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I enclose a note to Schlesinger, in which I give you full authority to act in this matter. I feel better every day; nevertheless, you will pay the portier these fifty francs, to which I completely agree, for my doctor does not permit me to move from here before summer. Mickiewicz's "Dziady" I received yesterday. What shall you do with my papers?
Like the suicide lover in Mickiewicz's poem, who returns to life in the land of the Dead only to renew the dreadful suffering of his earth life, perhaps among all the emotions then so vividly felt there is not a single one which, could it again live, would reappear without the disfigurements, the brandings, the bruises, the mutilations, which were inflicted on its early beauty, which so deeply sullied its primal innocence!
Both Roman Catholics and both revolutionists in religion. The religious revolution they made can be characterised only by the words "noble catholicity." Both of them were attracted by Primitive Christianity much more than by the official Church of their own time. Sienkiewicz's work "Quo Vadis?" is by far better known than Mickiewicz's lectures on "The Official Church and Messianism."
But instead of his description I shall quote a not less true and more picturesque one from the last canto of Mickiewicz's "Pan Tadeusz": It is time to dance the polonaise. The President comes forward; he lightly throws back the fausses manches of his overcoat, caresses his moustache, presents his hand to Sophia: and, by a respectful salute, invites her for the first couple.
A major ending would have crushed this extraordinary tone-poem, written, Chopin admits, under the direct inspiration of Adam Mickiewicz's "Le Lac de Willis." Willeby accepts Schumann's dictum of the inferiority of this Ballade to its predecessor. Niecks does not. Niecks is quite justified in asking how "two such wholly dissimilar things can be compared and weighed in this fashion."
That Chopin had a programme, a definite one, there can be no doubt; but he has, wise artist, left us no clue beyond Mickiewicz's, the Polish bard Lithuanian poems. In Leipzig, Karasowski relates, that when Schumann met Chopin, the pianist confessed having "been incited to the creation of the ballades by the poetry" of his fellow countryman.
She knew much more of Chopin than he did, and she recited Mickïewicz's patriotic poems with incomparable verve. "Do you believe in heredity?" he cried, as the father entered with the tea. "Do you believe that your love of Chopin is inherited? Chopin composed that wonderful slow movement of the F minor concerto because of his love for your grandmother. How I wish I could have seen her, heard her."
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