The Heart of Chopin

;In any Polish city, on every single souvenir stall, you are bound to find a plaster cast of a human hand. It is the hand of Fr;d;ric Chopin.
;The Poles are immensely proud that their soil brought forth such a spectacular pianist and composer.
;"But he’s half-French," I tease my Polish friend, Damian. "And he spent most of his life living in France."
;"He spent his entire life longing for our Poland," Damian counters, sounding a little hurt. "And that is exactly why his music turned out so beautiful."
;That sounds about right.
;The Maestro managed to elevate the utilitarian genres of Polish dance—the polonaise and the mazurka—into a universal longing for the ideal. These are no longer cheerful exercises for the feet; behind every step hides the ghost of a conquered, vanished homeland. His entire body of work is nostalgia manifested in sound.
;Chopin is my favorite composer. I have played everything of his that fell within the absolute limits of my modest technical abilities. His music was a lifeline to me during that difficult age when one says goodbye to childhood.
;In our music history class, our teacher used to tell us that Chopin died young, never to see his homeland again. He was buried in France, but his heart was removed, brought back to Poland, and immured inside the wall of a church.
;With great dramatic flair, the teacher read us a poem about a church standing tall, and inside it, Chopin’s heart still beating. I brooded over this for a long time. To me, it didn't seem romantic at all; on the contrary, it felt almost sacrilegious to cut a heart out of a corpse, shove it into a jar, and submerge it in cognac liqueur… Ugh.
;Later, I learned that Catholics have a deep reverence for all kinds of holy relics, shrines, and incorrupt bones—it’s an integral part of their spirituality.
;And later on, as my relatives jokingly needle me, I went and "turned Catholic" myself.
;Damian, Sasha, and I are strolling through the center of Warsaw. One church is more beautiful than the next. With such an abundance of spires and bell towers, the city’s skyline looks incredibly noble and historic.
;Outside one of the temples stands a statue of Jesus bearing the cross.
;"During World War II, during the bombardment of the city, the Nazis hit the statue, and everyone said back then that Jesus Himself had fallen with the cross. Later, the church was restored," Damian shares. "Let's go inside."
;We step into the vast temple. There is no service, very few people, and the silence practically rings.
;Suddenly, those old lines drift back into my mind: "...a church stands tall... a heart still beats..." And high up in my head, the upbeat "E" of the Mazurka in A minor begins to ring.
;"Chopin’s heart is here," I tell Damian.
;"No way, it’s not this one," he argues confidently.
;But without listening to him, I walk deeper into the church. I approach one of the massive stone pillars and spot a plaque, topped by a small bust. It’s that familiar, slender, aquiline face from my old Chopin sheet music.
;The inscription on the plaque is in Polish, but even without translating it, I know exactly what it means: the Maestro’s heart is immured inside this very column.
;"How did you know?" Damian asks, utterly stunned.
;I just shrug my shoulders.
;I cannot explain everything.
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