Painting I commissioned and of which I own the only copy based on the circa 1837 preliminary sketch of Eugene Delacroix’s joint portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
During winter of 1838, Aurore Dupin, Baroness Dudevant to French nobility, but better known as George Sand, with her children and Frederick Chopin, arrived on the isle of Mallorca looking for a better climate for Chopin’s fragile health.
In a letter to Julian Fontana, Chopin wrote:
“Here, the sun shines all day long and people wear summer clothes; the temperature is hot, and during night, I can hear guitars and singing voices for hours. Here I am in Palma, between palm trees, cedars, cacti, olives, aloe, lemon trees, orange trees, fig trees… Large balconies and trellises… Arab architecture… next to these beauties I feel better…”
Valldemosa (Photo credit: anieto2k)
But everything changed. Sun and heat was very soon replaced by rain and moisture, and they had to move to a rented antique monastery, Cartuja de Valldemosa. At a very rainy day, Chopin had to stay, very sick, while Aurore had to go looking for food being outside all day long. Alone and delirious, he felt every single raindrop hitting roof slates. Although started as a painful experience, in one moment, in the middle of dreams, he starts to compose.
When Aurore came back, she found Chopin at piano, in the middle of delusions. She recalls:
“When he recovered and saw our looking, he felt bad about dangers we have passed. Immediately he confessed that when we were out, he had calmed and like in dreams, he was playing the piano, convinced he was dead. He saw himself floating in a lake; raindrops, heavier and moist, were falling slowly on his chest…”
From this terrible experience, Chopin gave birth to a beautiful masterpiece, Raindrop Prelude, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_6APTb3RNQ, allowing us to feel a painful and continuous hit by raindrop.
If we take this page from Chopin’s biography, we can only think how, a person who is suffering can turn his pain in something beautiful.
When we are depressed or our heart is broken, what do we do with our pain?
Don’t you think would be wonderful if rather than being a problem, we could turn our suffering to something beautiful to offer?
How could be the world if people learn how to take bad thoughts, destructive emotions, jealousy, envy, bigotry and turn all this in beautiful feelings?, something to be proud to left for future generations.
Can you imagine?
