Princess On A Steeple

Franz Liszt, Austrian-Hungarian composer, still looking quite foxy at 47 in 1858.

A physician whose speciality is the disorders of women and with whom I conversed as to the magic which our Liszt exercises on his public, smiled mysteriously and told many things of magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of contagion in an overheated hall…

—Heinrich Heine explains the phenomenon of Lizstomania in 1844.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

February 23rd, 1989