All actions are social compromises. There is no such thing as freedom except as an ideal.
In July 1812 Beethoven wrote a love letter which was to become famous. Entire books have been written about the 'Immortal Beloved', the subject of the letter, but the important question isn't who this person was; it is why didn't he send it. Beethoven has an image of a rebellious loner, abandoned by society and isolated due to his deafness, wholly committed to his art. This is of course part truth, part fantasy. Perhaps here, in this relationship, Beethoven was offered the chance of a more normal life, a more domestic life, less troubled but less artistic. In this moment, perhaps, he realised he could set aside the struggles of poverty and thankless art for a more normal existence, but that ultimately he was not willing to compromise. Here, his sought-for goal of love and domesticity was within his grasp at last, but he consciously chose not to accept it.
Of course, this theory too is romantic. Beethoven wasn't free. He was a highly independent artist, but not alone, not wholly independent; nobody is. Most famously, his 9th Symphony was about freedom (or joy, something of a code-word for freedom during politicised times where the word 'freedom' and revolutionary ideas were censored and suppressed), but all of his symphonies were about this exact subject; all a struggle for freedom. This is the principle theme and idea of each of them, but by the 9th, perhaps, he realised that freedom was a fantasy only to be achieved in heaven's firmament.
As do I.
