account of her editing, transliterating
and translating principles, while the third part deals with the strange career
of Agnes and her father, and with the story of the affair. Especially revealing
and interesting is the section "Liszt in Love", in which Pocknell shows, in
a very sensitive and thought-provoking way, certain patterns that can be discovered
in Liszt's affairs with Countess d'Agoult, Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, Agnes
Street-Klindworth and Olga Meyendorff.
Each time, the emergence of an emotional relationship was sudden and unexpected;
each lady was at the end of her twenties; none had an unproblematic past.
They were usually dissatisfied with their social and family relations, and
all were educated, intelligent and receptive to art. At the same time they
all had a measure of social, mental and financial independence, and were well-travelled,
cosmopolitan women of French culture. They all lived intensive emotional lives,
and all had a social position inaccessible to Liszt. The comparison also shows
what made the composer's relationship to Agnes different, what made her attractive
and special to him: their mutual interest in politics, and the freedom that,
in contrast to the other women, Agnes was able to offer him.
The method used by Pauline Pocknell to follow the changes in the character
and intensity of the relationship is also remarkable. On the basis of the
frequency, tone and themes of the letters, she distinguishes nine stages in
the history of the relationship from Agnes's departure from Weimar to the
death of Liszt, pointing out the events which may be seen as turning-points
in their common and individual lives.
The above review will perhaps convince readers that Pauline Pocknell's edition
of these letters will not only be helpful to all students of the art and life
of Liszt but also fascinating and exciting reading to a general audience.
Notes
1 Franz Liszts Briefe. III. Briefe an eine
Freundin. Hrsg. Von La Mara. Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894.
2 Correspondance de Franz Liszt et de la Com-tesse d'Agoult
1840–1864. Publ. par Diel Ollivier. Vol. I-II. Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1933–1934.
3 Franz Liszt - Marie d'Agoult: Correspondance. Prés. et ann.
par Serge Gut et Jacqueline Bellas. Paris, Fayard, 2001.
4 Franz Liszts Briefe an seine Mutter. Hrsg. Von La Mara.
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1918.
5 Franz Liszt. Briefwechsel mit seiner Mutter. Hrsg. Von Klára
Hamburger. Eisenstadt, Knad & Danck, 2000.
6 La Mara's falsifications were already mentioned by Emil
Haraszti (Franz Liszt. Paris, Picard, 1967, p. 170) but the first to treat
the issue in greater detail was Sharon Winklhofer in the study "Editorial
Censorship in Liszt's Letters to Agnes Street Klindworth" (JALS 9 [June 1981],
pp. 42– 49). Still, the figure of Agnes Street-Klindworth gained proper stature
first in Alan Walker's authoritative biography of Liszt (Franz Liszt: The
Weimar Years, 1848–1861.) New York, Alfred Knopf, 1988, pp. 210–211.
7 See "Introduction I", XV.
8 Franz Liszt: Correspondance. Ed. par Pierre-Antoine Huré
et Claude Knepper. Paris, Lattès. 1987.
9 See the chapter "The Moment that Vanquished them" on p.
xxxix, and Letter 15 and Pocknells comments, pp. 29–31.
Péter Bozó
is on the staff of the Franz Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre, Budapest.
His Ph.D. research is on Liszt's songs.
