I'd quote it but I think I have a better translation of that passage in the Psychedelic Prayers book which I'll search out in my library.
It seems to me that it doesn't take long for the smile reflex to set in for a newborn baby so I guess it's a specific metaphor.
I can see it.
Where Liszt waxes a bit weird (and you wonder what he may have been partying on - absinthe, maybe?) - is the angst part of it.
I guess that was your point, that you prefer a more positive view of the freak's perspective (i.e. artistic).
It seems wild that he could be so detached from his art that if he was having a bad day (or life is it were) it would color his whole sense of his own performance to where it felt dead to him.
I think for a virtuoso, especially one who practices too much, and doesn't play "for fun" primarily - that the sort of state of mind that Liszt got into is a pitfall.
It is difficult but not impossible to be too much of a weirdo - and maybe knowing the mechanics of what goes into a performace so well that from time to time the experience of delivering the performance will seem "lifeless" to the artist. This is not a unique experience to Liszt but is a common experience of certain genuises that you'll hear them all speak of at some point in a career. Better in the beginning or middle than at the end of a career to be alienated from one's own art.
Given his music and the intricacy of his embellishments (which he took to more of an extreme than his friend Fred Chopin) - it's not entirely surprising that his sense of his art was a little dreary on some days.
I think you run into the same complaint from performers, where audiences and patrons have one idea of why they are there at a performance and what they are listening to - as opposed to - let's say, what they like and are familiar with. A bad audience, or one with expectations to hear something they like and it isn't on your program - it can make an artist feel like he is just gyrating and whacking keys.
In classical salons, it's not like a reggae band or something else fusionary coming to Askenaz where everyone quickly falls into a groove, audience and performers alike.
There are conventions in classical traditions that can be a bit stiff.
You shouldn't clap between movements. That is an example. The fact is that in some circumstances the same alienating context affects art, even contempory performances.
I think if you can get the spontaneous thing happening whether it's classical or popular a composer or artist can create something playful and interesting in terms of it's consciousness of scale, key, timbres, orchestrations, voicings, rhythms, and all the other ingredients that are on the composer's palette.
You'll find an appreciative audience somewhere - even if it's just the geese by the lake, or a small herd of deer on the side of Mt. Tam. I think the Japanese have the right idea playing shakuhachi flute for the deer.
A human audience can be equally receptive.
It maybe a bit rare. Sometimes humans surprise us too. All the above have to have some sense of being a bit sensitive (your sense that a visionary can be "over"- visionary) and a good audience will approach a performance as something a bit new and strange. In my view that makes the music alive, not dead.
I think I'd want to read what Liszt wrote in the whole context of that passage to get the full drift of what he was getting at. He may have been prone to becoming depressed.
Or it could be he ligitimately felt that from time to time he was a bit detached from his art and it no longer seemed alive to him.
Interesting.
That's really all I can conclude.
I'd have to speculate if he may have felt that way from not enough, or too much absinthe - or not enough of what Berlioz liked to smoke. I think Berlioz was a bit later, if not that much later. I wonder if they crossed paths.
Same town. I love Paris in the winter, when it shivers.
Viva Franz Liszt!
Viva Franz Kafka. . .
Viva Maria (Brigitte Bardot).
