Alkan 's later correspondence contain many despairing comments . In a letter of about 1861 he wrote to Hiller : " I 'm becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous ... nothing worthwhile , good or useful to do ... no one to devote myself to . My situation make me horridly sad and wretched . Even musical production have lost its attraction for me for I can 't see the point or goal . " This spirit of anomie may have led him to reject requests in the 1860s to play in public , or to allow performances of his orchestral compositions . However , it should not be ignored that he was writing similarly frantic self @-@ analyse in his letters of the early 1830s to Masarnau .