[Life of Chopin by Franz Liszt]@TWC D-Link bookLife of Chopin CHAPTER I 6/15
His Concertos and Sonatas are beautiful indeed, but we may discern in them more effort than inspiration.
His creative genius was imperious, fantastic and impulsive. His beauties were only manifested fully in entire freedom.
We believe he offered violence to the character of his genius whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to classifications, to regulations not his own, and which he could not force into harmony with the exactions of his own mind.
He was one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully displayed when they have cut themselves adrift from all bondage, and float on at their own wild will, swayed only by the ever undulating impulses of their own mobile natures. He was, perhaps, induced to desire this double success through the example of his friend, Mickiewicz, who, having been the first to gift his country with romantic poetry, forming a school in Sclavic literature by the publication of his Dziady, and his romantic Ballads, as early as 1818, proved afterwards, by the publication at his Grazyna and Wallenrod, that he could triumph over the difficulties that classic restrictions oppose to inspiration, and that, when holding the classic lyre of the ancient poets, he was still master.
In making analogous attempts, we do not think Chopin has been equally successful.
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