kbrenner; he will not
be able to break my perhaps bold but noble resolve--TO CREATE
A NEW ART-ERA. If I now continue my studies, I do so only in
order to stand at some future time on my own feet. It was not
difficult for Ries, who was then already recognised as a
celebrated pianist, to win laurels at Berlin, Frankfort-on-
the-Main, Dresden, &c., by his opera Die Rauberbraut. And how
long was Spohr known as an excellent violinist before he had
written Faust, Jessonda, and other works? I hope you will not
deny me your blessing when you see on what grounds and with
what intentions I struggle onwards.

This is one of the most important letters we have of Chopin; it brings
before us, not the sighing lover, the sentimental friend, but the
courageous artist. On no other occasion did he write so freely and fully
of his views and aims. What heroic self-confidence, noble resolves, vast
projects, flattering dreams! And how sad to think that most of them were
doomed to end in failure and disappointment! But few are the lives of
true artists that can really be called happy! Even the most successful
have, in view of the ideally conceived, to deplore the quantitative and
qualitative shortcomings of the actually accomplished. But to return to
Kalkbrenner. Of him Chopin said truly that he was not a popular man; at
any rate, he was not a popular man with the romanticists. Hiller tells
us in his "Recollections and Letters of Mendelssohn" how little grateful
he and his friends, Mendelssohn included, were for Kalkbrenner's
civilities, and what a wicked pleasure they took in worrying him.
Sitting one day in front of a cafe on the Boulevard des Italiens,
Hiller, Liszt, and Chopin saw the prim master advancing, and knowing
how disagreeable it would be to him to meet such a noisy company, they
surrounded him in the friendliest manner, and assailed him with such a
volley of talk that he was nearly driven to despair, which, adds
Hiller, "of course delighted us." It must be confessed that the great
Kalkbrenner, as M. Marmontel in his "Pianistes celebres" remarks, had
"certaines etroitesses de caractere," and these "narrownesses" were of
a kind that particularly provokes the ridicule of unconventional and
irreverent minds. Heine is never more biting than when he speaks of
Kalkbrenner. He calls him a mummy, and describes him as being dead long
ago and having lately also married. This, however, was some years after
the