Chopin and Eminescu, Mihai, and Frederic could be called magicians of humankind! Beautiful, genuine, human, with common sense, yet with dose, a big dose of impulsiveness like all geniuses have, awake, nervous and charming, beautiful, restless, magic minds. Creators of unique opus to stay for all the life span of humans and beyond. One with music, the other with words. One more known in the West the other less, but both with unique thoughts, both unhappy in love, both with pain and loneliness, and love for life, both born and died in the age of Romanticism.
Frederik Frantisek Chopin was born 1st of March 1810 and died 17th of October 1849, 39 years old.
Mihail Eminovici was born 15th of January 1850 and died 15th of June 1889. He was 39 years of age.
Chopin died, and after a couple of months, Eminescu was born. Like some divine force had thought not to leave our tiny planet without immortal, beautiful minds. Furthermore, the same power changed the longitude and latitude, and the means of communication with the rest of us, the people.
Namely, from Poland to Romania and from music to poems!
To move from “joy for the ears” to “joy for the eyes,” both in charge of developing our awareness, awakening us.
And the same force has triggered the talent they possessed by injecting two crucial ingredients :
PAIN AND LOVE OR LOVE AND PAIN
Both are in charge of producing extremely intense feelings that Chopin and Eminescu knew how to present to the outside world, but with cost to themselves. Looks like that was their mission! Their purpose of existence! Both were like butterflies, trying to accomplish as many works as possible before leaving us. And they left us with a tremendous legacy. Let’s mention that Eminescu was called Romanian Shakespeare in those days, as today we could call him, using a modern expression, LIFE COACH!
Both preferred loneliness unless with the woman they loved. Potocka and Mickle, Veronica and Delfina.
Both had, as Eminescu said, “cold friends and warm foes”!
Both left us with renewable feelings of exaltation, eminence, joy and sorrow, visions! Rebellion and hope!
In his sonata B moll, Chopin combined demons, dark games of evil forces, remembrance of serenity, quiet days in the middle of most challenging life tribulations, finishing it with a kind of posthumous marsh, fast and powerful like a storm.
Eminescu in his Luceafarul (mild Lucifer!)masterpiece, his “philosophy of love “starting it as a fairytale, and showing down desires and rejection even when immortality was on offer! Refusing it or exchanging it, losing it “for but one kiss of thine!”
And they never ever stop loving and missing their countries Romania and Poland!
Eminescu inspired Romanians with his poems, his thoughts, his in-depth analysis of Romanian mentality. He knew that it is hard to explain, as it is hard to be Romanian.
True patriots both were! Very rare human trait today!
Chopin, like Eminescu, felt somehow condensed, away from his Poland. Thus, nothing in Chopin music is calculated for outside expressions as it has deep inner value!
In his funeral, Polish soil he carried in a silver box was sprinkled on his coffin—a powerful message to all.
Eminescu poems have the same effect! His words penetrating the deep, sleepy places in our soul!
Both were like messiahs and doctors, showing us how to overcome blindness as they got their pain out creatively!
That pain, lot’s of pain first for not experiencing genuine love, then the fear of being rejected, and then when, they thought, love has come, it happened to be unfulfilled, tearing them apart.
Chopin left us with immortal opus and explained himself by the following statement in the letter toward Countess Delfina Potocka:
“Bach is like an astronomer who is finding the most beautiful stars using numbers. Beethoven takes the whole universe with the strength of his spirit. I do not climb so high. I have decided long ago that my
universe will be the human soul and heart!”
Eminescu immortality is here to stay as
“Godfather of modern Romanian language” and a person who, like many, very many of us, experienced pain and had it as an inspiration. Not knowing what to do with it at the first moments.
“What is love? Just another way to have pain.”
And if…
“And if my window feels the branch
Of a stuttering poplar tree,
It is to make me dream once more
Of clasping you to me.
And if the stars glow on the lake
And light its darkling shoal,
It is to flood my mind with peace
And quell my roiling soul.
And if the clouds draw themselves back
To let the moon blaze through,
It is to make my heart recall
How hard I ache for you.”
The Original:
Şi dacă…
“Şi dacă ramuri bat în geam
Şi se cutremur plopii,
E ca în minte să te am
Şi-ncet să te apropii.
Şi dacă stele bat în lac
Adâncu-i luminându-l,
E ca durerea mea s-o-mpac
Înseninându-mi gândul.
Şi dacă norii deşi se duc
De iese-n luciu luna,
E ca aminte să-mi aduc
De tine-ntotdeauna.”
We have our lives, everyday obligations, nervousness and happiness, sorrow and joy, explainable and not explainable unconscious, and who knows how many other feelings we get lost in comprehending to find out what we are and where we are going!
Instead, maybe we should just live the life of love!
And then by listening to Chopin’s music and reading poems of Eminescu, we understand that music and poetry expressing romance and love are making us stay alive, making us proceed with vigor and awareness of the beauty of life!
At Victoria and Albert Museum in London, there is a quote above the entrance door which says
“The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose.”
Both Eminescu and Chopin have achieved that!
And they even achieved something for me! To spend another day in quarantine thinking about great people and being inspired to continue walking and dreaming!
Philosophyofgoodnews
Connect and Respect
First punished 2017
Philosophyofgoodnews 