ABSTRACT
The traditional biography assumed the existence of a unified self of a biographical subject; a core personality that can be “discovered” if only the biographer digs deep and long enough. In this chapter, the author examines, in the context of Chopin’s biographies and biographical essays, one of the fundamental tenets of the traditional biography – an assumption of the existence of a coherent, essentially unchanging and unitary self of a biographical subject – and demonstrate that rethinking this assumption along the lines proposed by recent theoretical thought in the humanities. Chopin was thus largely immune to the influence of the French culture and “reproduced” himself artistically and personally by drawing exclusively from the resources he owed to Poland. The change of the country, culture, customs, and language was merely an opportunity for him to continue, in more favorable cultural and material circumstances, the development that would otherwise inevitably unfold itself in Warsaw or elsewhere.
