Anton Bruckner plays Hamlet to
Beethoven’s Yorick, Vienna, 1888.
A devout Catholic, he built to praise his God
huge hulking cathedral-symphonies where
even the willing listener finally gets lost,
mind wandering among the gray arcades and vaults,
arches within arches, endlessly on end. Bruckner
has his great moments oh but his dreadful half hours!
For twenty years and more, the critics said
his symphonies were “wild,” “absurd,”
“unplayable,” and helpfully rewrote them
for him. So after a successful performance
of his Fourth Symphony, he strode beaming
to the podium, tipped the conductor a thaler,
said Have a beer on me old boy!
When they were about to move Beethoven’s
exhumed remains from Währinger Cemetery
to more hallowed quarters in the Zentralfriedhof,
he rushed into the examination chamber,
brushed aside the bewildered doctors
studying the corpse, and took
the stinking skull in both his hands.
Searched those blank eye sockets
for the man whose final, 80-minute
symphony had pointed him the way down
the long and lonely nave he worshiped in.