during this study of frederic chopin, the musician, certain incidents in his career, those favorably or unfavorably affecting his artistic development, have been touched on. notable among them was his friendship with liszt; but we have now to record the effects of another coming together, that of chopin and george sand. this latter was not the marriage of two minds musically pre?minent, but, in fact, the result of the drawing near, until under one sky, of two related worlds: that of the musician, and that of the poet, for such, in fact, was the world of the imaginative french novelist. from this meeting and blending of abodes resulted a drama, and, for chopin, a final tragedy; therefore a word in regard to the two distinguished actors.
chopin's bodily appearance was marked by an entire absence of the robust; his features indicated delicate and refined feeling; his tastes were fastidious; his manner smooth and faultless with the last polish. this much created an impression as of a feminine personality, but the real, virile man was there, well-hidden beneath his mask. ?george sand,? as that nom de plume would indicate, claimed for herself almost every masculine prerogative. with manly daring and physical vitality, she overleaped convention as but the walls of a prison-pen fit only for the shutting in of little minds. and yet, before some noble and deep nature, a softest fire would mount to those dark eyes of hers, and voice and mien revealed the ?eternal womanly,? which often outlined and sometimes portrayed itself upon her most tender, soulful pages. from trustworthy accounts we conclude that chopin was at first repelled, not by any physical lack, for madame dudevant had just and ample claims to comeliness, but rather from his inability to divine at once the basic affinity which afterwards drew and held him despite external dissimilarities. not so with the great novelist to whose feminine insight much of the analytical, masculine mind was added. she at once divined chopin, and whatever was defective in him the glamour of sex made good; so she desisted not until she had made him her own.
the beauty and symmetry and fragrance of the flower is the complete expression of a life simple because low in the scale of evolution; but the beauty and symmetry of the masculine human form, together with every endowment of the characteristic masculine mind, only half expresses the rounded whole of the complex human soul, itself sexless because above sex. what is true of man is equally so of woman. the man and the woman of genius each recognizes in the other the riches and worth of that hemisphere of the soul adequately revealed only by that other. this perception of a mutual need is the prompter of love between men and women high in the scale of human evolution; it is in fact the cause of love even in the most unthinking; those whom only the wisdom of nature enlightens.
like beethoven, who sighed for his ?immortal beloved,? chopin himself had loved and more than once. that half of his being which, because a man, he failed to realize as an inward belonging, he had projected as an ideal clothed with the grace and beauty of womankind. that ideal had looked into his eyes with tender recognition, or a glance almost of scorn had wholly told his poor unworth. but, favoring or reproving, that ideal had vanished utterly and forever, and now his heart indeed was lone save in brief, exalted moments of genius. then the soul in its entirety would assert itself, and amidst that fullness he needed no other company.
chopin, now twenty-eight years of age, had reached the early maturity which hastens to the precocious genius into whose brief but brilliant years are crowded the doings of an ordinary lifetime. in subject matter, at least, he had from the first shown an originality almost unimpressed by any great contemporary or predecessor. conscious of ability to stand alone, he shunned rather than sought the friendship of renowned composers and virtuosi. a tone poet most essential to the romantic movement, he cared not for the romanticism of schumann. the eccentricities of berlioz repelled him, and, strange in an admirer of hummel and field, he could not or would not condone what he deemed commonplace in the bulk of mendelssohn's work. as for liszt, to whose interpretation he accorded deserved praise, he had with secret disdain penetrated to the somewhat small kernel of original and worthy ideas in that author's early virtuoso pieces.
from this much, and more that might be added, it is evident that chopin's glance was chiefly introspective. moreover, it is evident that his inner world was not that of other musicians.
what then was the influence of george sand upon our composer, now at the zenith of his powers? evidently that of a projected ideal the image of the half of his soul life which goethe calls the eternal feminine. in the searching light of our everyday world, the personality of george sand betrays many defects. this of itself forbade a union like that of the brownings; and to such a union other objections existed. the physical ailments of chopin, which even in youth had menaced, and in a gradual approach had now seized upon him, were never wholly to loosen their grasp, so the chronic invalid became at times an exacting and by no means patient sufferer. on the other hand, george sand was a woman of wide outlook and varied interests. certain chimeras in the guise of political and social reform were leading the temperamental novelist far afield; but in these matters the composer shared not her enthusiasm, neither would he be indoctrinated as she herself had been. knowing where his strength lay, he remained faithful to his muse, his lavish endower. while chopin sought the smiles of princesses, and the applause of the fashionable salon, the sand remained aloof. conscious of her superb mental equipment, she no doubt believed that the brightest of all that gay company could add not a single thought to her ever-overflowing store. no wonder that as time wore on our musician more and more failed to fulfill the requirements of her ideal.
the affair with de musset should have warned chopin, but what warning, what philosophy, what asceticism, could offset the fascinations of one who at will swayed the hearts of her immense public? besides, chopin was not a philosopher save that unconscious one which an analysis of his deepest tone-poems reveals. still less was he an ascetic this highly-developed emotional nature, this virile yet frail man of genius.
of chopin it must be admitted that he remained true to his attachment, true despite indubitable proof of the other's infidelity; true even till the shutting of the door wherewith eventually she barred her heart forever from his own; true even then he remained, nursing in secret the sorrows of a bruised and broken life, while, from this episode in her own career, but the finale in that of her lover, the woman, like faust and wilhelm meister, emerged into other and varied experiences.
but, to repeat our former question, what was the effect of george sand on the ten years of productive effort which measured the beginning and the end of this affaire du c?ur? we hold that effect the most important of everything extraneous on the body of our composer's works during that rich decade. nevertheless that effect is not local; the finger cannot be placed upon it, nor is it determinable as a fixed quantity. rather it is nourishment assimilated, chemically changed to blood and bloom and beauty by a process whereof genius alone has the secret.
of the work of these memorable years it may well be said that, beneath their various dedications, the name of george sand was written in the warm and ruddy life of the heart of frederic chopin. had the novelist been another clara schumann rendering for the composer those great fortissimos, and those loud and brilliant passages to which his delicate physique was unequal, or even had chopin himself been, like liszt, a man of literary tastes and capabilities, how much happier the outcome! how that mutual happiness, triumphing over the depressing power of a dread disease—as afterwards in the case of heinrich heine—would have infused a more luminous color into the prevailing sombreness of his tone poetry! but, thankful for our rich heritage, we grieve not over what might have been.
