In 1835, Liszt represented the amazing type of the virtuoso, whilst Chopin, for me, was the personification of poetry. The former played in pursuit of effect […] Chopin, by contrast, did not appear to be aware of the audience, but rather to be following an internal voice’

Incomparable genius whom the heavens envied the Earth

Chopin was the greatest artistic shock which I experienced. My adoration for him continued to grow, and still does so, and I regard Chopin to be the most magnificent phenomenon not only in the history of Polish poetry but in global art as a whole.

Where [John] Field smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace; where Field sighs, Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin arches his back like a cat, where Field puts some seasoning into the food, Chopin empties a handful of cayenne pepper… In short, if one holds Field’s charming romances before a distorting, concave mirror, so […]

Gustave Flaubert, pessimist and master of cadenced lyric prose, urged young writers to lead ascetic lives that in their art they might be violent. Chopin’s violence was psychic, a travailing and groaning of the spirit; the bright roughness of adventure was missing from his quotidian existence. The tragedy was within.