Chopin (not) rendered in words ebook

Contents

Iwona Puchalska

Not just George. Women writers in the life and correspondence of the young Chopin

Agata Seweryn

Chopin and the aesthetic and anthropological traditions of the Enlightenment

Ewa Hoffmann-Piotrowska

Between words and music… Chopin interpreting literature. A reconnaissance

Karol Samsel

Chopin’s metonymic imagination. An attempted profile based on his correspondence

Elżbieta Nowicka

‘I am always […] in syncopation with others’. Musical images in Chopin’s letters

Agnieszka Markuszewska

Chopin’s epistolary ‘I’: a reconnaissance

Anita Całek

Chopin and epistolary imagined spaces

Alina Borkowska-Rychlewska

‘I made a few turns, and then I returned home.’ Fryderyk Chopin’s thoughts on solitude

Elżbieta Dąbrowicz

An artist in the family: family relations in Chopin’s correspondence

Maria Cieśla-Korytowska

Chopin’s sense of humour

Kamila Stępień-Kutera

Chopin unrestrained

Iwona Burkacka

Foreign-language elements in the letters of Fryderyk Chopin

Ewelina Kwapień

One letter by Fryderyk Chopin – a linguistic analysis

Małgorzata Sokalska

Re-writing, or on using the letters of Fryderyk Chopin

Wiesław Ratajczak

‘Such a beautiful, poor, sad life and such a blessed death’. Kraszewski as a reader of Chopin’s correspondence

Renata Stachura-Lupa

Fryderyk Chopin’s letters as a biographical source in light of nineteenth-century biographical practices. Karasowski, Tarnowski, Szulc

Urszula Kowalczuk

Fryderyk Chopin’s letters on Ferdynand Hoesick’s desk

Mirosław Strzyżewski

The new edition of Chopin’s correspondence from an editorial perspective

Magdalena Dziadek, Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn

Chopin’s correspondence and the letters of Moniuszko (in connection with existing and planned editions)

Introduction

Fryderyk Chopin left a substantial body of correspondence, which – although perfectly familiar to musicologists and willingly read by literary scholars – has yet to attract either comprehensive academic studies or an adequate number of insightful discussions and interpretations, the like of which have been written on the cor­res­pond­ence of other creative artists of the Romantic era. For a long time, Chopin as a writer remained unappreciated by scholars – even those specialising in the art of words. He was denied any literary ability, and his letters were most often treated merely as biographical or historical documents. While respecting what has been written hitherto about the composer’s correspondence, we considered that it required a new, in-depth reading that took account of both the sensibilities of contemporary readers and also new findings relating to nineteenth-century epistolography.

Employing a range of research strategies, methodologies and approaches characteristic of various academic disciplines – in particular literary studies – we present, in the articles gathered in this book, the wealth of Chopin’s epistolographic writing: not only documental, but above all philosophical, existential and artistic. The authors of these texts, although their research perspectives differ, treat the composer’s letters as an immanent work, worthy of interest in itself, and as such still insufficiently read, calling for its qualities to be recognised.

The volume opens with editorial reflections. Several articles concern psychobiographical aspects of the letters, especially various strategies of self-creation, showing how Chopin wanted to see himself in his epistolary writings, how he diag­nosed his own existence and forged – more or less deliberately – his own legend, in the process becoming a source of literary legend himself. The authors write how the composer’s letters have been ‘used’, how they have become a biographical source, a component in monographic studies, how they have been read during times closer or farther from Chopin’s own. From the scholars’ words, we can also – or perhaps primarily – discern the picture of a composer not only sensitive to the written word (contrary to common opinion about his indifference to literature), but also consciously employing language, with a literary gift, using various stylistic or rhetorical strategies, and displaying creative linguistic imagination and great wit. The texts assembled herein demonstrate that Chopin’s epistolary work, read from various perspectives, holds many more secrets, and the volume was conceived as a pretext for further lively reflection on the phenomenon of Chopin’s writing, inspiring study, opening discussion into the composer’s non-musical legacy and prompting new questions about the Polish nineteenth century.

Projekt dofinansowano ze środków budżetu państwa, przyznanych

przez Ministra Edukacji i Nauki w ramach Programu „Doskonała Nauka II”

Translated and revised by John Comber

Editors Ewa Hoffmann-Piotrowska,

Urszula Kowalczuk, Kamila Stępień-Kutera

Academic reviews

Prof. Andrzej Fabianowski

Prof. Ewa Szczeglacka-Pawłowska

Index Lidia Nowicka-Comber

Graphic design, layout and typesetting

laventura Maciej Sawicki

Printed by ZAPOL Sobczyk Spółka Komandytowa

ISBN 978-83-68058-29-1

© Copyright by Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina 2024

Publisher The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

43 Tamka Street

00-355 Warsaw

nifc.pl

Preparation of the e-book

Graph-Sign Zuzanna Sandomierska-Moroz