Boston: Published by T. O. H. P. Burnham, No.
143 Washington street. New York: H. Dexter Hamilton & Co., 113
Nassau street; O. S. Felt, 36 Walker street.
'Rumor' is a book of genius, but genius of a peculiar character. Gleams
of intuition into the most secret recesses of the heart, analyses of
hidden feelings, flash brilliantly upon us from every leaf, and yet a
vague mysticism broods over all. No steady light illumes the pages;
scenes and characters float before as if shrouded in mist, or dimmed by
distance. The shadowy forms, held only by the heart, shimmer and float
before us, draped in starry veils and seen through hues of opal. We are
in Dreamland, or in the fair clime of the Ideal. 'Porphyro' we know to
be Louis Napoleon, but who are 'Rodomant and Diamid?' Adelaida and
deafness would point to Beethoven, but other circumstances forbid the
identification. Nor do we think Rodomant a fair type of a musical
genius; arrogant, overbearing, and positively ill-mannered as he
invariably is. He may be true to German nature, as he is pictured as a
German, but he is no study of the graceful Italian or elegant and suave
Sclavic Artist. We think the authoress unjust and cruel in her sketch of
that ethereal child of genius and suffering, Chopin. Did she study
exclusively in the German schools of musical art? If Beethoven is grand
and majestic, Chopin is sublime; if Beethoven is pathetic, Chopin is
pathos itself; if the one is broad and comprehensive, the other is high
and deep; the one appealing to the soul through a noble intellect, the
other reaching it through every nerve and fibre of our basic being.
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