The subject of passion arose recently in this electronic space, and it sprang loose a quote that I have yet to come to grips with, almost twenty years after encountering it as an epigraph to a book by Don Robertson:
Passions are not natural to mankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences. The ideal, genuine man is calm in joy and calm in pain and sorrow. Passions must quickly pass or else they must be driven out.
Said by Johannes Brahms, in a letter dated 17 October 1857.
An academic footnote: my attempt to find a “canonical” version of this quote in German on the web did not prove satisfying. It can be found in the following form here and here (for instance):
Which could be rendered:
Another snippet seems to provide at least part of the ellipsis in the version above (although it throws in an extra bald in the second sentence):
Note that it leaves out schöne (“beautiful”—why did someone render it “ideal”?). This is the only one I’ve found that adds Kummer (sorrow) for good measure:
What a mess!
Sounds like stoicism, doesn’t it? Maybe it comes from fear of feeling too much, perhaps also from observations of people with mental illnesses. Such observations alone could make one fear passion, especially in the days before effective medications!
Scary that the quote is from Brahms…. Not exactly an unpassionate or dispassionate dude, in my opinion!
The inclination to seek the middle and avoid the edges sounds more German than Greek to me (surprise!). Especially north German. His music does seem to belie the sentiment, but then again, some critics found him a bit of a stuffed shirt—an old fogey too concerned with form (for them, Wagner was the wave of the future). Maybe his music expresses the idea: Moderation in everything, including moderation.
I agree: Schumann (or the Schumanns) may have had something to do with it.