Stephen Crane was a reincarnation of Frederic Chopin. Both were small in stature, slight, fair-haired, and of that sensitive, acute, receptive temperament—capable of highest joy and keyed for exquisite pain. Haunted with the prophetic vision of quick-coming death, and with the hectic desire to get their work done, they often toiled the night away and were surprised by the rays of the rising sun. Both were shrinking yet proud, shy but bold, with a tenderness and a feminine longing for love that earth could not requite. At times mad gaiety, that ill-masked a breaking heart, took the reins, and the spirits of children just out of school seemed to hold the road. At other times—and this was the prevailing mood—the manner was one of placid, patient, calm and smooth, unruffled hope; but back and behind all was a dynamo of energy, a brooding melancholy of unrest, and the crouching world-sorrow that would not down.
Chopin reached sublimity through sweet sounds; Crane attained the same heights through the sense of sight and words that symboled color, shapes and scenes. In each the distinguishing feature is the intense imagination and active sympathy. Knowledge consists in a sense of values—of distinguishing this from that, for truth lies in the mass. The delicate nuances of Chopin's music have never been equaled by another composer; every note is cryptic, every sound a symbol. And yet it is dance-music, too, but still it tells its story of baffled hope and stifled desire—the tragedy of Poland in sweet sounds.
Stephen Crane was an artist in his ability to convey the feeling by just the right word, or a word misplaced, like a lady's dress in disarray, or a hat askew. This daring quality marks everything he wrote. The recognition that language is fluid, and at best only an expedient, flavors all his work. He makes no fetish of a grammar—if grammar gets in the way, so much the worse for the grammar. All is packed with color, and charged with feeling, yet the work is usually quiet in quality and modest in manner.
Art is born of heart, not head; and so it seems to me that the work of these men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live. Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind, gentle, with a capacity for love that passes the love of woman. They were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are. They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times. Both were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done—the term precedent not being found within the covers of their bright lexicon of words. In the nature of each was a goodly trace of peroxide of iron that often manifested itself in the man's work.
The faults in each spring from an intense personality, uncolored by the surroundings, and such faults in such men are virtues.
They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive today, and moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.
Mother Nature in giving out energy gives each man about an equal portion. But that ability to throw the weight with the blow, to concentrate the soul in a sonnet, to focus force in a single effort, is the possession of God's Chosen Few. Chopin put his affection, his patriotism, his wrath, his hope, and his heroism into his music—as if the song of all the forest birds could be secured, sealed and saved for us!
he father of Chopin was a Frenchman who went up to Poland seeking gain and adventure. He became a soldier under Kosciusko and arose to rank of Captain. He found such favor with the nobility by his gracious ways that he became a teacher of French in the family of Count Frederic Skarbek. In the family group was a fair young dependent of nervous temperament—slight, active, gentle and intelligent. She was descendent from a line of aristocrats, but in a country where revolutions have been known to begin and end before breakfast, titles stand for little.