CHAPTER III
The Birth of the Poet
When he was asked, after one of his improvisations at the piano, improvisations that were a mixture of brilliance that was always slightly sombre, and of tenderness that was at once poignant and dramatic, by what name this atavistic desolation that seemed too old for his young existence should be called, he replied with the Polish word _zal_. It was a word that he repeated, that he loved, a word susceptible of varied meanings and which included sometimes every tenderness and all humility, and sometimes only rancour, revolt, and glacial vengeance. It is a word also that holds at one and the same time connotations of inconsolable sorrow, and menace, or fruitless bitterness, a word, in short, that could be applied to all those cruel and poet Hamlets whom we call Slavs. From his sixteenth year _zal_ was the bright enemy of his fortune, an enemy armed each day anew when one has a romantic heart and when the destruction of oneself seems the most brilliant solution of life. In knowing himself and then in cultivating himself without opposition, Chopin accomplished the rare miracle of becoming absolutely himself before life had taught him anything. Himself against life, in spite of life. The sum of knowledge that was necessary to him he possessed at sixteen. It was reduced to the seven notes of the scale, which were sufficient for the expression of all his thoughts. He was tortured by the need of no other nourishment than the search for his own style. That was his method of attaining the truth. Apart from his piano, the universe, indeed, was but literature.
Furthermore, his father allowed him to leave school at seventeen to give himself up entirely to his music. He was given a little attic study with an old piano and a table. There he wrote his first works. And it was at this time that, testing his powers, he acquired the astonishingly original touch and style that were soon to amaze the artistic world. The following year, he composed his _Variations_ on the _La ci darem la mano_ of Mozart, of which Schumann said as he thumbed it over: “Eusebius came in softly the other day. You know that ironic smile with which he tries to intrigue you. I was at the piano... Eusebius put a piece of music before us, with these words, ‘Hats off, gentlemen—a genius!’ We were not to see the title. I turned over the pages mechanically. The veiled joy of music without sound is like something magical. And then, it has always seemed to me that each composer offers to the eyes a physiognomy of notes that is the essence of the man. Beethoven has a different look from Mozart, on paper. But here I fancied that quite strange eyes, the eyes of a flower, the eyes of a basilisk, the eyes of a peacock, the eyes of a virgin were marvellously regarding me. But what was the astonishment of the hearers on reading the title: opus 2... Chopin? I had never heard the name.”
Listen to the almost prophetic tone of that surprise: “Eyes of a flower, eyes of a basilisk, eyes of a peacock, eyes of a virgin.” This splendid musical portrait paints in completely the Polish swan testing for the first time the flutter of his wings.
He took flight very shortly after, at the beginning of September, 1828, on his first journey. A friend of his father’s, Professor Jaroçki, took him to Berlin, where the professor had to attend a scientific meeting. Frederick was in an ecstasy of enthusiasm. After five days of jolting in the diligence the travellers reached the Prussian capital and put up at the Hôtel du Kronprinz. Chopin’s first visit was to the factory of the Kisting pianos, his second to the Academy of Singing, his third to the Opera, where they were giving _Ferdinand Cortez_ by Spontini, and _The Secret Marriage_ by Cimarosa. “I followed these operas with great pleasure,” he wrote home, “but I must admit that the music of Handel approaches most nearly the musical ideal that I have adopted.... To-morrow they give _Freyschutz_; that is exactly the music that I want.” He saw Spontini at a distance, and the young Mendelssohn. He dined at the Congress of Naturalists. “Yesterday there was a banquet in honour of the scholars. What caricatures! I divided them into three groups.” At the table he sat next a professor from Hamburg, who, talking to Jaroçki, so far forgot himself as to take Chopin’s plate for his own and begin drumming on it. “A true scientist, eh? Nothing was lacking, not even the big deformed nose. I was on pins and needles during the drumming, and when it was finished had nothing better to do than to rub off the finger-marks with a napkin.” This incident was the object of a long report in which can be seen his stubborn disgust. Then there were the toilettes of the ladies. Details? None. That struck closer home than the compulsory visits to the Geological Museum.
Finally, after a fortnight, they re-entered their travelling carriage to take once more the road for Warsaw. Arriving at Zullichau, between Frankfurt-am-Oder and Posen, they found a shortage of horses and were obliged to stop and wait for fresh ones. What should they do? By chance the postal relay station was also the tavern. Professor Jaroçki seized the opportunity to dine. Chopin spied a piano. He opened it, sat down and began to let his fingers wander. An old traveller came and sat quietly near him, then another, then silently all the household, the postmaster, his wife, his daughters, and the neighbours. What a surprise was this nightingale blown by the wind from fairyland! Suddenly the head of the postillion was framed in the window, and he thundered out:
“All aboard! The horses are harnessed.”
“Devil take the spoil-sport,” replied the postmaster furiously.
They begged the young man, who had already arisen, to sit down again.
“Go on, _please_ go on,” said the ladies.
“I’ll give you extra horses if necessary,” added the postmaster.
And the old traveller said in his turn:
“Sir, I am an old-fashioned musician and I know what I am talking about. I, also, play the piano. If Mozart had heard you, sir, he would have taken your hand. I, a nobody, dare not....”
When Chopin stopped, this curious audience seized him and carried him out in triumph.
A Schumann overwhelmed, that enthusiastic postmaster, that timid musicaster trembling with emotion, these were the signs that a new poet was born among men.