cy. I neither regard Chopin's mazurkas as his most artistic
achievements nor recommend their capriciousness and fragmentariness for
general imitation. But if we view them from the right stand-point, which
is not that of classicism, we cannot help admiring them. The musical
idiom which the composer uses in these, notwithstanding their
capriciousness and fragmentariness, exquisitely-finished miniatures, has
a truly delightful piquancy. Yet delightful as their language is,
the mazurkas have a far higher claim to our admiration. They are
poems--social poems, poems of private life, in distinction from the
polonaises, which are political poems. Although Chopin's mazurkas and
polonaises are no less individual than the other compositions of this
most subjective of subjective poets, they incorporate, nevertheless, a
good deal of the poetry of which the national dances of those names
are the expression or vehicle. And let it be noted, in Poland so-called
civilisation did not do its work so fast and effectually as in Western
Europe; there dancing had not yet become in Chopin's days a merely
formal and conventional affair, a matter of sinew and muscle.

It is, therefore, advisable that we should make ourselves acquainted
with the principal Polish dances; such an acquaintance, moreover, will
not only help us to interpret aright Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises,
but also to gain a deeper insight into his ways of feeling and seeing
generally. Now the reader will become aware that the long disquisitions
on Poland and the Poles at the commencement of this biography were not
superfluous accessories. For completeness' sake I shall preface the
description of the mazurka by a short one of the krakowiak, the third
of the triad of principal Polish dances. The informants on whom I
shall chiefly rely when I am not guided by my own observations are the
musician Sowinski and the poet Brodzinski, both Poles:

The krakowiak [says Albert Sowinski in chant polonais] bubbles
over with esprit and gaiety; its name indicates its origin. It
is the delight of the salons, and especially of the huts. The
Cracovians dance it in a very agitated and expressive manner,
singing at the same time words made for the occasion of which
they multiply the stanzas and which they often improvise.
These words are of an easy gaiety which remind one strangely
of the rather loose [semi-grivoises] songs so popular in
France; others again are connected with t