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.