Life of Chopin

by Franz Liszt

FROM the date of 1840, the health of Chopin, affected by so many changes, visibly declined. During some years, his most tranquil hours were spent at Nohant, where he seemed to suffer less than elsewhere. He composed there, with pleasure, bringing with him every year to Paris several new compositions, but every winter caused him an increase of suffering. Motion became at first difficult, and soon almost impossible to him. From 1846 to 1847, he scarcely walked at all; he could not ascend the staircase without the most painful sensation of suffocation, and his life was only prolonged through continual care and the greatest precaution.

Towards the Spring of 1847, as his health grew more precarious from day to day, he was attacked by an illness from which it was thought he could never recover. He was saved for the last time; but this epoch was marked by an event so agonizing to his heart that he immediately called it mortal. Indeed, he did not long survive the rupture of his friendship with Madame Sand, which took place at this date. Madame de Stael, who, in spite of her generous and impassioned heart, her subtle and vivid intellect, fell sometimes into the fault of making her sentences heavy through a species of pedantry which robbed them of the grace of "abandon,"—remarked on one of those occasions when the strength of her feelings made her forget the solemnity of her Genevese stiffness: "In affection, there are only beginnings!"

This exclamation was based upon the bitter experience of the insufficiency of the human heart to accomplish the beautiful and blissful dreams of the imagination. Ah! if some blessed examples of human devotion did not sometimes occur to contradict the melancholy words of Madame de Stael, which so many illustrious as well as obscure facts seem to prove, our suspicions might lead us to be guilty of much ingratitude and want of trust; we might be led to doubt the sincerity of the hearts which surround us, and see but the allegorical symbols of human affections in the antique train of the beautiful Canephoroe, who carried the fragile and perfumed flowers to adorn some hapless victim for the altar!

Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of Madame Sand, without bitterness or recrimination. Tears always filled his eyes when he named her; but with a kind of bitter sweetness he gave himself up to the memories of past days, alas, now. He stripped of their manifold significance! In spite of the many subterfuges employed by his friends to entice him from dwelling upon remembrances which always brought dangerous excitement with them, he loved to return to them; as if through the same feelings which had once reanimated his life, he now wished to destroy it, sedulously stifling its powers through the vapor of this subtle poison. His last pleasure seemed to be the memory of the blasting of his last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak of it, would he not always have thought of it? He seemed to inhale the poison rapidly and eagerly, that he might thus shorten the time in which he would be forced to breathe it!

Although the exceeding fragility of his physical constitution might not have allowed him, under any circumstances, to have lingered long on earth, yet at least he might have been spared the bitter sufferings which clouded his last hours! With a tender and ardent soul, though exacting through its fastidiousness and excessive delicacy, he could not live unless surrounded by the radiant phantoms he had himself evoked; he could not expel the profound sorrow which his heart cherished as the sole remaining fragment of the happy past. He was another great and illustrious victim to the transitory attachments occurring between persons of different character, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their first sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It is always the nature the most deeply moved, the most absolute in its hopes and attachments, for which all transplantation is impossible, which is destroyed and mined in the painful awakening from the absorbing dream! Terrible power exercised over man by the most exquisite gifts which he possesses! Like the coursers of the sun, when the hand of Phaeton, in place of guiding their beneficent career, permits them to wander at random, disordering the beautiful structure of the celestial spheres, they bring devastation and flames in their train! Chopin felt and often repeated that the sundering of this long friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the chords which bound him to life.

During this attack his life was despaired of for several days. M. Gutman, his most distinguished pupil, and during the last years of his life, his most intimate friend, lavished upon him every proof of tender attachment. His cares, his attentions, were the most agreeable to him. With the timidity natural to invalids, and with the tender delicacy peculiar to himself, he once asked the Princess Czartoryska, who visited him every day, often fearing that on the morrow he would no longer be among the living: "if Gutman was not very much fatigued? If she thought he would be able to continue his care of him;" adding, "that his presence was dearer to him than that of any other person." His convalescence was very slow and painful, leaving him indeed but the semblance of life. At this epoch he changed so much in appearance that he could scarcely be recognized The next summer brought him that deceptive decrease of suffering which it sometimes grants to those who are dying. He refused to quit Paris, and thus deprived himself of the pure air of the country, and the benefit of this vivifying element.

The winter of 1847 to 1848 was filled with a painful and continual succession of improvements and relapses. Notwithstanding this, he resolved in the spring to accomplish his old project of visiting London. When the revolution of February broke out, he was still confined to bed, but with a melancholy effort, he seemed to try to interest himself in the events of the day, and spoke of them more than usual. M. Gutman continued his most intimate and constant visitor. He accepted through preference his cares until the close of his life.

Feeling better in the month of April, he thought of realizing his contemplated journey, of visiting that country to which he had intended to go when youth and life opened in bright perspective before him. He set out for England, where his works had already found an intelligent public, and were generally known and admired.

[Footnote: The compositions of Chopin were, even at that
time, known and very much liked in England. The most
distinguished virtuosi frequently executed them. In a
pamphlet published in London by Messrs. Wessel and
Stappletou, under the title of AN ESSAY ON THE WORKS OF F.
CHOPIN, we find some lines marked by just criticism. The
epigraph of this little pamphlet is ingeniously chosen, and
the two lines from Shelley could scarcely be better applied
than to Chopin:
"He was a mighty poet—and
A subtle-souled Psychologist."
The author of this pamphlet speaks with enthusiasm of the
"originative genius untrammeled by conventionalities,
unfettered by pedantry;... of the outpourings of an
unworldly and tristful soul—those musical floods of tears,
and gushes of pure joyfulness—those exquisite embodiments
of fugitive thoughts—those infinitesimal delicacies, which
give so much value to the lightest sketch of Chopin." The
English author again says: "One thing is certain, viz.: to
play with proper feeling and correct execution, the PRELUDES
and STUDIES of Chopin, is to be neither more nor less than a
finished pianist, and moreover to comprehend them
thoroughly, to give a life and tongue to their infinite and
most eloquent subtleties of expression, involves the
necessity of being in no less a degree a poet than a
pianist, a thinker than a musician. Commonplace is
instinctively avoided in all the works of Chopin; a stale
cadence or a trite progression, a humdrum subject or a
hackneyed sequence, a vulgar twist of the melody or a worn-
out passage, a meagre harmony or an unskillful counterpoint,
may in vain be looked for throughout the entire range of his
compositions; the prevailing characteristics of which, are,
a feeling as uncommon as beautiful, a treatment as original
as felicitous, a melody and a harmony as new, fresh,
vigorous, and striking, as they are utterly unexpected and
out of the common track. In taking up one of the works of
Chopin, you are entering, as it were, a fairyland, untrodden
by human footsteps, a path hitherto unfrequented but by the
great composer himself; and a faith, a devotion, a desire to
appreciate and a determination to understand are absolutely
necessary, to do it any thing like adequate justice....
Chopin in his POLONAISES and in his MAZOURKAS has aimed at
those characteristics, which distinguish the national music
of his country so markedly from, that of all others, that
quaint idiosyncrasy, that identical wildness and
fantasticality, that delicious mingling of the sad and
cheerful, which invariably and forcibly individualize the
music of those Northern nations, whose language delights in
combinations of consonants....">[

He left France in that mood of mind which the English call "low spirits." The transitory interest which he had endeavored to take in political changes, soon disappeared. He became more taciturn than ever. If through absence of mind, a few words would escape him. They were only exclamations of regret. His affection for the limited number of persons whom he continued to see, was filled with that heart-rending emotion which precedes eternal farewells! Art alone always retained its absolute power over him. Music absorbed him during the time, now constantly shortening, in which he was able to occupy himself with it, as completely as during the days when he was full of life and hope. Before he left Paris, he gave a concert in the saloon of M. Pleyel, one of the friends with whom his relations had been the most constant, the most frequent, and the most affectionate; who is now rendering a worthy homage to his memory, occupying himself with zeal and activity in the execution of a monument for his tomb. At this concert, his chosen and faithful audience heard him for the last time!