Nov 26, 2013 - Sale 2333

Sale 2333 - Lot 204

Price Realized: $ 21,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
"I HAVE FINALLY FOUND SYMPATHY . . . FOR WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO" MAHLER, GUSTAV. Autograph Letter Signed, to music publisher and composer Oskar Eichberg ("Esteemed Sir!"), in German, profusely thanking him for the sympathetic response given to his music after Mahler's debut in Berlin, remarking that if his music enjoys any more attention it will be due to him, and complaining of the repeated rejections and misunderstandings he had endured. 5 pages, 8vo, written on two folded sheets; terminal page detached from integral blank, minor toning to first page. Hamburg, 30 March 1895
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"It is only today that I . . . send you a few entirely inadequate words of thanks for the two great acts of kindness which you have performed . . . . The first . . . was the positive manner in which you reacted to my work when I first made my debut in Berlin and the deep understanding which you demonstrated in judging it. If . . . I can hope to get some attention in musical circles I owe that entirely to you. The second . . . is the fact that I have finally found sympathy and understanding for what I am trying to do. If you had seen my path of suffering as an author; if you had . . . witness[ed] those repeated rejections, disappointments, even humiliations; how I have been forced to lock away . . . work after work as soon as they were created; and how . . . I run into a wall of misunderstanding--only then would you realize how sincere is my thankfulness . . . . [T]he time will come when I shall . . . publically [point] to the man who was the first and the only one in a multitude of people qualified to be judges who understood the language that was spoken here . . . and who stood up to be counted at a time when doing so still required a man's full courage against a flood of adversaries and detractors. . . . I am now 34 years old and like Quintus Fixlein, I have written myself a little library the only readers of which have, so far, been my closest friends. . . . [B]elieve me that I shall never forget the debt which I owe you."
Quintus Fixlein is not the character from Jean Paul's fiction who wrote his own library; rather it was schoolmaster Wuz, from Paul's The Invisible Lodge.
Published in Martner, Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, 159.