Section 5 of 19 - Table of Contents
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!
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