These are the Hands of the Man who Composed EROICA

by Susan Dunn
Date

"It is best, it seems to me, to separate one’s inner striving from one’s trade as far as possible.
It is not good when one’s daily bread is tied to God’s special blessing.”

-- Einstein

What a strange thing for a man to say

Who was, at the time he lived,

The world’s greatest physicist.

Would you not have assumed that

“God’s special blessing” to him

Was his ability at physics?

Perhaps the violin and his mystical philosophies

Meant more to him than we knew.

And when I e-mailed this picture to my son

I received a reply back about the Egyptians’

unparalleled abilities at mummification,

And the fact that Napoleon’s penis had been auctioned off

at Sotheby’s recently.

It didn’t occur to me that my son had never played the piano … Look at the size of those hands! That’s what made that incredible music! You’d have to have struggled as I did,

Before going down in defeat trying to play Beethoven’s chords,

I, who have the soul of a pianist, and all the desire,

But can barely reach one octave with either hand

Because my double-jointed thumbs shorten the range

Of already short fingers, and also diminish the strength,

Those are not chords to diddle at.

And if you can’t play music like that,

Could you have composed it?

There’s a reason why we know it’s over

When the fat lady sings.

She’s the one with the chest cavity large enough

To do the job.

There’s a reason why Pavorotti is a bass,

And Domingo a tenor.

Sometimes agonies from other things

Make the parts go together wrong,

Such as my friend’s daughter who, at age 12,

And already 5’2”, 130 lbs.,

Told the psychologist she wanted to be a jockey,

When her father is 6’4”, 270 lbs., and

Her mother is 6’, 200 lbs.

The mother laughed,

The psychologist was appalled at the mother’s insensitivity,

And the father said, as father’s will,

“She knows damn well she’s not going to be a jockey.

She’s scared to death of horses.”

The heart wanting what it cannot have.

What a joy it is when they do fit together!

Look at the hands of Michelangelo’s “David”.

They are modeled after Michelangelo’s own hands,

And such hands a sculptor in marble would have to have.

Conversely, what the hell would you do with hands like that

If you couldn’t sculpt in marble?

Capacities clamor to be used!

How Michelangelo griped about having to paint,

Which was his bread and butter.

Clearly he was made to sculpt, not paint

Though what it takes to spend years

Painting on your back on scaffolding

Who knows. Maybe strong kidneys.

Were David’s hands Michelangelo’s hands?

I would think so;

You wouldn’t need hands like that for a slingshot.

And what a special agony it is

When the parts are put together wrong.

If you’ve never felt the frustration yourself

I present to you for consideration Adolph Hitler

A short, slight dark-haired, dark-eyed man

Who extolled the Aryan race,

Those tall, muscular, blue-eyed blonds,

Something he wished he was and was not,

And he longed to be an artist when he couldn’t paint

So he took his frustration out

On a half a million Jews.

So Beethoven had it made?

Well, except for the fact that he went deaf,

Which crushes down upon me every time I hear it

That Beethoven should go deaf.

To never hear again your creations.

It must be like losing a child.

By the way, did you know he had 20 kids?

Some say, however, that that sort of suffering

Is what brings the creative genius to its fullest fruition –

And at the risk of going through what Marge Schott went through,

She happens to be right that Hitler was a genius –

How on God’s earth could you mobilize that country of anal law-abiding citizens who sweep the street in front of their house each morning to do something like that?

(which I can say, being German)

and of course what they did is just

the flip side of what they’d never do

but the point is – how did he get them to?

That’s like being able to convince Jackson Pollock

To put his paint in dots in tidy little lines, like Seurat,

And I don’t care what the reparations’ policy was.

It’s a puzzle.

Myself,

I’m very curious about Napolean’s penis.