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Life of Chopin

Franz Lizst

Section 17 of 19 - Table of Contents
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?...
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