The true gist of music it never
can be; it can never truly translate what is most essential and
characteristic in its expression. It is but something that we
have half unconsciously imputed to music; nothing that really
exists in music."
The shadowy miming of Chopin's soul has nevertheless a
significance for this generation. It is now the reign of the
brutal, the realistic, the impossible in music. Formal excellence
is neglected and programme-music has reduced art to the level of
an anecdote. Chopin neither preaches nor paints, yet his art is
decorative and dramatic--though in the climate of the ideal. He
touches earth and its emotional issues in Poland only; otherwise
his music is a pure aesthetic delight, an artistic enchantment,
freighted with no ethical or theatric messages. It is poetry made
audible, the "soul written in sound." All that I can faintly
indicate is the way it affects me, this music with the petals of
a glowing rose and the heart of gray ashes. Its analogies to Poe,
Verlaine, Shelley, Keats, Heine and Mickiewicz are but critical
sign-posts, for Chopin is incomparable, Chopin is unique.
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