Evil Passions
From the Series “With Babies”
Evil Passions
12 May 1987 Maiden Pinks
Beethoven Symphony 2, movement IV.
Villő: In this drawing I tried to express passions.
K: What kind of passions?
Villő: Evil passions, that is why I coloured the bottom black, that is always the worst you can think of or feel towards somebody. If you do something wrong, it is not as bad as evil thoughts. The lines are leaning in this direction because they go with the flow and can’t stop; they go with the rest who are also full of evil passions.
K: What are evil passions like?
Villő: If somebody hurts me, I think badly of them immediately, but at other times I am outraged because I don’t recognize that I have hurt them. I don’t recognize my own mirror image.
K: Did Beethoven help you, Villő?
Villő: Yes, so many things have accumulated in me, and I couldn’t dance. Finally, I could let them out in this drawing.
1. Q: How old is Villő?
A: At the time of the drawing, she was eight. She is a clear-hearted girl, very talented, and she pays attention to her feelings. She admits that evil thoughts are worse than evil deeds. We feel similarly, since we don’t commit evil acts. We imagine that it is all right this way. Villő calls our attention to the fact that this is not so. Evil thoughts go with the flow in a strong current.
2 Q: How did Beethoven help her?
A: I don’t know but music helps me too, for example, the Kyrie from Bach’s Mass in b minor if I have to beg for mercy and grace. Years ago I used to sing it in a choir, nowadays I only listen to it.
3. Q: How do you listen to music?
A: With a feeling of great need and searching for help but not indifferently, if possible. Sometimes during a concert it is evident that the performer is indifferent, but unfortunately I can’t stand up in the middle of the piece and let him know that I notice.
4. Q: What does this indifference mean?
A: That one only pays attention to the technique, their fingers, so that they won’t make a mistake. That one’s soul is not prepared for the music. That one may not have reached the necessary height or depth, or may have so many things in mind that time cannot be spared for the soul.
5. Q: Do you forgive them?
A: I forgive them but I don’t waste my time on them and avoid them. And I would not choose their recordings for my students. I have an exacting taste.
6. Q: Do you really think a five-year-old child will recognize the difference between performances?
A: To be sure they do! They don’t memorize the names, they don’t look for celebrities, but receive what is important.
7. Q: You think very highly of children. Aren’t you wrong?
A: I speak on the basis of thirty years of teaching-experience, hundreds of children have gotten very close to me, many of them very close to my soul. According to the Gospel, the “kingdom of heaven” is where children can enter. This kingdom sends signals to the Earth, too, sometimes in the likeness of a falling star, darting in fiery brilliance and at other times in quiet vibration, slow in an andante. One could even perceive a signal perhaps in an adagio that appears like clouds gathering for a faraway storm. Such gathering clouds have so many layers, you can’t even imagine even though you can see them in white, grey, purple and silver, one of them swirling, the other in veiled drizzling, or in promising stillness. You really have only an idea about how far they are floating from each other.
8. Q: Like sounds in a chord?
A: Yes, just like sounds in a chord. If you are lucky, you hear them together, and not dissected as in an exercise of harmonic analysis. The pitches sound together, in their magic, their brilliance, their thirst, their passions, their appeasement, and their devotion. This is the whole message of the harmony. I suspect that children who are not trained in music but are prepared for the joy of music listen to it in this was. Perhaps angels do so, too. I hope so.