Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/118

94 Love for this land throve in Chopin's soul, till it became his most exalted creed, and thus it is, that a foreign nation cannot understand him, even in the remotest, as the Pole does—to the subtlest, the most fervent vibrations in Chopin's soul, the foreigner is deaf, precisely where the strongest echo is engendered in the Polish spirit.

In the specific tone of the Polish soul, of which I spoke at the beginning, and which the folk-song has preserved in all its maiden purity, in the dance-tunes of the Polish people, in their hymns, that infinitely melancholy sing-song in an undertone, that grievous psalmody of yearning—therein lies deeply buried the root of Chopin's creative power.

And Chopin took from the hand of the Polish peasant the fiddle carved from the bark of the lime-tree—but this instrument proved too scant; how could it encompass all those things in the soul of the people with which the organ-music of the village churches has become inseparably united, and the sobbing of the flute which was carved from the spring-tide branches of the willow, the groaning of the cellos, and the whining of the bag-pipes?

In his soul Chopin collected all those things which the people have wept about, have sung of in the deep grief of despair, have bewailed, and for which the g, d, a, e of the violin cannot