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!"