A Rebellion of the Soul at 19: Re-echoing Chopin's Rondo Op. 16 and My 1980 Prose Poetry

 A Rebellion of the Soul at 19: Re-echoing Chopin's Rondo Op. 16 and My 1980 Prose Poetry

When we listen to classical music, we often find our own lives and souls mirrored in the structures of the great masters. For a long time, I harbored a very specific, sharp perspective on the giants of music. To my ears, Beethoven was not a traditional melody maker; he was a magician of "motifs," building giant architectural monuments like the Fifth Symphony from just four simple notes (Da-da-da-dum!). Mozart, while undeniably a genius of classical symmetry, often felt predictable to the modern ear - with the sublime exception of his Piano Concerto №20 (K.466), which shatters his usual elegance with a haunting, dark turbulence.

But for me, the ultimate pinnacle of musical perfection belongs to Frédéric Chopin.

Recently, I revisited Chopin's Rondo in E-flat major, Op. 16. Listening to it on a Wilhelm Steinberg piano, the crisp, dry brilliance of the high notes brought back a flood of memories. Op. 16 is a work overflowing with a young composer's fierce determination to create his ultimate masterpiece. Its length, its flawless structure, and the overwhelming acceleration of the final coda are absolute perfection.

Seeing Chopin's final photograph from around 1849 for the first time, I didn't just see a tragic, dying genius. In his piercing gaze, despite the illness, I read a profound sense of closure: "I did what I came to do. It was a good life." It was a look of absolute self-affirmation.

This confrontation with Chopin's spirit brought me back to a pivotal moment in my own life: October 30, 1980.

At the time, I was 19 years old, a high school senior. While my classmates were single-mindedly preparing for university entrance exams, I had spent the previous two years completely isolating myself, sharpening my inner spiritual world solely for the moment of writing. Nobody around me - neither my peers nor my teachers - understood me. But I understood myself. I possessed an absolute, solitary conviction that I could leave behind literature that could rival the prose poetry of Arthur Rimbaud or Lautréamont.

That day, I poured everything into a 123-line prose poem titled "Declaration of War".

It was a torrent of surreal, raw, and fierce imagery - mixing the mundane with the cosmic, eros with destruction. Looking back, the structure of that poem mirrors Chopin's Rondo Op. 16 with uncanny precision. It moves from a tense, suspenseful prelude into a breathless, chaotic velocity ("motorcycles rushing through hell"), balancing beautiful imagery with shocking contrasts, before reaching a final, climactic breakthrough of absolute affirmation: "It means 'approval'… hear the sound of pure water telling me to go straight ahead."

At the very end of the poem, I wrote a mysterious line: "With this, half of this poem has passed…"

I laid down my pen, fully believing I would write the second half. But it was never written. I had completely exhausted my entire life force and spiritual energy into those 123 lines.

Like Rimbaud, who abandoned literature before the age of 20 to disappear into the silence of Africa, my poem became a permanently "unfinished masterpiece" - and perhaps, it is more complete because of that silence. The second half remains unwritten because my 19-year-old soul had already burned to ash, achieving its own final, glorious coda.

Beethoven conquered the world with raw construction. Mozart perfected the celestial order. But Chopin gave us the ultimate fusion of melody, structure, and the tragic beauty of human life. At 19, in the autumn of 1980, I fought my own war with words, and though the pen went dry, the music of that rebellion echoes within me to this day.

The Silence After the Storm: Returning from the Void

When I finished writing those 123 lines, a profound shock washed over me. I remember thinking to myself, "My God, what on earth have I created?"

But the toll of touching such a raw, psychological frontier was immense. For the two years that followed, I felt exactly like a fruit that had been entirely squeezed dry of its juice. The fierce, uncompromising energy required to sharpen my spiritual world had burned me out completely. While my peers were single-mindedly racing toward university entrance exams, I was left in a void, unable to even think about studying.

Yet, life pulled me back. Recognizing that I still needed to pursue a university education, I eventually picked up the pieces of my reality. I entered university three years later than my high school classmates, graduated successfully four years later, and built the life I live today.