I am glad she likes it,--the more so as
the country, soon after crossing the frontier, seemed to her rather
depressing. Truly, only those born on the soil can find any charm in
the vast solitary plains, where the eye finds very little to rest
upon. Clara, looking through the carriage window, said more than once:
"Ah! I can understand Chopin now!" She is utterly mistaken,--she does
not understand Chopin and his feelings, any more than she is in touch
with his native land. I, though a cosmopolitan by education, by
atavism understand our nature, and am surprised myself at the spell
a Polish spring casts upon me, and it seems as if I could never
feel tired of it. Properly speaking, what does the view consist of?
Sometimes, on purpose, I put myself into a stranger's place,--a
painter's, having no preconceived ideas about it, and look at it with
his eyes. The landscape then makes upon me the impression as if a
child had drawn it, or a savage, who had no notion about drawing. Flat
fallow-land, wet meadows, huts with their rectangular outline, the
straight poplars around country-seats on the distant horizon, a broad,
flat plain, finished off with a belt of woods,--that "ten miles of
nothing," as the Germans call it; all this reminds me of a first
attempt at drawing landscape. There is scarcely enough for a
background. From the moment I cease looking upon it with a stranger's
eyes, I begin to feel the simplicity of the view, incorporate myself
with that immense breadth, where every outlined object melts into the
far distance, as a soul in Nirvana; it has not only the artistic
charm of primitiveness, but it acts soothingly upon me.
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