Émigrés on an émigré: Poetic portraits of Chopin

Abstract

This article is devoted to analysis of the mechanisms behind the creation of the cultural image of Fryderyk Chopin in selected verse by twentieth-century Polish poets in exile, such as Kazimierz Wierzyński, Jan Lechoń, Stanisław Baliński and Czesław Miłosz. Verse (and excerpts from autobiographic texts) by those poets helps to forge and renew the ‘Chopin legend’ in various ways, through references to the most important moments in the composer’s biography and selected features of his music. From analysis of this verse, we learn that these poets looked at Chopin and his music primarily through the prism of the role assigned to them by history – similar to the role in which Chopin had tried to find his bearings a hundred years earlier on his departure from Poland. The attitude adopted by émigré writers towards Chopin and his music, representing one of the most important symbols in Polish culture, is not unequivocal. Its distinct affirmation is accompanied by reflection on the conditions and limitations of émigré mythology. The poems discussed show the significant currency in émigré circles especially of that aspect of the Chopin legend which refers to the image of a distant and enslaved homeland. That currency distinguishes the émigrés from their peers back home, who wished to see a different symbolism in Chopin and his music, especially one that was free from conventionalised patriotic references. This last observation may also be referred to the analysed poem by Miłosz, which from the proposed comparative perspective comes across as the reverse of the other works discussed in the article. An interesting perspective could no doubt be opened up by comparative studies of a broader scope, showing how this theme functioned and was functionalised in the output of foreign writers, within the constellation of other cultural, social and historical relations.