Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

377 LETTERS me, it certainly causes me torment. But as long as both Your Reverence and the Most Esteemed Signor Dottor Balbi are in good health, as this is essentially my main concern, let the rest take care of itself, for it really means nothing. But Your Reverence must free me from this torment, and in any way, either write to me, or have someone write to me, for one who loves greatly and holds in great esteem cannot remain in this condition, as I presently am. If this is caused by my having wanted a change in the order of how to carry out the examination, and as a consequence Your Reverence and the Most Illustrious Signor Dottor Balbi believe success to be impossible, this is substantially no bad thing whatsoever either on your part or on mine. On your part, with great kindness and patience (for which I shall certainly be obliged to you for as long as I live) you have done what you could to favour me; and to understand me, you have proposed that method which you have deemed the best. On my part, I followed your method for a long time, but after finally realizing that it could not lead us to what was needed, I wrote this to you sincerely. If in writing this to you in haste (as is usual for me) I went overboard in some inappropriate expression (as I do not know in my conscience and as a Christian), I repent one thousand times and ask for forgiveness two thousand times. I beg you (if this was the case) to overlook this. I am quite incapable of doing such a thing deliberately, so if it happens, it is due to my ignorance, and I heartily pray to God not to have to account to you for anything but this. In brief, let it be anything else, but not this. And if it is difficult to understand what that need is, a matter of some significance, here then one needs patience; and essentially the obstacle comes not from you, it comes from me. Because you follow the path which is well-travelled and common, and I follow another path which is quite new and peculiar. In that case, if I did not likewise know that yours is the trodden and common path, and that I should adjust my path to yours, it would be impossible to reach an understanding. But I know nothing but what is sufficient to clearly know the possibility of uniting those two paths into one. It will therefore be impossible for us to come to a good conclusion; and this is in a few words the substance of what has occurred and is occurring between us. So if that is so (if I guess correctly), our intent remains indeed without conclusion, but I nonetheless remain obliged to you in such a manner that I am unaware of having contracted an obligation greater than this in my whole life. I ask Your Reverence reply to me, therefore, and lift from me an enormous weight as soon as you can, because I need this. I submit to you my regards, as I do to the Most Esteemed Signor Dottor Balbi, and I remain more and more Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 3 November 1752