From Chopin's Album-Diary
Stuttgart, September 8, 1831
Stuttgart. Strange thing! This bed, in which I lie, has perhaps already served more than one dying person, and this thought does not horrify me today. Perhaps more than one corpse has lain here, perhaps for a long time? And why would a corpse be worse off than me? Even a corpse knows nothing of father, mother, sisters, or Tytus. Even a corpse has no lover. It cannot speak in its language to those who surround it. A corpse is as pale as I am. A corpse is cold, just as I now feel cold to everything. A corpse has now ceased to live, and I have lived to satiety. To satiety? Is a corpse perhaps satiated with life? If it were satiated, it would have a good appearance, but instead it is so wretched; does life thus have such a great influence on the features, on the expression of the face, on the external configuration of man? Why do we live such a wretched life, that devours us and serves this purpose, to make us corpses?
The clocks of the Stuttgart towers strike one at night. Ah, how many corpses are being made, at this moment, in the world! Mothers die to their children, children to their mothers, how many projects destroyed, how much sadness for the corpses and how much consolation. How many dishonest guardians, and how many oppressed creatures are corpses. A good corpse and an evil one. Virtue and wickedness together! In being corpses, they are sisters. It is seen, then, that death is man's best act; what, then, will be his worst? Birth: as the absolute contrary to the best act. I therefore have reason to be indignant, grieving at having come into the world! Why was I not granted the privilege of not coming? And I am so inert! To whom can my existence ever serve! I serve no one, because I have neither calves nor jaws. And even if I had them, I would have nothing else. And if I had them, would I perhaps be better? But without them, one cannot exist! And does a corpse have them? Even a corpse, like me, has no calves; and here is yet another similarity. Thus, I lack little to fraternize mathematically with death. Today I do not wish it for myself yet, unless you too are unhappy, my dear ones, and unless you too wish nothing better than death! If not, I desire to see you again, not through direct, but through indirect happiness, because I know how much you love me. Only she pretended. Or pretends. Ah, this is an enigma to be solved! Yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, finger upon finger... it slipped away!... Does she love me? Does she certainly love me? Let her do as she wishes. Today a higher feeling, higher, much higher than... curiosity, I have in my soul. One can preserve a good memory. Father, mother, dear sisters, all that is dearest to me, where are you? Perhaps corpses? Perhaps the Muscovite has played a trick on me! But wait! Wait... Tears? For a long time they had not flowed... why now? For a long time now, a dry sadness has gripped me. Ah, I could not weep for long. How sweet it is to me.... and how it consumes. It consumes, and it is sweet; what feeling is this? Sweet and consuming. When one is consumed, one is unhappy, and yet it is sweet. It is a strange case. But even for a corpse, it is so. In the same instant, there is for him, together, good and evil. He passes into a happier life, and that is good for him; he regrets leaving the past one, and that consumes him. A corpse must feel as I felt when I ceased to weep. It was, clearly, a temporary death of my feelings; I died to my heart, for a moment! Or rather, my heart died to me, for a moment. Why not forever? Perhaps for me it would have been more bearable. Alone, alone. Ah, it is impossible to describe my misfortune. Scarcely do the senses endure it. Scarcely does the heart not burst from joy and from the great pleasures it has experienced during this year. Next month my passport expires; I cannot live abroad, at least officially I cannot live. Because of this, I shall be even more like a corpse.
Stuttgart.
I wrote the previous pages without knowing that the enemy is in the house. The suburbs destroyed, burned. Jas! Wilus has certainly died on the bastions. I see Marcel prisoner, Sowinski, that dear man, in the hands of those scoundrels! O God, are you there? Are you there and do not take vengeance? Have you not had enough of the crimes of the Muscovites or, or, you yourself are a Muscovite! My unhappy father, my dear, perhaps hungry, there is no money to buy bread for my mother. Perhaps my sisters have suffered the fury of the unleashed Muscovite villainy! Paszkiewicz, that dog Mohylew, storms the seat of the first monarchs of Europe? The Muscovite master of the world? O father, these are the pleasures reserved for your old age! Mother, grieving, tender mother, you have lost a daughter, to see how the Muscovites fall upon her bones to oppress you. Ah, Powazki! Did they respect her tomb? Trampled, a thousand other corpses have fallen into the grave. They burned the city!! Ah, why not
I was able to kill at least one Muscovite! Or Tytus, Tytus!
Stuttgart.
What is happening to her? Where is she? Unhappy! Perhaps in the hands of the Muscovites. The Muscovite presses her, suffocates her, slaughters her, kills her! Ah, my life, I am here alone, come to me; I will dry your tears, I will heal the wounds of the present by reminding you of the past. Back then, when there were no Muscovites yet. Back then, when only some of them would have wanted very much to please you, and you mocked them, because I was there, I, not Grab....! Do you have a mother? And she is so bad! Mine is good. But perhaps I have no mother at all anymore. Perhaps the Muscovite killed her... slaughtered her. My stunned sisters do not leave my desperate father; he does not know what to do, he has no one to entrust my mother to. And I am here inactive; I am here with my bare hands—sometimes I only groan, I grieve on the piano, I despair—and what is the use?—God, God! Shake the earth, which swallows the men of this century. May the harshest anguishes torment the French, who did not come to our aid.
F.Chopin
