But even if she does entertain these ideas, she does not allow them to deter her from her campaign. Recently the campaign has even been intensified; where she once fought with words alone, she is resorting to other methods that she thinks will prove more effective but in our opinion will be more dangerous for her.
Some feel that Josephine is becoming so desperate because she feels she is growing old and her voice is weakening, and so it seems high time to wage the final battle for recognition. I don’t believe it. If it were true, Josephine would not be Josephine. For her, there is no getting old, no weakness in her voice. If she demands something, it is not due to outward forces but to an inner logic. She reaches for the highest laurels, not because they are hanging slightly lower for a moment but because they are the highest; if it were in her power she would hang them higher still.
This disregard of external difficulties certainly does not prevent her from employing the most unworthy methods. She feels her rights are beyond question, so that how she secures them does not matter, especially in this world where, as she sees it, it is the worthy methods that fail. Perhaps this is why she has transferred the fight for her rights from the arena of song to another that she cares very little about. Supporters have passed around statements of hers to the effect that she feels thoroughly capable of singing at such a level that every strata of the people, even the furthest reaches of the opposition, would find true pleasure in it—a true pleasure not by popular standards, for the people maintain they have always found pleasure in her singing, but a true pleasure by Josephine’s standards. But, she adds, since she can neither falsify higher standards nor pander to lower ones, her singing must stay as it is. Yet when it comes to the fight to be freed from work, that is another matter; it is also, of course, on behalf of her singing; however, in this case she is not using the precious weapon of song directly, therefore any means she employs is good enough.
So, for example, a rumor spread that if her petition were not granted, Josephine intended to shorten her trill notes. I know nothing of trill notes and have never noticed any sign of them in her singing, but Josephine is going to shorten her trill notes; for the time being she is not going to eliminate them, just shorten them. She has purportedly carried out her threat, although I, for one, have perceived no difference in her performance. The people as a whole listened as always without commenting on the trill notes and did not budge an inch in response to her demand. Incidentally, it is undeniable that Josephine’s thoughts can sometimes be as pleasing as her figure; for instance, after that performance, as if her decision with regard to the trill notes had been too harsh and too sudden a blow to the people, she announced that the next time she would again sing the trill notes in their complete form. But after the next concert she changed her tune once more: there was definitely to be an end to the elongated trills and they would not recur until a favorable decision on her petition was reached. Well, the people let all these announcements, decisions, and counterdecisions go in one ear and out the other, much like a preoccupied adult with the chattering of a child: well disposed at heart but unmoved.
But Josephine does not give up. She recently claimed, for example, that she injured her foot while working, so that it was difficult to stand and sing, and since she can only sing while standing, her songs would now have to be cut short. Although she limps and leans on her group of supporters, no one believes she is really injured. Even allowing for her exceptionally sensitive constitution, we are a working people and Josephine is one of us; if we were to start limping at every little scratch, the entire population would never stop limping. But although she may permit herself to be led around like a cripple, although she may display herself in this pathetic condition more often than usual, the people still listen gratefully and appreciatively to her singing just as before and don’t bother much about the abridgment of the songs.