Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/130

106 urged on the nation to battle, Chopin created in this one mazurek of the pelonaise in F sharp minor, incomparable in the power of its invention, an immortal, a heaven-storming song of songs.

But all this is but a dream—all the more terrible the awakening. Afresh begins the sombre "Missa desperationis"? which, in a "Ite, missa est" degenerates into a raging orgasm of despair. The end of these epic events, the most grievous that ever heroic race passed through in superhuman distress, is only the dying sigh of a sorrow which has already passed beyond the bounds of sorrowful emotion,—a sorrow beyond any human conception of torment.

And it seemed that all had now sunk to rest, all had now died away, that the last coffin was now borne out from the dead-house And then suddenly a fearful, piercing shriek, like the dire thunder of the Last Judgment. This final F, beneath which Chopin's trembling hand in its visionary rapture of creation had written a fourfold forte, is one of the strangest riddles in his work.

This abrupt and horrible shriek, which sets the hair on end,—is it the last outcry of a breaking heart, or a convulsive summons to a fresh contest?

It might appear that Chopin's soul had, in the polonaise in F sharp minor, contrived tu utter