ΤΟ ΠΑΘΟΣ ΤΟΥ KAROL SZYMANOWSKI

Α poem for Boris Kochno
by Karol Szymanowski
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No matter (1919)

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Leave off talking ... Let silence sing
Its stances and romances.
It is the holy singer of lays who follows love
And the nights and the days.
So what if our bodies are alike –
Towards the infinite flow
Our souls
And swoon
In radiant delirium
Of tenderness,
Of caress ...
Sweet Lord!
So what if they'll call us greedy!
Idiots
Are those who trail
Their slavish
Chains!
Shipwrecks of love, beggars for ardor
Who die
Unfulfilled
In pride and disdain!

No matter! I love you, I adore
Your suple body,
The slow caress
Of your quivering mouth,
Delirium, drunkenness,
Divine tenderness,
The giddy abandon,
The dream, infinity ...

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Karol Maciej Szymanowski (Tymoszówka, Ukraine, 3 October 1882 – 28 March 1937, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a Polish composer and pianist.
Life
Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family (of Korwin/Ślepowron coat-of-arms) in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus' Elizavetgrad School of Music from 1892. From 1901 he attended the State Conservatory in Warsaw, of which he was later director from 1926 until retiring in 1930. Musical opportunities in Russian-occupied Poland being quite limited at the time, he travelled widely throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the USA. These travels, especially those to the Mediterranean area, provided much inspiration to the composer and esthete.
The fruits of these trips included not only musical works, but poetry and his novel on pederasty Efebos, parts of which were subsequently lost in a fire in 1939. The central chapter was translated by him into Russian and given as a gift in 1919 to Boris Kochno, who was his beloved at the time. Szymanowski also wrote a number of love poems, in French, to the 15 year old boy. Among these are Ganymède, Baedecker, N'importe, and Vagabond.
Writing about his novel, Szymanowski said, "In it I expressed much, perhaps all that I have to say on this matter, which is for me very important and very beautiful." It remains available in a German translation as Das Gastmahl. Ein Kapitel aus dem verlorenen Roman Ephebos.
Szymanowski maintained a long correspondence with pianist Jan Smeterlin, who was a significant champion of his piano works. Their correspondence was published by Allegro Press in 1969.
Szymanowski died in a sanatorium in Lausanne, Switzerland from tuberculosis.
Influences
Szymanowski was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin and the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. He also drew much influence from his countryman Chopin and from Polish folk music. Like Chopin he wrote a number of mazurkas for piano. He was specifically influenced by folk music from the Polish Highlands [Górale], which he discovered in Zakopane, in the southern Tatra highlands, even writing in an article entitled About Górale Music: "My discovery of the essential beauty of Górale (Polish Highlander) music, dance and architecture is a very personal one; much of this beauty I have absorbed into my innermost soul." (p.97) According to Jim Samson (1977, p.200), it is "played on two fiddles and a string bass," and, "has uniquely 'exotic' characteristics, highly dissonant and with fascinating heterophonic effects." Carefully digesting all these elements, eventually Szymanowski developed a highly individual rhapsodic style and a unique harmonic world of his own.
Works
Among Szymanowski's better known orchestral works are four symphonies (No. 3, Song of the Night with choir and vocal soloists and No. 4, Symphonie Concertante, with piano concertante) and two dream-like violin concertos. His stage works include the ballets Harnasie and Mandragora and the operas Hagith and Król Roger ('King Roger'). He wrote much piano music, including the four Etudes, Op. 4 (of which No. 3 may be his single most popular piece), many mazurkas and the exquisite and highly individual Metopes. Other works include the Three Myths for violin and piano, two masterful string quartets, a sonata for violin and piano, a number of orchestral songs (some to texts by Hafiz and James Joyce) and his Stabat Mater, an acknowledged choral masterpiece.
According to Samson (p.131), "Szymanowski adopted no thorough-going alternatives to tonal organization [...] the harmonic tensions and relaxations and the melodic phraseology have clear origins in tonal procedure, but [...] an underpinning tonal framework has been almost or completely dissolved away."

Boris Kochno (January 3, 1904, Moscow — December 8, 1990, Paris) was a Russian poet, dancer and librettist. He was a lover of Karol Szymanowski while a schoolboy of fifteen in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad) in 1919,[1] and he received as a gift a Russian translation of the chapter The Symposium from Efebos, the composer's unpublished novel on pederasty. Szymanowski also dedicated four love poems to the youth. In 1920 he became Sergei Diaghilev's secretary, librettist, and eventually main collaborator. They were also briefly lovers. Kochno wrote the libretto of Mavra (1921), the Fâcheux (1924), La Chatte (1927) and of the Fils prodigue (1929). He also had an affair with Cole Porter in 1925, with whom he carried on a lengthy correspondence.
Upon Diaghilev's death he and Serge Lifar tried but failed to hold the Ballets Russes together. The two inherited part of Diaghilev's archives and collections, which Kochno completed and part of which was acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His later career included a position as Monte Carlo ballet director, where he became an influential figure in post World War II French ballet. In 1933 he co-founded, together with George Balanchine, the short-lived company Les Ballets 1933, which made its debut that summer at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. He and Edward James commissioned that year Brecht and Weill's last collaboration, The Seven Deadly Sins, which Balanchine produced, directed and choreographed.
At the end of World War II, Kochno entered into collaboration with Roland Petit, with whom he founded the Ballets des Champs-Élysées. There are a number of published works by him. One, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, is a record of the Diaghilev era. The other, Christian Bérard, is a scrapbook of reminiscences about, and art of, his former friend and collaborator. (en.wikipedia.org)