On Loss and Homecoming - Facsimile of a Visit to Warsaw, May 2024 (V. 15, No. 2)

Maja Trochimczyk on Piwna St. in the Old Town of Warsaw

In May 2024, after attending the  International Book Fair  at the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Sciences as the newest member of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad (since the spring of 2024) and before giving a paper at the 9th World Congress of Polish Studies organized by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America (an organization that I've belonged to since 1997), I found time to visit old friends and the neighborhoods of my youth.  

A House in Jelonki, May 2024

I was raised in a wooden house in a garden in "Osiedle Przyjazn" ("Friendship Estate") left over after the builders of the Soviet gift, the monumental Palace of Culture and Sciences left for USSR, and occupied by faculty and students of Warsaw Polytechnic University where my father worked.  My family lived there from 1956 to 1970 and the following poetic prose or lengthy narrative poem is dedicated to my childhood memories. The house is no longer there, it made way to widened street, but other houses remained and I visited a neighbor, noted Chopin scholar, Dr. Zofia Chechlinska of the National Institute of Fryderyk Chopin, editor of a monumental series of facsimile of Chopin's autographs. We chatted over a sweet "napoleonka" with cream, black tea, and fragrant, fresh strawberries - but not really about music. I only found out that the publication of the facsimile series goes very slowly due to financial constraints, two volumes per year. While many more critical commentaries are already done, they cannot be published yet due to insufficient funds and costly format  - hardcover in fancy boxes. Still, it is a monumental achievement deserving lots of praise. Congratulations! I bought some volumes of this series in the past, but I do not teach music history now, so I did not buy the rest. The annotations and critical commentaries are worth their weight in gold! 

Maja Trochimczyk with Prof. Zofia Chechlinska of NIFC, 

editor in chief of Chopin facsimile series.

The NIFC Website has the following information about this series:

 The Fryderyk Chopin Institute is the initiator, publisher and coordinator of the international project ‘Works by Chopin. Facsimile edition’, the aim of which is to publish all the available autographs of Fryderyk Chopin’s works, scattered around the world, in facsimile. The series has been edited since 2001, and from the beginning its Editor-in-Chief has been Professor Zofia Chechlińska. It is the first ever undertaking on such a large scale and the first attempt to publish the complete music autographs by Chopin.

The series was initiated to preserve and popularize Fryderyk Chopin’s heritage in Poland and around the world. Its most significant value is the most faithful replication of the manuscripts in print, making the original texts of Chopin’s compositions available for research and enabling us to get as close as possible to the composer’s intentions as well as to verify the knowledge about the sources. Thanks to the use of contemporary photographic and printing technology, it is possible to replicate the original sources in a more faithful way than ever before!

Each volume comprises two books: the facsimile and a scholarly commentary (in six languages: Polish, English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese). Among the outstanding specialists who have prepared source commentaries are: Zofia Chechlińska, Jan Ekier, Jeffrey Kallberg, Mieczysław Tomaszewski, Jim Samson, Irena Poniatowska, Paweł Kamiński, Artur Szklener. The commentaries include the most recent information on the history of published manuscripts. The aesthetic design, hard covers and ergonomic slipcase further enhance the value of these unique editions.

The page features links to individual works and to the online NIFC store where the items may be purchased.   https://publikacje.nifc.pl/en/dziela-chopina/wydanie-faksymilowe. 

 

I still remember Prof. Chechlinska's piano ... from my childhood. I sometimes sat under it, playing with her daughter and listening to the music that filled my whole body with miraculous sounds. But I did not write about this experience in any poems. After the visit, I decided to walk along the narrow alleys of the neighborhood of my youth and see if things I remembered still remain... Below is my quasi-poetic account... Time plays tricks on all of us. No doubt. 

A VISIT TO JELONKI, MAY 2024

We śnie gaszę pożar

We śnie ogień płonie

I dream in Polish

I dream of fires

 

After walking through the non-existent city of my youth 

and returning to California, I wonder: do I belong

in my cozy ranch house in the rose garden,

or in Warsaw I left 30 years ago?

 

There was a wooden house painted peach with white trim and shutters.

There, I climbed a cherry tree to sit among green leaves

and taste the miraculous sweetness of the summer.

There, bright yellow daffodils bloomed in two circles –

I loved watching them sprout through rotten leaves

after the snow melted. I daily checked how many

poked their heads out of the ground, as curious

as I was. What was this new world like?

 

There, I stopped to smell the jasmine stretching through

the neighbor’s chain-linked fence. There, towering sunflowers

welcomed me back from vacations in the countryside.

They were so small when I left – and now? A proof of

the unstoppable flow of time. The summer’s over. How strange.

Time flows one way; it freezes, immobile, only in a loop of memory.

 

We śnie gaszę pożar

We śnie ogień płonie

I dream in Polish

I dream of fires

 

Where is the lilac blooming outside my six-paned window?

Where is the liquid charm of the nightingale song

mixed in with lilac scent that filled sleepless nights with delight?

Where is the weeping willow we used to climb by way of wooden fence?

Its trunk was too smooth, too tall for children’s feet and hands.

 

The beet and potato fields across the road

are now covered with tall apartment blocks. Cement, steel and glass.

The street was widened. Our house – demolished.

My childhood dreams paved over. My neighbors stayed 

in their comfy, wooden houses, with their tall cherry trees,

their thick lilac bushes, their six-paned windows…

My school is gone and so is its row of acacia trees.

It made space for yet another black-asphalt highway.

I retrace the steps I took daily, always late,

dreaming of a white Pegasus to take me to my class

in an instant, or I could have at the very least

an electric car suspended high up on the wires…

I walk along the curb I fell off so often

in my brand-new, white stockings, torn and blood-stained

as I ran back home crying. Was it a premonition of my loss?

Why is the curb so low today? Why is the alley so narrow?

 

We śnie szumia drzewa

We śnie księżyc wschodzi

I dream of evening breeze

I dream of moonlit streets

 

The locked-up library with three steps I used to sit on, reading,

is still the same.  I went there daily for my six books –

high with anticipation of the wonders to be found on their pages.

So disappointed when the librarian did not let me exchange

the book I just read while walking home: “Come back tomorrow.”

These books in brown paper covers overflowed with

the magic of color within – tales of a thousand and one nights,

of dragons, queens and kings, of gleaming treasures,

crystals, translucent waves of distant seas. Flights of fancy

always ending with happiness and love – serenity and bliss.

 

No fires and no darkness. No demons with bared fangs.

No S&M black latex clothing, with chains, weird cutout holes,

fishnet stockings, hideous platform shoes. No massive spiders,

horrid bugs, Satanist symbols, nor tattoos that took over

the stage of National Opera in a botched Magic Flute –

devoid of magic, robbed of charm, distorted and deprived

of beauty, yes – depraved. The world has surely changed

a lot since my youth. Where is the wonder of lilacs, cherries,

dried maple leaves, winter crickets, and spring nightingales?

 

The old library looks abandoned, with metal shutters,

peeling paint. The rickety house across the street seems ready

to fall apart any minute. It used to be our grocery store,

replaced by shiny metal and glass of Carrefours, Aldi’s,

and Biedronka’s.  The cracked-asphalt parking lot survived – 

I stop and my unforgotten joy floats in the air above my head. 

Ever cautious, I refused to ride the bike without training wheels.

Dad made a stick to hold my bike upright. He promised

not to let go! He did promise! I hated pain so much,

hated the bloodied stockings. One day, speeding, with breeze

in my hair, I saw him standing far away, smiling.

I really could ride the bike by myself! Victory! The first!

The breeze of freedom in my hair. My heart - aflutter.

That joy is still here, as perfect as that day.

 

The joy of sitting on the library’s steps, reading

is there also – a quieter contentment, discovering

new worlds in words, alone, in silence –

the thousand and one hours of books

and thousand and one nights of tales

that saved Sheherezade's life. Prophetic.

 

Oh, starry nights!

Sezamie otwórz sie!

Sesame, open!

Abrakadabra!

The scent of cinnamon and jasmine fills my nostrils.

I collect fleeting joys in a necklace on memory string:

that wonder of white snowflakes suddenly twirling

in the yellow glow of the street-lamp. Those maple leaves

that covered my path and swish, swish, swished under my feet –

gold and bronze, not wine-red like Canadian maple –

such intense hue cannot possibly exist, it cannot

be real – whole forests in scarlet? Impossible!

 

Everything was paler, softer, gentler,

mellower in my Polish childhood.

So far away, so long ago.

 

We śnie kwitną kwiaty

We śnie ogień płonie.

 

There must be a place where the daffodils forever sprout,

the nightingales forever sing, the gold maple leaves forever crunch

under my forever six-year-old feet on the way to the library 

for my daily dose of six wondrous books.

 

There must be a place where I am so happy 

so so so incredibly proud and happy -

riding my bike all by myself, splashing through

rain puddles on the cracked asphalt.

 

We śnie kwitną kwiaty

We śnie szumią drzewa

We śnie pachną lipy

Słodycz, miód

In Jelonki street, May 2024

On the plane back to California,  June 2024

My California refuge, a ranch house with wood siding, just like my childhood home.

Magic of roses and the mockingbird song, Italian cypress, and hills on the horizon. 

TRANSLATIONS

We śnie gaszę pożar - In the dream I extinguish fire

We śnie ogień płonie - In the dream, the fire burns

 

We śnie szumia drzewa - In the dream, trees rustle

We śnie księżyc wschodzi - In the dream, moon is rising

We śnie kwitną kwiaty - In the dream, flowers bloom

We śnie ogień płonie.- in the dream, the fire burns

We śnie kwitną kwiaty  - In the dream, flowers bloom

We śnie szumią drzewa - In the dream, trees rustle

We śnie pachną lipy - In the dream, linden trees' scent

Słodycz, miód - In the dream, sweetness,  honey

On Hypnotic Modernism of Maciej Grzybowski (Vol. 3, No. 7)

How can you tell if a pianist is good enough to be worth the effort of driving on our congested freeways to attend his concert on a Friday night, if you have never heard his name before? Hard to tell… perhaps, you should believe what others say about him.  You certainly should watch for the name of Maciej Grzybowski, an extraordinary Polish pianist, who recently visited Los Angeles upon the invitation of the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club. On May 11, 2011, he performed a solo piano recital at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.  From there, he went on to play for the Polish Arts and Culture Club of San Diego and then to appear in a recital in Montreal, Canada. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have to state that as the President of the Modjeska Club I personally invited him to L.A., while his tour was sponsored by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute of Poland and supported by the Polish Consulate in Los Angeles). 

The specially crafted Santa Monica program included music by Polish composers (Paweł Mykietyn, Witold Lutosławski, Paweł Szymański, and Fryderyk Chopin) juxtaposed with Western classics – Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. Some of the best music of the world, played by one of the best pianists you can ever hear…

Born in 1968 and educated in Warsaw, Maciej Grzybowski is the winner of the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 20th Century Music Competition for Young Performers in Warsaw (1992). He made numerous phonographic, radio and television recordings as a soloist and chamber musician and collaborated with Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by such conductors as Jan Krenz, Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. From 1996 to 2000 Grzybowski was a co-director of the "NONSTROM presents" concert cycle in Warsaw. He took part in numerous music festivals in Poland, such as the Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova, Witold Lutosławski Forum, Warsaw Musical Encounters, and the Polish Radio Music Festival. He also performed at the Biennial of Contemporary Music in Zagreb, Hofkonzerte im Podewil, Berlin and festivals in Lvov, Kiev, and Odessa (Ukraine). In March 2005, Grzybowski’s recital at the Mozart Hall in Bologna was recognized as the greatest music event of the 2000s. After Grzybowski’s U.S. debut in New York, in August 2006 EMI Classics released his second solo CD with works by Paweł Szymański (b. 1954). He also appeared in three concerts at the critically acclaimed Festival of Paweł Szymański's Music in Warsaw. In February 2008, Grzybowski premiered a Piano Concerto by an unjustly forgotten composer, Andrzej Czajkowski (Andre Tchaikovsky).

After the 2004 release of Grzybowski’s first solo CD, Dialog, juxtaposing works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Alban Berg, Pawel Mykietyn, Arnold Schönberg and Pawel Szymanski, (Universal Music Polska), critics raved:
·       “His interpretations of Bach, Berg, Schönberg, Szymański and Mykietyn show the touch of genius! There are certainly none today to equal his readings of Bach! (...) How refreshing and exciting it is to be in the presence of such great art of interpretation, akin to a genius!”   (Bohdan Pociej).
·       “The performance of Berg’s youthful Sonata and Schönberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke could easily stand alongside the recordings of Gould or Pollini.”  (Marcin Gmys).

These exorbitant expressions of praise were seconded by attendees of the Santa Monica recital including composer Walter Arlen, the founder of the music department at Loyola Marymount University and for 30 years the most influential music critic of the Los Angeles Times. After the concert, he stated, “this was the best pianist I have ever heard in my life.” His praise was seconded by another listener, Howard Myers: “Maciej is a phenomenon, a marvel, a miracle, a special kind of genius.” The belief in Grzybowski’s exceptional talent is shared by the Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Paweł Potoroczyn: “He is more than just a talented pianist – he is both a virtuoso of the highest order and a great musical personality.  The resultant unique combination is that of an uncommon musical genius that fully justifies comparing him with such masters as Glenn Gould or Maurizio Pollini.”

While admitting to a personal bias towards someone who has dedicated years of his life to the music of Paweł Szymański, one of the greatest Polish composers who ever lived (as it will become apparent in 50 years, when the dust settles and musical diamonds will be found in the sea of ashes), I had no doubt that by bringing Maciej Grzybowski to California, I offered our audiences a special treat.  His recital exceeded even my already sky-high expectations. First the program: arranged in two distinct parts, pairing composers of different generations in a surprising dialogue of musical ideas.

The youngest of the composers featured by Grzybowski was Paweł Mykietyn (b. 1971), his colleague and co-founder of the Nonstrom Ensemble where he has played the clarinet. In an entry on the Polish Music Information Center’s website affiliated with the Polish Composers’ Union, Mykietyn’s style is described in the following way:  “The composer ostentatiously applies the major-minor harmonies, introducing tonal fragments interspersed with harmonically free sections. He also makes use of traditional melodic structures, transforming them in his own individual manner. Mykietyn could be described as a model postmodernist, deriving his inspiration as well as material from all the available sources without any inferiority complex.” These words could well be applied to the virtuosic and wistful Four Preludes (1992) that opened the program with their contrasting moods, textures and tempi.



Grzybowski with Howard Myers and Prof. Walter Arlen.

Grzybowski followed the postmodernist Mykietyn with Twelve Folk Melodies by the dean of Polish composers of the 20th century, Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994). Commissioned by PWM in 1945, and elevating folklore to the realm of high art (in a preview of the official ideology of „socialist realism“ of 1948) these little gems show how unimportant is the ideology or context for a great compositional talent. The popular melodies of Hej, od Krakowa jadę [Hey, I come from Cracow], Na jabłoni jabłko wisi [An apple hangs on the apple tree], or Gaik [The grove] were set to music in a sophisticated harmonic style, reminiscent of Bèla Bartók.

Under Grzybowski’s fingers, these charming miniatures sparkled with a caleidoscope of colors and rhythms. The pianist brought out the complexity of inner voices in seemingly simple pieces and endowed folk melodies with an aura of nostalgia and drama.  In a stroke of genius, Grzybowski followed the folk arrangements with an entirely hypnotic and modernist reading of Drei Intermezzi, Op. 117 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). A standard in every music theory textbook on Schenkerian analysis, Drei Intermezzi could be heard as small interludes only in comparison with Brahms’s majestic symphonies.  Composed in 1892, the intermezzi (No. 1 in E-flat major, No. 2 in B-flat minor and No. 3 in C-sharp minor) transverse cosmic landscapes of feeling evoked in Rainer Maria Rilke’s timeless poem, An Die Musik.

Yet it was the piece that followed, Two Etudes by Paweł Szymański(1954), written in 1986 and available on two Grzybowski CDs, that elicited the greatest enthusiasm of the audience.  It is a work of genius, unparalleled in music in its hypnotic effect on the listeners. The Etudes, played without a break, contrast the slow emergence of music in the first etude with the titanic flows of sound in the second.  The piece arises from silence in what appears to be a series of random, repeated notes and chords, but there is nothing random in Szymański’s music, everything is carefully constructed.  Sometimes called a “neo-Baroque” composer (due to his frequent inspirations with the music of that period, and talent for creating complex polyphony), Szymański refers to his style as “sur-conventionalism” and thus describes his main approach: “The modern artist, and this includes composers, finds himself tossed within two extremes. If he chooses to renounce the tradition altogether, there is the danger of falling into the trap of blah-blah; if he follows the tradition too closely, he may prove trivial. This is the paradox of practicing art in modern times. What is the way out? However, there are many methods to stay out of eclecticism despite playing games with tradition. An important method for me is to violate the rules of the traditional language and to create a new context using the elements of that language." Thus, Szymanski draws from traditional tonal and harmonic language by playing with the conventions of musical styles and with the listeners’ expectations. This game of cat-and-mouse was apparent in the stretching and constricting of time in the two Etudes. The irregularity of recurring chords and notes piqued the listeners’ interest and intensified their expectations. Thus, the music grew and expanded in scope in the first Etude, to reach monumental proportions and then dissolve in massive complexities of the second.

The second half of the recital started with a series of unusual readings of Fryderyk Chopin’s four mazurkas (in A Minor, Op. 7, No. 2; E Minor, Op. 41, No. 1; F Major, Op. Posth. 68, No. 3; G-sharp Minor, Op. 33, No. 1). The originality of the pianist’s interpretations rendered these well-known gems of the repertoire almost unrecognizable.  More angular and modernist than usual were also three Preludes from the second volume of impressionistic masterpieces by Claude Debussy (1862-1918): II  ...  Feuilles mortes, VI  ... „General Lavine” eccentric; VII ... La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune.  These terraces were lighted less by effervescent moonlight than by the brilliant focused light of Grzybowski’s intellect.  Again, they were so different from what I was used to hearing that I would need to hear these preludes again, to render an opinion. Yet, the rest of the audience was hypnotized into a complete silence and immobility: no slow, tortuous opening of candy wrappers at this recital! 

Grzybowski with the Modjeska Club Board

The finale was indeed “grand” -  a monumental rendering of Valses nobles et sentimentales by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). In 1906, Ravel started his “waltz” project, culminating with the 1919 publication of the orchestral suite, La Valse. Inspired by the noble and sentimental waltzes by the Viennese Franz Schubert, Ravel published a suite of eight pieces for piano in 1911 and followed them with orchestral versions a year later. The waltzes are not separated into distinct “noble” and “sentimental” sections; it is up to the listener to decide what is what.  The pieces, in contrasting tempi, span the whole expressive trajectory for which the words are too limited to give the music full justice.  An unusual selection to close a solo recital, the suite ended in a slow tranquil dissolution into silence. 

After a well-deserved standing ovation, the pianist relented and added a melancholy and thoroughly modern version of a Scarlatti’s sonata as an encore to the evening’s inspired and inspiring program.  One thing is certain: the name recognition problem mentioned at the beginning should be resolved, once for all, in the case of Maciej Grzybowski: just go to every concert of his, and if you cannot go, buy his CDs.

Chopin's Valentines and His Letters (Vol. 3, No. 3)

The association of Chopin's music with romance and love stories of all sorts is so profound that it is hard to imagine how mundane and trivial many of his own letters really were. He poured his heart in his music, and did not have to do it on the page. Instead, his letters are dedicated to ordinary matters, an equivalent of email or text messages of our times.

In April I posted here an article about Chopin's letters. Excerpts are included below, to celebrate Valentine's day with Chopin. For this, we need some Valentine Day's music, so let us start with some links:

Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3 (Vladimir Ashkenazy)

Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3(Eleni Traganas, with beautiful artwork)

Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3 (Maurizio Pollini, with the score to read along)

Nicknamed "La Tristesse," the Etude was completed on August 25, 1832 and originally envisioned in a much faster tempo than played in these recordings. Chopin's first tempo marking was that of Vivace, later changed to Vivace ma non troppo. Only for its French publication in 1833 was the tempo of the outer sections dramatically slowed down to Lento ma non troppo.

Newly arrived in Paris, Chopin was then at a threshold of an international career. He just signed agreements with French (Schlesinger), German and English publishers; was preparing his first major solo concert in Paris; and started giving lessons to music-loving aristocrats.

In Poland, he had been infatuated with a lovely singer, Konstancja Gladkowska. He was hoping to marry a daughter of a minor Polish noble, who shared his affections, but was rebutted in this plan by her parents. A sickly musician was not much of a prospect of a husband. Enter the love of Chopin's life, Baroness Aurora Dudevant, or George Sand, of a scandalous life-style, men's clothing, and interminable novels.

Nonetheless, the elan vital of his French novelist lover has revitalized Chopin. During the years with George he was extremely prolific. She adopted him into her household and took care of him like a mother. Her reward? He filled her home with divinely inspired music. Two centuries later we can enjoy it, too.

__________________________________________

The earliest Valentines that a child makes are for his/her parents. Chopin made colorful "laurki" greeting cards for his father and mother...

What did the boy say to his dad? The equivalent of "Happy birthday" and "I love you, Dad" - but in a more formal fashion, surprising for a six-year old. The lovely card was written for Nicholas Chopin's "Name-day" - a far more important celebration in Poland than that of a birthday. The Chopin family paid homage to their patriarch on the feast day of St. Nicholas, December 6 (1816):

Gdy świat Imienin uroczystość głosi Twoich, mój Papo, wszak i mnie przynosi Radość, z powodem uczuciów złożenia, Byś żył szczęśliwie, nie znał przykrych ciosów, Być zawsze sprzyjał Bóg pomyślnych losów, Te Ci z pragnieniem ogłaszam życzenia. F. Chopin. Dnia 6 grudnia 1816

Whereas the world proclaims the celebration of your Name-day, my dear Papa, thus it is also a great joy of mine, occasioned by the expression of heartfelt feelings, to wish you a happy life, that does not know sorrow, nor adversity, that is always blessed by God with good fortune, so these are, longingly expressed, my wishes. F. Chopin. On the 6th day of December, 1816.

If written by a child, and not dictated by his mother, older sister, or caretaker, these wishes surprise with the maturity of vocabulary and complication of syntax. What was Chopin's last letter, then? And how many letters did he write? This remains an issue of contention.

Scholars Zofia Helman, Zbigniew Skowron, and Hanna Wróblewska-Straus have been working for more than two decades on a fully annotated critical edition of all currently known Chopin's letters. The national edition of Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina, issued by the University of Warsaw (available in Polish only) features not only detailed context of each letter, revised and defined placement in chronology, but also extensive notes about every single person mentioned in the letters or in any way associated with them. The hosts of summer vacations, the musicians and friends of musicians, the students and their families - all find their life-stories briefly noted. They were blessed and immortalized by their encounters with a genius whom the world does not want to forget. The one issue that makes it difficult to use along with older edition is letter numbering. The universally accepted numbering by Sydow has been changed, as new letters were inserted in the proper slots and those that were assigned to wrong dates or years, were moved to the appropriate point on the chronology.

The first volume, covering the years up to Chopin's departure from Poland and ending with the famous, tortured pages from his so-called Stuttgart Diary, written after Chopin heard about the end of the November Uprising (started in November 1830), with the fall of Warsaw to Russian troops on September 7, 1831. As the editors ascertained, the Stuttgart press published the first reports about these tragic events on September 16. The famous, dramatic and despairing monologue of an embittered exile was written partly before and partly after that date. Following von Sydow, it is customarily attributed to September 8, a day after the fall of Warsaw, but Helman and her team were able to argue for a more accurate date. After the outburst of despair, on September 18, 1831, Chopin left Stuttgart to continue his way on to Paris where he spent the rest of his life.

The long and dramatic text, permeated with interruptions and exclamations, written in a stream-of-consciousness narrative expresses the composer's distress at a turning point of his life. The format and accusatory tone recall the - written much-later - monologue from Adam Mickiewicz's romantic play, The Forefather's Eve Part III. Chopin really sounds like Konrad in his Grand Improvisation: "Oh God, You are there! You are there and take no revenge! Have You not had Your fill of Muscovite crimes – or – or else You are Yourself a Muscovite! And I sit here idle, and I set here with my hands bare, sometimes just groaning, grieving at the piano, in despair..."

___________________________

The "national edition" of the composer's final letters is not ready yet, though the second volume went to print. Therefore, for Chopin's final word in epistolography, I turned to the online edition of full text of his letters in Polish and the original languages found on the Fryderyk Chopin Information Centre website, managed by the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland. Alas, the list compiled by NIFC includes mistakes in dates in the summaries of letters - so much so that it appears that he was still writing letters to Auguste Franchomme while dying (listed on October 17, the actual date was September 17) and to Tytus Wojciechowski, that Chopin appears to have written three days after breathing his last (listed on October 20, but actually written on August 20).

The last words, scribbled on a piece of paper, were not a letter but a somber instruction to his attendants, family and friends: "When all this coughing will finally suffocate me, I beg you, please order my body to be opened, so that I will not be buried alive." (Comme cette toux m'étouffera je vous conjure de faire ouvrir mon corps pour je suis pas enterré vif). These are customarily dated "somewhat before October 17, 1849" - not by Chopin.

One of the final dates Chopin wrote in his own hand was that of August 1849, when he sent a note to Auguste Franchomme in Paris, asking for some good wine to be delievered at Chailot where the composer was spending his summer:

"My Dear. Send me some of your Bordeaux. I must drink wine today and I do not have any at home. But pack the bottle well and do not forget to mark it with your seal; oh, these messengers! I do not know to whom you will entrust this package. How suspicious have I become! Yours truly, C. (Mon Cher, Envoie-moi un peu de ton Bordeaux. Il faut que je boive aujourd'hui un peu de vin et je n'en ai d'aucune sorte. Mais enveloppe bien la bouteille et n'oublie pas d'y mettre ton cachet, car les porteurs!! Je ne sais à qui tu confieras cet envoi. Comme je suis devenu soupçonneux! Tout à toi C.

From filial devotion, to patriotic duty, to mundane concerns: Chopin's letters reveal a complicated, conflicted man whose idyllic childhood was followed by adult age tormented by loneliness and disease, yet transfigured in the most inspired music. Two studies of letters of his friend Julian Fontana and his lover George Sand reveal Chopin's character and habits to a greater extent and merit further exploration.

What about his love life? Unhappy in securing a marriage with either of the two noble-born ladies he was interested in (Konstancja Gladkowska and Maria Wodzinska), he spent seven years in a tumultuous relationship with novelist George Sand (Baroness Aurore Dudevant), that ended in bitterness and separation.

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As if Chopin's own letters were not enough, poets wrote new letters in his name. The anthology Chopin with Cherries includes three imaginary letters to and from Chopin by Tammy L. Tillotson. She tries to capture Chopin’s heartbreak in the 1830s, marked by a packet of letters, that he had tied with a ribbon and inscribed “moja bieda” (“my misery”).

Similarly, through two epistolary poems, Martin Willitts Jr. recreates the growing discord between Chopin and Sand after their romance fell apart and the sick pianist was close to death in 1847. Willitts was nominated for four Pushcart Awards. His recent poems appeared in Blue Fifth, Parting Gifts, Bent Pin, New Verse news, Storm at Galesburg and other stories (anthology), The Centrifugal Eye, Quiddity, Autumn Sky Poetry, Protest Poems, and others. His tenth chapbook was The Garden of French Horns (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and his second full length book of poetry is The Hummingbird (March Street Press, 2009). He also has won many national storytelling contests and was invited to Denmark to tell many of the Hans Christian Andersen stories.

"Discord" consists of two letters, one from Chopin to George Sand and one from her to her "beloved little corpse" that she lovingly nicknamed her former lover and patient. Through these invented letters, Willitts tells the story of a romance with a bitter end.

Discord

by Martin Willitts, Jr.


1. Chopin to George Sand, 1847

The delicate touch you felt on your neck
is the same as on a piano, with the same lyrical rush,
the music of leaves in the resolute winds.
It is the same idiomatic language of geese leaving.
My heart has the same feeling, restless, yearning.
When I play a rondo, no one can hear the silence after.
I leave these early movements behind
like I must leave you.
Some things are finished when they are finished.

I thought of returning to you.
I hesitated at your window.
I knew if you saw me with that melodic look you have,
it would enrapture me.
Our bodies would become counterpoints.
But it would be fragmentary motifs. Textural nuances
of what used to be.

Our love was illicit, some say.
I say, it was melodic, rhythmic, and full of music.
Our love was repetitions of a single note.

You criticized me for my primitive sense of form
when we would lie in bed, soaked in harmonic intonations.
You were right about me as well as everything else.
I cannot help being in the soundscape of textures,
in the lightness of sound, in the last moment leaving you.
For life is opening one door and descending unknown stairs.


Would the real Chopin ever write anything like it? We do not know. That is what poetic license is for. Another poet, Roxanne Hoffman, writes in Chopin's persona to Sand. Hoffman is an experienced and widely published poet. Her poems and stories appears on and off the net, most recently in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Danse Macabre, The Fib Review, Lucid Rhythms, MOBIUS The Poetry Magazine, Word Slaw and two anthologies: The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology By Gang Members And Their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), and Love After 70 (Wising Up Press). She and her husband own the small press, POETS WEAR PRADA, www.reverbnation.com/pradapoet

Taking the cue from the composer’s notebooks, Hoffman entitles her letter-poem, “G” for George and signs it “F” for Frédéric.
G

by Roxanne Hoffman

G,

I tell my piano
the things I used to tell you,
pull back its fallboard
after propping up the lid,
stroke its sturdy trusses,
hear the strings vibrate in sympathy,
undampered escapement permits,
as my fingers depress and release its keys
to unlock unsaid thoughts,
the music I dream.
The solid back frame
understands the balanced tension
of romance:
the give and the take
of the player and the played,
the rhythm of two heartbeats, even at rest,
the somber melody
of disharmony.
We of equal temperament
speak at length,
practice our arpeggios and scales,
regulate our voices,
and play Mozart in your absence.

F.

Poet's Note: Lines 1 and 2 are a quotation attributed to Chopin. Toward the end of his life he had a falling out with his long time love George Sand, they separated, and she was absent from his funeral. A final request of Chopin’s was to have Mozart’s Requiem sung in his memory. After his death, among his possessions, a lock of her hair was found in a small envelope embroidered with their initials “G.F” tucked in the back of his diary.

A different Chopin emerges as the lyrical subject and protagonist in a poem by Elizabyth Hiscox, ostensibly narrated by "3784 Chopin" a small asteroid up in the sky:


Fryderyk Speaks to George of the Sky

by Elizabyth A. Hiscox

“3784 Chopin” – small asteroid in main belt

They’ve placed me in the vault:
fashioned me
near Jupiter and Mars;
fastened me to the side of old gods.

Power and War, my love,
a chaos created by moveable giants;
an uprising of stone circling itself
all orbital resonance and constant revolution.

Crowded together like notes
written in failing health.

I miss the way the earth broke
over itself each morning:
tender eyedawn of aurorean love.
Broke all of us.

Space, its extended nocturne
is a grand room, my love.
But, as with the past, there is no sound
– only music.

Poet's Note: Italicized line is from John Keat’s “Ode to Psyche.”
George Sand was the pseudonym for Chopin’s one-time lover, Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin.
Hiscox's venture into the night skies is an imaginative way of personalizing astronomy with a musical romance. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals – most recently The Fiddlehead and Hayden’s Ferry Review. She is the author of the chapbook Inventory from a One-Hour Room (2009) from Finishing Line Press. Former poet-in-residence at Durham University U.K., she currently serves as Program Coordinator for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

She "met" with Willitts and Hoffman in Chopin with Cherries, a book that provided a meeting space for poets and music lovers. Three of the epistolary poems cited here explored the fascinating love affair of Chopin and Sand, and this will be the subject of our next exploration on this forum.