Authors

Risa Matsuo¹;  ¹ Waseda University, Japan

Discussion

This paper traces the disruption of the notion of “fantasy” shared by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855, Polish poet and political activist), George Sand (1804-76, French novelist and journalist) and Fryderyk Chopin (1810-49, Polish composer) in the 1840s, and considers how this is expressed in Chopin’s “fantastic” solo-piano works, Op.44, 49 and 61.
    In 1839, Sand wrote and published her Essay on Fantastic Drama, in which she highly evaluated Mickiewicz’s Dziady part 3. This article impressed Chopin and he wrote to his friend Wojciech Grzymała about the excellence of Sand’s critique. The 3rd part of Dziady, a dramatic poetry in which the Partition of Poland is written from a philosophical perspective, was an important piece of Catholic spirituality for Polish people who at the time were forced into exile or combat due to Russian imperial rule. Since it was only later that Chopin composed solo-piano works which he himself regarded as “Fantasies”, this research project, which includes the content of this paper, has so far analysed two novels published by Sand in the same year as her Essay, namely Spiridion and The Seven Strings of the Lyre, in comparison with Dziady part 3 and concluded that their shared notion of “fantasy” influenced Chopin’s compositions of Op.44, 49 and 61.
    However, Op.44 and Op.49 were written in 1841, whereas Op.61 in 1846. During this five-year period, Mickiewicz was inclined towards Towianism, the radical ideology of redemption for the sins of the world through the martyrdom of the Polish people, which both Chopin and Sand criticised severely. Sand’s views of life and death in her works Jan Žiška (1843) and The Devil's Pool (1846) during this period can indicate a change from her “fantastic” novels of 1839.
  Based on the above, this paper considers how Chopin presented his last “fantastic” solo-piano work of 1846, Op.61, in comparison with Op.44 and Op.49, in response to the divergence between Mickiewicz’s and Sand’s thoughts on “fantasy”. Finally, this paper concludes what these artists arrived at in the 1840s, with a perspective from Poland and France, the latter of which accepted Polish exiles in this period and has continued to host war migrants until today.