Perhaps he wished to avoid the emotions of art, (affecting those who reproduce them in serenity of soul so differently from those who repeat in them their own desolation of heart,) by taking refuge in a region so barren.
He sought in this employment only an absorbing and uniform occupation, he only asked from it what Manfred demanded in vain from the powers of magic: "forgetfulness!" Forgetfulness--granted neither by the gayety of amusement, nor the lethargy of torpor! On the contrary, with venomous guile, they always compensate in the renewed intensity of woe, for the time they may have succeeded in benumbing it.

In the daily labor which "charms the storms of the soul," (DER SEELE STURM BESCHWORT,) he sought without doubt forgetfulness, which occupation, by rendering the memory torpid, may sometimes procure, though it cannot destroy the sense of pain.

At the close of that fine elegy which he names "The Ideal," a poet, who was also the victim of an inconsolable melancholy, appeals to labor as a consolation when a prey to bitter regret; while expecting an early death, he invokes occupation as the last resource against the incessant anguish of life: "And thou, so pleated, with her uniting, To charm the soul-storm into peace, Sweet toil, in toil itself delighting, That more it labored, less could cease, Though but by grains thou aidest the pile The vast eternity uprears, At least thou strikest from TIME the while Life's debt--the minutes--days--and years." Bulwer's translation of SCHILLER'S "Ideal." Beschoeftigung, die nie ermattet Die langsam schafft, doch nie zerstoert, Die zu dem Bau der Ewigkeiten Zwar Sandkorn nur, fuer Sandkorn reicht, Doch von der grossen Schuld der Zeiten Minute, Tage, Jahre streicht.
Die Ideale--SHILLER.
The strength of Chopin was not sufficient for the execution of his intention.

The occupation was too abstract, too fatiguing.

He contemplated the form of his project, he spoke of it at different times, but its execution had become impossible.