Chopin : the Man and His Music

PART I.--THE MAN

I. POLAND:--YOUTHFUL IDEALS

Gustave Flaubert, pessimist and master of cadenced lyric prose, urged young writers to lead ascetic lives that in their art they might be violent. Chopin's violence was psychic, a travailing and groaning of the spirit; the bright roughness of adventure was missing from his quotidian existence. The tragedy was within. One recall...