Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ The delays may have had something to do with the alarming situation in Europe: in July a revolution in Paris had swept the Bourbons from the throne and replaced them with a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe, another revolution had broken out in Belgium against Dutch rule, and there were rumblings of discontent in various other parts of the Continent. But they probably had as much to do with Chopin’s own state of mind.

      By the end of the summer he had reached new heights of emotional turmoil, ostensibly on account of Konstancja. Having met her well over a year before and immediately recognised her as his ‘ideal’ (the very word is redolent of schoolboy ritual), he had still not declared himself to her. ‘I could go on hiding my pathetic and ungainly passions for another couple of years,’ he wrote to Tytus, at the same time stressing their depth and force.³¹ Strong his feelings may have been, but they were certainly not exclusive. The brief infatuations with the Radziwiłł girls and Henriette Sontag are only some of the manifestations of an acute susceptibility to women. From his letters we know that at one soirée in August he saw a girl (who of course reminded him of Konstancja) whom he could not take his eyes off, and who had set his heart on fire by the end of the evening. Another day, in church, he caught the eye of ‘a certain person’, as a result of which he staggered out in a state of sensuous inebriation and nearly got himself run over by a passing carriage.

      These and similar stories are recounted to Tytus in tones of mawkish self-pity, alongside assurances that he, Tytus, is in fact the most important person in Chopin’s life. While reaffirming his constant and undying love for the girl, he would write to his friend that he thought constantly of him: ‘I do not forget you, I am with you, and it shall be so till death.’³² It was Tytus who would have a portrait of Chopin before Konstancja, and it was Tytus who was the recipient of what would have been love letters to Konstancja, had Chopin dared write to her. These letters, sometimes friendly, sometimes petulant, sometimes verging on the passionate, are freely strewn with declarations of love and affinity, and contain passages of extraordinary sensuality.

      This has prompted some to conclude that the two young men were or had been lovers. On the face of it, the equivocal references to passions, secrets and torment combine with the extremely specific terms of endearment to make this appear plausible. Chopin signs off one letter to Tytus with the following jumble of childishness and coy eroticism:

       I must go now and wash. So don’t embrace me now, as I haven’t washed myself yet. – You? If I anointed myself with fragrant oils from the East, – you wouldn’t embrace me, not unless I forced you to by magnetic means. But there are forces in Nature, and tonight you will dream that you are embracing me. – I have to pay you back for the nightmare you caused me last night! ³³

      Taken out of context, this may appear a little risqué, as might the endless kisses sent and demanded by Chopin. But these expressions were, and to some extent still are, common currency in Polish, and carry no greater implication than the ‘love’ people regularly sign off with today. And the traces of infantile eroticism in the letters are of little significance in themselves. The spirit of the times, pervaded by the Romantic movement in art and literature, favoured extreme expression of feeling and glorified transcendent friendship, and it is probably this that lies at the heart of these letters, written as they were at a period in Chopin’s life when he came nearest to living out the Romantic ideal.

      While the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, it is highly unlikely that the two were ever lovers. Had the slightly sentimental relationship between the older, stronger boy and his gentler, more emotional classmate really developed into a sexual rapport, it would almost certainly, knowing Chopin’s malleable and undecided nature, have become an exclusive and long-lasting passion. In such a case there would have been no reason for Chopin to sit about being bored in Warsaw while the bucolic seclusion of Tytus’s estate beckoned.

      Tytus’s role in Chopin’s life was nevertheless an important one. ‘I swear that only you have power over me, you and…no one else!’ Chopin wrote, somewhat dramatically, to his friend, and he was hardly exaggerating.³⁴ His upbringing had marked his character. The strong paternal authority to which he had been subjected had rendered him almost incapable of making a decision on his own. His loving mother and admiring sisters had led him to demand and expect boundless affection from people. The sheltered and regular life of the Chopin household only served to make the outside world and its cares seem more problematic and frightening. While his early exposure to a wide acquaintance had developed in him a gift for easy sociability, this was, apparently, accompanied by a certain fear of giving himself. All this made Chopin dependent, now that he was beginning to live outside his family, on the support of friends. Since he was finding it increasingly difficult to get close to people, he clung more and more to his old friend Tytus. He kept trying to abdicate responsibility, begging Tytus for advice and direction, but Tytus apparently evaded the responsibilities of a mentor and pressed Chopin to take a hold on himself. At the same time he became the recipient of some of Chopin’s repressed or frustrated feelings, which is why some of the letters he received from the young composer read like love letters.

      In Warsaw, Chopin’s only close friends were Jan Matuszyński, who was pursuing medical studies, and Julian Fontana, who had now, after finishing his studies at the Conservatoire, taken up law at the University. Along with Witwicki, they formed a small group which often met at the house of their friend the poet Dominik Magnuszewski. The latter lived with his grandfather, a former judge who seemed to embody the spirit of pre-partition Poland, still dressing in the traditional costume of the Polish nobility. Chopin and his friends loved to listen to him talking about that past which now seemed so distant. The atmosphere of the old Poland had been superseded by the more modern and secular spirit of the 1820s, and Chopin was strongly drawn to what was heroic and elegant about it – it was this he was attempting to capture in the rhythmic and melodic gestures of the more sophisticated Polonaises he was beginning to write.

      The atmosphere at Magnuszewski’s house was congenial, and here he could let himself go with abandon. ‘Everyone always wanted him to improvise,’ Magnuszewski’s sister recorded. ‘He never tried to wriggle out of this, but first he would ask my sister Klara, who had a beautiful voice, to sing something, and it was only afterwards that he would start. We would sit in silence for hours, listening to that music which fired our young souls, and afterwards we would usually start dancing. At that point the dreamy improviser would turn into a lusty player and start thundering out Mazurkas, Waltzes and Polkas until, tired of playing and eager to join in the dancing himself, he would cede the keyboard to a humbler replacement, Fontana, who played fluently and beautifully.’³⁵

      By mid-September, Chopin was trying out various movements of his new E minor Concerto in quartet or other forms, and on the twenty-second he arranged a full performance of the work in the Chopin apartment, again with a select audience of music-lovers, amongst whom were Count Skarbek, Grzymała and Witwicki. It was they who reviewed the event in the press and prompted a public clamour for Chopin to make himself heard. His travel plans had again been put off. He therefore agreed to give a concert, and what is more, invited Konstancja and her fellow pupils to take part in it. This entailed obtaining permission from the Minister of the Interior, which was not difficult, and also getting Kurpiński, who had a natural right to be the conductor, to cede his place to Soliva for the evening, which was a more delicate matter. This activity woke Chopin from his lethargy, and he was now seriously planning his departure as well. ‘A week after the concert at the latest I shall have left Warsaw,’ he wrote to Tytus, who had agreed to accompany him.³⁶ Chopin was, for once, decided; he had bought a trunk and clothes, and was writing out the scores he would need on his travels.

      The concert which took СКАЧАТЬ