Beethoven was an emotionally wounded, profoundly neurotic man, who was tortured by inner conflicts throughout his life. He suffered from the very kinds of internal divisions that Marion had described—split between his massive idealism about human nature on the one hand and the misanthropic, angry, spiteful man that he could be on the other. He was split between the ecstatic and spiritualized writer of the Missa Solemnis and the solitary man who wandered the streets of Vienna at night in search of prostitutes. And as with most neurotics, he was tortured by his own behavior. Beethoven was
...more
