Description:
This book may be of greater interest to the historian--political, social, and cultural--than to the musician. As its title indicates, it is about France, particularly Paris, more than about Chopin, and presupposes considerable knowledge of French history. Chopin wanders through its pages as a peripatetic presence; there are quotes from his letters commenting on whom he meets, where he plays, what he sees and hears, with references to his friends, pupils, and publishers. The author, a New York dermatologist who has written two previous books about Chopin (including Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw), has prodigiously researched every aspect of French life between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. He quotes copiously from contemporary writers as diverse as Balzac, Heine, Berlioz, Mrs. Trollop, and Thackeray. A meticulously detailed guided tour through Paris is followed by an account of several generations of the royal family describing their politics, personalities, fortunes, and misfortunes, as well as their habits, love affairs, interrelationships, hangers-on, and adversaries, resulting in a bewildering profusion of names. Among the most interesting chapters are those on the Polish refugee community--where Chopin had many friends--and those on the artists, writers, musicians, philosophers, and theologians (including numerous crackpots) who created the city's rich cultural life in its concerts, theaters, operas, journals, and famous private salons. The writing is lively, witty, and informative, marred only by occasional infelicities like "his inseparable sister," and the book abounds with excellent illustrations. Unfortunately, it also abounds with anti-Semitic slurs; Atwood misses no chance to point out, in an insulting manner, the Jewish origin of anyone he does not like, from the Rothschilds to Heine, Meyerbeer, and Offenbach. --Edith Eisler
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