ABSTRACT
In the closing months of his life, Szymanowski pondered the possibility of writing his memoirs. They would have started with his 'decisive' return to Poland in 1919, and the remaining sketch for the introduction hints at the difficulties he, or any biographer, would face. Conceding that the dry, mechanical chronicling of facts is lacking in interest, the composer resolved instead to reveal his 'guiding idea', and the fact that he selected the close of 1919 as the starting-point for his memoirs would seem to indicate that this guiding idea was the adoption of the role as 'public' composer working in the cause of independent Poland and its culture, whether through composition, performance, polemical writing or education. As Szymanowski himself admitted, the vast wealth of his external and internal career made this an extraordinarily difficult task, obliging him to choose an 'interpretation' and in so doing, 'be directed by a certain utilitarianism, namely that which in my existence is the deciding, dynamic and active agent, influencing the course of events in a certain portion of reality'. 1
