Abstract
Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult had one of the best known affairs in the nineteenth century. For decades it has been debated who was at fault for their many problems and their eventual split. Early biographies are not a valuable resource for this; the first biography, written by Lina Ramann, was edited by Liszt and his lover at the timem, Princess Carolyne Wittgenstein and contained their bias. Many early biographies were written based on the information in this book. Then Ernest Newman, in 1934, wrote a new type of Liszt biography. His stated goal was to tear down the trendy hagiographical depiction of Liszt and try to show him as a real man. Eleanor Perényi, in 1974, wrote a biography that was supposed to be a truer account of Liszt. In truth, Newman’s goal was to tear down Liszt to the point of degrading him and Perényi’s goal was to villainize Marie D’agoult. In this paper I examine the information in both biographies and present relevant parts. My purpose is to show that it is not useful to try to place blame on both parties of the affair, but rather see them both as people with faults and graces and that both contributed to the downfall of their affair.