A sorrowfully intent listening for something close and yet so endlessly distant, a brooding recollection of memories which escape and blurr, a gnawing pang of desire to experience them all once again in the glowing fullness of life, and the awareness of disconsolate impotence in the face of the impossible—all this and perhaps much else may well be what the specific tone of Chopin's soul, the sublimest revelation of the entire folk-soul, this "Żal" expresses.
And indeed, it could not be otherwise.
For this tone, which predominates so paramountly in the whole of Chopin's music, is not the tone of a nation who in revelry spend days of resplendent glory, sated with triumphs and proud of their empire, extending from one ocean to the other, nor is it that same nation's tone of drunken delirium, when in gluttony and a raving need for intoxication they steeped their senses in drunkenness and brought upon themselves the disgrace of Targowica[1]—no! It is that heroic overwhelming tone of martyrdom, which upon the deadly field of Maciejowice[2] sobbed for mercy in crazed prayers, the tone of despair, whose death-rattle resounds amid throes of torment, filled with the breath of revolt and curses and revilings and shrill outcry to God: "O thou,
