Chopin and the Consequences of Exile

This chapter examines how Chopin was seen both as an exile who was quite at home in Paris as well as the authentic voice of a nation. Since Chopin was cut off from his homeland, he supplanted the “tangible” with a wary construct, an aesthetic invention in music that in implicit and explicit ways offered an account of the character, sensibilities, and aspirations of Polishness, which then took hold inside and outside his native Poland. Chopin's capacity to express solitude and loneliness, and to exemplify the Romantic notion of the subjective in art, deepened because of the personal toll exile exacted from him. Chopin, despite his extensive socializing in Paris and his legendary charm and wit, believed himself destined to live and die alone.