WILCZYŃSKI Bolesław - Stanislaw Moniuszko and the Art of National Music. Studyum estetyczne [...]. Warsaw [1874].

WILCZYŃSKI Bolesław - Stanisław Moniuszko i sztuka muzyczna narodowa. Studyum estetyczne, by... Warsaw 1874 edition by Gebethner and Wolff. Edition of the Editorial Board of the Warsaw Library. Printed by J. Berger.

Format:22cm. Pages:[4], 149, [3]. Secondary binding: half leather damaged - part of the spine of the binding missing, yellowing of the paper typical of the era.

Ownership signature on title page: "Sz. Piotrowski."

Excerpt:"Let's see, then, what are the psychological features of our old Polish poeticism. They are full of character, and reflect differently among the common poetry. There is no resemblance here to that Germanic Romanticism, which emerged from the middle of dark forests, from the abyss of the seas, from mountain nests. There, the country piled up with the wild cut of nature, and its physognomy vultured with a terrible gaze, commanding silence, imposing terror on the human spirit. It was the téjà fantasy of man, which spun swarms of visions here and set the mighty dramas in motion. She reached out to that detached, fragmented, individual ideality, which, like a baron sitting on a rocky cliff, clings to the peaks and backwoods, which breathes anxiety and fear, and a black cloud lingers in the sky. Such poeticism infused Germanic legends, such poeticism with awe and fear took over the soul of the Romans, entering victoriously into the thresholds of northern barbarism. Under this guidance of impressions, the feeling that is formed is characterized by this individual sentimentality, which results from the fact that man turns more to himself, because he is not based on actual object love, but on imaginary and anticipated love. Nature, not being wedded to the soul of the German, taught him to hide the heartfelt pulse, disposed him to dream. Isolated, chilled, every now and then repelled by the matrix, the feeling moves into the realm of delusion and easily becomes an exaltation, fed rather by the food of the mind than by the blood of the heart. Consider the consequences of this in the history of love and the position of women. In the Middle Ages, the Germanic woman receives immoderate worship, she is an idol on burnt altars, on which all the thoughts, feelings and deeds of the other half of the human race are sacrificed. Suddenly it falls, and, thrown out of the temples of supposed love, it passes into slavery, and, as an instrument of practical reason, it does not even bring with it traces of its former honor. Well, as honor as well as decline, resulted from the injustice of the heart, from the lack of reliable intuition of the spirit. On the other hand, we were a long way from that passionate and fervent, delightful, Epicurean poetry of the southern peoples, who knew how to find charms and beauties in nature, and paid them love and honor. The spirit of our land breathes peacefully. The spirit of our land breathes peacefully. It is spacious in this slightly outlined country, where neither the heat is hot, nor the wild echo of human pulses repeats. Here the journeyman lives freely, because his chest is not crushed...".