Zelazowa Wola Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The birthplace of Frederic Chopin.Zelazowa Wola. The cradle of Frederic Chopin stood here more that a century and a half a go. It is difficult even to imagine what a busy place it was in days gone by. Zelazowa Wola was not spared the storms of fate, for its history, like the history of Poland, was full of unhappy events and unexplained adversity. During the nineteenth century, the existence of Zelazowa Wola was almost completely forgotten. Like a coffin, it had decayed almost into dust. Fire, ruin and incompetence had destroyed the manor-house and outbuildings. But it has survived till the present day, and in its modest seclusion has become one of Poland's most valued historical place and buildings. It has become a place of pilgrimage and spiritual homage, for not only Poles, but people from all over the world as well, visit this shrine. The first person to promote the idea of restoring this cottage and making a permanent monument to Chopin was a foreigner. Today, other foreigners, musicians, pianists and composers, consider it their duty to visit the birthplace of great art, the place where the infinite wealth of Chopin's great music had its source.
Here in Zelazowa Wola, in the unobtrusive Mazovian countryside, one comprehends better than anywhere else how much the music of Chopin is tied up with the Polish landscape. On the surface, this may seem a paradox. What can there be in common between those poor fields, that road stretching over the plain, those thatched cottages, and what Chopin's music gives us? But when we consider the question more closely, we see that it looks quite different.
The landscape here is an excellent introduction to the music of Chopin. Everyone who really wants to enter the spirit of his music and understand how closely it is bound up with the Poland must acquire the sensibility of that "blue tone", as Eugene Delacroix termed it, that is common both to the Polish landscape and the music of the composer who was born in this great plain.
But Chopin was born here. Every pedant will tell you that he only spent the first few months of his life in Zelazowa Wola before his parents moved to Warsaw. But he always felt attached to the place where he saw the light of day, and often came back there with his beloved sister Louise. As a young man, he used to sit here by the stream, under that tree, beside the bridge. He drove to Warsaw along that typically Polish road lined with willows. The willows were there then, just as they are now. A few weeks before Chopin left for Paris, he even came from Warsaw to say good-bye to Zelazowa Wola. Perhaps he looked on this country place as a symbol of the entire country. Everything we see today when, in quiet reflection and concentration, we survey the Mazovian country, he saw too, and loved it, and took it to his heart. He made his farewell in the autumn, and set off "en passant par Paris" on the long wanderings which were to take him on a search of his own illusory golden fleece, wanderings, from which he was never to return.
Chopin's life, his great culture, his trials and troubles-and the great opinion Chopin always had of his mission, complicated the influence and covered it with the mist of distance. Chopin's great compositions became far removed from Zelazowa Wola. His sojourns in splendid capitals, his travels and his other experiences made different impressions on him. But towards the end of his life, if thoughts of his home, his mother and sisters visited him while he was staying in cold and distant Edinburgh, we may be justified in thinking, too, that the landscape of his native country also conjured itself up before his eyes. Those were these trees, these shrubs, these expanses of water which are before our eyes now. And if we listen to the last mazurkas Chopin wrote before his death, we shall hear in them the distant notes of songs that were sung in his native parts-filtered by the prism of homesickness, but all the complications of his life, and far from rural simplicity, yet bound up with his land and derived from it.
The house where Chopin was born, which by some marvel survived all those years, and which for a time was used as stable or a pigsty, has changed enormously. There is not a piece of furniture in it, not a single object, that belonged to Chopin's real house, yet when we look through the open doors from one room to another, when we see the outline of a grand piano in the distance, we feel that Chopin is here, that he is walking between these wall, and that when all the people have gone away, he will sit down at the keyboard and continue his lyrical or dramatic improvisations.
When we look at the immense vase of flowers or leaves in the alcove where he was born, we have the feeling it is not a vase at all, but a fountain giving forth a golden stream, an inexhaustible stream of his music.
To this stream come people from all over the world, to throng round this modest cottage on autumn or summer Sundays, listening to a concert of Chopin's music. The greatest pianists in the world hold it their honour to play in this house, and pay tribute to Chopin playing one of his compositions.
On such occasions, the house is surrounded by listeners young and old- the new ones who are only penetrating the mystery of that beautiful world revealed by Chopin's music, and the old ones, whom the present concert reminds of their whole life, of the profoundly intimate feelings and emotions experienced in connection with that music. Sometimes the music also recalls those times when Chopin's music was banned and could only be heard in secret, or in salons where only a handful of people were present-proof not only of the greatness of our culture, but of the fact that the nation's life cannot be stifled. For this beautiful music has also been on occasion a weapon in the fight for Poland's freedom.
Anyone who, listens to Chopin will be able to put outside events aside, forget about daily cares, small disasters and unbearable troubles, and discover what is the most profound and the most valuable in life. In Zelazowa Wola, one can see with one's eyes the value of Chopin's great art as the strongest tie binding the nation together; one can see how Chopin's music is a rock and foundation.
In Zelazowa Wola, summer is full of memories of the most mature of Chopin's works. Especially at sunset the water is a fragrant as an arpeggio in his Barcarolle, while the high, mauvish tree-trunks stand as evenly and precisely as the first beats of the Ballade in F-minor. From these whispers and fragrances one gets as dizzy as when, deep in thought, one listens to the marching beats, the advancing and receding sound waves of his unique music.
Now there are no horses, nor sleighs, nor fur, nor beautiful women those furs enveloped. There is no Maria Wodzinska, nor Delfina Potocka, nor even Chopin's first love, Konstancja Gladkowska. There is neither mother nor sisters, but only great silence. All is gone.
He alone lives here, and wanders through these charming rooms. The faint music of his piano contrasts with the snow and the wind and the silence. Only the music is real.
On a winter day like this, if you stand before the house and look at the curb-roof, the bare branches and the dark windows, you suddenly feel all alone.
All alone with Chopin.
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