...[T]he Devil whispered behind the leaves, “Its pretty, but is it Art?“
– Rudyard Kipling, “The Conundrum of the Workshops”
Paganini and the Devil
When his bow began to move,
the earth began to wake.
Thousands upon thousands of heartstrings resounded,
resounded to rhythm and melody.
(Quick, scream the strings, quicker, quickest!
The notes stumble over each other,
a pure and jumbled clarity.)
When his strings began to sound,
the earth began to dance.
The ground trembled, broke in half,
split asunder, brought forth the Devil.
Red and black and bright he gleamed,
stepped to the master’s elbow
and watched the malformed fingers.
(When he is dying,
the master sees the devil’s grin
in the corner of the room,
and swears he is not done for yet.
As long as his comrade is there,
he knows he will live.
He sends the priest away.)
When the notes came to a halt,
the universe breathed out,
a long rush of silence.
Men wept for such sanctification.
(The devil steps forward,
the grin still in place,
and takes the man’s elastic fingers
in his own.)
Author’s Note
Niccolò Paganini was a world-famous violinist back in the early 1800s, a musician whose prodigious talent remains unsurpassed to this day. He was so good, in fact, that it was rumoured that he’d got his prodigious musical talent from the Devil; at one of his concerts, a man stood up and pointed to the empty stage beside the violinist, shrieking that he saw the devil at Paganini’s shoulder. (Paganini’s unusually large hands and flexible fingers were actually the result of a genetic deformity, rather than a Satanic pact.) Interestingly enough, Paganini ended up bolstering this legend by refusing the Last Rites when he lay dying, claiming that he was not yet going to die.
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