But as Chopin puts them perhaps nobody could have
put them." Liszt, despite the rhapsodical praise of his friend,
is not always to be relied upon. Capricious as Chopin, he had
days when he disliked not only the Mazurkas, but all music. He
confessed to Niecks that when he played a half hour for amusement
it was Chopin he took up.
There is no more brilliant chapter than this Hungarian's on the
dancing of the Mazurka by the Poles. It is a companion to his
equally sensational description of the Polonaise. He gives a
wild, whirling, highly-colored narrative of the Mazurka, with a
coda of extravagant praise of the beauty and fascination of
Polish women. "Angel through love, demon through fantasy," as
Balzac called her. In none of the piano rhapsodies are there such
striking passages to be met as in Liszt's overwrought, cadenced
prose, prose modelled after Chateaubriand. Niema iak Polki--
"nothing equals the Polish women" and their "divine coquetries;"
the Mazurka is their dance--it is the feminine complement to the
heroicand masculine Polonaise.
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