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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Life of Chopin, by Franz Liszt
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+Title: Life of Chopin
+
+Author: Franz Liszt
+
+Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4386]
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+[This file was first posted on January 20, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Life of Chopin, by Franz Liszt
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+
+
+LIFE OF CHOPIN
+
+
+by Franz Liszt (Translated from the French by Martha Walker Cook)
+
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+     INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION
+     DEDICATION OF THE TRANSLATION TO JAN PYCHOWSKI
+     PREFACE
+     CHAPTER I
+     CHAPTER II
+     CHAPTER III
+     CHAPTER IV
+     CHAPTER V
+     CHAPTER VI
+     CHAPTER VII
+     CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION
+
+
+
+The following is an e-text of "Life of Chopin," written by Franz
+Liszt and translated from the french by Martha Walker Cook. The
+original edition was published in 1863; a fourth, revised edition
+(1880) was used in making this e-text. This e-text reproduces the
+fourth edition essentially unabridged, with original spellings
+intact, numerous typographical errors corrected, and words
+italicized in the original text capitalized in this e-text. In
+making this e-text, each page was cut out of the original book
+with an x-acto knife to feed the pages into an Automatic Document
+Feeder scanner for scanning. Hence, the book was disbinded in
+order to save it. Thanks to Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading team for help in proofreading this e-
+text.
+
+
+
+DEDICATION OF THE TRANSLATION TO JAN PYCHOWSKI
+
+
+
+"Without your consent or knowledge, I have ventured to dedicate
+this translation to you!
+
+As the countryman of Chopin, and filled with the same earnest
+patriotism which distinguished him; as an impassioned and perfect
+Pianist, capable, of reproducing his difficult compositions in
+all the subtle tenderness, fire, energy, melancholy, despair,
+caprice, hope, delicacy and startling vigor which they
+imperiously exact; as thorough master of the complicated
+instrument to which he devoted his best powers; as an erudite and
+experienced possessor of that abstruse and difficult science,
+music; as a composer of true, deep, and highly original genius,--
+this dedication is justly made to you!
+
+Even though I may have wounded your characteristically haughty,
+shrinking, and Sclavic susceptibilities in rendering so public a
+tribute to your artistic skill, forgive me! The high moral worth
+and manly rectitude which distinguish you, and which alone render
+even the most sublime genius truly illustrious in the eyes of
+woman, almost force these inadequate and imperfect words from the
+heart of the translator.
+
+M.W.C.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+To a people, always prompt in its recognition of genius, and
+ready to sympathize in the joys and woes of a truly great artist,
+this work will be one of exceeding interest. It is a short,
+glowing, and generous sketch, from the hand of Franz Liszt, (who,
+considered in the double light of composer and performer, has no
+living equal,) of the original and romantic Chopin; the most
+ethereal, subtle, and delicate among our modern tone-poets. It is
+a rare thing for a great artist to write on art, to leave the
+passionate worlds of sounds or colors for the colder realm of
+words; rarer still for him to abdicate, even temporarily, his own
+throne, to stand patiently and hold aloft the blazing torch of
+his own genius, to illume the gloomy grave of another: yet this
+has Liszt done through love for Chopin.
+
+It is a matter of considerable interest to note how the nervous
+and agile fingers, accustomed to sovereign rule over the keys,
+handle the pen; how the musician feels as a man; how he estimates
+art and artists. Liszt is a man of extensive culture, vivid
+imagination, and great knowledge of the world; and, in addition
+to their high artistic value, his lines glow with poetic fervor,
+with impassioned eloquence. His musical criticisms are refined
+and acute, but without repulsive technicalities or scientific
+terms, ever sparkling with the poetic ardor of the generous soul
+through which the discriminating, yet appreciative awards were
+poured. Ah! in these days of degenerate rivalries and bitter
+jealousies, let us welcome a proof of affection so tender as his
+"Life of Chopin"!
+
+It would be impossible for the reader of this book to remain
+ignorant of the exactions of art. While, through its eloquence
+and subtle analysis of character, it appeals to the cultivated
+literary tastes of our people, it opens for them a dazzling
+perspective into that strange world of tones, of whose magical
+realm they know, comparatively speaking, so little. It is
+intelligible to all who think or feel; requiring no knowledge of
+music for its comprehension.
+
+The compositions of Chopin are now the mode, the rage. Every one
+asks for them, every one tries to play them. We have, however,
+but few remarks upon the peculiarities of his style, or the
+proper manner of producing his works. His compositions, generally
+perfect in form, are never abstract conceptions, but had their
+birth in his soul, sprang from the events of his life, and are
+full of individual and national idiosyncrasies, of psychological
+interest. Liszt knew Chopin both as man and artist; Chopin loved
+to hear him interpret his music, and himself taught the great
+Pianist the mysteries of his undulating rhythm and original
+motifs. The broad and noble criticisms contained in this book are
+absolutely essential for the musical culture of the thousands now
+laboriously but vainly struggling to perform his elaborate works,
+and who, having no key to their multiplied complexities of
+expression, frequently fail in rendering them aright.
+
+And the masses in this country, full of vivid perception and
+intelligent curiosity, who, not playing themselves, would yet
+fain follow with the heart compositions which they are told are
+of so much artistic value, will here find a key to guide them
+through the tuneful labyrinth. Some of Chopin's best works are
+analyzed herein. He wrote for the HEART OF HIS PEOPLE; their
+joys, sorrows, and caprices are immortalized by the power of his
+art. He was a strictly national tone-poet, and to understand him
+fully, something must be known of the brave and haughty, but
+unhappy country which he so loved. Liszt felt this, and has been
+exceedingly happy in the short sketch given of Poland. We
+actually know more of its picturesque and characteristic customs
+after a perusal of his graphic pages, than after a long course of
+dry historical details. His remarks on the Polonaise and Mazourka
+are full of the philosophy and essence of history. These dances
+grew directly from the heart of the Polish people; repeating the
+martial valor and haughty love of noble exhibition of their men;
+the tenderness, devotion, and subtle coquetry of their women--
+they were of course favorite forms with Chopin; their national
+character made them dear to the national poet. The remarks of
+Liszt on these dances are given with a knowledge so acute of the
+traits of the nation in which they originated, with such a
+gorgeousness of description and correctness of detail, that they
+rather resemble a highly finished picture, than a colder work of
+words only. They have all the splendor of a brilliant painting.
+He seizes the secrets of the nationality of these forms, traces
+them through the heart of the Polish people, follows them through
+their marvelous transfiguration in the pages of the Polish
+artist, and reads by their light much of the sensitive and
+exclusive character of Chopin, analyzing it with the skill of
+love, while depicting it with romantic eloquence.
+
+To those who can produce the compositions of Chopin in the spirit
+of their author, no words are necessary. They follow with the
+heart the poetic and palpitating emotions so exquisitely wrought
+through the aerial tissue of the tones by this "subtle-souled
+Psychologist," this bold and original explorer in the invisible
+world of sound;--all honor to their genius:
+
+
+     "Oh, happy! and of many millions, they
+     The purest chosen, whom Art's service pure
+     Hallows and claims--whose hearts are made her throne,
+     Whose lips her oracle, ordained secure,
+     To lead a priestly life, and feed the ray
+     Of her eternal shrine, to them alone
+     Her glorious countenance unveiled is shown:
+     Ye, the high brotherhood she links, rejoice
+     In the great rank allotted by her choice!
+     The loftiest rank the spiritual world sublime,
+     Rich with its starry thrones, gives to the sons of Time!"
+
+                                                  Schiller.
+
+
+Short but glowing sketches of Heine, Meyerbeer, Adolphe Nourrit,
+Hiller, Eugene Delacroix, Niemcevicz, Mickiewicz, and Madame
+Sand, occur in the book. The description of the last days of poor
+Chopin's melancholy life, with the untiring devotion of those
+around him, including the beautiful countess, Delphine Potocka;
+his cherished sister, Louise; his devoted friend and pupil, M.
+Gutman, with the great Liszt himself, is full of tragic interest.
+
+No pains have been spared by the translator to make the
+translation acceptable, for the task was truly a labor of love.
+No motives of interest induced the lingering over the careful
+rendering of the charmed pages, but an intense desire that our
+people should know more of musical art; that while acknowledging
+the generosity and eloquence of Liszt, they should learn to
+appreciate and love the more subtle fire, the more creative
+genius of the unfortunate, but honorable and honored artist,
+Chopin.
+
+Perchance Liszt may yet visit us; we may yet hear the matchless
+Pianist call from their graves in the white keys, the delicate
+arabesques, the undulating and varied melodies, of Chopin. We
+should be prepared to appreciate the great Artist in his
+enthusiastic rendering of the master-pieces of the man he loved;
+prepared to greet him when he electrifies us with his wonderful
+Cyclopean harmonies, written for his own Herculean grasp,
+sparkling with his own Promethean fire, which no meaner hand can
+ever hope to master! "Hear Liszt and die," has been said by some
+of his enthusiastic admirers--understand him and live, were the
+wiser advice!
+
+In gratitude then to Chopin for the multiplied sources of high
+and pure pleasure which he has revealed to humanity in his
+creations, that human woe and sorrow become pure beauty when his
+magic spell is on them, the translator calls upon all lovers of
+the beautiful "to contribute a stone to the pyramid now rapidly
+erecting in honor of the great modern composer"--ay, the living
+stone of appreciation, crystalized in the enlightened gratitude
+of the heart.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+          "So works this music upon earth
+          God so admits it, sends it forth.
+          To add another worth to worth--
+
+          A new creation-bloom that rounds
+          The old creation, and expounds
+          His Beautiful in tuneful sounds."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Chopin--Style and Improvements--The Adagio of the Second
+Concerto--Funeral March--Psychological Character of the
+Compositions of Chopin, &c., &c.
+
+
+
+Deeply regretted as he may be by the whole body of artists,
+lamented by all who have ever known him, we must still be
+permitted to doubt if the time has even yet arrived in which he,
+whose loss is so peculiarly deplored by ourselves, can be
+appreciated in accordance with his just value, or occupy that
+high rank which in all probability will be assigned him in the
+future.
+
+If it has been often proved that "no one is a prophet in his own
+country;" is it not equally true that the prophets, the men of
+the future, who feel its life in advance, and prefigure it in
+their works, are never recognized as prophets in their own times?
+It would be presumptuous to assert that it can ever be otherwise.
+In vain may the young generations of artists protest against the
+"Anti-progressives," whose invariable custom it is to assault and
+beat down the living with the dead: time alone can test the real
+value, or reveal the hidden beauties, either of musical
+compositions, or of kindred efforts in the sister arts.
+
+As the manifold forms of art are but different incantations,
+charged with electricity from the soul of the artist, and
+destined to evoke the latent emotions and passions in order to
+render them sensible, intelligible, and, in some degree,
+tangible; so genius may be manifested in the invention of new
+forms, adapted, it may be, to the expression of feelings which
+have not yet surged within the limits of common experience, and
+are indeed first evoked within the magic circle by the creative
+power of artistic intuition. In arts in which sensation is linked
+to emotion, without the intermediate assistance of thought and
+reflection, the mere introduction of unaccustomed forms, of
+unused modes, must present an obstacle to the immediate
+comprehension of any very original composition. The surprise,
+nay, the fatigue, caused by the novelty of the singular
+impressions which it awakens, will make it appear to many as if
+written in a language of which they were ignorant, and which that
+reason will in itself be sufficient to induce them to pronounce a
+barbarous dialect. The trouble of accustoming the ear to it will
+repel many who will, in consequence, refuse to make a study of
+it. Through the more vivid and youthful organizations, less
+enthralled by the chains of habit; through the more ardent
+spirits, won first by curiosity, then filled with passion for the
+new idiom, must it penetrate and win the resisting and opposing
+public, which will finally catch the meaning, the aim, the
+construction, and at last render justice to its qualities, and
+acknowledge whatever beauty it may contain. Musicians who do  not
+restrict themselves within the limits of conventional routine,
+have, consequently, more need than other artists of the aid of
+time. They cannot hope that death will bring that instantaneous
+plus-value to their works which it gives to those of the
+painters. No musician could renew, to the profit of his
+manuscripts, the deception practiced by one of the great Flemish
+painters, who, wishing in his lifetime to benefit by his future
+glory, directed his wife to spread abroad the news of his death,
+in order that the pictures with which he had taken care to cover
+the walls of his studio, might suddenly increase in value!
+
+Whatever may be the present popularity of any part of the
+productions of one, broken, by suffering long before taken by
+death, it is nevertheless to be presumed that posterity will
+award to his works an estimation of a far higher character, of a
+much more earnest nature, than has hitherto been awarded them. A
+high rank must be assigned by the future historians of music to
+one who distinguished himself in art by a genius for melody so
+rare, by such graceful and remarkable enlargements of the
+harmonic tissue; and his triumph will be justly preferred to many
+of far more extended surface, though the works of such victors
+may be played and replayed by the greatest number of instruments,
+and be sung and resung by passing crowds of Prime Donne.
+
+In confining himself exclusively to the Piano, Chopin has, in our
+opinion, given proof of one of the most essential qualities of a
+composer--a just appreciation of the form in which he possessed
+the power to excel; yet this very fact, to which we attach so
+much importance, has been injurious to the extent of his fame. It
+would have been most difficult for any other writer, gifted with
+such high harmonic and melodic powers, to have resisted the
+temptation of the SINGING of the bow, the liquid sweetness of the
+flute, or the deafening swells of the trumpet, which we still
+persist in believing the only fore-runner of the antique goddess
+from whom we woo the sudden favors. What strong conviction, based
+upon reflection, must have been requisite to have induced him to
+restrict himself to a circle apparently so much more barren; what
+warmth of creative genius must have been necessary to have forced
+from its apparent aridity a fresh growth of luxuriant bloom,
+unhoped for in such a soil! What intuitive penetration is
+repealed by this exclusive choice, which, wresting the different
+effects of the various instruments from their habitual domain,
+where the whole foam of sound would have broken at their feet,
+transported them into a sphere, more limited, indeed, but far
+more idealized! What confident perception of the future powers of
+his instrument must have presided over his voluntary renunciation
+of an empiricism, so widely spread, that another would have
+thought it a mistake, a folly, to have wrested such great
+thoughts from their ordinary interpreters! How sincerely should
+we revere him for this devotion to the Beautiful for its own
+sake, which induced him not to yield to the general propensity to
+scatter each light spray of melody over a hundred orchestral
+desks, and enabled him to augment the resources of art, in
+teaching how they may be concentrated in a more limited space,
+elaborated at less expense of means, and condensed in time!
+
+Far from being ambitious of the uproar of an orchestra, Chopin
+was satisfied to see his thought integrally produced upon the
+ivory of the key-board; succeeding in his aim of losing nothing
+in power, without pretending to orchestral effects, or to the
+brush of the scene-painter. Oh! we have not yet studied with
+sufficient earnestness and attention the designs of his delicate
+pencil, habituated as we are, in these days, to consider only
+those composers worthy of a great name, who have written at least
+half-a-dozen Operas, as many Oratorios, and various Symphonies:
+vainly requiring every musician to do every thing, nay, a little
+more than every thing. However widely diffused this idea may be,
+its justice is, to say the least, highly problematical. We are
+far from contesting the glory more difficult of attainment, or
+the real superiority of the Epic poets, who display their
+splendid creations upon so large a plan; but we desire that
+material proportion in music should be estimated by the same
+measure which is applied to dimension in other branches of the
+fine arts; as, for example, in painting, where a canvas of twenty
+inches square, as the Vision of Ezekiel, or Le Cimetiere by
+Ruysdael, is placed among the chefs d'oeuvre, and is more highly
+valued than pictures of a far larger size, even though they might
+be from the hands of a Rubens or a Tintoret. In literature, is
+Beranger less a great poet, because he has condensed his thoughts
+within the narrow limits of his songs? Does not Petrarch owe his
+fame to his Sonnets? and among those who most frequently repeat
+their soothing rhymes, how many know any thing of the existence
+of his long poem on Africa? We cannot doubt that the prejudice
+which would deny the superiority of an artist--though he should
+have produced nothing but such Sonatas as Franz Schubert has
+given us--over one who has portioned out the insipid melodies of
+many Operas, which it were useless to cite, will disappear; and
+that in music, also, we will yet take into account the eloquence
+and ability with which the thoughts and feelings are expressed,
+whatever may be the size of the composition in which they are
+developed, or the means employed to interpret them.
+
+In making an analysis of the works of Chopin, we meet with
+beauties of a high order, expressions entirely new, and a
+harmonic tissue as original as erudite. In his compositions,
+boldness is always justified; richness, even exuberance, never
+interferes with clearness; singularity never degenerates into
+uncouth fantasticalness; the sculpturing is never disorderly; the
+luxury of ornament never overloads the chaste eloquence of the
+principal lines. His best works abound in combinations which may
+be said to form an epoch in the handling of musical style.
+Daring, brilliant and attractive, they disguise their profundity
+under so much grace, their science under so many charms, that it
+is with difficulty we free ourselves sufficiently from their
+magical enthrallment, to judge coldly of their theoretical value.
+Their worth has, however, already been felt; but it will be more
+highly estimated when the time arrives for a critical examination
+of the services rendered by them to art during that period of its
+course traversed by Chopin.
+
+It is to him we owe the extension of chords, struck together in
+arpeggio, or en batterie; the chromatic sinuosities of which his
+pages offer such striking examples; the little groups of
+superadded notes, falling like light drops of pearly dew upon the
+melodic figure. This species of adornment had hitherto been
+modeled only upon the Fioritures of the great Old School of
+Italian song; the embellishments for the voice had been servilely
+copied by the Piano, although become stereotyped and monotonous:
+he imparted to them the charm of novelty, surprise and variety,
+unsuited for the vocalist, but in perfect keeping with the
+character of the instrument. He invented the admirable harmonic
+progressions which have given a serious character to pages,
+which, in consequence of the lightness of their subject, made no
+pretension to any importance. But of what consequence is the
+subject? Is it not the idea which is developed through it, the
+emotion with which it vibrates, which expands, elevates and
+ennobles it? What tender melancholy, what subtlety, what sagacity
+in the master-pieces of La Fontaine, although the subjects are so
+familiar, the titles so modest? Equally unassuming are the titles
+and subjects of the Studies and Preludes; yet the compositions of
+Chopin, so modestly named, are not the less types of perfection
+in a mode created by himself, and stamped, like all his other
+works, with the high impress of his poetic genius. Written in the
+commencement of his career, they are characterized by a youthful
+vigor not to be found in some of his subsequent works, even when
+more elaborate, finished, and richer in combinations; a vigor,
+which is entirely lost in his latest productions, marked by an
+over-excited sensibility, a morbid irritability, and giving
+painful intimations of his own state of suffering and exhaustion.
+
+If it were our intention to discuss the development of Piano
+music in the language of the Schools, we would dissect his
+magnificent pages, which afford so rich a field for scientific
+observation. We would, in the first place, analyze his Nocturnes,
+Ballades, Impromptus, Scherzos, which are full of refinements of
+harmony never heard before; bold, and of startling originality.
+We would also examine his Polonaises, Mazourkas, Waltzes and
+Boleros. But this is not the time or place for such a study,
+which would be interesting only to the adepts in Counterpoint and
+Thoroughbass.
+
+It is the feeling which overflows in all his works, which has
+rendered them known and popular; feeling of a character eminently
+romantic, subjective individual, peculiar to their author, yet
+awakening immediate sympathy; appealing not alone to the heart of
+that country indebted to him for yet one glory more, but to all
+who can be touched by the misfortunes of exile, or moved by the
+tenderness of love. Not content with success in the field in
+which he was free to design, with such perfect grace, the
+contours chosen by himself, Chopin also wished to fetter his
+ideal thoughts with classic chains. His Concertos and Sonatas are
+beautiful indeed, but we may discern in them more effort than
+inspiration. His creative genius was imperious, fantastic and
+impulsive. His beauties were only manifested fully in entire
+freedom. We believe he offered violence to the character of his
+genius whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to
+classifications, to regulations not his own, and which he could
+not force into harmony with the exactions of his own mind. He was
+one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully
+displayed when they have cut themselves adrift from all bondage,
+and float on at their own wild will, swayed only by the ever
+undulating impulses of their own mobile natures.
+
+He was, perhaps, induced to desire this double success through
+the example of his friend, Mickiewicz, who, having been the first
+to gift his country with romantic poetry, forming a school in
+Sclavic literature by the publication of his Dziady, and his
+romantic Ballads, as early as 1818, proved afterwards, by the
+publication at his Grazyna and Wallenrod, that he could triumph
+over the difficulties that classic restrictions oppose to
+inspiration, and that, when holding the classic lyre of the
+ancient poets, he was still master. In making analogous attempts,
+we do not think Chopin has been equally successful. He could not
+retain, within the square of an angular and rigid mould, that
+floating and indeterminate contour which so fascinates us in his
+graceful conceptions. He could not introduce in its unyielding
+lines that shadowy and sketchy indecision, which, disguising the
+skeleton, the whole frame-work of form, drapes it in the mist of
+floating vapors, such as surround the white-bosomed maids of
+Ossian, when they permit mortals to catch some vague, yet lovely
+outline, from their home in the changing, drifting, blinding
+clouds.
+
+Some of these efforts, however, are resplendent with a rare
+dignity of style; and passages of exceeding interest, of
+surprising grandeur, may be found among them. As an example of
+this, we cite the Adagio of the Second Concerto, for which he
+evinced a decided preference, and which he liked to repeat
+frequently. The accessory designs are in his best manner, while
+the principal phrase is of an admirable breadth. It alternates
+with a Recitative, which assumes a minor key, and which seems to
+be its Antistrophe. The whole of this piece is of a perfection
+almost ideal; its expression, now radiant with light, now full of
+tender pathos. It seems as if one had chosen a happy vale of
+Tempe, a magnificent landscape flooded with summer glow and
+lustre, as a background for the rehearsal of some dire scene of
+mortal anguish. A bitter and irreparable regret seizes the
+wildly-throbbing human heart, even in the midst of the
+incomparable splendor of external nature. This contrast is
+sustained by a fusion of tones, a softening of gloomy hues, which
+prevent the intrusion of aught rude or brusque that might awaken
+a dissonance in the touching impression produced, which, while
+saddening joy, soothes and softens the bitterness of sorrow.
+
+It would be impossible to pass in silence the Funeral March
+inserted in the first Sonata, which was arranged for the
+orchestra, and performed, for the first time, at his own
+obsequies. What other accents could have been found capable of
+expressing, with the same heart-breaking effect, the emotions,
+the tears, which should accompany to the last long sleep, one who
+had taught in a manner so sublime, how great losses should be
+mourned? We once heard it remarked by a native of his own
+country: "these pages could only have been written by a Pole."
+All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own
+ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of
+majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing
+bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it
+accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the
+Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal to
+superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which
+numbers every cradle and watches every tomb; the exalted
+resignation which has wreathed so much grief with halos so
+luminous; the noble endurance of so many disasters with the
+inspired heroism of Christian martyrs who know not to despair;--
+resound in this melancholy chant, whose voice of supplication
+breaks the heart. All of most pure, of most holy, of most
+believing, of most hopeful in the hearts of children, women, and
+priests, resounds, quivers and trembles there with irresistible
+vibrations. We feel it is not the death of a single warrior we
+mourn, while other heroes live to avenge him, but that a whole
+generation of warriors has forever fallen, leaving the death song
+to be chanted but by wailing women, weeping children and helpless
+priests. Yet this Melopee so funereal, so full of desolating woe,
+is of such penetrating sweetness, that we can scarcely deem it of
+this earth. These sounds, in which the wild passion of human
+anguish seems chilled by awe and softened by distance, impose a
+profound meditation, as if, chanted by angels, they floated
+already in the heavens: the cry of a nation's anguish mounting to
+the very throne of God! The appeal of human grief from the lyre
+of seraphs! Neither cries, nor hoarse groans, nor impious
+blasphemies, nor furious imprecations, trouble for a moment the
+sublime sorrow of the plaint: it breathes upon the ear like the
+rhythmed sighs of angels. The antique face of grief is entirely
+excluded. Nothing recalls the fury of Cassandra, the prostration
+of Priam, the frenzy of Hecuba, the despair of the Trojan
+captives. A sublime faith destroying in the survivors of this
+Christian Ilion the bitterness of anguish and the cowardice of
+despair, their sorrow is no longer marked by earthly weakness.
+Raising itself from the soil wet with blood and tears, it springs
+forward to implore God; and, having nothing more to hope from
+earth, it supplicates the Supreme Judge with prayers so poignant,
+that our hearts, in listening, break under the weight of an
+august compassion! It would be a mistake to suppose that all the
+compositions of Chopin are deprived of the feelings which he has
+deemed best to suppress in this great work. Not so. Perhaps human
+nature is not capable of maintaining always this mood of
+energetic abnegation, of courageous submission. We meet with
+breathings of stifled rage, of suppressed anger, in many passages
+of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his
+Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which
+are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant
+hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less
+attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of
+more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had
+something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous,
+and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not
+suffer the secret convulsions which agitated him to be even
+suspected.
+
+His character was indeed not easily understood. A thousand subtle
+shades, mingling, crossing, contradicting and disguising each
+other, rendered it almost undecipherable at a first view. As is
+usually the case with the Sclaves, it was difficult to read the
+recesses of his mind. With them, loyalty and candor, familiarity
+and the most captivating ease of manner, by no means imply
+confidence, or impulsive frankness. Like the twisted folds of a
+serpent rolled upon itself, their feelings are half hidden, half
+revealed. It requires a most attentive examination to follow the
+coiled linking of the glittering rings. It would be naive to
+interpret literally their courtesy full of compliment, their
+assumed humility. The forms of this politeness, this modesty,
+have their solution in their manners, in which their ancient
+connection with the East may be strangely traced. Without having
+in the least degree acquired the taciturnity of the Mussulman,
+they have yet learned from it a distrustful reserve upon all
+subjects which touch upon the more delicate and personal chords
+of the heart. When they speak of themselves, we may almost always
+be certain that they keep some concealment in reserve, which
+assures them the advantage in intellect, or feeling. They suffer
+their interrogator to remain in ignorance of some circumstance,
+some mobile secret, through the unveiling of which they would be
+more admired, or less esteemed, and which they well know how to
+hide under the subtle smile of an almost imperceptible mockery.
+Delighting in the pleasure of mystification, from the most
+spiritual or comic to the most bitter and melancholy, they may
+perhaps find in this deceptive raillery an external formula of
+disdain for the veiled expression of the superiority which they
+internally claim, but which claim they veil with the caution and
+astuteness natural to the oppressed.
+
+The frail and sickly organization of Chopin, not permitting him
+the energetic expression of his passions, he gave to his friends
+only the gentle and affectionate phase of his nature. In the
+busy, eager life of large cities, where no one has time to study
+the destiny of another, where every one is judged by his external
+activity, very few think it worth while to attempt to penetrate
+the enigma of individual character. Those who enjoyed familiar
+intercourse with Chopin, could not be blind to the impatience and
+ennui he experienced in being, upon the calm character of his
+manners, so promptly believed. And may not the artist revenge the
+man? As his health was too frail to permit him to give vent to
+his impatience through the vehemence of his execution, he sought
+to compensate himself by pouring this bitterness over those pages
+which he loved to hear performed with a vigor [Footnote: It was
+his delight to hear them executed by the great Liszt himself.--
+Translator.] which he could not himself always command: pages
+which are indeed full of the impassioned feelings of a man
+suffering deeply from wounds which he does not choose to avow.
+Thus around a gaily flagged, yet sinking ship, float the fallen
+spars and scattered fragments, torn by warring winds and surging
+waves from its shattered sides.
+
+Such emotions have been of so much the more importance in the
+life of Chopin, because they have deeply influenced the character
+of his compositions. Among the pages published under such
+influences, may be traced much analogous to the wire-drawn
+subtleties of Jean Paul, who found it necessary, in order to move
+hearts macerated by passion, blazes through suffering, to make
+use of the surprises caused by natural and physical phenomena; to
+evoke the sensations of luxurious terrors arising from
+occurrences not to be foreseen in the natural order of things; to
+awaken the morbid excitements of a dreamy brain. Step by step the
+tortured mind of Chopin arrived at a state of sickly
+irritability; his emotions increased to a feverish tremor,
+producing that involution, that tortuosity of thought, which mark
+his latest works. Almost suffocating under the oppression of
+repressed feelings, using art only to repeat and rehearse for
+himself his own internal tragedy, after having wearied emotion,
+he began to subtilize it. His melodies are actually tormented; a
+nervous and restless sensibility leads to an obstinate
+persistence in the handling and rehandling and a reiterated
+pursuit of the tortured motifs, which impress us as painfully as
+the sight of those physical or mental agonies which we know can
+find relief only in death. Chopin was a victim to a disease
+without hope, which growing more envenomed from year to year,
+took him, while yet young, from those who loved him, and laid him
+in his still grave. As in the fair form of some beautiful victim,
+the marks of the grasping claws of the fierce bird of prey which
+has destroyed it, may be found; so, in the productions of which
+we have just spoken, the traces of the bitter sufferings which
+devoured his heart, are painfully visible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+National Character of the Polonaise--Oginski--Meyseder--Weber--
+Chopin--His Polonaise in F Sharp, Minor--Polonaise--Fantaisie.
+
+
+
+It must not be supposed that the tortured aberrations of feeling
+to which we have just alluded, ever injure the harmonic tissue in
+the works of Chopin on the contrary, they only render it a more
+curious subject for analysis. Such eccentricities rarely occur in
+his more generally known and admired compositions. His
+Polonaises, which are less studied than they merit, on account of
+the difficulties presented by their perfect execution, are to be
+classed among his highest inspirations. They never remind us of
+the mincing and affected "Polonaises a la Pompadour," which our
+orchestras have introduced into ball-rooms, our virtuosi in
+concerts, or of those to be found in our "Parlor Repertories,"
+filled, as they invariably are, with hackneyed collections of
+music, marked by insipidity and mannerism.
+
+His Polonaises, characterized by an energetic rhythm, galvanize
+and electrify the torpor of indifference. The most noble
+traditional feelings of ancient Poland are embodied in them. The
+firm resolve and calm gravity of its men of other days, breathe
+through these compositions. Generally of a martial character,
+courage and daring are rendered with that simplicity of
+expression, said to be a distinctive trait of this warlike
+people. They bring vividly before the imagination, the ancient
+Poles, as we find them described in their chronicles; gifted with
+powerful organizations, subtle intellects, indomitable courage
+and earnest piety, mingled with high-born courtesy and a
+gallantry which never deserted them, whether on the eve of
+battle, during its exciting course, in the triumph of victory, or
+amidst the gloom of defeat. So inherent was this gallantry and
+chivalric courtesy in their nature, that in spite of the
+restraint which their customs (resembling those of their
+neighbours and enemies, the infidels of Stamboul) induced them to
+exercise upon their women, confining them in the limits of
+domestic life and always holding them under legal wardship, they
+still manifest themselves in their annals, in which they have
+glorified and immortalized queens who were saints; vassals who
+became queens, beautiful subjects for whose sake some periled,
+while others lost, crowns: a terrible Sforza; an intriguing
+d'Arquien; and a coquettish Gonzaga.
+
+The Poles of olden times united a manly firmness with this
+peculiar chivalric devotion to the objects of their love. A
+characteristic example of this may be seen in the letters of Jean
+Sobieski to his wife. They were dictated in face of the standards
+of the Crescent, "numerous as the ears in a grain-field," tender
+and devoted as is their character. Such traits caught a singular
+and imposing hue from the grave deportment of these men, so
+dignified that they might almost be accused of pomposity. It was
+next to impossible that they should not contract a taste for this
+stateliness, when we consider that they had almost always before
+them the most exquisite type of gravity of manner in the
+followers of Islam, whose qualities they appreciated and
+appropriated, even while engaged in repelling their invasions.
+Like the infidel, they knew how to preface their acts by an
+intelligent deliberation, so that the device of Prince Boleslas
+of Pomerania, was always present to them: "First weigh it; then
+dare:" Erst wieg's: dann wag's! Such deliberation imparted a kind
+of stately pride to their movements, while it left them in
+possession of an ease and freedom of spirit accessible to the
+lightest cares of tenderness, to the most trivial interests of
+the passing hour, to the most transient feelings of the heart. As
+it made part of their code of honor to make those who interfered
+with them, in their more tender interests, pay dearly for it; so
+they knew how to beautify life, and, better still, they knew how
+to love those who embellished it; to revere those who rendered it
+precious to them.
+
+Their chivalric heroism was sanctioned by their grave and haughty
+dignity; an intelligent and premeditated conviction added the
+force of reason to the energy of impulsive virtue; thus they have
+succeeded in winning the admiration of all ages, of all minds,
+even that of their most determined adversaries. They were
+characterized by qualities rarely found together, the description
+of which would appear almost paradoxical: reckless wisdom, daring
+prudence, and fanatic fatalism. The most marked and celebrated
+historic manifestation of these properties is to be found in the
+expedition of Sobieski when he saved Vienna, and gave a mortal
+blow to the Ottoman Empire, which was at last conquered in the
+long struggle, sustained on both sides with so much prowess and
+glory, with so much mutual deference between opponents as
+magnanimous in their truces as irreconcilable in their combats.
+
+While listening to some of the POLONAISES of Chopin, we can
+almost catch the firm, nay, the more than firm, the heavy,
+resolute tread of men bravely facing all the bitter injustice
+which the most cruel and relentless destiny can offer, with the
+manly pride of unblenching courage. The progress of the music
+suggests to our imagination such magnificent groups as were
+designed by Paul Veronese, robed in the rich costume of days long
+past: we see passing at intervals before us, brocades of gold,
+velvets, damasked satins, silvery soft and flexile sables,
+hanging sleeves gracefully thrown back upon the shoulders,
+embossed sabres, boots yellow as gold or red with trampled blood,
+sashes with long and undulating fringes, close chemisettes,
+rustling trains, stomachers embroidered with pearls, head dresses
+glittering with rubies or leafy with emeralds, light slippers
+rich with amber, gloves perfumed with the luxurious attar from
+the harems. Prom the faded background of times long passed these
+vivid groups start forth; gorgeous carpets from Persia lie at
+their feet, filigreed furniture from Constantinople stands
+around; all is marked by the sumptuous prodigality of the
+Magnates who drew, in ruby goblets embossed with medallions, wine
+from the fountains of Tokay, and shoed their fleet Arabian steeds
+with silver, who surmounted all their escutcheons with the same
+crown which the fate of an election might render a royal one, and
+which, causing them to despise all other titles, was alone worn
+as INSIGNE of their glorious equality.
+
+Those who have seen the Polonaise danced even as late as the
+beginning of the present century, declare that its style has
+changed so much, that it is now almost impossible to divine its
+primitive character. As very few national dances have succeeded
+in preserving their racy originality, we may imagine, when we
+take into consideration the changes which have occurred, to what
+a degree this has degenerated. The Polonaise is without rapid
+movements, without any true steps in the artistic sense of the
+word, intended rather for display than for the exhibition of
+seductive grace; so we may readily conceive it must lose all its
+haughty importance, its pompous self-sufficiency, when the
+dancers are deprived of the accessories necessary to enable them
+to animate its simple form by dignified, yet vivid gestures, by
+appropriate and expressive pantomime, and when the costume
+peculiarly fitted for it is no longer worn. It has indeed become
+decidedly monotonous, a mere circulating promenade, exciting but
+little interest. Unless we could see it danced by some of the old
+regime who still wear the ancient costume, or listen to their
+animated descriptions of it, we can form no conception of the
+numerous incidents, the scenic pantomime, which once rendered it
+so effective. By a rare exception this dance was designed to
+exhibit the men, to display manly beauty, to set off noble and
+dignified deportment, martial yet courtly bearing. "Martial yet
+courtly:" do not these two epithets almost define the Polish
+character? In the original the very name of the dance is
+masculine; it is only in consequence of a misconception that it
+has been translated in other tongues into the feminine gender.
+
+Those who have never seen the KONTUSZ worn, (it is a kind of
+Occidental kaftan, as it is the robe of the Orientals, modified
+to suit the customs of an active life, unfettered by the stagnant
+resignation taught by fatalism,) a sort of FEREDGI, often trimmed
+with fur, forcing the wearer to make frequent movements
+susceptible of grace and coquetry, by which the flowing sleeves
+are thrown backward, can scarcely imagine the bearing, the slow
+bending, the quick rising, the finesse of the delicate pantomime
+displayed by the Ancients, as they defiled in a Polonaise, as
+though in a military parade, not suffering their fingers to
+remain idle, but sometimes occupying them in playing with the
+long moustache, sometimes with the handle of the sword. Both
+moustache and sword were essential parts of the costume, and were
+indeed objects of vanity with all ages. Diamonds and sapphires
+frequently sparkled upon the arms, worn suspended from belts of
+cashmere, or from sashes of silk embroidered with gold,
+displaying to advantage forms always slightly corpulent; the
+moustache often veiled, without quite hiding, some scar, far more
+effective than the most brilliant array of jewels. The dress of
+the men rivaled that of the women in the luxury of the material
+worn, in the value of the precious stones, and in the variety of
+vivid colors. This love of adornment is also found among the
+Hungarians, [Footnote: The Hungarian costume worn by Prince
+Nicholas Esterhazy at the coronation of George the Fourth, is
+still remembered in England. It was valued at several millions of
+florins.] as may be seen in their buttons made of jewels, the
+rings forming a necessary part of their dress, the wrought clasps
+for the neck, the aigrettes and plumes adorning the cap made of
+velvet of some brilliant hue. To know how to take off, to put on,
+to manoeuvre the cap with all possible grace, constituted almost
+an art. During the progress of a Polonaise, this became an object
+of especial remark, because the cavalier of the leading pair, as
+commandant of the file, gave the mute word of command, which was
+immediately obeyed and imitated by the rest of the train.
+
+The master of the house in which the ball was given, always
+opened it himself by leading off in this dance. His partner was
+selected neither for her beauty, nor youth; the most highly
+honored lady present was always chosen. This phalanx, by whose
+evolutions every fete was commenced, was not formed only of the
+young: it was composed of the most distinguished, as well as of
+the most beautiful. A grand review, a dazzling exhibition of all
+the distinction present, was offered as the highest pleasure of
+the festival. After the host, came next in order the guests of
+the greatest consideration, who, choosing their partners, some
+from friendship, some from policy or from desire of advancement,
+some from love,--followed closely his steps. His task was a far
+more complicated one than it is at present. He was expected to
+conduct the files under his guidance through a thousand
+capricious meanderings, through long suites of apartments lined
+by guests, who were to take a later part in this brilliant
+cortege. They liked to be conducted through distant galleries,
+through the parterres of illuminated gardens, through the groves
+of shrubbery, where distant echoes of the music alone reached the
+ear, which, as if in revenge, greeted them with redoubled sound
+and blowing of trumpets upon their return to the principal
+saloon. As the spectators, ranged like rows of hedges along the
+route, were continually changing, and never ceased for a moment
+to observe all their movements, the dancers never forgot that
+dignity of bearing and address which won for them the admiration
+of women, and excited the jealousy of men. Vain and joyous, the
+host would have deemed himself wanting in courtesy to his guests,
+had he not evinced to them, which he did sometimes with a piquant
+naivete, the pride he felt in seeing himself surrounded by
+persons so illustrious, and partisans so noble, all striving
+through the splendor of the attire chosen to visit him, to show
+their high sense of the honor in which they held him.
+
+Guided by him in their first circuit, they were led through long
+windings, where unexpected turns, views, and openings had been
+arranged beforehand to cause surprise; where architectural
+deceptions, decorations and shifting scenes had been studiously
+adapted to increase the pleasure of the festival. If any monument
+or inscription, fitted for the occasion, lay upon the long line
+of route, from which some complimentary homage might be drawn to
+the "most valiant or the most beautiful," the honors were
+gracefully done by the host. The more unexpected the surprises
+arranged for these excursions, the more imagination evinced in
+their invention, the louder were the applauses from the younger
+part of the society, the more ardent the exclamations of delight;
+and silvery sounds of merry laughter greeted pleasantly the ears
+of the conductor-in-chief, who, having thus succeeded in
+achieving his reputation, became a privileged Corypheus, a leader
+par excellence. If he had already attained a certain age, he was
+greeted on his return from such circuits by frequent deputations
+of young ladies, who came, in the name of all present, to thank
+and congratulate him. Through their vivid descriptions, these
+pretty wanderers excited the curiosity of the guests, and
+increased the eagerness for the formation of the succeeding
+Polonaises among those who, though they did not make part of the
+procession, still watched its passage in motionless attention, as
+if gazing upon the flashing line of light of some brilliant
+meteor.
+
+In this land of aristocratic democracy, the numerous dependents
+of the great seigniorial houses, (too poor, indeed, to take part
+in the fete, yet only excluded from it by their own volition,
+all, however noble, some even more noble than their lords,) being
+all present, it was considered highly desirable to dazzle them;
+and this flowing chain of rainbow-hued and gorgeous light, like
+an immense serpent with its glittering rings, sometimes wreathed
+its linked folds, sometimes uncoiled its entire length, to
+display its brilliancy through the whole line of its undulating
+animated surface, in the most vivid scintillations; accompanying
+the shifting hues with the silvery sounds of chains of gold,
+ringing like muffled bells; with the rustling of the heavy sweep
+of gorgeous damasks and with the dragging of jewelled swords upon
+the floor. The murmuring sound of many voices announced the
+approach of this animated, varied, and glittering life-stream.
+
+But the genius of hospitality, never deficient in high-born
+courtesy, and which, even while preserving the touching
+simplicity of primitive manners, inspired in Poland all the
+refinements of the most advanced state of civilization,--how
+could it be exiled from the details of a dance so eminently
+Polish? After the host had, by inaugurating the fete, rendered
+due homage to all who were present, any one of his guests had the
+right to claim his place with the lady whom he had honored by his
+choice. The new claimant, clapping his hands, to arrest for a
+moment the ever moving cortege, bowed before the partner of the
+host, begging her graciously to accept the change; while the
+host, from whom she had been taken, made the same appeal to the
+lady next in course. This example was followed by the whole
+train. Constantly changing partners, whenever a new cavalier
+claimed the honor of leading the one first chosen by the host,
+the ladies remained in the same succession during the whole
+course; while, on the contrary, as the gentlemen continually
+replaced each other, he who had commenced the dance, would, in
+its progress, become the last, if not indeed entirely excluded
+before its close.
+
+Each cavalier who placed himself in turn at the head of the
+column, tried to surpass his predecessors in the novelty of the
+combinations of his opening, in the complications of the windings
+through which he led the expectant cortege; and this course, even
+when restricted to a single saloon, might be made remarkable by
+the designing of graceful arabesques, or the involved tracing of
+enigmatical ciphers. He made good his claim to the place he had
+solicited, and displayed his skill, by inventing close,
+complicated and inextricable figures; by describing them with so
+much certainty and accuracy, that the living ribbon, turned and
+twisted as it might be, was never broken in the loosing of its
+wreathed knots; and by so leading, that no confusion or graceless
+jostling should result from the complicated torsion. The
+succeeding couples, who had only to follow the figures already
+given, and thus continue the impulsion, were not permitted to
+drag themselves lazily and listlessly along the parquet. The step
+was rhythmic, cadenced, and undulating; the whole form swayed by
+graceful wavings and harmonious balancings. They were careful
+never to advance with too much haste, nor to replace each other
+as if driven on by some urgent necessity. On they glided, like
+swans descending a tranquil stream, their flexile forms swayed by
+the ebb and swell of unseen and gentle waves. Sometimes, the
+gentleman offered the right, sometimes, the left hand to his
+partner; touching only the points of her fingers, or clasping the
+slight hand within his own, he passed now to her right, now to
+her left, without yielding the snowy treasure. These complicated
+movements, being instantaneously imitated by every pair, ran,
+like an electric shiver, through the whole length of this
+gigantic serpent. Although apparently occupied and absorbed by
+these multiplied manoeuvres, the cavalier yet found time to bend
+to his lady and whisper sweet flatteries in her ear, if she were
+young; if young no longer, to repose confidence, to urge
+requests, or to repeat to her the news of the hour. Then,
+haughtily raising himself, he would make the metal of his arms
+ring, caress his thick moustache, giving to all his features an
+expression so vivid, that the lady was forced to respond by the
+animation of her own countenance.
+
+Thus, it was no hackneyed and senseless promenade which they
+executed; it was, rather, a parade in which the whole splendor of
+the society was exhibited, gratified with its own admiration,
+conscious of its own elegance, brilliancy, nobility and courtesy.
+It was a constant display of its lustre, its glory, its renown.
+Men grown gray in camps, or in the strife of courtly eloquence;
+generals more often seen in the cuirass than in the robes of
+peace; prelates and persons high in the Church; dignitaries of
+State aged senators; warlike palatines; ambitious castellans;--
+were the partners who were expected, welcomed, disputed and
+sought for, by the youngest, gayest, and most brilliant women
+present. Honor and glory rendered ages equal, and caused years to
+be forgotten in this dance; nay, more, they gave an advantage
+even over love. It was while listening to the animated
+descriptions of the almost forgotten evolutions and dignified
+capabilities of this truly national dance, from the lips of those
+who would never abandon the ancient Zupan and Kontusz, and who
+still wore their hair closely cut round their temples, as it had
+been worn by their ancestors, that we first fully understood in
+what a high degree this haughty nation possessed the innate
+instinct of its own exhibition, and how entirely it had
+succeeded, through its natural grace and genius, in poetizing its
+love of ostentation by draping it in the charms of noble
+emotions, and wrapping round it the glittering robes of martial
+glory.
+
+When we visited the country of Chopin, whose memory always
+accompanied us like a faithful guide who constantly keeps our
+interest excited, we were fortunate enough to meet with some of
+the peculiar characters, daily growing more rare, because
+European civilization, even where it does not modify the basis of
+character, effaces asperities, and moulds exterior forms. We
+there encountered some of those men gifted with superior
+intellect, cultivated and strongly developed by a life of
+incessant action, yet whose horizon does not extend beyond the
+limits of their own country, their own society, their own
+traditions. During our intercourse, facilitated by an
+interpreter, with these men of past days, we were able to study
+them and to understand the secret of their greatness. It was
+really curious to observe the inimitable originality caused by
+the utter exclusiveness of the view taken by them. This limited
+cultivation, while it greatly diminishes the value of their ideas
+upon many subjects, at the same time gifts the mind with a
+peculiar force, almost resembling the keen scent and the acute
+perceptions of the savage, for all the things near and dear to
+it. Only from a mind of this peculiar training, marked by a
+concentrative energy that nothing can distract from its course,
+every thing beyond the circle of its own nationality remaining
+alien to it, can we hope to obtain an exact picture of the past;
+for it alone, like a faithful mirror, reflects it in its primal
+coloring, preserves its proper lights and shades, and gives it
+with its varied and picturesque accompaniments. From such minds
+alone can we obtain, with the ritual of customs which are rapidly
+becoming extinct, the spirit from which they emanated. Chopin was
+born too late, and left the domestic hearth too early, to be
+himself in possession of this spirit; but he had known many
+examples of it, and, through the memories which surrounded his
+childhood, even more fully than through the literature and
+history of his country, he found by induction the secrets of its
+ancient prestige, which he evoked from the dim and dark land of
+forgetfulness, and, through the magic of his poetic art, endowed
+with immortal youth. Poets are better comprehended and
+appreciated by those who have made themselves familiar with the
+countries which inspired their songs. Pindar is more fully
+understood by those who have seen the Parthenon bathed in the
+radiance of its limpid atmosphere; Ossian, by those familiar with
+the mountains of Scotland, with their heavy veils and long
+wreaths of mist. The feelings which inspired the creations of
+Chopin can only be fully appreciated by those who have visited
+his country. They must have seen the giant shadows of past
+centuries gradually increasing, and veiling the ground as the
+gloomy night of despair rolled on; they must have felt the
+electric and mystic influence of that strange "phantom of glory"
+forever haunting martyred Poland. Even in the gayest hours of
+festival, it appalls and saddens all hearts. Whenever a tale of
+past renown, a commemoration of slaughtered heroes is given, an
+allusion to national prowess is made, its resurrection from the
+grave is instantaneous; it takes its place in the banquet-hall,
+spreading an electric terror mingled with intense admiration; a
+shudder, wild and mystic as that which seizes upon the peasants
+of Ukraine, when the "Beautiful Virgin," white as Death, with her
+girdle of crimson, is suddenly seen gliding through their
+tranquil village, while her shadowy hand marks with blood the
+door of each cottage doomed to destruction.
+
+During many centuries, the civilization of Poland was entirely
+peculiar and aboriginal; it did not resemble that of any other
+country; and, indeed, it seems destined to remain forever unique
+in its kind. As different from the German feudalism which
+neighboured it upon the West, as from the conquering spirit of
+the Turks which disquieted it on the East, it resembled Europe in
+its chivalric Christianity, in its eagerness to attack the
+infidel, even while receiving instruction in sagacious policy, in
+military tactics, and sententious reasoning, from the masters of
+Byzantium. By the assumption, at the same time, of the heroic
+qualities of Mussulman fanaticism and the sublime virtues of
+Christian sanctity and humility, [Footnote: It is well known with
+how many glorious names Poland has enriched the martyrology of
+the Church. In memorial of the countless martyrs it had offered,
+the Roman Church granted to the order of Trinitarians, or
+Redemptorist Brothers, whose duty it was to redeem from slavery
+the Christians who had fallen into the hands of the Infidels, the
+distinction, only granted to this nation, of wearing a crimson
+belt. These victims to benevolence were generally from the
+establishments near the frontiers, such as those of Kamieniec-
+Podolski.] it mingled the most heterogeneous elements, and thus
+planted in its very bosom the seeds of ruin and decay.
+
+The general culture of Latin letters, the knowledge of and love
+for Italian and French literature gave a lustre and classical
+polish to the startling contrasts we hare attempted to describe.
+Such a civilization must necessarily impress all its
+manifestations with its own seal. As was natural for a nation
+always engaged in war, forced to reserve its deeds of prowess and
+valor for its enemies upon the field of battle, it was not famed
+for the romances of knight-errantry, for tournaments or jousts;
+it replaced the excitement and splendor of the mimic war by
+characteristic fetes, in which the gorgeousness of personal
+display formed the principal feature.
+
+There is certainly nothing new in the assertion, that national
+character is, in some degree, revealed by national dances. We
+believe, however, there are none in which the creative impulses
+can be so readily deciphered, or the ensemble traced with so much
+simplicity, as in the Polonaise. In consequence of the varied
+episodes which each individual was expected to insert in the
+general frame, the national intuitions were revealed with the
+greatest diversity. When these distinctive marks disappeared,
+when the original flame no longer burned, when no one invented
+scenes for the intermediary pauses, when to accomplish
+mechanically the obligatory circuit of a saloon, was all that was
+requisite, nothing but the skeleton of departed glory remained.
+
+We would certainly have hesitated to speak of the Polonaise,
+after the exquisite verses which Mickiewicz has consecrated to
+it, and the admirable description which he has given of it in the
+last Canto of the "Pan Tadeusz," but that this description is to
+be found only in a work not yet translated, and, consequently,
+only known to the compatriots of the Poet. [Footnote: It has been
+translated into German.--T.] It would have been presumptuous,
+even under another form, to have ventured upon a subject already
+sketched and colored by such a hand, in his romantic Epic, in
+which beauties of the highest order are set in such a scene as
+Ruysdael loved to paint; where a ray of sunshine, thrown through
+heavy storm-clouds, falls upon one of those strange trees never
+wanting in his pictures, a birch shattered by lightning, while
+its snowy bark is deeply stained, as if dyed in the blood flowing
+from its fresh and gaping wounds. The scenes of "Pan Tadeusz" are
+laid at the beginning of the present century, when many still
+lived who retained the profound feeling and grave deportment of
+the ancient Poles, mingled with those who were even then under
+the sway of the graceful or giddying passions of modern origin.
+These striking and contrasting types existing together at that
+period, are now rapidly disappearing before that universal
+conventionalism which is at present seizing and moulding the
+higher classes in all cities and in all countries. Without doubt,
+Chopin frequently drew fresh inspiration from this noble poem,
+whose scenes so forcibly depict the emotions he best loved to
+reproduce.
+
+The primitive music of the Polonaise, of which we have no example
+of greater age than a century, possesses but little value for
+art. Those Polonaises which do not bear the names of their
+authors, but are frequently marked with the name of some hero,
+thus indicating their date, are generally grave and sweet. The
+Polonaise styled "de Kosciuszko," is the most universally known,
+and is so closely linked with the memories of his epoch, that we
+have known ladies who could not hear it without breaking into
+sobs. The Princess F. L., who had been loved by Kosciuszko, in
+her last days, when age had enfeebled all her faculties, was only
+sensible to the chords of this piece, which her trembling hands
+could still find upon the key-board, though the dim and aged eye
+could no longer see the keys. Some contemporary Polonaises are of
+a character so sad, that they might almost be supposed to
+accompany a funeral train.
+
+The Polonaises of Count Oginski [Footnote: Among the Polonaises
+of Count Oginski, the one in F Major has especially retained its
+celebrity. It was published with a vignette, representing the
+author in the act of blowing his brains out with a pistol. This
+was merely a romantic commentary, which was for a long time
+mistaken for a fact.] which next appeared, soon attained great
+popularity through the introduction of an air of seductive
+languor into the melancholy strains. Full of gloom as they still
+are, they soothe by their delicious tenderness, by their naive
+and mournful grace. The martial rhythm grows more feeble; the
+march of the stately train, no longer rustling in its pride of
+state, is hushed in reverential silence, in solemn thought, as if
+its course wound on through graves, whose sad swells extinguish
+smiles and humiliate pride. Love alone survives, as the mourners
+wander among the mounds of earth so freshly heaped that the grass
+has not yet grown upon them, repeating the sad refrain which the
+Bard of Erin caught from the wild breezes of the sea:
+
+"Love born of sorrow, like sorrow is true!"
+
+In the well known pages of Oginski may be found the sighing of
+analogous thoughts: the very breath of love is sad, and only
+revealed through the melancholy lustre of eyes bathed in tears.
+
+At a somewhat later stage, the graves and grassy mounds were all
+passed, they are seen only in the distance of the shadowy
+background. The living cannot always weep; life and animation
+again appear, mournful thoughts changed into soothing memories,
+return on the ear, sweet as distant echoes. The saddened train of
+the living no longer hush their breath as they glide on with
+noiseless precaution, as if not to disturb the sleep of those who
+have just departed, over whose graves the turf is not yet green;
+the imagination no longer evokes only the gloomy shadows of the
+past. In the Polonaises of Lipinski we hear the music of the
+pleasure-loving heart once more beating joyously, giddily,
+happily, as it had done before the days of disaster and defeat.
+The melodies breathe more and more the perfume of happy youth;
+love, young love, sighs around. Expanding into expressive songs
+of vague and dreamy character, they speak but to youthful hearts,
+cradling them in poetic fictions, in soft illusions. No longer
+destined to cadence the steps of the high and grave personages
+who ceased to bear their part in these dances, [Footnote: Bishops
+and Primates formerly assisted in these dances; at a later date
+the Church dignitaries took no part in them.] they are addressed
+to romantic imaginations, dreaming rather of rapture than of
+renown. Meyseder advanced upon this descending path; his dances,
+full of lively coquetry, reflect only the magic charms of youth
+and beauty. His numerous imitations have inundated us with pieces
+of music, called Polonaises, out which have no characteristics to
+justify the name.
+
+The pristine and vigorous brilliancy of the Polonaise was again
+suddenly given to it by a composer of true genius. Weber made of
+it a Dithyrambic, in which the glittering display of vanished
+magnificence again appeared in its ancient glory. He united all
+the resources of his art to ennoble the formula which had been so
+misrepresented and debased, to fill it with the spirit of the
+past; not seeking to recall the character of ancient music, he
+transported into music the characteristics of ancient Poland.
+Using the melody as a recital, he accentuated the rhythm, he
+colored his composition, through his modulations, with a
+profusion of hues not only suitable to his subject, but
+imperiously demanded by it. Life, warmth, and passion again
+circulated in his Polonaises, yet he did not deprive them of the
+haughty charm, the ceremonious and magisterial dignity, the
+natural yet elaborate majesty, which are essential parts of their
+character. The cadences are marked by chords, which fall upon the
+ear like the rattling of swords drawn from their scabbards. The
+soft, warm, effeminate pleadings of love give place to the
+murmuring of deep, fall, bass voices, proceeding from manly
+breasts used to command; we may almost hear, in reply, the wild
+and distant neighings of the steeds of the desert, as they toss
+the long manes around their haughty heads, impatiently pawing the
+ground, with their lustrous eye beaming with intelligence and
+full of fire, while they bear with stately grace the trailing
+caparisons embroidered with turquoise and rubies, with which the
+Polish Seigneurs loved to adorn them. [Footnote: Among the
+treasures of Prince radziwill at Nieswirz were to be seen, in the
+days of former splendor, twelve sets of horse trappings, each of
+a different color, incrusted with precious stones. The twelve
+Apostles, life size, in massive silver, were also to be seen
+there. This luxury will cease to astonish us when we consider
+that the family of Radziwill was descended from the last Grand
+Pontiff of Lithuania, to whom, when he embraced Christianity,
+were given all the forests and plains which had before been
+consecrated to the worship of the heathen Deities; and that
+toward the close of the last century, the family still possessed
+eight hundred thousand serfs, although its riches had then
+considerably diminished. Among the collection of treasures of
+which we speak, was an exceedingly curious relic, which is still
+in existence. It is a picture of St. John the Baptist, surrounded
+by a Bannerol bearing the inscription: "In the name of the Lord,
+John, thou shalt be Conqueror." It was found by Jean Sobieski
+himself, after the victory which he had won, under the walls of
+Vienna, in the tent of the Vizier Kara Mustapha. It was presented
+after his death, by Marie d'Arquin, to a Prince Radziwill, with
+an inscription in her own hand- writing which indicates its
+origin, and the presentation which she makes of it. The
+autograph, with the royal seal, is on the reverse side of the
+canvas.] How did Weber divine the Poland of other days? Had he
+indeed the power to call from the grave of the past, the scenes
+which we have just contemplated, that he was thus able to clothe
+them with life, to renew their earlier associations? Vain
+questions! Genius is always endowed with its own sacred
+intuitions! Poetry ever reveals to her chosen the secrets of her
+wild domain!
+
+All the poetry contained in the Polonaises had, like a rich sap,
+been so fully expressed from them by the genius of Weber, they
+had been handled with a mastery so absolute, that it was, indeed,
+a dangerous and difficult thing to attempt them, with the
+slightest hope of producing the same effect. He has, however,
+been surpassed in this species of composition by Chopin, not only
+in the number and variety of works in this style, but also in the
+more touching character of the handling, and the new and varied
+processes of harmony. Both in construction and spirit, Chopin's
+Polonaise In A, with the one in A flat major, resembles very much
+the one of Weber's in E Major. In others he relinquished this
+broad style: Shall we say always with a more decided success? In
+such a question, decision were a thorny thing. Who shall restrict
+the rights of a poet over the various phases of his subject? Even
+in the midst of joy, may he not be permitted to be gloomy and
+oppressed? After having chanted the splendor of glory, may he not
+sing of grief? After having rejoiced with the victorious, may he
+not mourn with the vanquished? We may, without any fear of
+contradiction, assert, that it is not one of the least merits of
+Chopin, that he has, consecutively, embraced ALL the phases of
+which the theme is susceptible, that he has succeeded in
+eliciting from it all its brilliancy, in awakening from it all
+its sadness. The variety of the moods of feeling to which he was
+himself subject, aided him in the reproduction and comprehension
+of such a multiplicity of views. It would be impossible to follow
+the varied transformations occurring in these compositions, with
+their pervading melancholy, without admiring the fecundity of his
+creative force, even when not fully sustained by the higher
+powers of his inspiration. He did not always confine himself to
+the consideration of the pictures presented to him by his
+imagination and memory, taken en masse, or as a united whole.
+More than once, while contemplating the brilliant groups and
+throngs flowing on before him, has he yielded to the strange
+charm of some isolated figure, arresting it in its course by the
+magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he
+has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic
+revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and
+spells only for the entranced Sibyl of his song.
+
+His GRAND POLONAISE in F SHARP MINOR, must be ranked among his
+most energetic compositions. He has inserted in it a MAZOURKA.
+Had he not frightened the frivolous world of fashionable life, by
+the gloomy grotesqueness with which he introduced it in an
+incantation so fantastic, this mode might have become an
+ingenious caprice for the ball-room. It is a most original
+production, exciting us like the recital of some broken dream,
+made, after a night of restlessness, by the first dull, gray,
+cold, leaden rays of a winter's sunrise. It is a dream-poem, in
+which the impressions and objects succeed each other with
+startling incoherency and with the wildest transitions, reminding
+us of what Byron says in his "DREAM:"
+
+       "...Dreams in their development have breath,
+       And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
+       They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
+       *     *     *     *     *     *    *     *
+       And look like heralds of Eternity."
+
+The principal motive is a weird air, dark as the lurid hour which
+precedes a hurricane, in which we catch the fierce exclamations
+of exasperation, mingled with a bold defiance, recklessly hurled
+at the stormy elements. The prolonged return of a tonic, at the
+commencement of each measure, reminds us of the repeated roar of
+artillery--as if we caught the sounds from some dread battle
+waging in the distance. After the termination of this note, a
+series of the most unusual chords are unrolled through measure
+after measure. We know nothing analogous, to the striking effect
+produced by this, in the compositions of the greatest masters.
+This passage is suddenly interrupted by a SCENE CHAMPETRE, a
+MAZOURKA in the style of an Idyl, full of the perfume of lavender
+and sweet marjoram; but which, far from effacing the memory of
+the profound sorrow which had before been awakened, only
+augments, by its ironical and bitter contrast, our emotions of
+pain to such a degree, that we feel almost solaced when the first
+phrase returns; and, free from the disturbing contradiction of a
+naive, simple, and inglorious happiness, we may again sympathize
+with the noble and imposing woe of a high, yet fatal struggle.
+This improvisation terminates like a dream, without other
+conclusion than a convulsive shudder; leaving the soul under the
+strangest, the wildest, the most subduing impressions.
+
+The "POLONAISE-FANTAISIE" is to be classed among the works which
+belong to the latest period of Chopin's compositions, which are
+all more or less marked by a feverish and restless anxiety. No
+bold and brilliant pictures are to be found in it; the loud tramp
+of a cavalry accustomed to victory is no longer heard; no more
+resound the heroic chants muffled by no visions of defeat--the
+bold tones suited to the audacity of those who were always
+victorious. A deep melancholy--ever broken by startled movements,
+by sudden alarms, by disturbed rest, by stifled sighs--reigns
+throughout. We are surrounded by such scenes and feelings as
+might arise among those who had been surprised and encompassed on
+all sides by an ambuscade, the vast sweep of whose horizon
+reveals not a single ground for hope, and whose despair had
+giddied the brain, like a draught of that wine of Cyprus which
+gives a more instinctive rapidity to all our gestures, a keener
+point to all our words, a more subtle flame to all our emotions,
+and excites the mind to a pitch of irritability approaching
+insanity.
+
+Such pictures possess but little real value for art. Like all
+descriptions of moments of extremity, of agonies, of death
+rattles, of contractions of the muscles where all elasticity is
+lost, where the nerves, ceasing to be the organs of the human
+will, reduce man to a passive victim of despair; they only serve
+to torture the soul. Deplorable visions, which the artist should
+admit with extreme circumspection within the graceful circle of
+his charmed realm!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Chopin's Mazourkas--Polish Ladies--Mazourka in Poland--Tortured
+Motives--Early life of Chopin--Zal.
+
+
+
+In all that regards expression, the MAZOURKAS of Chopin differ
+greatly from his POLONAISES. Indeed they are entirely unlike in
+character. The bold and vigorous coloring of the Polonaises gives
+place to the most delicate, tender, and evanescent shades in the
+Mazourkas. A nation, considered as a whole, in its united,
+characteristic, and single impetus, is no longer placed before
+us; the character and impressions now become purely personal,
+always individualized and divided. No longer is the feminine and
+effeminate element driven back into shadowy recesses. On the
+contrary, it is brought out in the boldest relief, nay, it is
+brought into such prominent importance that all else disappears,
+or, at most, serves only as its accompaniment. The days are now
+past when to say that a woman was charming, they called her
+GRATEFUL (WDZIECZNA); the very word charm being derived from
+WDZIEKI: GRATITUDE. Woman no longer appears as a protegee, but as
+a queen; she no longer forms only the better part of life, she
+now entirely fills it. Man is still ardent, proud, and
+presumptuous, but he yields himself up to a delirium of pleasure.
+This very pleasure is, however, always stamped with melancholy.
+Both the music of the national airs, and the words, which are
+almost always joined with them, express mingled emotions of pain
+and joy. This strange but attractive contrast was caused by the
+necessity of "CONSOLING MISERY" (CIESZYC BIDE), which necessity
+induced them to seek the magical distraction of the graceful
+Mazourka, with its transient delusions. The words which were sung
+to these melodies, gave them a capability of linking themselves
+with the sacred associations of memory, in a far higher degree
+than is usual with ordinary dance-music. They were sung and re-
+sung a thousand times in the days of buoyant youth, by fresh and
+sonorous voices, in the hours of solitude, or in those of happy
+idleness. Linking the most varying associations with the melody,
+they were again and again carelessly hummed when traveling
+through forests, or ploughing the deep in ships; perhaps they
+were listlessly upon the lips when some startling emotion has
+suddenly surprised the singer; when an unexpected meeting, a
+long-desired grouping, an unhoped-for word, has thrown an undying
+light upon the heart, consecrating hours destined to live
+forever, and ever to shine on in the memory, even through the
+most distant and gloomy recesses of the constantly darkening
+future.
+
+Such inspirations were used by Chopin in the most happy manner,
+and greatly enriched with the treasures of his handling and
+style. Cutting these diamonds so as to present a thousand facets,
+he brought all their latent fire to light, and re-uniting even
+their glittering dust, he mounted them in gorgeous caskets.
+Indeed what settings could he have chosen better adapted to
+enhance the value of his early recollections, or which would have
+given him more efficient aid in creating poems, in arranging
+scenes, in depicting episodes, in producing romances? Such
+associations and national memories are indebted to him for a
+reign far more extensive than the land which gave them birth.
+Placing them among those idealized types which art has touched
+and consecrated with her resplendent lustre, he has gifted them
+with immortality.
+
+In order fully to understand how perfectly this setting suited
+the varying emotions which Chopin had succeeded in displaying in
+all the magic of their rainbow hues, we must have seen the
+Mazourka danced in Poland, because it is only there that it is
+possible to catch the haughty, yet tender and alluring, character
+of this dance. The cavalier, always chosen by the lady, seizes
+her as a conquest of which he is proud, striving to exhibit her
+loveliness to the admiration of his rivals, before he whirls her
+off in an entrancing and ardent embrace, through the tenderness
+of which the defiant expression of the victor still gleams,
+mingling with the blushing yet gratified vanity of the prize,
+whose beauty forms the glory of his triumph. There are few more
+delightful scenes than a ball in Poland. After the Mazourka has
+commenced, the attention, in place of being distracted by a
+multitude of people jostling against each other without grace or
+order, is fascinated by one couple of equal beauty, darting
+forward, like twin stars, in free and unimpeded space. As if in
+the pride of defiance, the cavalier accentuates his steps, quits
+his partner for a moment, as if to contemplate her with renewed
+delight, rejoins her with passionate eagerness, or whirls himself
+rapidly round, as though overcome with the sudden joy and
+yielding to the delicious giddiness of rapture. Sometimes, two
+couples start at the same moment, after which a change of
+partners may occur between them; or a third cavalier may present
+himself, and, clapping his hands, claim one of the ladies as his
+partner. The queens of the festival are in turn claimed by the
+most brilliant gentlemen present, courting the honor of leading
+them through the mazes of the dance.
+
+While in the Waltz and Galop, the dancers are isolated, and only
+confused tableaux are offered to the bystanders; while the
+Quadrille is only a kind of pass at arms made with foils, where
+attack and defence proceed with equal indifference, where the
+most nonchalant display of grace is answered with the same
+nonchalance; while the vivacity of the Polka, charming, we
+confess, may easily become equivocal; while Fandangos, Tarantulas
+and Minuets, are merely little love-dramas, only interesting to
+those who execute them, in which the cavalier has nothing to do
+but to display his partner, and the spectators have no share but
+to follow, tediously enough, coquetries whose obligatory
+movements are not addressed to them;--in the Mazourka, on the
+contrary, they have also their part, and the role of the cavalier
+yields neither in grace nor importance to that of his fair
+partner.
+
+The long intervals which separate the successive appearance of
+the pairs being reserved for conversation among the dancers, when
+their turn comes again, the scene passes no longer only among
+themselves, but extends from them to the spectators. It is to
+them that the cavalier exhibits the vanity he feels in having
+been able to win the preference of the lady who has selected him;
+it is in their presence she has deigned to show him this honor;
+she strives to please them, because the triumph of charming them
+is reflected upon her partner, and their applause may be made a
+part of the most flattering and insinuating coquetry. Indeed, at
+the close of the dance, she seems to make him a formal offering
+of their suffrages in her favor. She bounds rapidly towards him
+and rests upon his arm,--a movement susceptible of a thousand
+varying shades which feminine tact and subtle feeling well know
+how to modify, ringing every change, from the most impassioned
+and impulsive warmth of manner to an air of the most complete
+"abandon."
+
+What varied movements succeed each other in the course round the
+ball-room! Commencing at first with a kind of timid hesitation,
+the lady sways about like a bird about to take flight; gliding
+for some time on one foot only, like a skater, she skims the ice
+of the polished floor; then, running forward like a sportive
+child, she suddenly takes wing. Raising her veiling eyelids, with
+head erect, with swelling bosom and elastic bounds, she cleaves
+the air as the light bark cleaves the waves, and, like an agile
+woodnymph, seems to sport with space. Again she recommences her
+timid graceful gliding, looks round among the spectators, sends
+sighs and words to the most, highly favored, then extending her
+white arms to the partner who comes to rejoin her, again begins
+her vigorous steps which transport her with magical rapidity from
+one end to the other of the ball-room. She glides, she runs, she
+flies; emotion colors her cheek, brightens her eye; fatigue bends
+her flexile form, retards her winged feet, until, panting and
+exhausted, she softly sinks and reclines in the arms of her
+partner, who, seizing her with vigorous arm, raises her a moment
+in the air, before finishing with her the last intoxicating
+round.
+
+In this triumphal course, in which may be seen a thousand
+Atalantas as beautiful as the dreams of Ovid, many changes occur
+in the figures. The couples, in the first chain, commence by
+giving each other the hand; then forming themselves into a
+circle, whose rapid rotation dazzles the eye, they wreathe a
+living crown, in which each lady is the only flower of its own
+kind, while the glowing and varied colors are heightened by the
+uniform costume of the men, the effect resembling that of the
+dark-green foliage with which nature relieves her glowing buds
+and fragrant bloom. They all then dart forward together with a
+sparkling animation, a jealous emulation, defiling before the
+spectators as in a review--an enumeration of which would scarcely
+yield in interest to those given us, by Homer and Tasso, of the
+armies about to range themselves in the front of battle! At the
+close of an hour or two, the same circle again forms to end the
+dance; and on those days when amusement and pleasure fill all
+with an excited gayety, sparkling and glittering through those
+impressible temperaments like an aurora in a midnight sky, a
+general promenade is recommenced, and in its accelerated
+movements, we cannot detect the least symptom of fatigue among
+all these delicate yet enduring women; as if their light limbs
+possessed the flexible tenacity and elasticity of steel!
+
+As if by intuition, all the Polish women possess the magical
+science of this dance. Even the least richly gifted among them
+know how to draw from it new charms. If the graceful ease and
+noble dignity of those conscious of their own power are full of
+attraction in it, timidity and modesty are equally full of
+interest. This is so because of all modern dances, it breathes
+most of pure love. As the dancers are always conscious that the
+gaze of the spectators is fastened upon them, addressing
+themselves constantly to them, there reigns in its very essence a
+mixture of innate tenderness and mutual vanity, as full of
+delicacy and propriety as of allurement.
+
+The latent and unknown poetry, which was only indicated in the
+original Polish Mazourkas, was divined, developed, and brought to
+light, by Chopin. Preserving their rhythm, he ennobled their
+melody, enlarged their proportions; and--in order to paint more
+fully in these productions, which he loved to hear us call
+"pictures from the easel," the innumerable and widely-differing
+emotions which agitate the heart during the progress of this
+dance, above all, in the long intervals in which the cavalier has
+a right to retain his place at the side of the lady, whom he
+never leaves--he wrought into their tissues harmonic lights and
+shadows, as new in themselves as were the subjects to which he
+adapted them.
+
+Coquetries, vanities, fantasies, inclinations, elegies, vague
+emotions, passions, conquests, struggles upon which the safety or
+favor of others depends, all--all, meet in this dance. How
+difficult it is to form a complete idea of the infinite
+gradations of passion--sometimes pausing, sometimes progressing,
+sometimes suing, sometimes ruling! In the country where the
+Mazourka reigns from the palace to the cottage, these gradations
+are pursued, for a longer or shorter time, with as much ardor and
+enthusiasm as malicious trifling. The good qualities and faults
+of men are distributed among the Poles in a manner so fantastic,
+that, although the essentials of character may remain nearly the
+same in all, they vary and shade into each other in a manner so
+extraordinary, that it becomes almost impossible to recognize or
+distinguish them. In natures so capriciously amalgamated, a
+wonderful diversity occurs, adding to the investigations of
+curiosity, a spur unknown in other lands; making of every new
+relation a stimulating study, and lending unwonted interest to
+the lightest incident. Nothing is here indifferent, nothing
+unheeded, nothing hackneyed! Striking contrasts are constantly
+occurring among these natures so mobile and susceptible, endowed
+with subtle, keen and vivid intellects, with acute sensibilities
+increased by suffering and misfortune; contrasts throwing lurid
+light upon hearts, like the blaze of a conflagration illumining
+and revealing the gloom of midnight. Here chance may bring
+together those who but a few hours before were strangers to each
+other. The ordeal of a moment, a single word, may separate hearts
+long united; sudden confidences are often forced by necessity,
+and invincible suspicions frequently held in secret. As a witty
+woman once remarked: "They often play a comedy, to avoid a
+tragedy!" That which has never been uttered, is yet incessantly
+divined and understood. Generalities are often used to sharpen
+interrogation, while concealing its drift; the most evasive
+replies are carefully listened to, like the ringing of metal, as
+a test of the quality. Often, when in appearance pleading for
+others, the suitor is urging his own cause; and the most graceful
+flattery may be only the veil of disguised exactions.
+
+But caution and attention become at last wearisome to natures
+naturally expansive and candid, and a tiresome frivolity,
+surprising enough before the secret of its reckless indifference
+has been divined, mingles with the most spiritual refinement, the
+most poetic sentiments, the most real causes for intense
+suffering, as if to mock and jeer at all reality. It is difficult
+to analyze or appreciate justly this frivolity, as it is
+sometimes real, sometimes only assumed. It makes use of confusing
+replies and strange resources to conceal the truth. It is
+sometimes justly, sometimes wrongfully regarded as a kind of veil
+of motley, whose fantastic tissue needs only to be slightly torn
+to reveal more than one hidden or sleeping quality under the
+variegated folds of gossamer. It often follows from such causes,
+that eloquence becomes only a sort of grave badinage, sparkling
+with spangles like the play of fireworks, though the heart of the
+discourse may contain nothing earnest; while the lightest
+raillery, thrown out apparently at random, may perhaps be most
+sadly serious. Bitter and intense thought follows closely upon
+the steps of the most tempestuous gayety; nothing indeed remains
+absolutely superficial, though nothing is presented without an
+artificial polish. In the discussions constantly occurring in
+this country, where conversation is an art cultivated to the
+highest degree, and occupying much time, there are always those
+present, who, whether the topic discussed be grave or gay, can
+pass in a moment from smiles to tears, from joy to sorrow,
+leaving the keenest observer in doubt which is most real, so
+difficult is it to discern the fictitious from the true.
+
+In such varying modes of thought, where ideas shift like quick
+sands upon the shores of the sea, they are rarely to be found
+again at the exact point where they were left. This fact is in
+itself sufficient to give interest to interviews otherwise
+insignificant. We have been taught this in Paris by some natives
+of Poland, who astonished the Parisians by their skill in
+"fencing in paradox;" an art in which every Pole is more or less
+skillful, as he has felt more or less interest or amusement in
+its cultivation. But the inimitable skill with which they are
+constantly able to alternate the garb of truth or fiction (like
+touchstones, more certain when least suspected, the one always
+concealed under the garb of the other), the force which expends
+an immense amount of intellect upon the most trivial occasions,
+as Gil Bias made use of as much intelligence to find the means of
+subsistence for a single day, as was required by the Spanish king
+to govern the whole of his domain; make at last an impression as
+painful upon us as the games in which the jugglers of India
+exhibit such wonderful skill, where sharp and deadly arms fly
+glittering through the air, which the least error, the least want
+of perfect mastery, would make the bright, swift messengers of
+certain death! Such skill is full of concealed anxiety, terror,
+and anguish! From the complication of circumstances, danger may
+lurk in the slightest inadvertence, in the least imprudence, in
+possible accidents, while powerful assistance may suddenly spring
+from some obscure and forgotten individual. A dramatic interest
+may instantaneously arise from interviews apparently the most
+trivial, giving an unforeseen phase to every relation. A misty
+uncertainty hovers round every meeting, through whose clouds it
+is difficult to seize the contours, to fix the lines, to
+ascertain the present and future influence, thus rendering
+intercourse vague and unintelligible, filling it with an
+indefinable and hidden terror, yet, at the same time, with an
+insinuating flattery. The strong currents of genuine sympathy are
+always struggling to escape from the weight of this external
+repression. The differing impulses of vanity, love, and
+patriotism, in their threefold motives of action, are forever
+hurtling against each other in all hearts, leading to
+inextricable confusion of thought and feeling.
+
+What mingling emotions are concentrated in the accidental
+meetings of the Mazourka! It can surround, with its own
+enchantment, the lightest emotion of the heart, while, through
+its magic, the most reserved, transitory, and trivial rencounter
+appeals to the imagination. Could it be otherwise in the presence
+of the women who give to this dance that inimitable grace and
+suavity, for which, in less happy countries, they struggle in
+vain? In very truth are not the Sclavic women utterly
+incomparable? There are to be found among them those whose
+qualities and virtues are so incontestable, so absolute, that
+they are acknowledged by all ages, and by all countries. Such
+apparitions are always and everywhere rare. The women of Poland
+are generally distinguished by an originality full of fire.
+Parisians in their grace and culture, Eastern dancing girls in
+their languid fire, they have perhaps preserved among them,
+handed down from mother to daughter, the secret of the burning
+love potions possessed in the seraglios. Their charms possess the
+strange spell of Asiatic languor. With the flames of spiritual
+and intellectual Houris in their lustrous eyes, we find the
+luxurious indolence of the Sultana. Their manners caress without
+emboldening; the grace of their languid movements is
+intoxicating; they allure by a flexibility of form, which knows
+no restraint, save that of perfect modesty, and which etiquette
+has never succeeded in robbing of its willowy grace. They win
+upon us by those intonations of voice which touch the heart, and
+fill the eye with tender tears; by those sudden and graceful
+impulses which recall the spontaneity and beautiful timidity of
+the gazelle. Intelligent, cultivated, comprehending every thing
+with rapidity, skillful in the use of all they have acquired;
+they are nevertheless as superstitious and fastidious as the
+lovely yet ignorant creatures adored by the Arabian prophet.
+Generous, devout, loving danger and loving love, from which they
+demand much, and to which they grant little; beyond every thing
+they prize renown and glory. All heroism is dear to them. Perhaps
+there is no one among them who would think it possible to pay too
+dearly for a brilliant action; and yet, let us say it with
+reverence, many of them devote to obscurity their most holy
+sacrifices, their most sublime virtues. But however exemplary
+these quiet virtues of the home life may be, neither the miseries
+of private life, nor the secret sorrows which must prey upon
+souls too ardent not to be frequently wounded, can diminish the
+wonderful vivacity of their emotions, which they know how to
+communicate with the infallible rapidity and certainty of an
+electric spark. Discreet by nature and position, they manage the
+great weapon of dissimulation with incredible dexterity,
+skillfully reading the souls of others with out revealing the
+secrets of their own. With that strange pride which disdains to
+exhibit characteristic or individual qualities, it is frequently
+the most noble virtues which are thus concealed. The internal
+contempt they feel for those who cannot divine them, gives them
+that superiority which enables them to reign so absolutely over
+those whom they have enthralled, flattered, subjugated, charmed;
+until the moment arrives when--loving with the whole force of
+their ardent souls, they are willing to brave and share the most
+bitter suffering, prison, exile, even death itself, with the
+object of their love! Ever faithful, ever consoling, ever tender,
+ever unchangeable in the intensity of their generous devotion!
+Irresistible beings, who in fascinating and charming, yet demand
+an earnest and devout esteem! In that precious incense of praise
+burned by M. de Balzac, "in honor of that daughter of a foreign
+soil," he has thus sketched the Polish woman in hues composed
+entirely of antitheses: "Angel through love, demon through
+fantasy; child through faith, sage through experience; man
+through the brain, woman through the heart; giant through hope,
+mother through sorrow; and poet through dreams." [Footnote:
+Dedication of "Modeste Mignon".]
+
+The homage inspired by the Polish women is always fervent. They
+all possess the poetic conception of an ideal, which gleams
+through their intercourse like an image constantly passing before
+a mirror, the comprehension and seizure of which they impose as a
+task. Despising the insipid and common pleasure of merely being
+able to please, they demand that the being whom they love shall
+be capable of exacting their esteem. This romantic temperament
+sometimes retains them long in hesitation between the world and
+the cloister. Indeed, there are few among them who at some moment
+of their lives have not seriously and bitterly thought of taking
+refuge within the walls of a convent.
+
+Where such women reign as sovereigns, what feverish words, what
+hopes, what despair, what entrancing fascinations must occur in
+the mazes of the Mazourka; the Mazourka, whose every cadence
+vibrates in the ear of the Polish lady as the echo of a vanished
+passion, or the whisper of a tender declaration. Which among them
+has ever danced through a Mazourka, whose cheeks burned not more
+from the excitement of emotion than from mere physical fatigue?
+What unexpected and endearing ties have been formed in the long
+tete-a-tete, in the very midst of crowds, with the sounds of
+music, which generally recalled the name of some hero or some
+proud historical remembrance attached to the words, floating
+around, while thus the associations of love and heroism became
+forever attached to the words and melodies! What ardent vows have
+been exchanged; what wild and despairing farewells been breathed!
+How many brief attachments have been linked and as suddenly
+unlinked, between those who had never met before, who were never,
+never to meet again--and yet, to whom forgetfulness had become
+forever impossible! What hopeless love may have been revealed
+during the moments so rare upon this earth; when beauty is more
+highly esteemed than riches, a noble bearing of more consequence
+than rank! What dark destinies forever severed by the tyranny of
+rank and wealth may have been, in these fleeting moments of
+meeting, again united, happy in the glitter of passing triumph,
+reveling in concealed and unsuspected joy! What interviews,
+commenced in indifference, prolonged in jest, interrupted with
+emotion, renewed with the secret consciousness of mutual
+understanding, (in all that concerns subtle intuition Slavic
+finesse and delicacy especially excel,) have terminated in the
+deepest attachments! What holy confidences have been exchanged in
+the spirit of that generous frankness which circulates from
+unknown to unknown, when the noble are delivered from the tyranny
+of forced conventionalisms! What words deceitfully bland, what
+vows, what desires, what vague hopes have been negligently thrown
+on the winds;--thrown as the handkerchief of the fair dancer in
+the Mazourka...and which the maladroit knows not how to pick
+up!...
+
+We have before asserted that we must have known personally the
+women of Poland, for the full and intuitive comprehension of the
+feelings with which the Mazourkas of Chopin, as well as many more
+of his compositions, are impregnated. A subtle love vapor floats
+like an ambient fluid around them; we may trace step by step in
+his Preludes, Nocturnes Impromptus and Mazourkas, all the phases
+of which passion is capable The sportive hues of coquetry the
+insensible and gradual yielding of inclination, the capricious
+festoons of fantasy; the sadness of sickly joys born dying,
+flowers of mourning like the black roses, the very perfume of
+whose gloomy leaves is depressing, and whose petals are so frail
+that the faintest sigh is sufficient to detach them from the
+fragile stem; sudden flames without thought, like the false
+shining of that decayed and dead wood which only glitters in
+obscurity and crumbles at the touch; pleasures without past and
+without future, snatched from accidental meetings; illusions,
+inexplicable excitements tempting to adventure, like the sharp
+taste of half ripened fruit which stimulates and pleases even
+while it sets the teeth on edge; emotions without memory and
+without hope; shadowy feelings whose chromatic tints are
+interminable;--are all found in these works, endowed by genius
+with the innate nobility, the beauty, the distinction, the
+surpassing elegance of those by whom they are experienced.
+
+In the compositions just mentioned, as well as in most of his
+Ballads, Waltzes and Etudes, the rendering of some of the
+poetical subjects to which we have just alluded, may be found
+embalmed. These fugitive poems are so idealized, rendered so
+fragile and attenuated, that they scarcely seem to belong to
+human nature, but rather to a fairy world, unveiling the
+indiscreet confidences of Peris, of Titanias, of Ariels, of Queen
+Mabs, of the Genii of the air, of water, and of fire,--like
+ourselves, subject to bitter disappointments, to invincible
+disgusts.
+
+Some of these compositions are as gay and fantastic as the wiles
+of an enamored, yet mischievous sylph; some are soft, playing in
+undulating light, like the hues of a salamander; some, full of
+the most profound discouragement, as if the sighs of souls in
+pain, who could find none to offer up the charitable prayers
+necessary for their deliverance, breathed through their notes.
+Sometimes a despair so inconsolable is stamped upon them, that we
+feel ourselves present at some Byronic tragedy, oppressed by the
+anguish of a Jacopo Foscari, unable to survive the agony of
+exile. In some we hear the shuddering spasms of suppressed sobs.
+Some of them, in which the black keys are exclusively taken, are
+acute and subtle, and remind us of the character of his own
+gaiety, lover of atticism as he was, subject only to the higher
+emotions, recoiling from all vulgar mirth, from coarse laughter,
+and from low enjoyments, as we do from those animals more abject
+than venomous, whose very sight causes the most nauseating
+repulsion in tender and sensitive natures.
+
+An exceeding variety of subjects and impressions occur in the
+great number of his Mazourkas. Sometimes we catch the manly
+sounds of the rattling of spurs, but it is generally the almost
+imperceptible rustling of crape and gauze under the light breath
+of the dancers, or the clinking of chains of gold and diamonds,
+that maybe distinguished. Some of them seem to depict the defiant
+pleasure of the ball given on the eve of battle, tortured however
+by anxiety for, through the rhythm of the dance, we hear the
+sighs and despairing farewells of hearts forced to suppress their
+tears. Others reveal to us the discomfort and secret ennui of
+those guests at a fete, who find it in vain to expect that the
+gay sounds will muffle the sharp cries of anguished spirits. We
+sometimes catch the gasping breath of terror and stifled fears;
+sometimes divine the dim presentiments of a love destined to
+perpetual struggle and doomed to survive all hope, which, though
+devoured by jealousy and conscious that it can never be the
+victor, still disdains to curse, and takes refuge in a soul-
+subduing pity. In others we feel as if borne into the heart of a
+whirlwind, a strange madness; in the midst of the mystic
+confusion, an abrupt melody passes and repasses, panting and
+palpitating, like the throbbing of a heart faint with longing,
+gasping in despair, breaking in anguish, dying of hopeless, yet
+indignant love. In some we hear the distant flourish of trumpets,
+like fading memories of glories past, in some of them, the rhythm
+is as floating, as undetermined, as shadowy, as the feeling with
+which two young lovers gaze upon the first star of evening, as
+yet alone in the dim skies.
+
+Upon one afternoon, when there were but three persons present,
+and Chopin had been playing for a long time, one of the most
+distinguished women in Paris remarked, that she felt always more
+and more filled with solemn meditation, such as might be awakened
+in presence of the grave-stones strewing those grounds in Turkey,
+whose shady recesses and bright beds of flowers promise only a
+gay garden to the startled traveller. She asked him what was the
+cause of the involuntary, yet sad veneration which subdued her
+heart while listening to these pieces, apparently presenting only
+sweet and graceful subjects:--and by what name he called the
+strange emotion inclosed in his compositions, like ashes of the
+unknown dead in superbly sculptured urns of the purest
+alabaster...Conquered by the appealing tears which moistened the
+beautiful eyes, with a candor rare indeed in this artist, so
+susceptible upon all that related to the secrets of the sacred
+relics buried in the gorgeous shrines of his music, he replied:
+"that her heart had not deceived her in the gloom which she felt
+stealing upon her, for whatever might have been his transitory
+pleasures, he had never been free from a feeling which might
+almost be said to form the soil of his heart, and for which he
+could find no appropriate expression except in his own language,
+no other possessing a term equivalent to the Polish word: ZAL!"
+As if his ear thirsted for the sound of this word, which
+expresses the whole range of emotions produced by an intense
+regret, through all the shades of feeling, from hatred to
+repentance, he repeated it again and again.
+
+ZAL! Strange substantive, embracing a strange diversity, a
+strange philosophy! Susceptible of different regimens, it
+includes all the tenderness, all the humility of a regret borne
+with resignation and without a murmur, while bowing before the
+fiat of necessity, the inscrutable decrees of Providence: but,
+changing its character, and assuming the regimen indirect as soon
+as it is addressed to man, it signifies  excitement, agitation,
+rancor, revolt full of reproach, premeditated vengeance, menace
+never ceasing to threaten if retaliation should ever become
+possible, feeding itself meanwhile with a bitter, if sterile
+hatred.
+
+ZAL! In very truth, it colors the whole of Chopin's compositions:
+sometimes wrought through their elaborate tissue, like threads of
+dim silver; sometimes coloring them with more passionate hues. It
+may be found in his sweetest reveries; even in those which that
+Shakespearian genius, Berlioz, comprehending all extremes, has so
+well characterized as "divine coquetries"--coquetries only
+understood in semi-oriental countries; coquetries in which men
+are cradled by their mothers, with which they are tormented by
+their sisters, and enchanted by those they love; and which cause
+the coquetries of other women to appear insipid or coarse in
+their eyes; inducing them to exclaim, with an appearance of
+boasting, yet in which they are entirely justified by the truth:
+NIEMA IAK POLKI! "Nothing equals the Polish women!" [Footnote:
+The custom formerly in use of drinking, in her own shoe, the
+health of the woman they loved, is one of the most original
+traditions of the enthusiastic gallantry if the Poles.] Through
+the secrets of these "divine coquetries" those adorable beings
+are formed, who are alone capable of fulfilling the impassioned
+ideals of poets who, like M. de Chateaubriand, in the feverish
+sleeplessness of their adolescence, create for themselves visions
+"of an Eve, innocent, yet fallen; ignorant of all, yet knowing
+all; mistress, yet virgin." [Footnote: Memoires d'Outre Tombe. 1st
+vol. Incantation.] The only being which was ever found to
+resemble this dream, was a Polish girl of seventeen--"a mixture
+of the Odalisque and Valkyria...realization of the ancient sylph-
+-new Flora--freed from the chain of the seasons" [Footnote: Idem.
+3d vol. Atala.]--and whom M. de Chateaubriand feared to meet
+again. "Divine coquetries" at once generous and avaricious;
+impressing the floating, wavy, rocking, undecided motion of a
+boat without rigging or oars upon the charmed and intoxicated
+heart!
+
+Through his peculiar style of performance, Chopin imparted this
+constant rocking with the most fascinating effect; thus making
+the melody undulate to and fro, like a skiff driven on over the
+bosom of tossing waves. This manner of execution, which set a
+seal so peculiar upon his own style of playing, was at first
+indicated by the term 'tempo rubato', affixed to his writings: a
+Tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a movement flexible, yet at
+the same time abrupt and languishing, and vacillating as the
+flame under the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated. In
+his later productions we no longer find this mark. He was
+convinced that if the performer understood them, he would divine
+this rule of irregularity. All his compositions should be played
+with this accentuated and measured swaying and balancing. It is
+difficult for those who have not frequently heard him play to
+catch this secret of their proper execution. He seemed desirous
+of imparting this style to his numerous pupils, particularly
+those of his own country. His countrymen, or rather his
+countrywomen, seized it with the facility with which they
+understand every thing relating to poetry or feeling; an innate,
+intuitive comprehension of his meaning aided them in following
+all the fluctuations of his depths of aerial and spiritual blue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Chopin's Mode of Playing--Concerts--The Elite--Fading Bouquets
+and Immortal Crowns--Hospitality--Heine--Meyerbeer--Adolphe
+Nourrit--Eugene Delacroix--Niemcevicz--Mickiewicz--George Sand.
+
+
+
+AFTER having described the compositions palpitating with emotion
+in which genius struggles with grief, (grief, that terrible
+reality which Art must strive to reconcile with Heaven),
+confronting it sometimes as conqueror, sometimes as conquered;
+compositions in which all the memories of his youth, the
+affections of his heart, the mysteries of his desires, the
+secrets of his untold passions, are collected like tears in a
+lachrymatory; compositions in which, passing the limits of human
+sensations--too dull for his eager fancy, too obtuse for his keen
+perceptions--he makes incursions into the realms of Dryads,
+Oreads, and Oceanides;--we would naturally be expected to speak
+of his talent for execution. But this task we cannot assume. We
+cannot command the melancholy courage to exhume emotions linked
+with our fondest memories, our dearest personal recollections; we
+cannot force ourselves to make the mournful effort to color the
+gloomy shrouds, veiling the skill we once loved, with the
+brilliant hues they would exact at our hands. We feel our loss
+too bitterly to attempt such an analysis. And what result would
+it be possible to attain with all our efforts! We could not hope
+to convey to those who have never heard him, any just conception
+of that fascination so ineffably poetic, that charm subtle and
+penetrating as the delicate perfume of the vervain or the
+Ethiopian calla, which, shrinking and exclusive, refuses to
+diffuse its exquisite aroma in the noisome breath of crowds,
+whose heavy air can only retain the stronger odor of the
+tuberose, the incense of burning resin.
+
+By the purity of its handling, by its relation with LA FEE AUX
+MIETTES and LES LUTINS D'ARGAIL, by its rencounters with the
+SERAPHINS and DIANES, who murmur in his ear their most
+confidential complaints, their most secret dreams, the style and
+the manner of conception of Chopin remind us of Nodier. He knew
+that he did not act upon the masses, that he could not warm the
+multitude, which is like a sea of lead, and as heavy to set in
+motion, and which, though its waves may be melted and rendered
+malleable by heat, requires the powerful arm of an athletic
+Cyclops to manipulate, fuse, and pour into moulds, where the dull
+metal, glowing and seething under the electric fire, becomes
+thought and feeling under the new form into which it has been
+forced. He knew he was only perfectly appreciated in those
+meetings, unfortunately too few, in which ALL his hearers were
+prepared to follow him into those spheres which the ancients
+imagined to be entered only through a gate of ivory, to be
+surrounded by pilasters of diamond, and surmounted by a dome
+arched with fawn-colored crystal, upon which played the various
+dyes of the prism; spheres, like the Mexican opal, whose
+kaleidoscopical foci are dimmed by olive-colored mists veiling
+and unveiling the inner glories; spheres, in which all is magical
+and supernatural, reminding us of the marvellous worlds of
+realized dreams. In such spheres Chopin delighted. He once
+remarked to a friend, an artist who has since been frequently
+heard: "I am not suited for concert giving; the public intimidate
+me; their looks, only stimulated by curiosity, paralyze me; their
+strange faces oppress me; their breath stifles me: but you--you
+are destined for it, for when you do not gain your public, you
+have the force to assault, to overwhelm, to control, to compel
+them."
+
+Conscious of how much was necessary for the comprehension of his
+peculiar talent, he played but rarely in public. With the
+exception of some concerts given at his debut in 1831, in Vienna
+and Munich, he gave no more, except in Paris, being indeed not
+able to travel on account of his health, which was so precarious,
+that during entire months, he would appear to be in an almost
+dying state. During the only excursion which he made with a hope
+that the mildness of a Southern climate would be more conducive
+to his health, his condition was frequently so alarming, that
+more than once the hotel keepers demanded payment for the bed and
+mattress he occupied, in order to have them burned, deeming him
+already arrived at that stage of consumption in which it becomes
+so highly contagious We believe, however, if we may be permitted
+to say it, that his concerts were less fatiguing to his physical
+constitution, than to his artistic susceptibility. We think that
+his voluntary abnegation of popular applause veiled an internal
+wound. He was perfectly aware of his own superiority; perhaps it
+did not receive sufficient reverberation and echo from without to
+give him the tranquil assurance that he was perfectly
+appreciated. No doubt, in the absence of popular acclamation, he
+asked himself how far a chosen audience, through the enthusiasm
+of its applause, was able to replace the great public which he
+relinquished. Few understood him:--did those few indeed
+understand him aright? A gnawing feeling of discontent, of which
+he himself scarcely comprehended the cause, secretly undermined
+him. We have seen him almost shocked by eulogy. The praise to
+which he was justly entitled not reaching him EN MASSE, he looked
+upon isolated commendation as almost wounding. That he felt
+himself not only slightly, but badly applauded, was sufficiently
+evident by the polished phrases with which, like troublesome
+dust, he shook such praises off, making it quite evident that he
+preferred to be left undisturbed in the enjoyment of his solitary
+feelings to injudicious commendation.
+
+Too fine a connoisseur in raillery, too ingenious satirist ever
+to expose himself to sarcasm, he never assumed the role of a
+"genius misunderstood." With a good grace and under an apparent
+satisfaction, he concealed so entirely the wound given to his
+just pride, that its very existence was scarcely suspected. But
+not without reason, might the gradually increasing rarity
+[Footnote: Sometimes he passed years without giving a single
+concert. We believe the one given by him in Pleyel's room, in
+1844, was after an interval of nearly ten years] of his concerts
+be attributed rather to the wish he felt to avoid occasions which
+did not bring him the tribute he merited, than to physical
+debility. Indeed, he put his strength to rude proofs in the many
+lessons which he always gave, and the many hours he spent at his
+own Piano.
+
+It is to be regretted that the indubitable advantage for the
+artist resulting from the cultivation of only a select audience,
+should be so sensibly diminished by the rare and cold expression
+of its sympathies. The GLACE which covers the grace of the ELITE,
+as it does the fruit of their desserts; the imperturbable calm of
+their most earnest enthusiasm, could not be satisfactory to
+Chopin. The poet, torn from his solitary inspiration, can only
+find it again in the interest, more than attentive, vivid and
+animated of his audience. He can never hope to regain it in the
+cold looks of an Areopagus assembled to judge him. He must FEEL
+that he moves, that he agitates those who hear him, that his
+emotions find in them the responsive sympathies of the same
+intuitions, that he draws them on with him in his flight towards
+the infinite: as when the leader of a winged train gives the
+signal of departure, he is immediately followed by the whole
+flock in search of milder shores.
+
+But had it been otherwise--had Chopin everywhere received the
+exalted homage and admiration he so well deserved; had he been
+heard, as so many others, by all nations and in all climates; had
+ho obtained those brilliant ovations which make a Capitol every
+where, where the people salute merit or honor genius had he been
+known and recognized by thousands in place of the hundreds who
+acknowledged him--we would not pause in this part of his career
+to enumerate such triumphs.
+
+What are the dying bouquets of an hour to those whose brows claim
+the laurel of immortality? Ephemeral sympathies, transitory
+praises, are not to be mentioned in the presence of the august
+Dead, crowned with higher glories. The joys, the consolations,
+the soothing emotions which the creations of true art awaken in
+the weary, suffering, thirsty, or persevering and believing
+hearts to whom they are dedicated, are destined to be borne into
+far countries and distant years, by the sacred works of Chopin.
+Thus an unbroken bond will be established between elevated
+natures, enabling them to understand and appreciate each other,
+in whatever part of the earth or period of time they may live.
+Such natures are generally badly divined by their contemporaries
+when they have been silent, often misunderstood when they have
+spoken the most eloquently!
+
+"There are different crowns," says Goethe, "there are some which
+may be readily gathered during a walk." Such crowns charm for the
+moment through their balmy freshness, but who would think of
+comparing them with those so laboriously gained by Chopin by
+constant and exemplary effort, by an earnest love of art, and by
+his own mournful experience of the emotions which he has so
+truthfully depicted?
+
+As he sought not with a mean avidity those crowns so easily won,
+of which more than one among ourselves has the modesty to be
+proud; as he was a pure, generous, good and compassionate man,
+filled with a single sentiment, and that one of the most noble of
+feelings, the love of country; as he moved among us like a spirit
+consecrated by all that Poland possesses of poetry; let us
+approach his sacred grave with due reverence! Let us adorn it
+with no artificial wreaths! Let us cast upon it no trivial
+crowns! Let us nobly elevate our thoughts before this consecrated
+shroud! Let us learn from him to repulse all but the highest
+ambition, let us try to concentrate our labor upon efforts which
+will leave more lasting effects than the vain leading of the
+fashions of the passing hour. Let us renounce the corrupt spirit
+of the times in which we live, with all that is not worthy of
+art, all that will not endure, all that does not contain in
+itself some spark of that eternal and immaterial beauty, which it
+is the task of art to reveal and unveil as the condition of its
+own glory! Let us remember the ancient prayer of the Dorians
+whose simple formula is so full of pious poetry, asking only of
+their gods: "To give them the Good, in return for the Beautiful!"
+In place of laboring so constantly to attract auditors, and
+striving to please them at whatever sacrifice, let us rather aim,
+like Chopin, to leave a celestial and immortal echo of what we
+have felt, loved, and suffered! Let us learn, from his revered
+memory, to demand from ourselves works which will entitle us to
+some true rank in the sacred city of art! Let us not exact from
+the present with out regard to the future, those light and vain
+wreath which are scarcely woven before they are faded and
+forgotten!...
+
+In place of such crowns, the most glorious palms which it is
+possible for an artist to receive during his lifetime, have been
+placed in the hands of Chopin by ILLUSTRIOUS EQUALS. An
+enthusiastic admiration was given him by a public still more
+limited than the musical aristocracy which frequented his
+concerts. This public was formed of the most distinguished names
+of men, who bowed before him as the kings of different empires
+bend before a monarch whom they have assembled to honor. Such men
+rendered to him, individually, due homage. How could it have been
+otherwise in France, where the hospitality, so truly national,
+discerns with such perfect taste the rank and claims of the
+guests?
+
+The most eminent minds in Paris frequently met in Chopin's
+saloon. Not in reunions of fantastic periodicity, such as the
+dull imaginations of ceremonious and tiresome circles have
+arranged, and which they have never succeeded in realizing in
+accordance with their wishes, for enjoyment, ease, enthusiasm,
+animation, never come at an hour fixed upon before hand. They can
+be commanded less by artists than by other men, for they are all
+more or less struck by some sacred malady whose paralyzing torpor
+they must shake off, whose benumbing pain they must forget, to be
+joyous and amused by those pyrotechnic fires which startle the
+bewildered guests, who see from time to time a Roman candle, a
+rose-colored Bengal light, a cascade whose waters are of fire, or
+a terrible, yet quite innocent dragon! Gayety and the strength
+necessary to be joyous, are, unfortunately things only
+accidentally to be encountered among poets and artists! It is
+true some of the more privileged among them have the happy gift
+of surmounting internal pain, so as to bear their burden always
+lightly, able to laugh with their companions over the toils of
+the way, or at least always able to preserve a gentle and calm
+serenity which, like a mute pledge of hope and consolation,
+animates, elevates, and encourages their associates, imparting to
+them, while they remain under the influence of this placid
+atmosphere, a freedom of spirit which appears so much the more
+vivid, the more strongly it contrasts with their habitual ennui,
+their abstraction, their natural gloom, their usual indifference.
+
+Chopin did not belong to either of the above mentioned classes;
+he possessed the innate grace of a Polish welcome, by which the
+host is not only bound to fulfill the common laws and duties of
+hospitality, but is obliged to relinquish all thought of himself,
+to devote all his powers to promote the enjoyment of his guests.
+It was a pleasant thing to visit him; his visitors were always
+charmed; he knew how to put them at once at ease, making them
+masters of every thing, and placing every thing at their
+disposal. In doing the honors of his own cabin, even the simple
+laborer of Sclavic race never departs from this munificence; more
+joyously eager in his welcome than the Arab in his tent, he
+compensates for the splendor which may be wanting in his
+reception by an adage which he never fails to repeat, and which
+is also repealed by the grand seignior after the most luxurious
+repasts served under gilded canopies: CZYM BOHAT, TYM RAD--which
+is thus paraphrased for foreigners: "Deign graciously to pardon
+all that is unworthy of you, it is all my humble riches which I
+place at your feet." This formula [Footnote: All the Polish
+formulas of courtesy retain the strong impress of the
+hyperbolical expressions of the Eastern languages. The titles of
+"very powerful and very enlightened seigniors" are still
+obligatory. The Poles, in conversation, constantly name each
+other Benefactor (DOBRODZIJ). The common salutation between men,
+and of men to women, is PADAM DO NOG: "I fall at your feet." The
+greeting of the people possesses a character of ancient solemnity
+and simplicity: SLAWA BOHU: "Glory to God."] is still pronounced
+with a national grace and dignity by all masters of families who
+preserve the picturesque customs which distinguished the ancient
+manners of Poland.
+
+Having thus described something of the habits of hospitality
+common in his country, the ease which presided over our reunions
+with Chopin will be readily understood. The flow of thought, the
+entire freedom from restraint, were of a character so pure that
+no insipidity or bitterness ever ensued, no ill humor was ever
+provoked. Though he avoided society, yet when his saloon was
+invaded, the kindness of his attention was delightful; without
+appearing to occupy himself with any one, he succeeded in finding
+for all that which was most agreeable; neglecting none, he
+extended to all the most graceful courtesy.
+
+It was not without a struggle, without a repugnance slightly
+misanthropic, that Chopin could be induced to open his doors and
+piano, even to those whose friendship, as respectful as faithful,
+gave them a claim to urge such a request with eagerness. Without
+doubt more than one of us can still remember our first improvised
+evening with him, in spite of his refusal, when he lived at
+Chaussee d'Antin.
+
+His apartment, invaded by surprise, was only lighted by some wax
+candles, grouped round one of Pleyel's pianos, which he
+particularly liked for their slightly veiled, yet silvery
+sonorousness, and easy touch, permitting him to elicit tones
+which one might think proceeded from one of those harmonicas of
+which romantic Germany has preserved the monopoly, and which were
+so ingeniously constructed by its ancient masters, by the union
+of crystal and water.
+
+As the corners of the room were left in obscurity, all idea of
+limit was lost, so that there seemed no boundary save the
+darkness of space. Some tall piece of furniture, with its white
+cover, would reveal itself in the dim light; an indistinct form,
+raising itself like a spectre to listen to the sounds which had
+evoked it. The light, concentrated round the piano and falling on
+the floor, glided on like a spreading wave until it mingled with
+the broken flashes from the fire, from which orange colored
+plumes rose and fell, like fitful gnomes, attracted there by
+mystic incantations in their own tongue. A single portrait, that
+of a pianist, an admiring and sympathetic friend, seemed invited
+to be the constant auditor of the ebb and flow of tones, which
+sighed, moaned, murmured, broke and died upon the instrument near
+which it always hung. By a strange accident, the polished surface
+of the mirror only reflected so as to double it for our eyes, the
+beautiful oval with silky curls which so many pencils have
+copied, and which the engraver has just reproduced for all who
+are charmed by works of such peculiar eloquence.
+
+Several men, of brilliant renown, were grouped in the luminous
+zone immediately around the piano: Heine, the saddest of
+humorists, listened with the interest of a fellow countryman to
+the narrations made him by Chopin of the mysterious country which
+haunted his ethereal fancy also, and of which he too had explored
+the beautiful shores. At a glance, a word, a tone, Chopin and
+Heine understood each other; the musician replied to the
+questions murmured in his ear by the poet, giving in tones the
+most surprising revelations from those unknown regions, about
+that "laughing nymph" [Footnote: Heine. SALOON- CHOPIN.] of whom
+he demanded news: "If she still continued to drape her silvery
+veil around the flowing locks of her green hair, with a coquetry
+so enticing?" Familiar with the tittle-tattle and love tales of
+those distant lands he asked: "If the old marine god, with the
+long white beard, still pursued this mischievous naiad with his
+ridiculous love?" Fully informed, too, about all the exquisite
+fairy scenes to be seen DOWN THERE--DOWN THERE, he asked "if the
+roses always glowed there with a flame so triumphant? if the
+trees at moonlight sang always so harmoniously?" When Chopin had
+answered, and they had for a long time conversed together about
+that aerial clime, they would remain in gloomy silence, seized
+with that mal du pays from which Heine suffered when he compared
+himself to that Dutch captain of the phantom ship, with his crew
+eternally driven about upon the chill waves, and "sighing in vain
+for the spices, the tulips, the hyacinths, the pipes of sea-
+foam, the porcelain cups of Holland...'Amsterdam! Amsterdam! when
+shall we again see Amsterdam!' they cry from on board, while the
+tempest howls in the cordage, beating them forever about in their
+watery hell." Heine adds: "I fully understand the passion with
+which the unfortunate captain once exclaimed: 'Oh if I should
+EVER again see Amsterdam! I would rather be chained forever at
+the corner of one of its streets, than be forced to leave it
+again!' Poor Van der Decken!"
+
+Heine well knew what poor Van der Decken had suffered in his
+terrible and eternal course upon the ocean, which had fastened
+its fangs in the wood of his incorruptible vessel, and by an
+invisible anchor, whose chain he could not break because it could
+never be found, held it firmly linked upon the waves of its
+restless bosom. He could describe to us when he chose, the hope,
+the despair, the torture of the miserable beings peopling this
+unfortunate ship, for he had mounted its accursed timbers, led on
+and guided by the hand of some enamored Undine, who, when the
+guest of her forest of coral and palace of pearl rose more
+morose, more satirical, more bitter than usual, offered for the
+amusement of his ill humor between the repasts, some spectacle
+worthy of a lover who could create more wonders in his dreams
+than her whole kingdom contained.
+
+Heine had traveled round the poles of the earth in this
+imperishable vessel; he had seen the brilliant visitor of the
+long nights, the aurora borealis, mirror herself in the immense
+stalactites of eternal ice, rejoicing in the play of colors
+alternating with each other in the varying folds of her glowing
+scarf. He had visited the tropics, where the zodiacal triangle,
+with its celestial light, replaces, during the short nights, the
+burning rays of an oppressive sun. He had crossed the latitudes
+where life becomes pain, and advanced into those in which it is a
+living death, making himself familiar, on the long way, with the
+heavenly miracles in the wild path of sailors who make for no
+port! Seated on a poop without a helm, his eye had ranged from
+the two Bears majestically overhanging the North, to the
+brilliant Southern Cross, through the blank Antarctic deserts
+extending through the empty space of the heavens overhead, as
+well as over the dreary waves below, where the despairing eye
+finds nothing to contemplate in the sombre depths of a sky
+without a star, vainly arching over a shoreless and bottomless
+sea! He had long followed the glittering yet fleeting traces left
+by the meteors through the blue depths of space; he had tracked
+the mystic and incalculable orbits of the comets as they flash
+through their wandering paths, solitary and incomprehensible,
+everywhere dreaded for their ominous splendor, yet inoffensive
+and harmless. He had gazed upon the shining of that distant star,
+Aldebaran, which, like the glitter and sullen glow in the eye of
+a vengeful enemy, glares fiercely upon our globe, without daring
+to approach it. He had watched the radiant planets shedding upon
+the restless eye which seeks them a consoling and friendly light,
+like the weird cabala of an enigmatic yet hopeful promise.
+
+Heine had seen all these things, under the varying appearances
+which they assume in different latitudes; he had seen much more
+also with which he would entertain us under strange similitudes.
+He had assisted at the furious cavalcade of "Herodiade;" he had
+also an entrance at the court of the king of "Aulnes" in the
+gardens of the "Hesperides"; and indeed into all those places
+inaccessible to mortals who have not had a fairy as godmother,
+who would take upon herself the task of counterbalancing all the
+evil experienced in life, by showering upon the adopted the whole
+store of fairy treasures.
+
+Upon that evening which we are now describing, Meyerbeer was
+seated next to Heine;--Meyerbeer, for whom the whole catalogue of
+admiring interjections has long since been exhausted! Creator of
+Cyclopean harmonics as he was, he passed the time in delight when
+following the detailed arabesques, which, woven in transparent
+gauze, wound in filmy veils around the delicate conceptions of
+Chopin.
+
+Adolphe Nourrit, a noble artist, at once ascetic and passionate,
+was also there. He was a sincere, almost a devout Catholic,
+dreaming of the future with the fervor of the Middle Ages, who,
+during the latter part of his life, refused the assistance of his
+talent to any scene of merely superficial sentiment. He served
+Art with a high and enthusiastic respect; he considered it, in
+all its divers manifestations, only a holy tabernacle, "the
+Beauty of which formed the splendor of the True." Already
+undermined by a melancholy passion for the Beautiful, his brow
+seemed to be turning into stone under the dominion of this
+haunting feeling: a feeling always explained by the outbreak of
+despair, too late for remedy from man--man, alas! so eager to
+explore the secrets of the heart--so dull to divine them!
+
+Hiller, whose talent was allied to Chopin's, and who was one of
+his most intimate friends, was there also. In advance of the
+great compositions which he afterwards published, of which the
+first was his remarkable Oratorio, "The Destruction of
+Jerusalem," he wrote some pieces for the Piano. Among these,
+those known under the title of Etudes, (vigorous sketches of the
+most finished design), recall those studies of foliage, in which
+the landscape painter gives us an entire little poem of light and
+shade, with only one tree, one branch, a single "motif," happily
+and boldly handled.
+
+In the presence of the spectres which filled the air, and whose
+rustling might almost be heard, Eugene Delacroix remained
+absorbed and silent. Was he considering what pallet, what
+brushes, what canvas he must use, to introduce them into visible
+life through his art? Did he task himself to discover canvas
+woven by Arachne, brushes made from the long eyelashes of the
+fairies, and a pallet covered with the vaporous tints of the
+rainbow, in order to make such a sketch possible? Did he then
+smile at these fancies, yet gladly yield to the impressions from
+which they sprung, because great talent is always attracted by
+that power in direct contrast to its own?
+
+The aged Niemcevicz, who appeared to be the nearest to the grave
+among us, listened to the "Historic Songs" which Chopin
+translated into dramatic execution for this survivor of times
+long past. Under the fingers of the Polish artist, again were
+heard, side by side with the descriptions, so popular, of the
+Polish bard, the shock of arms, the songs of conquerors, the
+hymns of triumph, the complaints of illustrious prisoners, and
+the wail over dead heroes. They memorized together the long
+course of national glory, of victory, of kings, of queens, of
+warriors; and so much life had these phantoms, that the old man,
+deeming the present an illusion, believed the olden times fully
+resuscitated.
+
+Dark and silent, apart from all others, fell the motionless
+profile of Mickiewicz: the Dante of the North, he seemed always
+to find "the salt of the stranger bitter, and his steps hard to
+mount."
+
+Buried in a fauteuil, with her arms resting upon a table, sat
+Madame Sand, curiously attentive, gracefully subdued. Endowed
+with that rare faculty only given to a few elect, of recognizing
+the Beautiful under whatever form of nature or of art it may
+assume, she listened with the whole force of her ardent genius.
+The faculty of instantaneously recognizing Beauty may perhaps be
+the "second sight," of which all nations have acknowledged the
+existence in highly gifted women. It is a kind of magical gaze
+which causes the bark, the mask, the gross envelope of form, to
+fall off; so that the invisible essence, the soul which is
+incarnated within, may be clearly contemplated; so that the ideal
+which the poet or artist may have vivified under the torrent of
+notes, the passionate veil of coloring, the cold chiseling of
+marble, or the mysterious rhythms of strophes, may be fully
+discerned. This faculty is much rarer than is generally supposed.
+It is usually felt but vaguely, yet--in its highest
+manifestations, it reveals itself as a "divining oracle," knowing
+the Past and prophesying the Future. It is a power which exempts
+the blessed organization which it illumes, from the bearing of
+the heavy burden of technicalities, with which the merely
+scientific drag on toward that mystic region of inner life, which
+the gifted attain with a single bound. It is a faculty which
+springs less from an acquaintance with the sciences, than from a
+familiarity with nature.
+
+The fascination and value of a country life consist in the long
+tete-a-tete with nature. The words of revelation hidden under the
+infinite harmonies of form, of sounds, of lights and shadows, of
+tones and warblings, of terror and delight, may best be caught in
+these long solitary interviews. Such infinite variety may appear
+crushing or distracting on a first view, but if faced with a
+courage that no mystery can appal, if sounded with a resolution
+that no length of time can abate, may give the clue to analogies,
+conformities, relations between our senses and our sentiments,
+and aid us in tracing the hidden links which bind apparent
+dissimilarities, identical oppositions and equivalent antitheses,
+and teach us the secrets of the chasms separating with narrow but
+impassable space, that which is destined to approach forever, yet
+never mingle; to resemble ever, yet never blend. To have awakened
+early, as did Madame Sand, to the dim whispering with which
+nature initiates her chosen to her mystic rites, is a necessary
+appanage of the poet. To have learned from her to penetrate the
+dreams of man when he, in his turn, creates, and uses in his
+works the tones, the warblings, the terrors, the delights,
+requires a still more subtle power; a power which Madame Sand
+possesses by a double right, by the intuitions of her heart, and
+the vigor of her genius. After having named Madame Sand, whose
+energetic personality and electric genius inspired the frail and
+delicate organization of Chopin with an intensity of admiration
+which consumed him, as a wine too spirituous shatters the fragile
+vase; we cannot now call up other names from the dim limbus of
+the past, in which so many indistinct images, such doubtful
+sympathies, such indefinite projects and uncertain beliefs, are
+forever surging and hurtling. Perhaps there is no one among us,
+who, in looking through the long vista, would not meet the ghost
+of some feeling whose shadowy form he would find impossible to
+pass! Among the varied interests, the burning desires, the
+restless tendencies surging through the epoch in which so many
+high hearts and brilliant intellects were fortuitously thrown
+together, how few of them, alas! possessed sufficient vitality to
+enable them to resist the numberless causes of death, surrounding
+every idea, every feeling, as well as every individual life, from
+the cradle to the grave! Even during the moments of the troubled
+existence of the emotions now past, how many of them escaped that
+saddest of all human judgments: "Happy, oh, happy were it dead!
+Far happier had it never been born!" Among the varied feelings
+with which so many noble hearts throbbed high, were there indeed
+many which never incurred this fearful malediction? Like the
+suicide lover in Mickiewicz's poem, who returns to life in the
+land of the Dead only to renew the dreadful suffering of his
+earth life, perhaps among all the emotions then so vividly felt
+there is not a single one which, could it again live, would
+reappear without the disfigurements, the brandings, the bruises,
+the mutilations, which were inflicted on its early beauty, which
+so deeply sullied its primal innocence! And if we should persist
+in recalling these melancholy ghosts of dead thoughts and buried
+feelings from the heavy folds of the shroud, would they not
+actually appal us, because so few of them possessed sufficient
+purity and celestial radiance to redeem them from the shame of
+being utterly disowned, entirely repudiated, by those whose bliss
+or torment they formed during the passionate hours of their
+absolute rule? In very pity ask us not to call from the Dead,
+ghosts whose resurrection would be so painful! Who could bear the
+sepulchral ghastly array? Who would willingly call them from
+their sheeted sleep? If our ideas, thoughts, and feelings were
+indeed to be suddenly aroused from the unquiet grave in which
+they lie buried, and an account demanded from them of the good
+and evil which they have severally produced in the hearts in
+which they found so generous an asylum, and which they have
+confused, overwhelmed, illumined, devastated, ruined, broken, as
+chance or destiny willed,--who could hope to endure the replies
+that would be made to questions so searching?
+
+If among the group of which we have spoken, every member of which
+has won the attention of many human souls, and must, in
+consequence, bear in his conscience the sharp sting of multiplied
+responsibilities, there should be found ONE who has not suffered
+aught, that was pure in the natural attraction which bound them
+together in this chain of glittering links, to fall into dull
+forgetfulness; one who allowed no breath of the fermentation
+lingering even around the most delicate perfumes, to embitter his
+memories; one who has transfigured and left to the immortality of
+art, only the unblemished inheritance of all that was noblest in
+their enthusiasm, all that was purest and most lasting of their
+joys; let us bow before him as before one of the Elect! Let us
+regard him as one of those whom the belief of the people marks as
+"Good Genii!" The attribution of superior power to beings
+believed to be beneficent to man, has received a sublime
+conformation from a great Italian poet, who defines genius as a
+"stronger impress of Divinity!" Let us bow before all who are
+marked with this mystic seal; but let us venerate with the
+deepest, truest tenderness those who have only used their
+wondrous supremacy to give life and expression to the highest and
+most exquisite feelings! and among the pure and beneficent genii
+of earth must indubitably be ranked the artist Chopin!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Lives of Artists--Pure Fame of Chopin--Reserve--Classic and
+Romantic Art-Language of the Sclaves--Chopin's Love of Home
+Memories.
+
+
+
+A natural curiosity is generally felt to know something of the
+lives of men who have consecrated their genius to embellish noble
+feelings through works of art, through which they shine like
+brilliant meteors in the eyes of the surprised and delighted
+crowd. The admiration and sympathy awakened by the compositions
+of such men, attach immediately to their own names, which are at
+once elevated as symbols of nobility and greatness, because the
+world is loath to believe that those who can express high
+sentiments with force, can themselves feel ignobly. The objects
+of this benevolent prejudice, this favorable presumption, are
+expected to justify such suppositions by the high course of life
+which they are required to lead. When it is seen that the poet
+feels with such exquisite delicacy all that which it is so sweet
+to inspire; that he divines with such rapid intuition all that
+pride, timidity, or weariness struggles to hide; that he can
+paint love as youth dreams it, but as riper years despair to
+realize it; when such sublime situations seem to be ruled by his
+genius, which raises itself so calmly above the calamities of
+human destiny, always finding the leading threads by which the
+most complicated knots in the tangled skein of life may be
+proudly and victoriously unloosed; when the secret modulations of
+the most exquisite tenderness, the most heroic courage, the most
+sublime simplicity, are known to be subject to his command,--it
+is most natural that the inquiry should be made if this wondrous
+divination springs from a sincere faith in the reality of the
+noble feelings portrayed, or whether its source is to be found in
+an acute perception of the intellect, an abstract comprehension
+of the logical reason.
+
+The question in what the life led by men so enamored of beauty
+differs from that of the common multitude, is then earnestly
+asked. This high poetic disdain,--how did it comport itself when
+struggling with material interests? These ineffable emotions of
+ethereal love,--how were they guarded from the bitterness of
+petty cares, from that rapidly growing and corroding mould which
+usually stifles or poisons them? How many of such feelings were
+preserved from that subtle evaporation which robs them of their
+perfume, that gradually increasing inconstancy which lulls us
+until we forget to call the dying emotions to account? Those who
+felt such holy indignation,--were they indeed always just? Those
+who exalted integrity,--were they always equitable? Those who
+sung of honor,--did they never stoop? Those who so admired
+fortitude,--have they never compromised with their own weakness?
+
+A deep interest is also felt in ascertaining how those to whom
+the task of sustaining our faith in the nobler sentiments through
+art has been intrusted, have conducted themselves in external
+affairs, where pecuniary gain is only to be acquired at the
+expense of delicacy, loyalty, or honor. Many assert that the
+nobler feelings exist only in the works of art. When some
+unfortunate occurrence seems to give a deplorable foundation to
+the words of such mockers, with what avidity they name the most
+exquisite conceptions of the poet, "vain phantoms!" How they
+plume themselves upon their own wisdom in having advocated the
+politic doctrine of an astute, yet honeyed hypocrisy; how they
+delight to speak of the perpetual contradiction between words and
+deeds!....With what cruel joy they detail such occurrences, and
+cite such examples in the presence of those unsteady restless
+souls, who are incited by their youthful aspirations and by the
+depression and utter loss of happy confidence which such a
+conviction would entail upon them, to struggle against a distrust
+so blighting! When such wavering spirits are engaged in the
+bitter combat with the harsh alternatives of life, or tempted at
+every turn by its insinuating seductions, what a profound
+discouragement seizes upon them when they are induced to believe
+that the hearts devoted to the most sublime thoughts, the most
+deeply initiated in the most delicate susceptibilities, the most
+charmed by the beauty of innocence, have denied, by their acts,
+the sincerity of their worship for the noble themes which they
+have sung as poets! With what agonizing doubts are they not
+filled by such flagrant contradictions! How much is their anguish
+increased by the jeering mockery of those who repeat: "Poetry is
+only that which might have been"--and who delight in blaspheming
+it by their guilty negations! Whatever may be the human short-
+comings of the gifted, believe the truths they sing! Poetry is
+more than the gigantic shadow of our own imagination,
+immeasurably increased, and projected upon the flying plane of
+the Impossible. POETRY and REALITY are not two incompatible
+elements, destined to move on together without commingling.
+Goethe himself confesses this. In speaking of a contemporary
+writer he says: "that having lived to create poems, he had also
+made his life a Poem." (Er lebte dichtend, und dichtete lebend.)
+Goethe was himself too true a poet not to know that Poetry only
+is, because its eternal Reality throbs in the noble impulses of
+the human heart.
+
+We have once before remarked that "genius imposes its own
+obligations." [Footnote: Upon Paganini, after his death.] If the
+examples of cold austerity and of rigid disinterestedness are
+sufficient to awaken the admiration of calm and reflective
+natures, whence shall more passionate and mobile organizations,
+to whom the dullness of mediocrity is insipid, who naturally seek
+honor or pleasure, and who are willing to purchase the object of
+their desires at any price--form their models? Such temperaments
+easily free themselves from the authority of their seniors. They
+do not admit their competency to decide. They accuse them of
+wishing to use the world only for the profit of their own dead
+passions, of striving to turn all to their own advantage, of
+pronouncing upon the effects of causes which they do not
+understand, of desiring to promulgate laws in spheres to which
+nature has denied them entrance. They will not receive answers
+from their lips, but turn to others to resolve their doubts; they
+question those who have drunk deeply from the boiling springs of
+grief, bursting from the riven clefts in the steep cliffs upon
+the top of which alone the soul seeks rest and light. They pass
+in silence by the still cold gravity of those who practice the
+good, without enthusiasm for the beautiful. What leisure has
+ardent youth to interpret their gravity, to resolve their chill
+problems? The throbbings of its impetuous heart are too rapid to
+allow it to investigate the hidden sufferings, the mystic
+combats, the solitary struggles, which may be detected even in
+the calm eye of the man who practices only the good. Souls in
+continual agitation seldom interpret aright the calm simplicity
+of the just, or the heroic smiles of the stoic. For them
+enthusiasm and emotion are necessities. A bold image persuades
+them, a metaphor leads them, tears convince them, they prefer the
+conclusions of impulse, of intuition, to the fatigue of logical
+argument. Thus they turn with an eager curiosity to the poets and
+artists who have moved them by their images, allured them by
+their metaphors, excited them by their enthusiasm. They demand
+from them the explanation, the purpose of this enthusiasm, the
+secret of this beauty!
+
+When distracted by heart-rending events, when tortured by intense
+suffering, when feeling and enthusiasm seem to be but a heavy and
+cumbersome load which may upset the life-boat if not thrown
+overboard into the abyss of forgetfulness; who, when menaced with
+utter shipwreck after a long struggle with peril, has not evoked
+the glorious shades of those who have conquered, whose thoughts
+glow with noble ardor, to inquire from them how far their
+aspirations were sincere, how long they preserved their vitality
+and truth? Who has not exerted an ingenious discernment to
+ascertain how much of the generous feeling depicted was only for
+mental amusement, a mere speculation; how much had really become
+incorporated with the habitual acts of life? Detraction is never
+idle in such cases; it seizes eagerly upon the foibles, the
+neglect, the faults of those who have been degraded by any
+weakness: alas, it omits nothing! It chases its prey, it
+accumulates facts only to distort them, it arrogates to itself
+the right of despising the inspiration to which it will grant no
+authority or aim but to furnish amusement, denying it any claim
+to guide our actions, our resolutions, our refusal, our consent!
+Detraction knows well how to winnow history! Casting aside all
+the good grain, it carefully gathers all the tares, to scatter
+the black seed over the brilliant pages in which the purest
+desires of the heart, the noblest dreams of the imagination are
+found; and with the irony of assumed victory, demands what the
+grain is worth which only germinates dearth and famine? Of what
+value the vain words, which only nourish sterile feelings? Of
+what use are excursions into realms in which no real fruit can
+ever be gathered? of what possible importance are emotions and
+enthusiasm, which always end in calculations of interest,
+covering only with brilliant veil the covert struggles of egotism
+and venal self-interest?
+
+With how much arrogant derision men given to such detraction,
+contrast the noble thoughts of the poet, with his unworthy acts!
+The high compositions of the artist, with his guilty frivolity!
+What a haughty superiority they assume over the laborious merit
+of the men of guileless honesty, whom they look upon as
+crustacea, sheltered from temptation by the immobility of weak
+organizations, as well as over the pride of those, who, believing
+themselves superior to such temptations, do not, they assert,
+succeed even as well as themselves in repudiating the pursuit of
+material well being, the gratification of vanity, or the pleasure
+of immediate enjoyment! What an easy triumph they win over the
+hesitation, the doubt, the repugnance of those who would fain
+cling to a belief in the possibility of the union of vivid
+feelings, passionate impressions, intellectual gifts, imaginative
+temperaments, with high integrity, pure lives, and courses of
+conduct in perfect harmony with poetic ideals!
+
+It is therefore impossible not to feel the deepest sadness when
+we meet with any fact which shows us the poet disobedient to the
+inspiration of the Muses, those guardian angels of the man of
+genius, who would willingly teach him to make of his own life the
+most beautiful of poems. What disastrous doubts in the minds of
+others, what profound discouragements, what melancholy apostasies
+are induced by the faltering steps of the man of genius! And yet
+it would be profanity to confound his errors in the same
+anathema, hurled against the base vices of meanness, the
+shameless effrontery of low crime! It would be sacrilege! If the
+acts of the poet have sometimes denied the spirit of his song,
+have not his songs still more powerfully denied his acts? May not
+the limited influence of his private actions have been far more
+than counterbalanced by the germs of creative virtues, scattered
+profusely through his eloquent writings? Evil is contagious, but
+good is truly fruitful! The poet, even while forcing his inner
+convictions to give way to his personal interest, still
+acknowledges and ennobles the sentiments which condemn himself;
+such sentiments attain a far wider influence through his works
+than can be exerted by his individual acts. Are not the number of
+spirits which have been calmed, consoled, edified, through these
+works, far greater than the number of those who have been injured
+by the errors of his private life? Art is far more powerful than
+the artist. His creations have a life independent of his
+vacillating will; for they are revelations of the "immutable
+beauty!" More durable than himself, they pass on from generation
+to generation; let us hope that they may, through the blessings
+of their widely spread influence, contain a virtual power of
+redemption for the frequent errors of their gifted authors. If it
+be indeed true that many of those who have immortalized their
+sensibility and their aspirations, by robing them in the garb of
+surpassing eloquence, have, nevertheless, stifled these high
+aspirations, abused these quick sensibilities,--how many have
+they not confirmed, strengthened and encouraged to pursue a noble
+course, through the works created by their genius! A generous
+indulgence towards them would be but justice! It is hard to be
+forced to claim simple justice for them; unpleasant to be
+constrained to defend those whom we wish to be admired, to excuse
+those whom we wish to see venerated!
+
+With what exultant feelings of just pride may the friend and
+artist remember a career in which there are no jarring
+dissonances; no contradictions, for which he is forced to claim
+indulgence; no errors, whose source must be found in palliation
+of their existence; no extreme, to be accounted for as the
+consequence of "excess of cause." How sweet it is to be able to
+name one who has fully proved that it is not only apathetic
+beings whom no fascination can attract, no illusion betray, who
+are able to limit themselves within the strict routine of honored
+and honorable laws, who may justly claim that elevation of soul,
+which no reverse subdues, and which is never found in
+contradiction with its better self! Doubly dear and doubly
+honored must the memory of Chopin, in this respect, ever remain!
+Dear to the friends and artists who have known him in his
+lifetime, dear to the unknown friends who shall learn to love him
+through his poetic song, as well as to the artists who, in
+succeeding him, shall find their glory in being worthy of him!
+
+The character of Chopin, in none of its numerous folds, concealed
+a single movement, a single impulse, which was not dictated by
+the nicest sense of honor, the most delicate appreciation of
+affection. Yet no nature was ever more formed to justify
+eccentricity, whims, and abrupt caprices. His imagination was
+ardent, his feelings almost violent, his physical organization
+weak, irritable and sickly. Who can measure the amount of
+suffering arising from such contrasts? It must have been bitter,
+but he never allowed it to be seen! He kept the secret of his
+torments, he veiled them from all eyes under the impenetrable
+serenity of a haughty resignation.
+
+The delicacy of his heart and constitution imposed upon him the
+woman's torture, that of enduring agonies never to be confessed,
+thus giving to his fate some of the darker hues of feminine
+destiny. Excluded, by the infirm state of his health, from the
+exciting arena of ordinary activity, without any taste for the
+useless buzzing, in which a few bees, joined with many wasps,
+expend their superfluous strength, he built apart from all noisy
+and frequented routes a secluded cell for himself. Neither
+adventures, embarrassments, nor episodes, mark his life, which he
+succeeded in simplifying, although surrounded by circumstances
+which rendered such a result difficult of attainment. His own
+feelings, his own impressions, were his events; more important in
+his eyes than the chances and changes of external life. He
+constantly gave lessons with regularity and assiduity; domestic
+and daily tasks, they were given conscientiously and
+satisfactorily. As the devout in prayer, so he poured out his
+soul in his compositions, expressing in them those passions of
+the heart, those unexpressed sorrows, to which the pious give
+vent in their communion with their Maker. What they never say
+except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions;
+uttering in the language of the tones those mysteries of passion
+and of grief which man has been permitted to understand without
+words, because there are no words adequate for their expression.
+
+The care taken by Chopin to avoid the zig-zags of life, to
+eliminate from it all that was useless, to prevent its crumbling
+into masses without form, has deprived his own course of
+incident. The vague lines and indications surrounding his figure
+like misty clouds, disappear under the touch which would strive
+to follow or trace their outlines. He takes part in no actions,
+no drama, no entanglements, no denouements. He exercised a
+decisive influence upon no human being. His will never encroached
+upon the desires of another, he never constrained any other
+spirit, or crashed it under the domination of his own, He never
+tyrannized over another heart, he never placed a conquering hand
+upon the destiny of another being. He sought nothing; he would
+have scorned to have made any demands. Like Tasso, he might say:
+
+Brama assai, poco spera, e nulla chiede. In compensation, he
+escaped from all ties; from the affections which might have
+influenced him, or led him into more tumultuous spheres. Ready to
+yield all, he never gave himself. Perhaps he knew what exclusive
+devotion, what love without limit he was worthy of inspiring, of
+understanding, of sharing! Like other ardent and ambitions
+natures, he may have thought if love and friendship are not all--
+they are nothing! Perhaps it would have been more painful for him
+to have accepted a part, any thing less than all, than to have
+relinquished all, and thus to have remained at least faithful to
+his impossible Ideal! If these things have been so or not, none
+ever knew, for he rarely spoke of love or friendship. He was not
+exacting, like those whose high claims and just demands exceed
+all that we possess to offer them. The most intimate of his
+acquaintances never penetrated to that secluded fortress in which
+the soul, absent from his common life, dwelt; a fortress which he
+so well succeeded in concealing, that its very existence was
+scarcely suspected.
+
+In his relations and intercourse with others, he always seemed
+occupied in what interested them; he was cautions not to lead
+them from the circle of their own personality, lest they should
+intrude into his. If he gave up but little of his time to others,
+at least of that which he did relinquish, he reserved none for
+himself. No one ever asked him to give an account of his dreams,
+his wishes, or his hopes. No one seemed to wish to know what he
+sighed for, what he might have conquered, if his white and
+tapering fingers could have linked the brazen chords of life to
+the golden ones of his enchanted lyre! No one had leisure to
+think of this in his presence. His conversation was rarely upon
+subjects of any deep interest. He glided lightly over all, and as
+he gave but little of his time, it was easily filled with the
+details of the day. He was careful never to allow himself to
+wander into digressions of which he himself might become the
+subject. His individuality rarely excited the investigations of
+curiosity, or awakened vivid scrutiny. He pleased too much to
+excite much reflection. The ensemble of his person was
+harmonious, and called for no especial commentary. His blue eye
+was more spiritual than dreamy, his bland smile never writhed
+into bitterness. The transparent delicacy of his complexion
+pleased the eye, his fair hair was soft and silky, his nose
+slightly aquiline, his bearing so distinguished, and his manners
+stamped with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was
+always treated EN PRINCE. His gestures were many and graceful;
+the tone of his voice was veiled, often stifled; his stature was
+low, and his limbs slight. He constantly reminded us of a
+convolvulus balancing its heaven-colored cup upon an incredibly
+slight stem, the tissue of which is so like vapor that the
+slightest contact wounds and tears the misty corolla.
+
+His manners in society possessed that serenity of mood which
+distinguishes those whom no ennui annoys, because they expect no
+interest. He was generally gay, his caustic spirit caught the
+ridiculous rapidly and far below the surface at which it usually
+strikes the eye. He displayed a rich vein of drollery in
+pantomime. He often amused himself by reproducing the musical
+formulas and peculiar tricks of certain virtuosi, in the most
+burlesque and comic improvisations, in imitating their gestures,
+their movements, in counterfeiting their faces with a talent
+which instantaneously depicted their whole personality. His own
+features would then become scarcely recognizable, he could force
+the strangest metamorphoses upon them, but while mimicking the
+ugly and grotesque, he never lost his own native grace. Grimace
+was never carried far enough to disfigure him; his gayety was so
+much the more piquant because he always restrained it within the
+limits of perfect good taste, holding at a suspicious distance
+all that could wound the most fastidious delicacy. He never made
+use of an inelegant word, even in the moments of the most entire
+familiarity; an improper merriment, a coarse jest would have been
+shocking to him.
+
+Through a strict exclusion of all subjects relating to himself
+from conversation, through a constant reserve with regard to his
+own feelings, he always succeeded in leaving a happy impression
+behind him. People in general like those who charm them without
+causing them to fear that they will be called upon to render
+aught in return for the amusement given, or that the pleasurable
+excitement of gayety will be followed by the sadness of
+melancholy confidences the sight of mournful faces, or the
+inevitable reactions which occur in susceptible natures of which
+we may say: Ubi mel, ibi fel. People generally like to keep such
+"susceptible natures" at a distance; they dislike to be brought
+into contact with their melancholy moods, though they do not
+refuse a kind of respect to the mournful feelings caused by their
+subtle reactions; indeed such changes possess for them the
+attraction of the unknown and they are as ready to take delight
+in the description of such changing caprices, as they are to
+avoid their reality. The presence of Chopin was always feted. He
+interested himself so vividly in all that was not himself, that
+his own personality remained intact, unapproached and
+unapproachable, under the polished and glassy surface upon which
+it was impossible to gain footing.
+
+On some occasions, although very rarely, we have seen him deeply
+agitated. We have seen him grow so pale and wan, that his
+appearance was actually corpse-like. But even in moments of the
+most intense emotion, he remained concentrated within himself. A
+single instant for self-recovery always enabled him to veil the
+secret of his first impression. However full of spontaneity his
+bearing afterwards might seem to be, it was instantaneously the
+effect of reflection, of a will which governed the strange
+conflict of emotional and moral energy with conscious physical
+debility; a conflict whose strange contrasts were forever warring
+vividly within. The dominion exercised over the natural violence
+of his character reminds us of the melancholy force of those
+beings who seek their strength in isolation and entire self-
+control, conscious of the uselessness of their vivid indignation
+and vexation, and too jealous of the mysteries of their passions
+to betray them gratuitously.
+
+He could pardon in the most noble manner. No rancor remained in
+his heart toward those who had wounded him, though such wounds
+penetrated deeply in his soul, and fermented there in vague pain
+and internal suffering, so that long after the exciting cause had
+been effaced from his memory, he still experienced the secret
+torture. By dint of constant effort, in spite of his acute and
+tormenting sensibilities, he subjected his feelings to the rule
+rather of what ought to be, than of what is; thus he was grateful
+for services proceeding rather from good intentions than from a
+knowledge of what would have been agreeable to him; from
+friendship which wounded him, because not aware of his acute but
+concealed susceptibility. Nevertheless the wounds caused by such
+awkward miscomprehension are, of all others, the most difficult
+for nervous temperaments to bear. Condemned to repress their
+vexation, such natures are excited by degrees to a state of
+constantly gnawing irritability, which they can never attribute
+to the true cause. It would be a gross mistake to imagine that
+this irritation existed without provocation. But as a dereliction
+from what appeared to him to be the most honorable course of
+conduct was a temptation which he was never called upon to
+resist, because in all probability it never presented itself to
+him; so he never, in the presence of the more vigorous and
+therefore more brusque and positive individualities than his own,
+unveiled the shudder, if repulsion be too strong a term, caused
+by their contact or association.
+
+The reserve which marked his intercourse with others, extended to
+all subjects to which the fanaticism of opinion can attach. His
+own sentiments could only be estimated by that which he did not
+do in the narrow limits of his activity. His patriotism was
+revealed in the course taken by his genius, in the choice of his
+friends, in the preferences given to his pupils, and in the
+frequent and great services which he rendered to his compatriots;
+but we cannot remember that he took any pleasure in the
+expression of this feeling. If he sometimes entered upon the
+topic of politics, so vividly attacked, so warmly defended, so
+frequently discussed in Prance, it was rather to point out what
+he deemed dangerous or erroneous in the opinions advanced by
+others than to win attention for his own. In constant connection
+with some of the most brilliant politicians of the day, he knew
+how to limit the relations between them to a personal attachment
+entirely independent of political interests.
+
+Democracy presented to his view an agglomeration of elements too
+heterogeneous, too restless, wielding too much savage power, to
+win his sympathies. The entrance of social and political
+questions into the arena of popular discussion was compared, more
+than twenty years ago, to a new and bold incursion of barbarians.
+Chopin was peculiarly and painfully struck by the terror which
+this comparison awakened. He despaired of obtaining the safety of
+Rome from these modern Attilas, he feared the destruction of art,
+its monuments, its refinements, its civilization; in a word, he
+dreaded the loss of the elegant, cultivated if somewhat indolent
+ease described by Horace. Would the graceful elegancies of life,
+the high culture of the arts, indeed be safe in the rude and
+devastating hands of the new barbarians? He followed at a
+distance the progress of events, and an acuteness of perception,
+which he would scarcely have been supposed to possess, often
+enabled him to predict occurrences which were not anticipated
+even by the best informed. But though such observations escaped
+him, he never developed them. His concise remarks attracted no
+attention until time proved their truth. His good sense, full of
+acuteness, had early persuaded him of the perfect vacuity of the
+greater part of political orations, of theological discussions,
+of philosophic digressions. He began early to practice the
+favorite maxim of a man of great distinction, whom we have often
+heard repeat a remark dictated by the misanthropic wisdom of age,
+which was then startling to our inexperienced impetuosity, but
+which has since frequently struck us by its melancholy truth:
+"You will be persuaded one day as I am," (said the Marquis de
+Noailles to the young people whom he honored with his attention,
+and who were becoming heated in some naive discussions of
+differing opinions,) 'that it is scarcely possible to talk about
+any thing to any body." (Qu'il n'y a guere moyen de causer de
+quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit.)
+
+Sincerely religious, and attached to Catholicity, Chopin never
+touched upon this subject, but held his faith without attracting
+attention to it. One might have been acquainted with him for a
+long time, without knowing exactly what his religious opinion
+were. Perhaps to console his inactive hand an reconcile it with
+his lute, he persuaded himself to think: Il mondo va da se. We
+have frequently watched him during the progress of long,
+animated, and stormy discussions, in which he would take no part.
+In the excitement of the debate he was forgotten by the speakers,
+but we have often neglected to follow the chain of their
+reasoning, to fix our attention upon the features of Chopin,
+which were almost imperceptibly contracted when subjects touching
+upon the most important conditions of our existence were
+discussed with such eagerness and ardor, that it might have been
+thought our fates were to be instantly decided by the result of
+the debate. At such times, he appeared to us like a passenger on
+board of a vessel, driven and tossed by tempests upon the
+stormful waves, thinking of his distant country, watching the
+horizon, the stars, the manoeuvres of the sailors, counting their
+fatal mistakes, without possessing in himself sufficient force to
+seize a rope, or the energy requisite to haul in a fluttering
+sail.
+
+On one single subject he relinquished his premeditated silence,
+his cherished neutrality. In the cause of art he broke through
+his reserve, he never abdicated upon this topic the explicit
+enunciation of his opinions. He applied himself with great
+perseverance to extend the limits of his influence upon this
+subject. It was a tacit confession that he considered himself
+legitimately possessed of the authority of a great artist. In
+questions which he dignified by his competence, he never left any
+doubt with regard to the nature of his opinions. During several
+years his appeals were full of impassioned ardor, but later, the
+triumph of his opinions having diminished the interest of his
+role, he sought no further occasion to place himself as leader,
+as the bearer of any banner. In the only occurrence in which he
+took part in the conflict of parties, he gave proof of opinions,
+absolute, tenacious, and inflexible, as those which rarely come
+to the light usually are.
+
+Shortly after his arrival in Paris, in 1832, a new school was
+formed both in literature and music, and youthful talent
+appeared, which shook off with eclat the yoke of ancient
+formulas. The scarcely lulled political effervescence of the
+first years of the revolution of July, passed into questions upon
+art and letters, which attracted the attention and interest of
+all minds. ROMANTICISM was the order of the day; they fought with
+obstinacy for and against it. What truce could there be between
+those who would not admit the possibility of writing in any other
+than the already established manner, and those who thought that
+the artist should be allowed to choose such forms as he deemed
+best suited for the expression of his ideas; that the rule of
+form should be found in the agreement of the chosen form with the
+sentiments to be expressed, every different shade of feeling
+requiring of course a different mode of expression? The former
+believed in the existence of a permanent form, whose perfection
+represented absolute Beauty. But in admitting that the great
+masters had attained the highest limits in art, had reached
+supreme perfection, they left to the artists who succeeded them
+no other glory than the hope of approaching these models, more or
+less closely, by imitation, thus frustrating all hope of ever
+equalling them, because the perfecting of any process can never
+rival the merit of its invention. The latter denied that the
+immaterial Beautiful could have a fixed and absolute form. The
+different forms which had appeared in the history of art, seemed
+to them like tents spread in the interminable route of the ideal;
+mere momentary halting places which genius attains from epoch to
+epoch, and beyond which the inheritors of the past should strive
+to advance. The former wished to restrict the creations of times
+and natures the most dissimilar, within the limits of the same
+symmetrical frame; the latter claimed for all writers the liberty
+of creating their own mode, accepting no other rules than those
+which result from the direct relation of sentiment and form,
+exacting only that the form should be adequate to the expression
+of the sentiment. However admirable the existing models might be,
+they did not appear to them to have exhausted all the range of
+sentiments upon which art might seize, or all the forms which it
+might advantageously use. Not contented with the mere excellence
+of form, they sought it so far only as its perfection is
+indispensable for the complete revelation of the idea, for they
+were not ignorant that the sentiment is maimed if the form remain
+imperfect, any imperfection in it, like an opaque veil,
+intercepting the raying of the pure idea. Thus they elevated what
+had otherwise been the mere work of the trade, into the sphere of
+poetic inspiration. They enjoined upon genius and patience the
+task of inventing a form which would satisfy the exactions of the
+inspiration. They reproached their adversaries with attempting to
+reduce inspiration to the bed of Procrustes, because they refused
+to admit that there are sentiments which cannot be expressed in
+forms which have been determined upon beforehand, and of thus
+robbing art, in advance even of their creation, of all works
+which might attempt the introduction of newly awakened ideas,
+newly clad in new forms; forms and ideas both naturally arising
+from the naturally progressive development of the human spirit,
+the improvement of the instruments, and the consequent increase
+of the material resources of art.
+
+Those who saw the flames of Genius devour the old worm-eaten
+crumbling skeletons, attached themselves to the musical school of
+which the most gifted, the most brilliant, the most daring
+representative, was Berlioz. Chopin joined this school. He
+persisted most strenuously in freeing himself from the servile
+formulas of conventional style, while he earnestly repudiated the
+charlatanism which sought to replace the old abuses only by the
+introduction of new ones.
+
+During the years which this campaign of Romanticism lasted, in
+which some of the trial blows were master-strokes, Chopin
+remained invariable in his predilections, as well as in his
+repulsions. He did not admit the least compromise with those who,
+in his opinion, did not sufficiently represent progress, and who,
+in their refusal to relinquish the desire of displaying art for
+the profit of the trade, in their pursuit of transitory effects,
+of success won only from the astonishment of the audience, gave
+no proof of sincere devotion to progress. He broke the ties which
+he had contracted with respect when he felt restricted by them,
+or bound too closely to the shore by cordage which he knew to be
+decayed. He obstinately refused, on the other hand, to form ties
+with the young artists whose success, which he deemed
+exaggerated, elevated a certain kind of merit too highly. He
+never gave the least praise to any thing which he did not believe
+to be a real conquest for art, or which did not evince a serious
+conception of the task of an artist. He did not wish to be lauded
+by any party, to be aided by the manoeuvres of any faction, or by
+the concessions made by any schools in the persons of their
+chiefs. In the midst of jealousies, encroachments, forfeitures,
+and invasions of the different branches of art, negotiations,
+treaties, and contracts have been introduced, like the means and
+appliances of diplomacy, with all the artifices inseparable from
+such a course. In refusing the support of any accessory aid for
+his productions, he proved that he confidently believed that
+their own beauty would ensure their appreciation, and that he did
+not struggle to facilitate their immediate reception.
+
+He supported our struggles, at that time so full of uncertainty,
+when we met more sages shaking their heads, than glorious
+adversaries, with his calm and unalterable conviction. He aided
+us with opinions so fixed that neither weariness nor artifice
+could shake them, with a rare immutability of will, and that
+efficacious assistance which the creation of meritorious works
+always brings to a struggling cause, when it can claim them as
+its own. He mingled so many charms, so much moderation, so much
+knowledge with his daring innovations, that the prompt admiration
+he inspired fully justified the confidence he placed in his own
+genius. The solid studies which he had made, the reflective
+habits of his youth, the worship for classic models in which he
+had been educated, preserved him from losing his strength in
+blind gropings, in doubtful triumphs, as has happened to more
+than one partisan of the new ideas. His studious patience in the
+elaboration of his works sheltered him from the critics, who
+envenomed the dissensions by seizing upon those easy and
+insignificant victories due to omissions, and the negligence of
+inadvertence. Early trained to the exactions and restrictions of
+rules, having produced compositions filled with beauty when
+subjected to all their fetters, he never shook them off without
+an appropriate cause and after due reflection. In virtue of his
+principles he always progressed, but without being led into
+exaggeration or lured by compromise; he willingly relinquished
+theoretic formulas to pursue their results. Less occupied with
+the disputes of the schools and their terms, than in producing
+himself the best argument, a finished work, he was fortunate
+enough to avoid personal enmities and vexatious accommodations.
+
+Chopin had that reverential worship for art which characterized
+the first masters of the middle ages, but in expression and
+bearing he was more simple, modern, and less ecstatic. As for
+them, so art was for him, a high and holy vocation. Like them he
+was proud of his election for it, and honored it with devout
+piety. This feeling was revealed at the hour of his death through
+an occurrence, the significance of which is more fully explained
+by a knowledge of the manners prevalent in Poland. By a custom
+which still exists, although it is now falling into disuse, the
+Poles often chose the garments in which they wished to be buried,
+and which were frequently prepared a long time in advance.
+[Footnote: General K----, the author of Julie and Adolphe, a
+romance imitated from the New Heloise which was much in vogue at
+the time of its publication, and who was still living in Volhynia
+at the date of our visit to Poland, though more than eighty years
+of age, in conformity with the custom spoken of above, had caused
+his coffin to be made, and for more than thirty years it had
+always stood at the door of his chamber.] Their dearest wishes
+were thus expressed for the last time, their inmost feelings were
+thus at the hour of death betrayed. Monastic robes were
+frequently chosen by worldly men, the costumes of official
+charges were selected or refused as the remembrances connected
+with them were glorious or painful. Chopin, who, although among
+the first of contemporary artists, had given the fewest concerts,
+wished, notwithstanding, to be borne to the grave in the clothes
+which he had worn on such occasions. A natural and profound
+feeling springing from the inexhaustible sources of art, without
+doubt dictated this dying request, when having scrupulously
+fulfilled the last duties of a Christian, he left all of earth
+which he could not bear with him to the skies. He had linked his
+love for art and his faith in it with immortality long before the
+approach of death, and as he robed himself for his long sleep in
+the grave, he gave, as was customary with him, by a mute symbol,
+the last touching proof of the conviction he had preserved intact
+during the whole course of his life. Faithful to himself, he died
+adoring art in its mystic greatness, its highest revelations.
+
+In retiring from the turmoil of society, Chopin concentrated his
+cares and affections upon the circle of his own family and his
+early acquaintances. Without any interruption he preserved close
+relations with them; never ceasing to keep them up with the
+greatest care. His sister Louise was especially dear to him, a
+resemblance in the character of their minds, the bent of their
+feelings, bound them closely to each other. Louise frequently
+came from Warsaw to Paris to see him. She spent the last three
+months of his life with the brother she loved, watching over him
+with undying affection. Chopin kept up a regular correspondence
+with the members of his own family, but only with them. It was
+one of his peculiarities to write letters to no others; it might
+almost have been thought that he had made a vow to write to no
+strangers. It was curious enough to see him resort to all kinds
+of expedients to escape the necessity of tracing the most
+insignificant note. Many times he has traversed Paris from one
+end to the other, to decline an invitation to dinner, or to give
+some trivial information, rather than write a few lines which
+would have spared him all this trouble and loss of time. His
+handwriting was quite unknown to the greatest number of his
+friends. It is said he sometimes departed from this custom in
+favor of his beautiful countrywomen, some of whom possess several
+of his notes written in Polish. This infraction of what seemed to
+be a law with him, may be attributed to the pleasure he took in
+the use of this language. He always used it with the people of
+his own country, and loved to translate its most expressive
+phrases. He was a good French scholar, as the Sclaves generally
+are. In consequence of his French origin, the language had been
+taught him with peculiar care. But he did not like it, he did not
+think it sufficiently sonorous, and he deemed its genius cold.
+This opinion is very prevalent among the Poles, who, although
+speaking it with great facility, often better than their native
+tongue, and frequently using it in their intercourse with each
+other, yet complain to those who do not speak Polish of the
+impossibility of rendering the thousand ethereal and shifting
+modes of thought in any other idiom. In their opinion it is
+sometimes dignity, sometimes grace, sometimes passion, which is
+wanting in the French language. If they are asked the meaning of
+a word or a phrase which they may have cited in Polish, the reply
+invariably is: "Oh, that cannot be translated!" Then follow
+explanations, serving as comments to the exclamation, of all the
+subtleties, all the shades of meaning, all the delicacies
+contained in THE NOT TO BE TRANSLATED words. We have cited some
+examples which, joined to others, induce us to believe that this
+language has the advantage of making images of abstract nouns,
+and that in the course of its development, through the poetic
+genius of the nation, it has been enabled to establish striking
+and just relations between ideas by etymologies, derivations, and
+synonymes. Colored reflections of light and shade are thus thrown
+upon all expressions, so that they necessarily call into
+vibration through the mind the correspondent tone of a third,
+which modulates the thought into a major or minor mode. The
+richness of the language always permits the choice of the mode,
+but this very richness may become a difficulty. It is not
+impossible that the general use of foreign tongues in Poland may
+be attributed to indolence of mind or want of application; may be
+traced to a desire to escape the necessary labor of acquiring
+that mastery of diction indispensable in a language so full of
+sudden depths, of laconic energy, that it is very difficult, if
+not quite impossible, to support in it the commonplace. The vague
+agreements of badly defined ideas cannot be compressed in the
+nervous strength of its grammatical forms; the thought, if it be
+really low, cannot be elevated from its debasement or poverty; if
+it really soar above the commonplace, it requires a rare
+precision of terms not to appear uncouth or fantastic. In
+consequence of this, in proportion to the works published, the
+Polish literature should be able to show a greater number of
+chefs-d'oeuvre than can be done in any other language. He who
+ventures to use this tongue, must feel himself already master.
+
+[Footnote: It cannot be reproached with a want of harmony or
+musical charm. The harshness of a language does not always and
+absolutely depend upon the number of consonants, but rather upon
+the manner of their association. We might even assert, that in
+consequence of the absence of well-determined and strongly marked
+sounds, some languages have a dull and cold coloring. It is the
+frequent repetition of certain consonants which gives shadow,
+rhythm, and vigor to a tongue; the vowels imparting only a kind
+of light clear hue, which requires to be brought out by deeper
+shades. It is the sharp, uncouth, or unharmonious clashing of
+heterogeneous consonants which strikes the ear painfully. It is
+true the Sclavic languages make use of many consonants, but their
+connection is generally sonorous, sometimes pleasant to the ear,
+and scarcely ever entirely discordant, even when the combinations
+are more striking than agreeable. The quality of the sounds is
+rich, full, and varied. They are not straitened and contracted as
+if produced in a narrow medium, but extending through a
+considerable register, range through a variety of intonations.
+The letter L, almost impossible for those to pronounce, who have
+not acquired the pronunciation in their infancy, has nothing
+harsh in its sound. The ear receives from it an impression
+similar to that which is made upon the fingers by the touch of a
+thick woolen velvet, rough, but at the same time, yielding. The
+union of jarring consonants being rare, and the assonances easily
+multiplied, the same comparison might be employed to the ensemble
+of the effect produced by these idioms upon foreigners. Many
+words occur in Polish which imitate the sound of the thing
+designated by them. The frequent repetition of CH, (h aspirated,)
+of SZ, (CH in French,) of RZ, of CZ, so frightful to a profane
+eye, have however nothing barbaric in their sounds, being
+pronounced nearly like GEAI, and TCHE, and greatly facilitate
+imitations of the sense by the sound. The word DZWIEK, (read
+DZWIINQUE,) meaning sound, offers a characteristic example of
+this; it would be difficult to find a word which would reproduce
+more accurately the sensation which a diapason makes upon the
+ear. Among the consonants accumulated in groups, producing very
+different sounds, sometimes metallic, sometimes buzzing, hissing
+or rumbling, many diphthongs and vowels are mingled, which
+sometimes become slightly nasal, the A and E being sounded as ON
+and IN, (in French,) when they are accompanied by a cedilla. In
+juxtaposition with the E, (TSE,) which is pronounced with great
+softness, sometimes C, (TSIE,) the accented S is almost warbled.
+The Z has three sounds: the Z, (JAIS,) the Z, (ZED,) and the Z,
+(ZIED). The Y forms a vowel of a muffled tone, which, as the L,
+cannot be represented by any equivalent sound in French, and
+which like it gives a variety of ineffable shades to the
+language. These fine and light elements enable the Polish women
+to assume a lingering and singing accent, which they usually
+transport into other tongues. When the subjects are serious or
+melancholy, after such recitatives or improvised lamentations,
+they have a sort of lisping infantile manner of speaking, which
+they vary by light silvery laughs, little interjectional cries,
+short musical pauses upon the higher notes, from which they
+descend by one knows not what chromatic scale of demi and quarter
+tones to rest upon some low note; and again pursue the varied,
+brusque and original modulations which astonish the ear not
+accustomed to such lovely warblings, to which they sometimes give
+that air of caressing irony, of cunning mockery, peculiar to the
+song of some birds. They love to ZINZILYLER, and charming
+changes, piquant intervals, unexpected cadences naturally find
+place in this fondling prattle, making the language far more
+sweet and caressing when spoken by the women, than it is in the
+mouths of the men. The men indeed pride themselves upon speaking
+it with elegance, impressing upon it a masculine sonorousness,
+which is peculiarly adapted to the energetic movements of manly
+eloquence, formerly so much cultivated in Poland. Poetry commands
+such a diversity of prosodies, of rhymes, of rhythms, such an
+abundance of assonances from these rich and varied materials,
+that it is almost possible to follow MUSICALLY the feelings and
+scenes which it depicts, not only in mere expressions in which
+the sound repeats the sense, but also in long declamations. The
+analogy between the Polish and Russian, has been compared to that
+which obtains between the Latin and Italian. The Russian language
+is indeed more mellifluous, more lingering, more caressing,
+fuller of sighs than the Polish. Its cadencing is peculiarly
+fitted for song. The finer poems, such as those of Zukowski and
+Pouchkin, seem to contain a melody already designated in the
+metre of the verses; for example, it would appear quite possible
+to detach an ARIOSO or a sweet CANTIABLE from some of the stanzas
+of LE CHALE NOIR, or the TALISMAN. The ancient Sclavonic, which
+is the language of the Eastern Church, possesses great majesty.
+More guttural than the idioms which have arisen from it, it is
+severe and monotonous yet of great dignity, like the Byzantine
+paintings preserved in the worship to which it is consecrated. It
+has throughout the characteristics of a sacred language which has
+only been used for the expression of one feeling and has never
+been modulated or fashioned by profane wants.]
+
+Chopin mingled a charming grace with all the intercourse which he
+held with his relatives. Not satisfied with limiting his whole
+correspondence to them alone, he profited by his stay in Paris to
+procure for them the thousand agreeable surprises given by the
+novelties, the bagatelles, the little gifts which charm through
+their beauty, or attract as being the first seen of their kind.
+He sought for all that he had reason to believe would please his
+friends in Warsaw, adding constant presents to his many letters.
+It was his wish that his gifts should be preserved, that through
+the memories linked with them he might be often remembered by
+those to whom they were sent. He attached the greatest
+importance, on his side, to all the evidences of their affection
+for him. To receive news or some mark of their remembrance, was
+always a festival for him. He never shared this pleasure with any
+one, but it was plainly visible in his conduct. He took the
+greatest care of every thing that came from his distant friends,
+the least of their gifts was precious to him, he never allowed
+others to make use of them, indeed he was visibly uneasy if they
+touched them.
+
+Material elegance was as natural to him as mental; this was
+evinced in the objects with which he surrounded himself, as well
+as in the aristocratic grace of his manners. He was passionately
+fond of flowers. Without aiming at the brilliant luxury with
+which, at that epoch, some of the celebrities in Paris decorated
+their apartments, he knew how to keep upon this point, as well as
+in his style of dress, the instinctive line of perfect propriety.
+
+Not wishing the course of his life, his thoughts, his time, to be
+associated or shackled in any way by the pursuits of others, he
+preferred the society of ladies, as less apt to force him into
+subsequent relations. He willingly spent whole evenings in
+playing blind man's buff with the young people, telling them
+little stories to make them break into the silvery laughs of
+youth, sweeter than the song of the nightingale. He was fond of a
+life in the country, or the life of the chateau. He was ingenious
+in varying its amusements, in multiplying its enjoyments. He also
+loved to compose there. Many of his best works written in such
+moments, perhaps embalm and hallow the memories of his happiest
+days.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Birth and Early Life of Chopin--National Artists--Chopin embodies
+in himself the poetic sense of his whole nation--Opinion of
+Beethoven.
+
+
+
+CHOPIN was born in 1810, at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw. Unlike
+most other children, he could not, during his childhood, remember
+his own age, and the date of his birth was only fixed in his
+memory by a watch given him in 1820 by Madame Catalani, which
+bore the following inscription: "Madame Catalani to Frederic
+Chopin, aged ten years." Perhaps the presentiments of the artist
+gave to the child a foresight of his future! Nothing
+extraordinary marked the course of his boyhood; his internal
+development traversed but few phases, and gave but few
+manifestations. As he was fragile and sickly, the attention of
+his family was concentrated upon his health. Doubtless it was
+from this cause that he acquired his habits of affability, his
+patience under suffering, his endurance of every annoyance with a
+good grace; qualities which he early acquired from his wish to
+calm the constant anxiety that was felt with regard to him. No
+precocity of his faculties, no precursory sign of remarkable
+development, revealed, in his early years, his future superiority
+of soul, mind, or capacity. The little creature was seen
+suffering indeed, but always trying to smile, patient and
+apparently happy and his friends were so glad that he did not
+become moody or morose, that they were satisfied to cherish his
+good qualities, believing that he opened his heart to them
+without reserve, and gave to them all his secret thoughts.
+
+But there are souls among us who resemble rich travelers thrown
+among simple herdsmen, loading them with gifts during their
+sojourn among them, truly not at all in proportion to their own
+wealth, yet which are quite sufficient to astonish the poor
+hosts, and to spread riches and happiness in the midst of such
+simple habits. It is true that such souls give as much affection,
+it may be more, than those who surround them; every body is
+pleased with them, they are supposed to have been generous, when
+the truth is that in comparison with their boundless wealth they
+have not been liberal, and have given but little of their store
+of internal treasure.
+
+The habits in which Chopin grew up, in which he was rocked as in
+a form-strengthening cradle, were those peculiar to calm,
+occupied, and tranquil characters. These early examples of
+simplicity, piety, and integrity, always remained the nearest and
+dearest to him. Domestic virtues, religious habits, pious
+charities, and rigid modesty, surrounded him from his infancy
+with that pure atmosphere in which his rich imagination assumed
+the velvety tenderness characterizing the plants which have never
+been exposed to the dust of the beaten highways.
+
+He commenced the study of music at an early age, being but nine
+years old when he began to learn it. Shortly after he was
+confided to a passionate disciple of Sebastian Bach, Ziwna, who
+directed his studies during many years in accordance with the
+most classic models. It is not to be supposed that when he
+embraced the career of a musician, any prestige of vain glory,
+any fantastic perspective, dazzled his eyes, or excited the hopes
+of his family. In order to become a skillful and able master, he
+studied seriously and conscientiously, without dreaming of the
+greater or less amount of fame he would be able to obtain as the
+fruit of his lessons and assiduous labors.
+
+In consequence of the generous and discriminating protection
+always granted by Prince Antoine Radziwill to the arts, and to
+genius, which he had the power of recognizing both as a man of
+intellect and as a distinguished artist; Chopin was early placed
+in one of the first colleges in Warsaw. Prince Radziwill did not
+cultivate music only as a simple dilettante, he was also a
+remarkable composer. His beautiful rendering of Faust, published
+some years ago, and executed at fixed epochs by the Academy of
+Song at Berlin, appears to us far superior to any other attempts
+which have been made to transport it into the realm of music, by
+its close internal appropriateness to the peculiar genius of the
+poem. Assisting the limited means of the family of Chopin, the
+Prince made him the inestimable gift of a finished education, of
+which no part had been neglected. Through the person of a friend,
+M. Antoine Korzuchowski, whose own elevated mind enabled him to
+understand the requirements of an artistic career, the Prince
+always paid his pension from his first entrance into college,
+until the completion of his studies. From this time until the
+death of Chopin, M. Antoine Korzuchowski always held the closest
+relations of friendship with him.
+
+In speaking of this period of his life, it gives us pleasure to
+quote the charming lines which may be applied to him more justly,
+than other pages in which his character is believed to have been
+traced, but in which we only find it distorted, and in such false
+proportions as are given in a profile drawn upon an elastic
+tissue, which has been pulled athwart, biased by contrary
+movements during the whole progress of the sketch. [Footnote:
+These extracts, with many that succeed them, in which the
+character of Chopin is described, are taken from Lucrezia
+Floriani, a novel by Madame Sand, in which the leading characters
+are said to be intended to represent Liszt, Chopin, and herself.-
+-Note of the Translator.]
+
+
+
+"Gentle, sensitive, and very lovely, at fifteen years of age he
+united the charms of adolescence with the gravity of a more
+mature age. He was delicate both in body and in mind. Through the
+want of muscular development he retained a peculiar beauty, an
+exceptional physiognomy, which had, if we may venture so to
+speak, neither age nor sex. It was not the bold and masculine air
+of a descendant of a race of Magnates, who knew nothing but
+drinking, hunting and making war; neither was it the effeminate
+loveliness of a cherub couleur de rose. It was more like the
+ideal creations with which the poetry of the middle ages adorned
+the Christian temples: a beautiful angel, with a form pure and
+slight as a young god of Olympus, with a face like that of a
+majestic woman filled with a divine sorrow, and as the crown of
+all, an expression at the same time tender and severe, chaste and
+impassioned.
+
+"This expression revealed the depths of his being. Nothing could
+be purer, more exalted than his thoughts; nothing more tenacious,
+more exclusive, more intensely devoted, than his
+affections....But he could only understand that which closely
+resembled himself....Every thing else only existed for him as a
+kind of annoying dream, which he tried to shake off while living
+with the rest of the world. Always plunged in reveries, realities
+displeased him. As a child he could never touch a sharp
+instrument without injuring himself with it; as a man, he never
+found himself face to face with a being different from himself
+without being wounded by the living contradiction...
+
+"He was preserved from constant antagonism by a voluntary and
+almost inveterate habit of never seeing or hearing any thing
+which was disagreeable to him, unless it touched upon his
+personal affections. The beings who did not think as he did, were
+only phantoms in his eyes. As his manners were polished and
+graceful, it was easy to mistake his cold disdain on
+insurmountable aversion for benevolent courtesy...
+
+"He never spent an hour in open-hearted expansiveness, without
+compensating for it by a season of reserve. The moral causes
+which induced such reserve were too slight, too subtle, to be
+discovered by the naked eye. It was necessary to use the
+microscope to read his soul, into which so little of the light of
+the living ever penetrated.......
+
+"With such a character, it seems strange he should have had
+friends: yet he had them, not only the friends of his mother who
+esteemed him as the noble son of a noble mother, but friends of
+his own age, who loved him ardently, and who were loved by him in
+return..... He had formed a high ideal of friendship; in the age
+of early illusions he loved to think that his friends and
+himself, brought up nearly in the same manner, with the same
+principles, would never change their opinions, and that no formal
+disagreement could ever occur between them.......
+
+"He was externally so affectionate, his education had been so
+finished, and he possessed so much natural grace, that he had the
+gift of pleasing even where he was not personally known. His
+exceeding loveliness was immediately prepossessing, the delicacy
+of his constitution rendered him interesting in the eyes of
+women, the full yet graceful cultivation of his mind, the sweet
+and captivating originality of his conversation, gained for him
+the attention of the most enlightened men. Men less highly
+cultivated, liked him for his exquisite courtesy of manner. They
+were so much the more pleased with this, because, in their
+simplicity, they never imagined it was the graceful fulfillment
+of a duty into which no real sympathy entered.
+
+"Could such people have divined the secrets of his mystic
+character, they would have said he was more amiable than loving--
+and with respect to them, this would have been true. But how
+could they have known that his real, though rare attachments,
+were so vivid, so profound, so undying?...
+
+"Association with him in the details of life was delightful. He
+filled all the forms of friendship with an unaccustomed charm,
+and when he expressed his gratitude, it was with that deep
+emotion which recompenses kindness with usury. He willingly
+imagined that he felt himself every day dying; he accepted the
+cares of a friend, hiding from him, lest it should render him
+unhappy, the little time he expected to profit by them. He
+possessed great physical courage, and if he did not accept with
+the heroic recklessness of youth the idea of approaching death,
+at least he cherished the expectation of it with a kind of bitter
+pleasure."...
+
+The attachment which he felt for a young lady, who never ceased
+to feel a reverential homage for him, may be traced back to his
+early youth. The tempest which in one of its sudden gusts tore
+Chopin from his native soil, like a bird dreamy and abstracted
+surprised by the storm upon the branches of a foreign tree,
+sundered the ties of this first love, and robbed the exile of a
+faithful and devoted wife, as well as disinherited him of a
+country. He never found the realization of that happiness of
+which he had once dreamed with her, though he won the glory of
+which perhaps he had never thought. Like the Madonnas of Luini
+whose looks are so full of earnest tenderness, this young girl
+was sweet and beautiful. She lived on calm, but sad. No doubt the
+sadness increased in that pure soul when she knew that no
+devotion tender as her own, ever came to sweeten the existence of
+one whom she had adored with that ingenuous submission, that
+exclusive devotion, that entire self-forgetfulness, naive and
+sublime, which transform the woman into the angel.
+
+Those who are gifted by nature with the beautiful, yet fatal
+energies of genius, and who are consequently forbidden to
+sacrifice the care of their glory to the exactions of their love,
+are probably right in fixing limits to the abnegation of their
+own personality. But the divine emotions due to absolute
+devotion, may be regretted even in the presence of the most
+sparkling endowments of genius. The utter submission, the
+disinterestedness of love, in absorbing the existence, the will,
+the very name of the woman in that of the man she loves, can
+alone authorize him in believing that he has really shared his
+life with her, and that his honorable love for her has given her
+that which no chance lover, accidentally met, could have rendered
+her: peace of heart and the honor of his name.
+
+This young Polish lady, unfortunately separated from Chopin,
+remained faithful to his memory, to all that was left of him. She
+devoted herself to his parents. The father of Chopin would never
+suffer the portrait which she had drawn of him in the days of
+hope, to be replaced by another, though from the hands of a far
+more skilful artist. We saw the pale cheeks of this melancholy
+woman, glow like alabaster when a light shines through its snow,
+many years afterwards, when in gazing upon this picture, she met
+the eyes of his father.
+
+The amiable character of Chopin won for him while at college the
+love of his fellow collegiates, particularly that of Prince
+Czetwertynski and his brothers. He often spent the vacations and
+days of festival with them at the house of their mother, the
+Princess Louise Czetwertynska, who cultivated music with a true
+feeling for its beauties, and who soon discovered the poet in the
+musician. Perhaps she was the first who made Chopin feel the
+charm of being understood, as well as heard. The Princess was
+still beautiful, and possessed a sympathetic soul united to many
+high qualities. Her saloon was one of the most brilliant and
+RECHERCHE in Warsaw. Chopin often met there the most
+distinguished women of the city. He became acquainted there with
+those fascinating beauties who had acquired a European celebrity,
+when Warsaw was so famed for the brilliancy, elegance, and grace
+of its society. He was introduced by the Princess Czetwertynska
+to the Princess of Lowicz; by her he was presented to the
+Countess Zamoyska; to the Princess Radziwill; to the Princess
+Jablonowska; enchantresses, surrounded by many beauties little
+less illustrious.
+
+While still very young, he has often cadenced their steps to the
+chords of his piano. In these meetings, which might almost be
+called assemblies of fairies, he may often have discovered,
+unveiled in the excitement of the dance, the secrets of
+enthusiastic and tender souls. He could easily read the hearts
+which were attracted to him by friendship and the grace of his
+youth, and thus was enabled early to learn of what a strange
+mixture of leaven and cream of roses, of gunpowder and tears of
+angels, the poetic Ideal of his nation is formed. When his
+wandering fingers ran over the keys, suddenly touching some
+moving chords, he could see how the furtive tears coursed down
+the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young neglected wife; how
+they moistened the eyes of the young men, enamored of, and eager
+for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play
+a simple prelude, then softened by the tones, leaning her rounded
+arm upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she
+suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of the
+lustrous eyes, the song sung by her youthful heart? Did not
+groups, like sportive nymphs, throng around him, and begging him
+for some waltz of giddying rapidity, smile upon him with such
+wildering joyousness, as to put him immediately in unison with
+the gay spirit of the dance? He saw there the chaste grace of his
+brilliant countrywomen displayed in the Mazourka, and the
+memories of their witching fascination, their winning reserve,
+were never effaced from his soul.
+
+In an apparently careless manner, but with that involuntary and
+subdued emotion which accompanies the remembrance of our early
+delights, he would sometimes remark that he first understood the
+whole meaning of the feeling which is contained in the melodies
+and rhythms of national dances, upon the days in which he saw
+these exquisite fairies at some magic fete, adorned with that
+brilliant coquetry which sparkles like electric fire, and
+flashing from heart to heart, heightens love, blinds it, or robs
+it of all hope. And when the muslins of India, which the Greeks
+would have said were woven of air, were replaced by the heavier
+folds of Venetian velvet, and the perfumed roses and sculptured
+petals of the hot-house camellias gave way to the gorgeous
+bouquets of the jewel caskets; it often seemed to him that
+however good the orchestra might be, the dancers glided less
+rapidly over the floor, that their laugh was less sonorous, their
+eye less luminous, than upon those evenings in which the dance
+had been suddenly improvised, because he had succeeded in
+electrifying his audience through the magic of his performance.
+If he electrified them, it was because he repeated, truly in
+hieroglyphic tones, but yet easily understood by the initiated,
+the secret whispers which his delicate ear had caught from the
+reserved yet impassioned hearts, which indeed resemble the
+Fraxinella, that plant so full of burning and vivid life, that
+its flowers are always surrounded by a gas as subtle as
+inflammable. He had seen celestial visions glitter, and illusory
+phantoms fade in this sublimated air; he had divined the meaning
+of the swarms of passions which are forever buzzing in it; he
+knew how these hurtling emotions fluttered through the reckless
+human soul; how, notwithstanding their ceaseless agitation and
+excitement, they could intermingle, interweave, intercept each
+other, without once disturbing the exquisite proportions of
+external grace, the imposing and classic charm of manner. It was
+thus that he learned to prize so highly the noble and measured
+manners which preserve delicacy from insipidity; petty cares from
+wearisome trifling; conventionalism from tyranny; good taste from
+coldness; and which never permit the passions to resemble, as is
+often the case where such careful culture does not rule, those
+stony and calcareous vegetables whose hard and brittle growth
+takes a name of such sad contrast: flowers of iron (FLOS FERRI).
+
+His early introduction into this society, in which regularity of
+form did not conceal petrifaction of heart, induced Chopin to
+think that the CONVENANCES and courtesies of manner, in place of
+being only a uniform mask, repressing the character of each
+individual under the symmetry of the same lines, rather serve to
+contain the passions without stifling them, coloring only that
+bald crudity of tone which is so injurious to their beauty,
+elevating that materialism which debases them, robbing them of
+that license which vulgarizes them, lowering that vehemence which
+vitiates them, pruning that exuberance which exhausts them,
+teaching the "lovers of the ideal" to unite the virtues which
+have sprung from a knowledge of evil, with those "which cause its
+very existence to be forgotten in speaking to those they love."
+As these visions of his youth deepened in the long perspective of
+memories, they gained in grace, in charm, in delight, in his
+eyes, fascinating him to such an extent that no reality could
+destroy their secret power over his imagination, rendering his
+repugnance more and more unconquerable to that license of
+allurement, that brutal tyranny of caprice, that eagerness to
+drink the cup of fantasy to the very dregs, that stormy pursuit
+of all the changes and incongruities of life, which rule in the
+strange mode of life known as LA BOHEME.
+
+More than once in the history of art and literature, a poet has
+arisen, embodying in himself the poetic sense of a whole nation,
+an entire epoch, representing the types which his contemporaries
+pursue and strive to realize, in an absolute manner in his works:
+such a poet was Chopin for his country and for the epoch in which
+he was born. The poetic sentiments the most widely spread, yet
+the most intimate and inherent of his nation, were embodied and
+united in his imagination, and represented by his brilliant
+genius. Poland has given birth to many bards, some of whom rank
+among the first poets of the world.
+
+Its writers are now making strenuous efforts to display in the
+strongest light, the most glorious and interesting facts of its
+history, the most peculiar and picturesque phases of its manners
+and customs. Chopin, differing from them in having formed no
+premeditated design, surpasses them all in originality. He did
+not determine upon, he did not seek such a result; he created no
+ideal a priori. Without having predetermined to transport himself
+into the past, he constantly remembered the glories of his
+country, he understood and sung the loves and tears of his
+contemporaries without having analyzed them in advance. He did not
+task himself, nor study to be a national musician. Like all truly
+national poets he sang spontaneously without premeditated design
+or preconceived choice all that inspiration dictated to him, as
+we hear it gushing forth in his songs without labor, almost
+without effort. He repeated in the most idealized form the
+emotions which had animated and embellished his youth; under the
+magic delicacy of his pen he displayed the Ideal, which is, if we
+may be permitted so to speak, the Real among his people; an Ideal
+really in existence among them, which every one in general and
+each one in particular approaches by the one or the other of its
+many sides. Without assuming to do so, he collected in luminous
+sheaves the impressions felt everywhere throughout his country--
+vaguely felt it is true, yet in fragments pervading all hearts.
+Is it not by this power of reproducing in a poetic formula,
+enchanting to the imagination of all nations, the indefinite
+shades of feeling widely scattered but frequently met among their
+compatriots, that the artists truly national are distinguished?
+
+Not without reason has the task been undertaken of collecting the
+melodies indigenous to every country. It appears to us it would
+be of still deeper interest, to trace the influences forming the
+characteristic powers of the authors most deeply inspired by the
+genius of the nation to which they belong. Until the present
+epoch there have been very few distinctive compositions, which
+stand out from the two great divisions of the German and Italian
+schools of music. But with the immense development which this art
+seems destined to attain, perhaps renewing for us the glorious
+era of the Painters of the CINQUE CENTO, it is highly probable
+that composers will appear whose works will be marked by an
+originality drawn from differences of organization, of races, and
+of climates. It is to be presumed that we will be able to
+recognize the influences of the country in which they were born
+upon the great masters in music, as well as in the other arts;
+that we will be able to distinguish the peculiar and predominant
+traits of the national genius more completely developed, more
+poetically true, more interesting to study, in the pages of their
+compositions than in the crude, incorrect, uncertain, vague and
+tremulous sketches of the uncultured people.
+
+Chopin must be ranked among the first musicians thus
+individualizing in themselves the poetic sense of an entire
+nation, not because he adopted the rhythm of POLONAISES,
+MAZOURKAS, and CRACOVIENNES, and called many of his works by such
+names, for in so doing he would have limited himself to the
+multiplication of such works alone, and would always have given
+us the same mode, the remembrance of the same thing; a
+reproduction which would soon have grown wearisome, serving but
+to multiply compositions of similar form, which must have soon
+grown more or less monotonous. It is because he filled these
+forms with the feelings peculiar to his country, because the
+expression of the national heart may be found under all the modes
+in which he has written, that he is entitled to be considered a
+poet essentially Polish. His PRELUDES, his NOCTURNES, his
+SCHERZOS, his CONCERTOS, his shortest as well as his longest
+compositions, are all filled with the national sensibility,
+expressed indeed in different degrees, modified and varied in a
+thousand ways, but always bearing the same character. An
+eminently subjective author, Chopin has given the same life to
+all his productions, animated all his works with his own spirit.
+All his writings are thus linked by a marked unity. Their
+beauties as well as their defects may be traced to the same order
+of emotions, to peculiar modes of feeling. The reproduction of
+the feelings of his people, idealized and elevated through his
+own subjective genius, is an essential requisite for the national
+poet who desires that the heart of his country should vibrate in
+unison with his own strains.
+
+By the analogies of words and images, we should like to render it
+possible for our readers to comprehend the exquisite yet
+irritable sensibility peculiar to ardent yet susceptible hearts,
+to haughty yet deeply wounded souls. We cannot flatter ourselves
+that in the cold realm of words we have been able to give any
+idea of such ethereal odorous flames. In comparison with the
+vivid and delicious excitement produced by other arts, words
+always appear poor, cold, and arid, so that the assertion seems
+just: "that of all modes of expressing sentiments, words are the
+most insufficient." We cannot flatter ourselves with having
+attained in our descriptions the exceeding delicacy of touch,
+necessary to sketch that which Chopin has painted with hues so
+ethereal. All is subtle in his compositions, even the source of
+excitement, of passion; all open, frank, primitive impressions
+disappear in them; before they meet the eye, they have passed
+through the prism of an exacting, ingenious, and fertile
+imagination, and it has become difficult if not impossible to
+resolve them again into their primal elements. Acuteness of
+discernment is required to understand, delicacy to describe them.
+In seizing such refined impressions with the keenest
+discrimination, in embodying them with infinite art, Chopin has
+proved himself an artist of the highest order. It is only after
+long and patient study, after having pursued his sublimated ideas
+through their multiform ramifications, that we learn to admire
+sufficiently, to comprehend aright, the genius with which he has
+rendered his subtle thoughts visible and palpable, without once
+blunting their edge, or ever congealing their fiery flow.
+
+He was so entirely filled with the sentiments whose most perfect
+types he believed he had known in his own youth, with the ideas
+which it alone pleased him to confide to art; he contemplated art
+so invariably from the same point of view, that his artistic
+preferences could not fail to be influenced by his early
+impressions. In the great models and CHEFS-D'OEUVRE, he only
+sought that which was in correspondence with his own soul. That
+which stood in relation to it pleased him; that which resembled
+it not, scarcely obtained justice from him. Uniting in himself
+the frequently incompatible qualities of passion and grace he
+possessed great accuracy of judgment, and preserved himself from
+all petty partiality, but he was but slightly attracted by the
+greatest beauties, the highest merits, when they wounded any of
+the phases of his poetic conceptions. Notwithstanding the high
+admiration which he entertained for the works of Beethoven,
+certain portions of them always seemed to him too rudely
+sculptured; their structure was too athletic to please him, their
+wrath seemed to him too tempestuous, their passion too
+overpowering, the lion-marrow which fills every member of his
+phases was matter too substantial for his tastes, and the
+Raphaelic and Seraphic profiles which are wrought into the midst
+of the nervous and powerful creations of this great genius, were
+to him almost painful from the force of the cutting contrast in
+which they are frequently set.
+
+In spite of the charm which he acknowledged in some of the
+melodies of Schubert, he would not willingly listen to those in
+which the contours were too sharp for his ear, in which suffering
+lies naked, and we can almost feel the flesh palpitate, and hear
+the bones crack and crash under the rude embrace of sorrow. All
+savage wildness was repulsive to him. In music, in literature, in
+the conduct of life, all that approached the melodramatic was
+painful to him The frantic and despairing aspects of exaggerated
+romanticism were repellent to him, he could not endure the
+struggling for wonderful effects, for delicious excesses. "He
+loved Shakspeare only under many conditions. He thought his
+characters were drawn too closely to the life, and spoke a
+language too true; he preferred the epic and lyric syntheses
+which leave the poor details of humanity in the shade. For the
+same reason he spoke little and listened less, not wishing to
+give expression to his own thoughts, or to receive the thoughts
+of others, until after they had attained a certain degree of
+elevation."
+
+A nature so completely master of itself, so full of delicate
+reserve, which loved to divine through glimpses, presentiments,
+suppositions, all that had been left untold (a species of
+divination always dear to poets who can so eloquently finish the
+interrupted words) must have felt annoyed, almost scandalized, by
+an audacity which leaves nothing unexpressed, nothing to be
+divined. If he had been called upon to express his own views upon
+this subject, we believe he would have confessed that in
+accordance with his taste, he was only permitted to give vent to
+his feelings on condition of suffering much to remain unrevealed,
+or only to be divined under the rich veils of broidery in which
+he wound his emotions. If that which they agree in calling
+classic in art appeared to him too full of methodical
+restrictions, if he refused to permit himself to be garroted in
+the manacles and frozen in the conventions of systems, if he did
+not like confinement although enclosed in the safe symmetry of a
+gilded cage, it was not because he preferred the license of
+disorder, the confusion of irregularity. It was rather that he
+might soar like the lark into the deep blue of the unclouded
+heavens. Like the Bird of Paradise, which it was once thought
+never slept but while resting upon extended wing, rocked only by
+the breath of unlimited space at the sublime height at which it
+reposed; he obstinately refused to descend to bury himself in the
+misty gloom of the forests, or to surround himself with the
+howlings and wailings with which it is filled. He would not leave
+the depths of azure for the wastes of the desert, or attempt to
+fix pathways over the treacherous waves of sand, which the winds,
+in exulting irony, delight to sweep over the traces of the rash
+mortal seeking to mark the line of his wandering through the
+drifting, blinding swells.
+
+That style of Italian art which is so open, so glaring, so devoid
+of the attraction of mystery or of science, with all that which
+in German art bears the seal of vulgar, though powerful energy,
+was distasteful to him. Apropos of Schubert he once remarked:
+"that the sublime is desecrated when followed by the trivial or
+commonplace." Among the composers for the piano Hummel was one of
+the authors whom he reread with the most pleasure. Mozart was in
+his eyes the ideal type, the Poet par excellence, because he,
+less rarely than any other author, condescended to descend the
+steps leading from the beautiful to the commonplace. The father
+of Mozart after having been present at a representation of
+IDOMENEE made to his son the following reproach: "You have been
+wrong in putting in it nothing for the long ears." It was
+precisely for such omissions that Chopin admired him. The gayety
+of Papageno charmed him; the love of Tamino with its mysterious
+trials seemed to him worthy of having occupied Mozart; he
+understood the vengeance of Donna Anna because it cast but a
+deeper shade upon her mourning. Yet such was his Sybaritism of
+purity, his dread of the commonplace, that even in this immortal
+work he discovered some passages whose introduction we have heard
+him regret. His worship for Mozart was not diminished but only
+saddened by this. He could sometimes forget that which was
+repulsive to him, but to reconcile himself to it was impossible.
+He seemed to be governed in this by one of those implacable and
+irrational instincts, which no persuasion, no effort, can ever
+conquer sufficiently to obtain a state of mere indifference
+towards the objects of the antipathy; an aversion sometimes so
+insurmountable, that we can only account for it by supposing it
+to proceed from some innate and peculiar idiosyncrasy.
+
+After he had finished his studies in harmony with Professor
+Joseph Elsner, who taught him the rarely known and difficult task
+of being exacting towards himself, and placing the just value
+upon the advantages which are only to be obtained by dint of
+patience and labor; and after he had finished his collegiate
+course, it was the desire of his parents that he should travel in
+order that he might become familiar with the finest works under
+the advantage of their perfect execution. For this purpose he
+visited many of the German cities. He had left Warsaw upon one of
+these short excursions, when the revolution of the 29th of
+November broke out in 1830.
+
+Forced to remain in Vienna, he was heard there in some concerts,
+but the Viennese public, generally so cultivated, so prompt to
+seize the most delicate shades of execution, the finest
+subtleties of thought, during this winter were disturbed and
+abstracted. The young artist did not produce there the effect he
+had the right to anticipate. He left Vienna with the design of
+going to London, but he came first to Paris, where he intended to
+remain but a short time. Upon his passport drawn up for England,
+he had caused to be inserted: "passing through Paris." These
+words sealed his fate. Long years afterwards, when he seemed not
+only acclimated, but naturalized in France, he would smilingly
+say: I am "passing through Paris."
+
+He gave several concerts after his arrival in Paris, where he was
+immediately received and admired in the circles of the elite, as
+well as welcomed by the young artists. We remember his first
+appearance in the saloons of Pleyel, where the most enthusiastic
+and redoubled applause seemed scarcely sufficient to express our
+enchantment for the genius which had revealed new phases of
+poetic feeling, and made such happy yet bold innovations in the
+form of musical art.
+
+Unlike the greater part of young debutants, he was not
+intoxicated or dazzled for a moment by his triumph, but accepted
+it without pride or false modesty, evincing none of the puerile
+enjoyment of gratified vanity exhibited by the PARVENUS of
+success. His countrymen who were then in Paris gave him a most
+affectionate reception. He was intimate in the house of Prince
+Czartoryski, of the Countess Plater, of Madame de Komar, and in
+that of her daughters, the Princess de Beauveau and the Countess
+Delphine Potocka, whose beauty, together with her indescribable
+and spiritual grace, made her one of the most admired sovereigns
+of the society of Paris. He dedicated to her his second Concerto,
+which contains the Adagio we have already described. The ethereal
+beauty of the Countess, her enchanting voice enchained him by a
+fascination full of respectful admiration. Her voice was destined
+to be the last which should vibrate upon the musician's heart.
+Perhaps the sweetest sounds of earth accompanied the parting soul
+until they blended in his ear with the first chords of the
+angels' lyres.
+
+He mingled much with the Polish circle in Paris; with Orda who
+seemed born to command the future, and who was however killed in
+Algiers at twenty years of age; with Counts Plater, Grzymala,
+Ostrowski, Szembeck, with Prince Lubomirski, etc. etc. As the
+Polish families who came afterwards to Paris were all anxious to
+form acquaintance with him, he continued to mingle principally
+with his own people. He remained through them not only AU COURANT
+of all that was passing in his own country, but even in a kind of
+musical correspondence with it. He liked those who visited Paris
+to show him the airs or new songs they had brought with them, and
+when the words of these airs pleased him, he frequently wrote a
+new melody for them, thus popularizing them rapidly in his
+country although the name of their author was often unknown. The
+number of these melodies, due to the inspiration of the heart
+alone, having become considerable, he often thought of collecting
+them for publication. But he thought of it too late, and they
+remain scattered and dispersed, like the perfume of the scented
+flowers blessing the wilderness and sweetening the "desert air"
+around some wandering traveller, whom chance may have led upon
+their secluded track. During our stay in Poland we heard some of
+the melodies which are attributed to him, and which are truly
+worthy of him; but who would now dare to make an uncertain
+selection between the inspirations of the national poet, and the
+dreams of his people?
+
+Chopin kept for a long time aloof from the celebrities of Paris;
+their glittering train repelled him. As his character and habits
+had more true originality than apparent eccentricity, he inspired
+less curiosity than they did. Besides he had sharp repartees for
+those who imprudently wished to force him into a display of his
+musical abilities. Upon one occasion after he had just left the
+dining-room, an indiscreet host, who had had the simplicity to
+promise his guests some piece executed by him as a rare dessert,
+pointed to him an open piano. He should have remembered that in
+counting without the host, it is necessary to count twice. Chopin
+at first refused, but wearied at last by continued persecution,
+assuming, to sharpen the sting of his words, a stifled and
+languid tone of voice, he exclaimed: "Ah, sir, I have scarcely
+dined!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Madame Sand--Lelia--Visit to Majorca--Exclusive Ideals.
+
+
+
+In 1836 Madame Sand had not only published INDIANA, VALENTINE,
+and JACQUES, but also LELIA, that prose poem of which she
+afterwards said: "If I regret having written it, it is because I
+could not now write it. Were I in the same state of mind now as
+when it was written, it would indeed be a great consolation to me
+to be able to commence it." The mere painting of romances in cold
+water colors must have seemed, without doubt, dull to Madame
+Sand, after having handled the hammer and chisel of the sculptor
+so boldly, in modeling the grand lines of that semi-colossal
+statue, in cutting those sinewy muscles, which even in their
+statuesque immobility, are full of bewildering and seductive
+charm. Should we continue long to gaze upon it, it excites the
+most painful emotion. In strong contrast to the miracle of
+Pygmalion, Lelia seems a living Galatea, rich in feeling, full of
+love, whom the deeply enamored artist has tried to bury alive in
+his exquisitely sculptured marble, stifling the palpitating
+breath, and congealing the warm blood in the vain hope of
+elevating and immortalizing the beauty he adores. In the presence
+of this vivid nature petrified by art, we cannot feel that
+admiration is kindled into love, but, saddened and chilled, we
+are forced to acknowledge that love may be frozen into mere
+admiration.
+
+Brown and olive-hued Lelia! Dark as Lara, despairing as Manfred,
+rebellious as Cain, thou hast ranged through the depths of
+solitude! But thou art more ferocious, more savage, more
+inconsolable than they, because thou hast never found a man's
+heart sufficiently feminine to love thee as they were loved, to
+pay the homage of a confiding and blind submission to thy virile
+charms, to offer thee a mute yet ardent devotion, to suffer its
+obedience to be protected by thy Amazonian force! Woman-hero!
+Like the Amazons, thou hast been valiant and eager for combats;
+like them thou hast not feared to expose the exquisite loveliness
+of thy face to the fierceness of the summer's sun, or the sharp
+blasts of winter! Thou hast hardened thy fragile limbs by the
+endurance of fatigue, thus robbing them of the subtle power of
+their weakness! Thou hast covered thy palpitating breast with a
+heavy cuirass, which has pressed and torn it, dyeing its snow in
+blood;--that gentle woman's bosom, charming as life, discreet as
+the grave, which is always adored by man when his heart is
+permitted to form its sole, its impenetrable buckler!
+
+After having blunted her chisel in polishing this statue, which,
+by its majesty, its haughty disdain, its look of hopeless
+anguish, shadowed by the frowning of the pure brows and by the
+long loose locks shivering with electric life, reminds us of
+those antique cameos on which we still admire the perfect
+features, the beautiful yet fatal brow, the haughty smile of the
+Medusa, whose gaze paralyzed and stopped the pulses of the human
+heart;--Madame Sand in vain sought another form for the
+expression of the emotions which tortured her insatiate soul.
+After having draped this figure with the highest art,
+accumulating every species of masculine greatness upon it in
+order to compensate for the highest of all qualities which she
+repudiated for it, the grandeur of, "utter self-abnegation for
+love," which the many-sided poet has placed in the empyrean and
+called "the Eternal Feminine," (DAS EWIGWEIBLICHE,)--a greatness
+which is love existing before any of its joys, surviving all its
+sorrows;--after having caused Don Juan to be cursed, and a divine
+hymn to be chanted to Desire by Lelia, who, as well as Don Juan,
+had repulsed the only delight which crowns desire, the luxury of
+self-abnegation,--after having fully revenged Elvira by the
+creation of Stenio,--after having scorned man more than Don Juan
+had degraded woman,--Madame Sand, in her LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR,
+depicts the shivering palsy, the painful lethargy which seizes
+the artist, when, having incorporated the emotion which inspired
+him in his work, his imagination still remains under the
+domination of the insatiate idea without being able to find
+another form in which to incarnate it. Such poetic sufferings
+were well understood by Byron, when he makes Tasso shed his most
+bitter tears, not for his chains, not for his physical
+sufferings, not for the ignominy heaped upon him, but for his
+finished Epic, for the ideal world created by his thought and now
+about to close its doors upon him, and by thus expelling him from
+its enchanted realm, rendering him at last sensible of the gloomy
+realities around him:--
+
+
+     "But this is o'er--my pleasant task is done:--
+     My long-sustaining friend of many years:
+     If I do blot thy final page with tears,
+     Know that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
+     But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
+     Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
+     And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight,
+     Thou too art gone--and so is my delight."
+
+                                   LAMENT OF TASSO.--BYRON.
+
+
+At this epoch, Madame Sand often heard a musician, one of the
+friends who had greeted Chopin with the most enthusiastic joy
+upon his arrival at Paris, speak of him. She heard him praise his
+poetic genius even more than his artistic talent. She was
+acquainted with his compositions, and admired their graceful
+tenderness. She was struck by the amount of emotion displayed in
+his poems, with the effusions of a heart so noble and dignified.
+Some of the countrymen of Chopin spoke to her of the women of
+their country, with the enthusiasm natural to them upon that
+subject, an enthusiasm then very much increased by a remembrance
+of the sublime sacrifices made by them during the last war.
+Through their recitals and the poetic inspiration of the Polish
+artist, she perceived an ideal of love which took the form of
+worship for woman. She thought that guaranteed from dependence,
+preserved from inferiority, her role might be like the fairy
+power of the Peri, that ethereal intelligence and friend of man.
+Perhaps she did not fully understand what innumerable links of
+suffering, of silence, of patience, of gentleness, of indulgence,
+of courageous perseverance, had been necessary for the formation
+of the worship for this imperious but resigned ideal, beautiful
+indeed, but sad to behold, like those plants with the rose-
+colored corollas, whose stems, intertwining and interlacing in a
+network of long and numerous branches, give life to ruins;
+destined ever to embellish decay, growing upon old walls and
+hiding only tottering stones! Beautiful veils woven by beneficent
+Nature, in her ingenious and inexhaustible richness, to cover the
+constant decay of human things!
+
+As Madame Sand perceived that this artist, in place of giving
+body to his phantasy in porphyry and marble, or defining his
+thoughts by the creation of massive caryatides, rather effaced
+the contour of his works, and, had it been necessary, could have
+elevated his architecture itself from the soil, to suspend it,
+like the floating palaces of the Fata Morgana, in the fleecy
+clouds, through his aerial forms of almost impalpable buoyancy,
+she was more and more attracted by that mystic ideal which she
+perceived glowing within them. Though her arm was powerful enough
+to have sculptured the round shield, her hand was delicate enough
+to have traced those light relievos where the shadows of
+ineffaceable profiles have been thrown upon and trusted to a
+stone scarcely raised from its level plane. She was no stranger
+in the supernatural world, she to whom Nature, as to a favored
+child, had unloosed her girdle and unveiled all the caprices, the
+attractions, the delights, which she can lend to beauty. She was
+not ignorant of the lightest graces; she whose eye could embrace
+such vast proportions, had stooped to study the glowing
+illuminations painted upon the wings of the fragile butterfly.
+She had traced the symmetrical and marvellous network which the
+fern extends as a canopy over the wood strawberry; she had
+listened to the murmuring of streams through the long reeds and
+stems of the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous
+viper" may be heard; she had followed the wild leaps of the Will-
+with-a-wisp as it bounds over the surface of the meadows and
+marshes; she had pictured to herself the chimerical dwelling-
+places toward which it perfidiously attracts the benighted
+traveller; she had listened to the concerts given by the Cicada
+and their friends in the stubble of the fields; she had learned
+the names of the inhabitants of the winged republics of the woods
+which she could distinguish as well by their plumaged robes, as
+by their jeering roulades or plaintive cries. She knew the secret
+tenderness of the lily in the splendor of its tints; she had
+listened to the sighs of Genevieve, [Footnote: ANDRE] the maiden
+enamored of flowers.
+
+She was visited in her dreams by those "unknown friends" who came
+to rejoin her "when she was seized with distress upon a desolate
+shore," brought by a "rapid stream...in large and full
+bark"...upon which she mounted to leave the unknown shores, "the
+country of chimeras which make real life appear like a dream half
+effaced to those, who enamored from their infancy of large shells
+of pearl, mount them to land in those isles where all are young
+and beautiful...where the men and women are crowned with flowers,
+with their long locks floating upon their shoulders...holding
+vases and harps of a strange form...having songs and voices not
+of this world...all loving each other equally with a divine
+love...where crystal fountains of perfumed waters play in basins
+of silver...where blue roses bloom in vases of alabaster...where
+the perspectives are all enchanted...where they walk with naked
+feet upon the thick green moss, soft as carpets of velvet...where
+all sing as they wander among the fragrant groves." [Footnote:
+LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR]
+
+She knew these unknown friends so well that after having again
+seen them, "she could not dream of them without palpitations of
+the heart during the whole day." She was initiated into the
+Hoffmannic world--"she who had surprised such ineffable smiles
+upon the portraits of the dead;" [Footnote: SPIRIDSON] who had
+seen the rays of the sun falling through the stained glass of a
+Gothic window form a halo round loved heads, like the arm of God,
+luminous and impalpable, surrounded by a vortex of atoms;--she
+who had known such glorious apparitions, clothed with the purple
+and golden glories of the setting sun. The realm of fantasy had
+no myth with whose secret she was not familiar!
+
+Thus she was naturally anxious to become acquainted with one who
+had with rapid wing flown "to those scenes which it is impossible
+to describe, but which must exist somewhere, either upon the
+earth, or in some of the planets, whose light we love to gaze
+upon in the forests when the moon has set." [Footnote: LETTRES
+D'UN VOYAGEUR] Such scenes she had prayed never to be forced to
+desert--never desiring to bring her heart and imagination back to
+this dreary world, too like the gloomy coasts of Finland, where
+the slime and miry slough can only be escaped by scaling the
+naked granite of the solitary rocks. Fatigued with the massive
+statue she had sculptured, the Amazonian Lelia; wearied with the
+grandeur of an Ideal which it is impossible to mould from the
+gross materials of this earth; she was desirous to form an
+acquaintance with the artist "the lover of an impossible so
+shadowy"--so near the starry regions. Alas! if these regions are
+exempt from the poisonous miasmas of our atmosphere, they are not
+free from its desolating melancholy! Perhaps those who are
+transported there may adore the shining of new suns--but there
+are others not less dear whose light they must see extinguished!
+Will not the most glorious among the beloved constellation of the
+Pleiades there disappear? Like drops of luminous dew the stars
+fall one by one into the nothingness of a yawning abyss, whose
+bottomless depths no plummet has ever sounded, while the soul,
+contemplating these fields of ether, this blue Sahara with its
+wandering and perishing oases,--is stricken by a grief so
+hopeless, so profound, that neither enthusiasm nor love can ever
+soothe it more. It ingulfs and absorbs all emotions, being no
+more agitated by them than the sleeping waters of some tranquil
+lake, reflecting the moving images thronging its banks from its
+polished surface, are by the varied motions and eager life of the
+many objects mirrored upon its glassy bosom. The drowsy waters
+cannot thus be wakened from their icy lethargy. This melancholy
+saddens even the highest joy. "Through the exhaustion always
+accompanying such tension, when the soul is strained above the
+region which it naturally inhabits...the insufficiency of speech
+is felt for the first time by those who have studied it so much,
+and used it so well--we are borne from all active, from all
+militant instincts--to travel through boundless space--to be lost
+in the immensity of adventurous courses far, far above the
+clouds...where we no longer see that the earth is beautiful,
+because our gaze is riveted upon the skies...where reality is no
+longer poetically draped, as has been so skilfully done by the
+author of Waverley, but where, in idealizing poetry itself, the
+infinite is peopled with the spirits belonging only to its mystic
+realm, as has been done by Byron in his Manfred."
+
+Could Madame Sand have divined the incurable melancholy, the will
+which cannot blend with that of others, the imperious
+exclusiveness, which invariably seize upon imaginations
+delighting in the pursuit of dreams whose realities are nowhere
+to be found, or at least never in the matter-of-fact world in
+which the dreamers are constrained to dwell? Had she foreseen the
+form which devoted attachment assumes for such dreamers; had she
+measured the entire and absolute absorption which they will alone
+accept as the synonyme of tenderness? It is necessary to be in
+some degree shy, shrinking, and secretive as they themselves are,
+to be able to understand the hidden depths of characters so
+concentrated. Like those susceptible flowers which close their
+sensitive petals before the first breath of the North wind, they
+too veil their exacting souls in the shrouds of self
+concentration, unfolding themselves only under the warming rays
+of a propitious sun. Such natures have been called "rich by
+exclusiveness;" in opposition to those which are "rich by
+expansiveness." "If these differing temperaments should meet and
+approach each other, they can never mingle or melt the one into
+the other," (says the writer whom we have so often quoted) "but
+the one must consume the other, leaving nothing but ashes
+behind." Alas! it is the natures like that of the fragile
+musician whose days we commemorate, which, consuming themselves,
+perish; not wishing, not indeed being able, to live any life but
+one in conformity with their own exclusive Ideal.
+
+Chopin seemed to dread Madame Sand more than any other woman, the
+modern Sibyl, who, like the Pythoness of old, had said so many
+things that others of her sex neither knew nor dared to say. He
+avoided and put off all introduction to her. Madame Sand was
+ignorant of this. In consequence of that captivating simplicity,
+which is one of her noblest charms, she did not divine his fear
+of the Delphic priestess. At last she was presented to him, and
+an acquaintance with her soon dissipated the prejudices which he
+had obstinately nourished against female authors.
+
+In the fall of 1837, Chopin was attacked by an alarming illness,
+which left him almost without force to support life. Dangerous
+symptoms forced him to go South to avoid the rigor of winter.
+Madame Sand, always so watchful over those whom she loved, so
+full of compassion for their sufferings, would not permit him,
+when his health required so much care, to set out alone, and
+determined to accompany him. They selected the island of Majorca
+for their residence because the air of the sea, joined to the
+mild climate which prevails there, is especially salubrious for
+those who are suffering from affections of the lungs. Though he
+was so weak when he left Paris that we had no hope of his ever
+returning; though after his arrival in Majorca he was long and
+dangerously ill; yet so much was he benefited by the change that
+big health was improved during several years.
+
+Was it the effect of the balmy climate alone which recalled him
+to health? Was it not rather because his life was full of bliss
+that he found strength to live? Did he not regain strength only
+because he now wished to live? Who can tell how far the influence
+of the will extends over the body? Who knows what internal subtle
+aroma it has the power of disengaging to preserve the sinking
+frame from decay; what vital force it can breathe into the
+debilitated organs? Who can say where the dominion of mind over
+matter ceases? Who knows how far our senses are under the
+dominion of the imagination, to what extent their powers may be
+increased, or their extinction accelerated, by its influence? It
+matters not how the imagination gains its strange extension of
+power, whether through long and bitter exercise, or, whether
+spontaneously collecting its forgotten strength, it concentrates
+its force in some new and decisive moment of destiny: as when the
+rays of the sun are able to kindle a flame of celestial origin
+when concentrated in the focus of the burning glass, brittle and
+fragile though the medium be.
+
+All the long scattered rays of happiness were collected within
+this epoch of the life of Chopin; is it then surprising that they
+should have rekindled the flame of life, and that it should have
+burned at this time with the most vivid lustre? The solitude
+surrounded by the blue waves of the Mediterranean and shaded by
+groves of orange, seemed fitted in its exceeding loveliness for
+the ardent vows of youthful lovers, still believing in their
+naive and sweet illusions, sighing for happiness in "some desert
+isle." He breathed there that air for which natures unsuited for
+the world, and never feeling themselves happy in it, long with
+such a painful home-sickness; that air which may be found
+everywhere if we can find the sympathetic souls to breathe it
+with us, and which is to be met nowhere without them; that air of
+the land of our dreams; and which in spite of all obstacles, of
+the bitter real, is easily discovered when sought by two! It is
+the air of the country of the ideal to which we gladly entice the
+being we cherish, repeating with poor Mignon: DAHIN!
+DAHIN!...LASST UNS ZIEHN!
+
+As long as his sickness lasted, Madame Sand never left the pillow
+of him who loved her even to death, with an attachment which in
+losing all its joys, did not lose its intensity, which remained
+faithful to her even after all its memories had turned to pain:
+"for it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and consumed
+by the strength of his affection....Others seek happiness in
+their attachments; when they no longer find it, the attachment
+gently vanishes. In this they resemble the rest of the world. But
+he loved for the sake of loving. No amount of suffering was
+sufficient to discourage him. He could enter upon a new phase,
+that of woe; but the phase of coldness he could never arrive at.
+It would have been indeed a phase of physical agony--for his love
+was his life--and delicious or bitter, he had not the power of
+withdrawing himself a single moment from its domination."
+[Footnote: LUCRESIA FLORIANA] Madame Sand never ceased to be for
+Chopin that being of magic spells who had snatched him from the
+valley of the shadow of death, whose power had changed his
+physical agony into the delicious languor of love. To save him
+from death, to bring him back to life, she struggled courageously
+with his disease. She surrounded him with those divining and
+instinctive cares which are a thousand times more efficacious
+than the material remedies known to science. While engaged in
+nursing him, she felt no fatigue, no weariness, no
+discouragement. Neither her strength, nor her patience, yielded
+before the task. Like the mothers in robust health, who appear to
+communicate a part of their own strength to the sickly infant
+who, constantly requiring their care, have also their preference,
+she nursed the precious charge into new life. The disease
+yielded: "the funereal oppression which secretly undermined the
+spirit of Chopin, destroying and corroding all contentment,
+gradually vanished. He permitted the amiable character, the
+cheerful serenity of his friend to chase sad thoughts and
+mournful presentiments away, and to breathe new force into his
+intellectual being."
+
+Happiness succeeded to gloomy fears, like the gradual progression
+of a beautiful day after a night full of obscurity and terror,
+when so dense and heavy is the vault of darkness which weighs
+upon us from above, that we are prepared for a sudden and fatal
+catastrophe, we do not even dare to dream of deliverance, when
+the despairing eye suddenly catches a bright spot where the mists
+clear, and the clouds open like flocks of heavy wool yielding,
+even while the edges thicken under the pressure of the hand which
+rends them. At this moment, the first ray of hope penetrates the
+soul. We breathe more freely like those who lost in the windings
+of a dark cavern at last think they see a light, though indeed
+its existence is still doubtful. This faint light is the day
+dawn, though so colorless are its rays, that it is more like the
+extinction of the dying twilight,--the fall of the night-shroud
+upon the earth. But it is indeed the dawn; we know it by the
+vivid and pure breath of the young zephyrs which it sends forth,
+like avant-coureurs, to bear us the assurance of morn and safety.
+The balm of flowers fills the air, like the thrilling of an
+encouraged hope. A stray bird accidentally commences his song
+earlier than usual, it soothes the heart like a distant
+consolation, and is accepted as a promise for the future. As the
+imperceptibly progressive but sure indications multiply, we are
+convinced that in this struggle of light and darkness it is the
+shadows of night which are to yield. Raising our eyes to the Dome
+of lead above us, we feel that it weighs less heavily upon us,
+that it has already lost its fatal stability.
+
+Little by little the long gray lines of light increase, they
+stretch themselves along the horizon like fissures into a
+brighter world. They suddenly enlarge, they gain upon their dark
+boundaries, now they break through them, as the waters bounding
+the edge of a lake inundate in irregular pools the arid banks.
+Then a fierce opposition begins, banks and long dikes accumulate
+to arrest the progress. The clouds are oiled like ridges of sand,
+tossing and surging to present obstructions, but like the
+impetuous raging of irresistible waters, the light breaks through
+them, demolishes them, devours them, and as the rays ascend, the
+rolling waves of purple mist glow into crimson. At this moment
+the young dawn shines with a timid yet victorious grace, while
+the knee bends in admiration and gratitude before it, for the
+last terror has vanished, and we feel as if new born.
+
+Fresh objects strike upon the view, as if just called from chaos.
+A veil of uniform rose-color covers them all, but as the light
+augments in intensity, the thin gauze drapes and folds in shades
+of pale carnation, while the advancing plains grow clear in white
+and dazzling splendor.
+
+The brilliant sun delays no longer to invade the firmament,
+gaining new glory as he rises. The vapors surge and crowd
+together, rolling themselves from right to left, like the heavy
+drapery of a curtain moved by the wind. Then all breathes, moves,
+lives, hums, sings; the sounds mingle, cross, meet, and melt into
+each other. Inertia gives place to motion, it spreads,
+accelerates and circulates. The waves of the lake undulate and
+swell like a bosom touched by love. The tears of the dew,
+motionless as those of tenderness, grow more and more
+perceptible, one after another they are seen glittering on the
+humid herbs, diamonds waiting for the sun to paint with rainbow-
+tints their vivid scintillations. The gigantic fan of light in
+the East is ever opening larger and wider. Spangles of silver,
+borders of scarlet, violet fringes, bars of gold, cover it with
+fantastic broidery. Light bands of reddish brown feather its
+branches. The brightest scarlet at its centre has the glowing
+transparency of the ruby; shading into orange like a burning
+coal, it widens like a torch, spreads like a bouquet of flames,
+which glows and glows from fervor to fervor, ever more
+incandescent.
+
+At last the god of day appears! His blazing front is adorned with
+luminous locks of long floating hair. Slowly he seems to rise--
+but scarcely has he fully unveiled himself, than he starts
+forward, disengages himself from all around him, and, leaving the
+earth far below him, takes instantaneous possession of the
+vaulted heavens..............
+
+The memory of the days passed in the lovely isle of Majorca, like
+the remembrance of an entrancing ecstasy, which fate grants but
+once in life even to the most favored of her children, remained
+always dear to the heart of Chopin. "He [Footnote: Lucrezia
+Fioriani] was no longer upon this earth, he was in an empyrean of
+golden clouds and perfumes, his imagination, so full of exquisite
+beauty, seemed engaged in a monologue with God himself; and if
+upon the radiant prism in whose contemplation he forgot all else,
+the magic-lantern of the outer world would even cast its
+disturbing shadow, he felt deeply pained, as if in the midst of a
+sublime concert, a shrieking old woman should blend her shrill
+yet broken tones, her vulgar musical motivo, with the divine
+thoughts of the great masters." He always spoke of this period
+with deep emotion, profound gratitude, as if its happiness had
+been sufficient for a life-time, without hoping that it would
+ever be possible again to find a felicity in which the fight of
+time was only marked by the tenderness of woman's love, and the
+brilliant flashes of true genius. Thus did the clock of Linnaeus
+mark the course of time, indicating the hours by the successive
+waking and sleeping of the flowers, marking each by a different
+perfume, and a display of ever varying beauties, as each
+variegated calyx opened in ever changing yet ever lovely form!
+
+The beauties of the countries through which the Poet and Musician
+travelled together, struck with more distinctness the imagination
+of the former. The loveliness of nature impressed Chopin in a
+manner less definite, though not less strong. His soul was
+touched, and immediately harmonized with the external
+enchantment, yet his intellect did not feel the necessity of
+analyzing or classifying it. His heart vibrated in unison with
+the exquisite scenery around him, although he was not able at the
+moment to assign the precise source of his blissful tranquillity.
+Like a true musician, he was satisfied to seize the sentiment of
+the scenes he visited, while he seemed to give but little
+attention to the plastic material, the picturesque frame, which
+did not assimilate with the form of his art, nor belong to his
+more spiritualized sphere. However, (a fact that has been often
+remarked in organizations such as his,) as he was removed in time
+and distance from the scenes in which emotion had obscured his
+senses, as the clouds from the burning incense envelope the
+censer, the more vividly the forms and beauties of such scenes
+stood out in his memory. In the succeeding years, he frequently
+spoke of them, as though the remembrance was full of pleasure to
+him. But when so entirely happy, he made no inventory of his
+bliss. He enjoyed it simply, as we all do in the sweet years of
+childhood, when we are deeply impressed by the scenery
+surrounding us without ever thinking of its details, yet finding,
+long after, the exact image of each object in our memory, though
+we are only able to describe its forms when we have ceased to
+behold them.
+
+Besides, why should he have tasked himself to scrutinize the
+beautiful sites in Spain which formed the appropriate setting of
+his poetic happiness? Could he not always find them again through
+the descriptions of his inspired companion? As all objects, even
+the atmosphere itself, become flame-colored when seen through a
+glass dyed in crimson, so he might contemplate these delicious
+sites in the glowing hues cast around them by the impassioned
+genius of the woman he loved. The nurse of his sick- room--was
+she not also a great artist? Rare and beautiful union! If to the
+depths of tenderness and devotion, in which the true and
+irresistible empire of woman must commence, and deprived of which
+she is only an enigma without a possible solution, nature should
+unite the most brilliant gifts of genius,--the miraculous
+spectacle of the Greek firs would be renewed,--the glittering
+flames would again sport over the abysses of the ocean without
+being extinguished or submerged in the chilling depths, adding,
+as the living hues were thrown upon the surging waves, the
+glowing dyes of the purple fire to the celestial blue of the
+heaven-reflecting sea!
+
+Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that sublime
+humility of heart which gives the power to make those strange
+sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole Future; those
+immolations, as courageous as mysterious; those mystic and utter
+holocausts of self, not temporary and changing, but monotonous
+and constant,--through whose might alone tenderness may justly
+claim the higher name, devotion? Has not the force of genius its
+own exclusive and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of
+woman consist in the abdication of all exactions? Can the royal
+purple and burning flames of genius ever float upon the
+immaculate azure of woman's destiny?...
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Disappointment--Ill Health--Visit to England--Devotion of
+Friends--Last Sacraments--Delphina Potocka--Louise--M. Gutman--
+Death.
+
+
+
+FROM the date of 1840, the health of Chopin, affected by so many
+changes, visibly declined. During some years, his most tranquil
+hours were spent at Nohant, where he seemed to suffer less than
+elsewhere. He composed there, with pleasure, bringing with him
+every year to Paris several new compositions, but every winter
+caused him an increase of suffering. Motion became at first
+difficult, and soon almost impossible to him. From 1846 to 1847,
+he scarcely walked at all; he could not ascend the staircase
+without the most painful sensation of suffocation, and his life
+was only prolonged through continual care and the greatest
+precaution.
+
+Towards the Spring of 1847, as his health grew more precarious
+from day to day, he was attacked by an illness from which it was
+thought he could never recover. He was saved for the last time;
+but this epoch was marked by an event so agonizing to his heart
+that he immediately called it mortal. Indeed, he did not long
+survive the rupture of his friendship with Madame Sand, which
+took place at this date. Madame de Stael, who, in spite of her
+generous and impassioned heart, her subtle and vivid intellect,
+fell sometimes into the fault of making her sentences heavy
+through a species of pedantry which robbed them of the grace of
+"abandon,"--remarked on one of those occasions when the strength
+of her feelings made her forget the solemnity of her Genevese
+stiffness: "In affection, there are only beginnings!"
+
+This exclamation was based upon the bitter experience of the
+insufficiency of the human heart to accomplish the beautiful and
+blissful dreams of the imagination. Ah! if some blessed examples
+of human devotion did not sometimes occur to contradict the
+melancholy words of Madame de Stael, which so many illustrious as
+well as obscure facts seem to prove, our suspicions might lead us
+to be guilty of much ingratitude and want of trust; we might be
+led to doubt the sincerity of the hearts which surround us, and
+see but the allegorical symbols of human affections in the
+antique train of the beautiful Canephoroe, who carried the
+fragile and perfumed flowers to adorn some hapless victim for the
+altar!
+
+Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand,
+without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes
+when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave
+himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now. He stripped
+of their manifold significance! In spite of the many subterfuges
+employed by his friends to entice him from dwelling upon
+remembrances which always brought dangerous excitement with them,
+he loved to return to them; as if through the same feelings which
+had once reanimated his life, he now wished to destroy it,
+sedulously stifling its powers through the vapor of this subtle
+poison. His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting
+of his last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under
+this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to
+fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he
+refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one
+engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak of it, would
+he not always have thought of it? He seemed to inhale the poison
+rapidly and eagerly, that he might thus shorten the time in which
+he would be forced to breathe it!
+
+Although the exceeding fragility of his physical constitution
+might not have allowed him, under any circumstances, to have
+lingered long on earth, yet at least he might have been spared
+the bitter sufferings which clouded his last hours! With a tender
+and ardent soul, though exacting through its fastidiousness and
+excessive delicacy, he could not live unless surrounded by the
+radiant phantoms he had himself evoked; he could not expel the
+profound sorrow which his heart cherished as the sole remaining
+fragment of the happy past. He was another great and illustrious
+victim to the transitory attachments occurring between persons of
+different character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight
+in their first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling,
+and build hopes and illusions upon it which can never be
+realized. It is always the nature the most deeply moved, the most
+absolute in its hopes and attachments, for which all
+transplantation is impossible, which is destroyed and mined in
+the painful awakening from the absorbing dream! Terrible power
+exercised over man by the most exquisite gifts which he
+possesses! Like the coursers of the sun, when the hand of
+Phaeton, in place of guiding their beneficent career, permits
+them to wander at random, disordering the beautiful structure of
+the celestial spheres, they bring devastation and flames in their
+train! Chopin felt and often repeated that the sundering of this
+long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the
+chords which bound him to life.
+
+During this attack his life was despaired of for several days. M.
+Gutman, his most distinguished pupil, and during the last years
+of his life, his most intimate friend, lavished upon him every
+proof of tender attachment. His cares, his attentions, were the
+most agreeable to him. With the timidity natural to invalids, and
+with the tender delicacy peculiar to himself, he once asked the
+Princess Czartoryska, who visited him every day, often fearing
+that on the morrow he would no longer be among the living: "if
+Gutman was not very much fatigued? If she thought he would be
+able to continue his care of him;" adding, "that his presence was
+dearer to him than that of any other person." His convalescence
+was very slow and painful, leaving him indeed but the semblance
+of life. At this epoch he changed so much in appearance that he
+could scarcely be recognized The next summer brought him that
+deceptive decrease of suffering which it sometimes grants to
+those who are dying. He refused to quit Paris, and thus deprived
+himself of the pure air of the country, and the benefit of this
+vivifying element.
+
+The winter of 1847 to 1848 was filled with a painful and
+continual succession of improvements and relapses.
+Notwithstanding this, he resolved in the spring to accomplish his
+old project of visiting London. When the revolution of February
+broke out, he was still confined to bed, but with a melancholy
+effort, he seemed to try to interest himself in the events of the
+day, and spoke of them more than usual. M. Gutman continued his
+most intimate and constant visitor. He accepted through
+preference his cares until the close of his life.
+
+Feeling better in the month of April, he thought of realizing his
+contemplated journey, of visiting that country to which he had
+intended to go when youth and life opened in bright perspective
+before him. He set out for England, where his works had already
+found an intelligent public, and were generally known and
+admired.
+
+[Footnote: The compositions of Chopin were, even at that time,
+known and very much liked in England. The most distinguished
+virtuosi frequently executed them. In a pamphlet published in
+London by Messrs. Wessel and Stappletou, under the title of AN
+ESSAY ON THE WORKS OF F.CHOPIN, we find some lines marked by just
+criticism. The epigraph of this little pamphlet is ingeniously
+chosen, and the two lines from Shelley could scarcely be better
+applied than to Chopin:
+
+        "He was a mighty poet--and
+        A subtle-souled Psychologist."
+
+The author of this pamphlet speaks with enthusiasm of the
+"originative genius untrammeled by conventionalities, unfettered
+by pedantry;...of the outpourings of an unworldly and tristful
+soul--those musical floods of tears, and gushes of pure
+joyfulness--those exquisite embodiments of fugitive thoughts--
+those infinitesimal delicacies, which give so much value to the
+lightest sketch of Chopin." The English author again says: "One
+thing is certain, viz.: to play with proper feeling and correct
+execution, the PRELUDES and STUDIES of Chopin, is to be neither
+more nor less than a finished pianist, and moreover to comprehend
+them thoroughly, to give a life and tongue to their infinite and
+most eloquent subtleties of expression, involves the necessity of
+being in no less a degree a poet than a pianist, a thinker than a
+musician. Commonplace is instinctively avoided in all the works
+of Chopin; a stale cadence or a trite progression, a humdrum
+subject or a hackneyed sequence, a vulgar twist of the melody or
+a worn-out passage, a meagre harmony or an unskillful
+counterpoint, may in vain be looked for throughout the entire
+range of his compositions; the prevailing characteristics of
+which, are, a feeling as uncommon as beautiful, a treatment as
+original as felicitous, a melody and a harmony as new, fresh,
+vigorous, and striking, as they are utterly unexpected and out of
+the common track. In taking up one of the works of Chopin, you
+are entering, as it were, a fairyland, untrodden by human
+footsteps, a path hitherto unfrequented but by the great composer
+himself; and a faith, a devotion, a desire to appreciate and a
+determination to understand are absolutely necessary, to do it
+any thing like adequate justice.... Chopin in his POLONAISES and
+in his MAZOURKAS has aimed at those characteristics, which
+distinguish the national music of his country so markedly from,
+that of all others, that quaint idiosyncrasy, that identical
+wildness and fantasticality, that delicious mingling of the sad
+and cheerful, which invariably and forcibly individualize the
+music of those Northern nations, whose language delights in
+combinations of consonants...."]
+
+He left France in that mood of mind which the English call "low
+spirits." The transitory interest which he had endeavored to take
+in political changes, soon disappeared. He became more taciturn
+than ever. If through absence of mind, a few words would escape
+him. They were only exclamations of regret. His affection for the
+limited number of persons whom he continued to see, was filled
+with that heart-rending emotion which precedes eternal farewells!
+Art alone always retained its absolute power over him. Music
+absorbed him during the time, now constantly shortening, in which
+he was able to occupy himself with it, as completely as during
+the days when he was full of life and hope. Before he left Paris,
+he gave a concert in the saloon of M. Pleyel, one of the friends
+with whom his relations had been the most constant, the most
+frequent, and the most affectionate; who is now rendering a
+worthy homage to his memory, occupying himself with zeal and
+activity in the execution of a monument for his tomb. At this
+concert, his chosen and faithful audience heard him for the last
+time!
+
+He was received in London with an eagerness which had some effect
+in aiding him to shake off his sadness, to dissipate his mournful
+depression. Perhaps he dreamed, by burying all his former habits
+in oblivion, he could succeed in dissipating, his melancholy! He
+neglected the prescriptions of his physicians, with all the
+precautions which reminded him of his wretched health. He played
+twice in public, and many times in private concerts. He mingled
+much in society, sat up late at night, and exposed himself to
+considerable fatigue, without permitting himself to be deterred
+by any consideration for his health. He was presented to the
+Queen by the Duchess of Sutherland, and the most distinguished
+society sought the pleasure of his acquaintance. He went to
+Edinburgh, where the climate was particularly injurious to him.
+He was much debilitated upon his return from Scotland; his
+physicians wished him to leave England immediately, but he
+delayed for some time his departure. Who can read the feelings
+which caused this delay!...He played again at a concert given for
+the Poles. It was the last mark of love sent to his beloved
+country--the last look--the last sigh--the last regret! He was
+feted, applauded, and surrounded by his own people. He bade them
+all adieu,--they did not know it was an eternal Farewell! What
+thoughts must have filled his sad soul as he crossed the sea to
+return to Paris! That Paris so different now for him from that
+which he had found without seeking in 1831!
+
+He was met upon his arrival by a surprise as painful as
+unexpected. Dr. Molin, whose advice and intelligent prescriptions
+had saved his life in the winter of 1847, to whom alone he
+believed himself indebted for the prolongation of his life, was
+dead. He felt his loss painfully, nay, it brought a profound
+discouragement with it; at a time when the mind exercises so much
+influence over the progress of the disease, he persuaded himself
+that no one could replace the trusted physician, and he had no
+confidence in any other. Dissatisfied with them all, without any
+hope from their skill, he changed them constantly. A kind of
+superstitious depression seized him. No tie stronger than life,
+no more powerful as death, came now to struggle against this
+bitter apathy! From the winter of 1848, Chopin had been in no
+condition to labor continuously. From time to time he retouched
+some scattered leaves, without succeeding in arranging his
+thoughts in accordance with his designs. A respectful care of his
+fame dictated to him the wish that these sketches should be
+destroyed to prevent the possibility of their being mutilated,
+disfigured, and transformed into posthumous works unworthy of his
+hand.
+
+He left no finished manuscripts, except a very short WALTZ, and a
+last NOCTURNE, as parting memories. In the later period of his
+life he thought of writing a method for the Piano, in which he
+intended to give his ideas upon the theory and technicality of
+his art, the results of his long and patient studies, his happy
+innovations, and his intelligent experience. The task was a
+difficult one, demanding redoubled application even from one who
+labored as assiduously as Chopin. Perhaps he wished to avoid the
+emotions of art, (affecting those who reproduce them in serenity
+of soul so differently from those who repeat in them their own
+desolation of heart,) by taking refuge in a region so barren. He
+sought in this employment only an absorbing and uniform
+occupation, he only asked from it what Manfred demanded in vain
+from the powers of magic: "forgetfulness!" Forgetfulness--granted
+neither by the gayety of amusement, nor the lethargy of torpor!
+On the contrary, with venomous guile, they always compensate in
+the renewed intensity of woe, for the time they may have
+succeeded in benumbing it. In the daily labor which "charms the
+storms of the soul," (DER SEELE STURM BESCHWORT,) he sought
+without doubt forgetfulness, which occupation, by rendering the
+memory torpid, may sometimes procure, though it cannot destroy
+the sense of pain. At the close of that fine elegy which he names
+"The Ideal," a poet, who was also the victim of an inconsolable
+melancholy, appeals to labor as a consolation when a prey to
+bitter regret; while expecting an early death, he invokes
+occupation as the last resource against the incessant anguish of
+life:
+
+
+     "And thou, so pleated, with her uniting,
+     To charm the soul-storm into peace,
+     Sweet toil, in toil itself delighting,
+     That more it labored, less could cease,
+     Though but by grains thou aidest the pile
+     The vast eternity uprears,
+     At least thou strikest from TIME the while
+     Life's debt--the minutes--days--and years."
+
+              Bulwer's translation of SCHILLER'S "Ideal."
+
+          Beschoeftigung, die nie ermattet
+          Die langsam schafft, doch nie zerstoert,
+          Die zu dem Bau der Ewigkeiten
+          Zwar Sandkorn nur, fuer Sandkorn reicht,
+          Doch von der grossen Schuld der Zeiten
+          Minute, Tage, Jahre streicht.
+
+                                      Die Ideale--SHILLER.
+
+
+The strength of Chopin was not sufficient for the execution of
+his intention. The occupation was too abstract, too fatiguing. He
+contemplated the form of his project, he spoke of it at different
+times, but its execution had become impossible. He wrote but a
+few pages of it, which were destroyed with the rest.
+
+At last the disease augmented so visibly, that the fears of his
+friends assumed the hue of despair. He scarcely ever left his
+bed, and spoke but rarely. His sister, upon receiving this
+intelligence, came from Warsaw to take her place at his pillow,
+which she left no more. He witnessed the anguish, the
+presentiments, the redoubled sadness around him, without showing
+what impression they made upon him. He thought of death with
+Christian calm and resignation, yet he did not cease to prepare
+for the morrow. The fancy he had for changing his residence was
+once more manifested, he took another lodging, disposed the
+furnishing of it anew, and occupied himself in its most minute
+details. As he had taken no measures to recall the orders he had
+given for its arrangement, they were transporting his furniture
+to the apartments he was destined never to inhabit, upon the very
+day of his death!
+
+Did he fear that death would not fulfil his plighted promise! Did
+he dread, that after having touched him with his icy hand, he
+would still suffer him to linger upon earth? Did he feel that
+life would be almost unendurable with its fondest ties broken,
+its closest links dissevered? There is a double influence often
+felt by gifted temperaments when upon the eve of some event which
+is to decide their fate. The eager heart, urged on by a desire to
+unravel the mystic secrets of the unknown Future, contradicts the
+colder, the more timid intellect, which fears to plunge into the
+uncertain abyss of the coming fate! This want of harmony between
+the simultaneous previsions of the mind and heart, often causes
+the firmest spirits to make assertions which their actions seem
+to contradict; yet actions and assertions both flow from the
+differing sources of an equal conviction. Did Chopin suffer from
+this inevitable dissimilarity between the prophetic whispers of
+the heart, and the thronging doubts of the questioning mind?
+
+From week to week, and soon from day to day, the cold shadow of
+death gained upon him. His end was rapidly approaching; his
+sufferings became more and more intense; his crises grew more
+frequent, and at each accelerated occurrence, resembled more and
+more a mortal agony. He retained his presence of mind, his vivid
+will upon their intermission, until the last; neither losing the
+precision of his ideas, nor the clear perception of his
+intentions. The wishes which he expressed in his short moments of
+respite, evinced the calm solemnity with which he contemplated
+the approach of death. He desired to be buried by the side of
+Bellini, with whom, during the time of Bellini's residence in
+Paris, he had been intimately acquainted. The grave of Bellini is
+in the cemetery of Pere LaChaise, next to that of Cherubini. The
+desire of forming an acquaintance with this great master whom he
+had been brought up to admire, was one of the motives which, when
+he left Vienna in 1831 to go to London, induced him, without
+foreseeing that his destiny would fix him there, to pass through
+Paris. Chopin now sleeps between Bellini and Cherubini, men of
+very dissimilar genius, and yet to both of whom he was in an
+equal degree allied, as he attached as much value to the respect
+he felt for the science of the one, as to the sympathy he
+acknowledged for the creations of the other. Like the author of
+NORMA, he was full of melodic feeling, yet he was ambitions of
+attaining the harmonic depth of the learned old master; desiring
+to unite, in a great and elevated style, the dreamy vagueness of
+spontaneous emotion with the erudition of the most consummate
+masters.
+
+Continuing the reserve of his manners to the very last, he did
+not request to see. any one for the last time; but he evinced the
+most touching gratitude to all who approached him. The first days
+of October left neither doubt nor hope. The fatal moment drew
+near. The next day, the next hour, could no longer be relied
+upon. M. Gutman and his sister were in constant attendance upon
+him, never for a single moment leaving him. The Countess Delphine
+Potocka, who was then absent from Paris, returned as soon as she
+was informed of his imminent danger. None of those who approached
+the dying artist, could tear themselves from the spectacle of
+this great and gifted soul in its hours of mortal anguish.
+
+However violent or frivolous the passions may be which agitate
+our hearts, whatever strength or indifference may be displayed in
+meeting unforeseen or sudden accidents, which would seem
+necessarily overwhelming in their effects, it is impossible to
+escape the impression made by the imposing majesty of a lingering
+and beautiful death, which touches, softens, fascinates and
+elevates even the souls the least prepared for such holy and
+sublime emotions. The lingering and gradual departure of one
+among us for those unknown shores, the mysterious solemnity of
+his secret dreams, his commemoration of past facts and passing
+ideas when still breathing upon the narrow strait which separates
+time from eternity, affect us more deeply than any thing else in
+this world. Sudden catastrophes, the dreadful alternations forced
+upon the shuddering fragile ship, tossed like a toy by the wild
+breath of the tempest; the blood of the battle-field, with the
+gloomy smoke of artillery; the horrible charnel-house into which
+our own habitation is converted by a contagious plague;
+conflagrations which wrap whole cities in their glittering
+flames; fathomless abysses which open at our feet;--remove us
+less sensibly from all the fleeting attachments "which pass,
+which can be broken, which cease," than the prolonged view of a
+soul conscious of its own position, silently contemplating the
+multiform aspects of time and the mute door of eternity! The
+courage, the resignation, the elevation, the emotion, which
+reconcile it with that inevitable dissolution so repugnant to all
+our instincts, certainly impress the bystanders more profoundly
+than the most frightful catastrophes, which, in the confusion
+they create, rob the scene of its still anguish, its solemn
+meditation.
+
+The parlor adjoining the chamber of Chopin was constantly
+occupied by some of his friends, who, one by one, in turn,
+approached him to receive a sign of recognition, a look of
+affection, when he was no longer able to address them in words.
+On Sunday, the 15th of October, his attacks were more violent and
+more frequent--lasting for several hours in succession. He
+endured them with patience and great strength of mind. The
+Countess Delphine Potocka, who was present, was much distressed;
+her tears were flowing fast when he observed her standing at the
+foot of his bed, tall, slight, draped in white, resembling the
+beautiful angels created by the imagination of the most devout
+among the painters. Without doubt, he supposed her to be a
+celestial apparition; and when the crisis left him a moment in
+repose, he requested her to sing; they deemed him at first seized
+with delirium, but he eagerly repeated his request. Who could
+have ventured--to oppose his wish? The piano was rolled from his
+parlor to the door of his chamber, while, with sobs in her voice,
+and tears streaming down her cheeks, his gifted countrywoman
+sang. Certainly, this delightful voice had never before attained
+an expression so full of profound pathos. He seemed to suffer
+less as he listened. She sang that famous Canticle to the Virgin,
+which, it is said, once saved the life of Stradella. "How
+beautiful it is!" he exclaimed. "My God, how very beautiful!
+Again--again!" Though overwhelmed with emotion, the Countess had
+the noble courage to comply with the last wish of a friend, a
+compatriot; she again took a seat at the piano, and sung a hymn
+from Marcello. Chopin again feeling worse, everybody was seized
+with fright--by a spontaneous impulse all who were present threw
+themselves upon their knees--no one ventured to speak; the sacred
+silence was only broken by the voice of the Countess, floating,
+like a melody from heaven, above the sighs and sobs which formed
+its heavy and mournful earth-accompaniment. It was the haunted
+hour of twilight; a dying light lent its mysterious shadows to
+this sad scene--the sister of Chopin prostrated near his bed,
+wept and prayed--and never quitted this attitude of supplication
+while the life of the brother she had so cherished lasted.
+
+His condition altered for the worse during the night, but he felt
+more tranquil upon Monday morning, and as if he had known in
+advance the appointed and propitious moment, he asked to receive
+immediately the last sacraments. In the absence of the Abbe * *
+*, with whom he had been very intimate since their common
+expatriation, he requested that the Abbe Jelowicki, one of the
+most distinguished men of the Polish emigration, should be sent
+for. When the holy Viaticum was administered to him, he received
+it, surrounded by those who loved him, with great devotion. He
+called his friends a short time afterwards, one by one, to his
+bedside, to give each of them his last earnest blessing; calling
+down the grace of God fervently upon themselves, their
+affections, and their hopes,--every knee bent--every head bowed--
+all eyes were heavy with tears--every heart was sad and
+oppressed--every soul elevated.
+
+Attacks more and more painful, returned and continued during the
+day; from Monday night until Tuesday, he did not utter a single
+word. He did not seem able to distinguish the persons who were
+around him. About eleven o'clock on Tuesday evening, he appeared
+to revive a little. The Abbe Jelowicki had never left him. Hardly
+had he recovered the power of speech, than he requested him to
+recite with him the prayers and litanies for the dying. He was
+able to accompany the Abbe in an audible and intelligible voice.
+From this moment until his death, he held his head constantly
+supported upon the shoulder of M. Gutman, who, during the whole
+course of this sickness, had devoted his days and nights to him.
+
+A convulsive sleep lasted until the 17th of October, 1849. The
+final agony commenced about two o'clock; a cold sweat ran
+profusely from his brow; after a short drowsiness, he asked, in a
+voice scarcely audible: "Who is near me?" Being answered, he bent
+his head to kiss the hand of M. Gutman, who still supported it--
+while giving this last tender proof of love and gratitude, the
+soul of the artist left its fragile clay. He died as he had
+lived--in loving.
+
+When the doors of the parlor were opened, his friends threw
+themselves around the loved corpse, not able to suppress the gush
+of tears.
+
+His love for flowers being well known, they were brought in such
+quantities the next day, that the bed in which they had placed
+them, and indeed the whole room, almost disappeared, hidden by
+their varied and brilliant hues. He seemed to repose in a garden
+of roses. His face regained its early beauty, its purity of
+expression, its long unwonted serenity. Calmly--with his youthful
+loveliness, so long dimmed by bitter suffering, restored by
+death, he slept among the flowers he loved, the last long and
+dreamless sleep!
+
+M. Clesinger reproduced the delicate traits, to which death had
+rendered their early beauty, in a sketch which he immediately
+modeled, and which he afterwards executed in marble for his tomb.
+
+The respectful admiration which Chopin felt for the genius of
+Mozart, had induced him to request that his Requiem should be
+performed at his obsequies; this wish was complied with. The
+funeral ceremonies took place in the Madeleine Church, the 30th
+of October, 1849. They had been delayed until this date, in order
+that the execution of this great work should be worthy of the
+master and his disciple. The principal artists in Paris were
+anxious to take part in it. The FUNERAL MARCH of Chopin, arranged
+for the instruments for this occasion by M. Reber, was introduced
+at the Introit. At the Offertory, M. Lefebure Vely executed his
+admirable PRELUDES in SI and MI MINOR upon the organ. The solos
+of the REQUIEM were claimed by Madame Viardot and Madame
+Castellan. Lablache, who had sung the TUBA MIRUM of this REQUIEM
+at the burial of Beethoven in 1827, again sung it upon this
+occasion. M. Meyerbeer, with Prince Adam Czartoryski, led the
+train of mourners. The pall was borne by M. Delacroix, M.
+Franchomme, M. Gutman, and Prince Alexander Czartorvski.--However
+insufficient these pages may be to speak of Chopin as we would
+have desired, we hope that the attraction which so justly
+surrounds his name, will compensate for much that may be wanting
+in them. If to these lines, consecrated to the commemoration of
+his works and to all that he held dear, which the sincere esteem,
+enthusiastic regard, and intense sorrow for his loss, can alone
+gift with persuasive and sympathetic power, it were necessary to
+add some of the thoughts awakened in every man when death robs
+him of the loved contemporaries of his youth, thus breaking the
+first ties linked by the confiding and deluded heart with so much
+the greater pain if they were strong enough to survive that
+bright period of young life, we would say that in the same--year
+we have lost the two dearest friends we have known on earth. One
+of them perished in the wild course of civil war. Unfortunate and
+valiant hero! He fell with his burning courage unsubdued, his
+intrepid calmness undisturbed, his chivalric temerity unabated,
+through the endurance of the horrible tortures of a fearful
+death. He was a Prince of rare intelligence, of great activity,
+of eminent faculties, through whose veins the young blood
+circulated with the glittering ardor of a subtle gas. By his own
+indefatigable energy he had just succeeded in removing the
+difficulties which obstructed his path, in creating an arena in
+which his faculties might hare displayed themselves with as much
+success in debates and the management of civil affairs, as they
+had already done in brilliant feats in arms. The other, Chopin,
+died slowly, consuming himself in the flames of his own genius.
+His life, unconnected with public events, was like some fact
+which has never been incorporated in a material body. The traces
+of his existence are only to be found in the works which he has
+left. He ended his days upon a foreign soil, which he never
+considered as his country, remaining faithful in the devotion of
+his affections to the eternal widowhood of his own. He was a Poet
+of a mournful soul, full of reserve and complicated mystery, and
+familiar with the stern face of sorrow.
+
+The immediate interest which we felt in the movements of the
+parties to which the life of Prince Felix Lichnowsky was bound,
+was broken by his death: the death of Chopin has robbed us of all
+the consolations of an intelligent and comprehensive friendship.
+The affectionate sympathy with our feelings, with our manner of
+understanding art, of which this exclusive artist has given us so
+many proofs, would have softened the disappointment and weariness
+which yet await us, and have strengthened is in our earliest
+tendencies, confirmed us in our first essays.
+
+Since it has fallen to our lot to survive them, we wish at least
+to express the sincere regret we feel for their loss. We deem
+ourselves bound to offer the homage of our deep and respectful
+sorrow upon the grave of the remarkable musician who has just
+passed from among us. Music is at present receiving such great
+and general development, that it reminds us of that which took
+place in painting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even
+the artists who limited the productions of their genius to the
+margins of parchments, painted their miniatures with an
+inspiration so happy, that having broken through the Byzantine
+stiffness, they left the most exquisite types, which the
+Francias, the Peruginos, and the Raphaels to come were to
+transport to their frescos, and introduce upon their canvas.
+
+                        -------
+
+There have been people among whom, in order to preserve the
+memory of their great men or the signal events of their history,
+it was the custom to form pyramids composed of the stones which
+each passer-by was expected to bring to the pile, which gradually
+increased to an unlooked-for height from the anonymous
+contributions of all. Monuments are still in our days erected by
+an analogous proceeding, but in place of building only a rude and
+unformed hillock, in consequence of a fortunate combination the
+contribution of all concurs in the creation of some work of art,
+which is not only destined to perpetuate the mute remembrance
+which they wish to honor, but which may have the power to awaken
+in future ages the feelings which gave birth to such creation,
+the emotions of the contemporaries which called it into being. The
+subscriptions which are opened to raise statues and noble
+memorials to those who have rendered their epoch or country
+illustrious, originate in this design. Immediately after the
+death of Chopin, M. Camille Pleyel conceived a project of this
+kind. He commenced a subscription, (which conformably to the
+general expectation rapidly amounted to a considerable sum,) to
+have the monument modeled by M. Clesinger, executed in marble and
+placed in the Pere La-Chaise. In thinking over our long
+friendship with Chopin; on the exceptional admiration which we
+have always felt for him ever since his appearance in the musical
+world; remembering that, artist like himself, we have been the
+frequent interpreter of his inspirations, an interpreter, we may
+safely venture to say, loved and chosen by himself; that we have
+more frequently than others received from his own lips the spirit
+of his style; that we were in some degree identified with his
+creations in art, and with the feelings which he confided to it,
+through that long and constant assimilation which obtains between
+a writer and his translator;--we have fondly thought that these
+connective circumstances imposed upon us a higher and nearer duty
+than that of merely adding an unformed and anonymous stone to the
+growing pyramid of homage which his contemporaries are elevating
+to him. We believed that the claims of a tender friendship for
+our illustrious colleague, exacted from us a more particular
+expression of our profound regret, of our high admiration. It
+appeared to us that we would not be true to ourselves, did we not
+court the honor of inscribing our name, our deep affliction, upon
+his sepulchral stone! This should be granted to those who never
+hope to fill the void in their hearts left by an irreparable
+loss!...
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Life of Chopin, by Franz Liszt
+
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