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Jean Christophe, Vol. I

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe, Vol. I




"Order! Order!" he cried. "You do not know any order but that of the
police. Genius is not to be dragged along the beaten track. It creates
order, and makes its will a law."

After this arrogant declaration he took the unlucky critic, considered all
the idiocies he had written for some time past, and administered
correction.

All the critics felt the affront. Up to that time they had stood aside
from the conflict. They did not care to risk a rebuff: they knew
Christophe, they knew his efficiency, and they knew also that he was not
long-suffering. Certain of them had discreetly expressed their regret that
so gifted a composer should dabble in a profession not his own. Whatever
might be their opinion (when they had one), and however hurt they might be
by Christophe, they respected in him their own privilege of being able to
criticise everything without being criticised themselves. But when they saw
Christophe rudely break the tacit convention which bound them, they saw in
him an enemy of public order. With one consent it seemed revolting to them
that a very young man should take upon himself to show scant respect for
the national glories: and they began a furious campaign against him. They
did not write long articles or consecutive arguments--(they were unwilling
to venture upon such ground with an adversary better armed than themselves:
although a journalist has the special faculty of being able to discuss
without taking his adversary's arguments into consideration, and even
without having read them)--but long experience had taught them that, as the
reader of a paper always agrees with it, even to appear to argue was to
weaken its credit with him: it was necessary to affirm, or better still,
to deny--(negation is twice as powerful as affirmation: it is a direct
consequence of the law of gravity: it is much easier to drop a stone than
to throw it up).--They adopted, therefore, a system of little notes,
perfidious, ironic, injurious, which were repeated day by day, in an easily
accessible position, with unwearying assiduity. They held the insolent
Christophe up to ridicule, though they never mentioned him by name, but
always transparently alluded to him. They twisted his words to make them
look absurd: they told anecdotes about him, true for the most part, though
the rest were a tissue of lies, nicely calculated to set him at loggerheads
with the whole town, and, worse still, with the Court: even his physical
appearance, his features, his manner of dressing, were attacked and
caricatured in a way that by dint of repetition came to be like him.

* * * * *

It would have mattered little to Christophe's friends if their Review had
not also come in for blows in the battle. In truth, it served rather as an
advertisement: there was no desire to commit the Review to the quarrel:
rather the attempt was made to cut Christophe off from it: there was
astonishment that it should so compromise its good name, and they were
given to understand that if they did not take care steps would be taken,
however unpleasant it might be, to make the whole editorial staff
responsible. There were signs of attack, gentle enough, upon Adolf Mai and
Mannheim, which stirred up the wasps' nest. Mannheim only laughed at it: he
thought that it would infuriate his father, his uncles, cousins, and his
innumerable family, who took upon themselves to watch everything he did and
to be scandalized by it. But Adolf Mai took it very seriously and blamed
Christophe for compromising the Review. Christophe sent him packing. The
others who had not been attacked found it rather amusing that Mai, who was
apt to pontificate over them, should be their scapegoat. Waldhaus was
secretly delighted: he said that there was never a fight without a few
heads being broken. Naturally he took good care that it should not be his
own: he thought he was sheltered from onslaught by the position of his
family; and his relatives: and he saw no harm in the Jews, his allies,
being mauled a little. Ehrenfeld and Goldenring, who were so far untouched,
would not have been worried by attack: they could reply. But what did touch
them on the raw was that Christophe should go on persistently putting them
in the wrong with their friends, and especially their women friends. They
had laughed loudly at the first articles and thought them good fun: they
admired Christophe's vigorous window-smashing: they thought they had only
to give the word to check his combativeness, or at least to turn his attack
from men and women whom they might mention.--But no. Christophe would
listen to nothing: he paid no heed to any remark and went on like a madman.
If they let him go on there would be no living in the place. Already their
young women friends, furious and in tears, had come and made scenes at
the offices of the Review. They brought all their diplomacy to bear on
Christophe to persuade him at least to moderate certain of his criticisms:
Christophe changed nothing. They lost their tempers: Christophe lost his,
but he changed nothing. Waldhaus was amused by the unhappiness of his
friends, which in no wise touched him, and took Christophe's part to
annoy them. Perhaps also he was more capable than they of appreciating
Christophe's extravagance, who with head down hurled himself upon
everything without keeping any line of retreat, or preparing any refuge for
the future. As for Mannheim he was royally amused by the farce: it seemed
to him a good joke to have introduced this madman among these correct
people, and he rocked with laughter both at the blows which Christophe
dealt and at those which he received. Although under his sister's influence
he was beginning to think that Christophe was decidedly a little cracked,
he only liked him the more for it--(it was necessary for him to find those
who were in sympathy with him a little absurd).--And so he joined Waldhaus
in supporting Christophe against the others.

As he was not wanting in practical sense, in spite of all his efforts to
pretend to the contrary, he thought very justly that it would be to his
friend's advantage to ally himself with the cause of the most advanced
musical party in the country.

As in most German towns, there was in the town a _Wagner-Verein_, which
represented new ideas against the conservative element.--In truth, there
was no great risk in defending Wagner when his fame was acknowledged
everywhere and his works included in the repertory of every Opera House
in Germany. And yet his victory was rather won by force than by universal
accord, and at heart the majority were obstinately conservative, especially
in the small towns such as this which have been rather left outside the
great modern movements and are rather proud of their ancient fame. More
than anywhere else there reigned the distrust, so innate in the German
people, of anything new, the sort of laziness in feeling anything true or
powerful which has not been pondered and digested by several generations.
It was apparent in the reluctance with which--if not the works of Wagner
which are beyond discussion--every new work inspired by the Wagnerian
spirit was accepted. And so the _Wagner-Vereine_ would have had a useful
task to fulfil if they had set themselves to defend all the young and
original forces in art. Sometimes they did so, and Bruckner or Hugo Wolf
found in some of them their best allies. But too often the egoism of
the master weighed upon his disciples: and just as Bayreuth serves only
monstrously to glorify one man, the _offshoots_ of Bayreuth were little
churches in which Mass was eternally sung in honor of the one God. At
the most the faithful disciples were admitted to the side chapels, the
disciples who applied the hallowed doctrines to the letter, and, prostrate
in the dust, adored the only Divinity with His many faces: music, poetry,
drama, and metaphysics.

The _Wagner-Verein_ of the town was in exactly this case.--However, they
went through the form of activity: they were always trying to enroll young
men of talent who looked as though they might be useful to it: and they had
long had their eyes on Christophe. They had discreetly made advances to
him, of which Christophe had not taken any notice, because he felt no need
of being associated with anybody: he could not understand the necessity
which drove his compatriots always to be banding themselves together in
groups, being unable to do anything alone: neither to sing, nor to walk,
nor to drink. He was averse to all _Vereinswesen_. But on the whole he was
more kindly disposed to the _Wagner-Verein_ than to any other _Verein_: at
least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: and although he did
not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, he was much nearer them than
to those of any other group in music. He could he thought find common
ground with a party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and
the "Brahmins." So he let himself be put up for it. Mannheim introduced
him: he knew everybody. Without being a musician he was a member of the
_Wagner-Verein_.--The managing committee had followed the campaign which
Christophe was conducting in the Review. His slaughter in the opposing camp
had seemed to them to give signs of a strong grip which it would be as well
to have in their service. Christophe had also let fly certain disrespectful
remarks about the sacred fetish: but they had preferred to close their eyes
to that: and perhaps his attacks, not yet very offensive, had not been
without their influence, unconsciously, in making them so eager to enroll
Christophe before he had time to deliver himself manfully. They came and
very amiably asked his permission to play some of his compositions at one
of the approaching concerts of the Association. Christophe was flattered,
and accepted: he went to the _Wagner-Verein_, and, urged by Mannheim, he
was made a member.

At that time there were at the head of the _Wagner-Verein_ two men, of whom
one enjoyed a certain notoriety as a writer, and the other as a conductor.
Both had a Mohammedan belief in Wagner. The first, Josias Kling, had
compiled a Wagner Dictionary--_Wagner Lexikon_--which made it possible in a
moment to know the master's thoughts _de omni re scibili_: it had been his
life's work. He was capable of reciting whole chapters of it at table, as
the French provincials used to troll the songs of the Maid. He used also
to publish in the _Bayreuther Blätter_ articles on Wagner and the Aryan
Spirit. Of course, Wagner was to him the type of the pure Aryan, of whom
the German race had remained the last inviolable refuge against the
corrupting influences of Latin Semitism, especially the French. He declared
that the impure French spirit was finally destroyed, though he did not
desist from attacking it bitterly day by day as though the eternal enemy
were still a menace. He would only acknowledge one great man in France:
the Count of Gobineau. Kling was a little man, very little, and he used to
blush like a girl.--The other pillar of the _Wagner-Verein_, Erich Lauber,
had been manager of a chemical works until four years before: then he had
given up everything to become a conductor. He had succeeded by force of
will, and because he was very rich. He was a Bayreuth fanatic: it was said
that he had gone there on foot, from Munich, wearing pilgrim's sandals. It
was a strange thing that a man who had read much, traveled much, practised
divers professions, and in everything displayed an energetic personality,
should have become in music a sheep of Panurge: all his originality was
expended in his being a little more stupid than the others. He was not
sure enough of himself in music to trust to his own personal feelings,
and so he slavishly followed the interpretations of Wagner given by the
_Kapellmeisters_, and the licensees of Bayreuth. He desired to reproduce
even to the smallest detail the setting and the variegated costumes which
delighted the puerile and barbarous taste of the little Court of Wahnfried.
He was like the fanatical admirer of Michael Angelo who used to reproduce
in his copies even the cracks in the wall of the moldy patches which had
themselves been hallowed by their appearance in the hallowed pictures.

Christophe was not likely to approve greatly of the two men. But they were
men of the world, pleasant, and both well-read: and Lauber's conversation
was always interesting on any other subject than music. He was a bit of a
crank: and Christophe did not dislike cranks: they were a change from the
horrible banality of reasonable people. He did not yet know that there is
nothing more devastating than an irrational man, and that originality is
even more rare among those who are called "originals" than among the rest.
For these "originals" are simply maniacs whose thoughts are reduced to
clockwork.

Josias Kling and Lauber, being desirous of winning Christophe's support,
were at first very keenly interested in him. Kling wrote a eulogistic
article about him and Lauber followed all his directions when he conducted
his compositions at one of the concerts of the Society. Christophe was
touched by it all. Unfortunately all their attentions were spoiled by the
stupidity of those who paid them. He had not the facility of pretending
about people because they admired him. He was exacting. He demanded that no
one should admire him for the opposite of what he was: and he was always
prone to regard as enemies those who were his friends, by mistake. And
so he was not at all pleased with Kling for seeing in him a disciple of
Wagner, and trying to see connections between passages of his _Lieder_
and passages of the _Tetralogy_, which had nothing in common but certain
notes of the scale. And he had no pleasure in hearing one of his
works sandwiched--together with a worthless imitation by a Wagnerian
student--between two enormous blocks of Wagnerian drama.

It was not long before he was stifled in the little chapel. It was just
another Conservatoire, as narrow as the old Conservatoires, and more
intolerant because it was the latest comer in art. Christophe began to lose
his illusions about the absolute value of a form of art or of thought.
Hitherto he had always believed that great ideas bear their own light
within themselves. Now he saw that ideas may change, but that men remain
the same: and, in fine, nothing counted but men: ideas were what they were.
If they were born mediocre and servile, even genius became mediocre in its
passage through their souls, and the shout of freedom of the hero breaking
his bonds became the act of slavery of succeeding generations.--Christophe
could mot refrain from expressing his feelings. He let no opportunity
slip of jeering at fetishism in art. He declared that there was no need
of idols, or classics of any sort, and that he only had the right to call
himself the heir of the spirit of Wagner who was capable of trampling
Wagner underfoot and so walking on and keeping himself in close communion
with life. Kling's stupidity made Christophe aggressive. He set out all
the faults and absurdities he could see in Wagner. The Wagnerians at once
credited him with a grotesque jealousy of their God. Christophe for his
part had no doubt that these same people who exalted Wagner since he was
dead would have been the first to strangle him in his life: and he did
them an injustice. The Klings and the Laubers also had had their hour of
illumination: they had been advanced twenty years ago: and then like most
people they had stopped short at that. Man has so little force that he is
out of breath after the first ascent: very few are long-winded enough to go
on.

Christophe's attitude quickly alienated him from his new friends. Their
sympathy was a bargain: he had to side with them if they were to side with
him: and it was quite evident that Christophe would not yield an inch: he
would not join them. They lost their enthusiasm for him. The eulogies which
he refused to accord to the gods and demi-gods who were approved by the
cult, were withheld from him. They showed less eagerness to welcome his
compositions: and some of the members began to protest against his name
being too often on the programmes. They laughed at him behind his back, and
criticism went on: Kling and Lauber by not protesting seemed to take part
in it. They would have avoided a breach with Christophe if possible: first
because the minds of the Germans of the Rhine like mixed solutions,
solutions which are not solutions, and have the privilege of prolonging
indefinitely an ambiguous situation: and secondly, because they hoped in
spite of everything to be able to make use of him, by wearing him down, if
not by persuasion.

Christophe gave them no time for it. Whenever he thought he felt that at
heart any man disliked him, but would not admit it and tried to cover it up
so as to remain on good terms with him, he would never rest until he had
succeeded in proving to him that he was his enemy. One evening at the
_Wagner-Verein_ when he had come up against a wall of hypocritical
hostility, he could bear it no longer and sent in his resignation to Lauber
without wasting words. Lauber could not understand it: and Mannheim
hastened to Christophe to try and pacify him. At his first words Christophe
burst out:

"No, no, no,--no! Don't talk to me about these people. I will not see them
again.... I cannot. I cannot.... I am disgusted, horribly, with men: I can
hardly bear to look at one."

Mannheim laughed heartily. He was thinking much less of smoothing
Christophe down than of having the fun of it.

"I know that they are not beautiful," he said; "but that is nothing new:
what new thing has happened?"

"Nothing. I have had enough, that is all.... Yes, laugh, laugh at me:
everybody knows I am mad. Prudent people act in accordance with the laws of
logic and reason and sanity. I am not like that: I am a man who acts only
on his own impulse. When a certain quantity of electricity is accumulated
in me it has to expend itself, at all costs: and so much the worse for the
others if it touches them! And so much the worse for them! I am not made
for living in society. Henceforth I shall belong only to myself."

"You think you can do without everybody else?" said Mannheim. "You cannot
play your music all by yourself. You need singers, an orchestra, a
conductor, an audience, a claque...."

Christophe shouted.

"No! no! no!"

But the last word made him jump.

"A claque! Are you not ashamed?"

"I am not talking of a paid claque--(although, indeed, it is the only
means yet discovered of revealing the merit of a composition to the
audience).--But you must have a claque: the author's coterie is a claque,
properly drilled by him: every author has his claque: that is what friends
are for."

"I don't want any friends!"

"Then you will be hissed."

"I want to be hissed!"

Mannheim was in the seventh heaven.

"You won't have even that pleasure for long. They won't play you."

"So be it, then! Do you think I care about being a famous man?... Yes. I
was making for that with all my might.... Nonsense! Folly! Idiocy!... As if
the satisfaction of the vulgarest sort of pride could compensate for all
the sacrifices--weariness, suffering, infamy, insults, degradation, ignoble
concessions--which are the price of fame! Devil take me if I ever bother my
head about such things again! Never again! Publicity is a vulgar infamy. I
will be a private citizen and live for myself and those whom I love...."

"Good," said Mannheim ironically. "You must choose a profession. Why
shouldn't you make shoes?"

"Ah! if I were a cobbler like the incomparable Sachs!" cried Christophe.
"How happy my life would be! A cobbler all through the week,--and a
musician on Sunday, privately, intimately, for my own pleasure and that of
my friends! What a life that would be!... Am I mad, to waste my time and
trouble for the magnificent pleasure of being a prey to the judgment of
idiots? Is it not much better and finer to be loved and understood by a
few honest men than to be heard, criticised, and toadied by thousands of
fools?... The devil of pride and thirst for fame shall never again take me:
trust me for that!"

"Certainly," said Mannheim. He thought:

"In an hour he will say just the opposite." He remarked quietly:

"Then I am to go and smooth things down with the _Wagner-Verein_?"

Christophe waved his arms.

"What is the good of my shouting myself hoarse with telling you 'No', for
the last hour?... I tell you that I will never set foot inside it again! I
loathe all these _Wagner-Vereine_, all these _Vereine_, all these flocks of
sheep who have to huddle together to be able to baa in unison. Go and tell
those sheep from me that I am a wolf, that I have teeth, and am not made
far the pasture!"

"Good, good, I will tell them," said Mannheim, as he went. He was delighted
with his morning's entertainment. He thought:

"He is mad, mad, mad as a hatter...."

His sister, to whom he reported the interview, at once shrugged her
shoulders and said:

"Mad? He would like us to think so!... He is stupid, and absurdly vain...."

* * * * *

Christophe went on with his fierce campaign in Waldhaus's Review. It was
not that it gave him pleasure: criticism disgusted him, and he was always
wishing it at the bottom of the sea. But he stuck to it because people were
trying to stop him: he did not wish to appear to have given in.

Waldhaus was beginning to be uneasy. As long as he was out of reach he had
looked on at the affray with the calmness of an Olympian god. But for some
weeks past the other papers had seemed to be beginning to disregard his
inviolability: they had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a
rare malevolence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have
recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the attacks were
cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Goldenring: they could see no other
way of inducing him to stop Christophe's polemics. Their perception was
justified. Waldhaus at once declared that Christophe was beginning to weary
him: and he withdrew his support. All the staff of the Review then tried
hard to silence Christophe! But it were as easy to muzzle a dog who
is about to devour his prey! Everything they said to him only excited
him more. He called them poltroons and declared that he would say
everything--everything that he ought to say. If they wished to get rid of
him, they were free to do so! The whole town would know that they were as
cowardly as the rest: but he would not go of his own accord.

They looked at each other in consternation, bitterly blaming Mannheim for
the trick he had played them in bringing such a madman among them. Mannheim
laughed and tried hard to curb Christophe himself: and he vowed that with
the next article Christophe would water his wine. They were incredulous:
but the event proved that Mannheim had not boasted vainly. Christophe's
next article, though not a model of courtesy, did not contain a single
offensive remark about anybody. Mannheim's method was very simple: they
were all amazed at not having thought of it before: Christophe never read
what he wrote in the Review, and he hardly read the proofs of his articles,
only very quickly and carelessly. Adolf Mai had more than once passed
caustic remarks on the subject: he said that a printer's error was a
disgrace to a Review: and Christophe, who did not regard criticism
altogether as an art, replied that those who were upbraided in it would
understand well enough. Mannheim turned this to account: he said that
Christophe was right and that correcting proofs was printers' work: and he
offered to take it over. Christophe was overwhelmed with gratitude: but
they told him that such an arrangement would be of service to them and a
saving of time for the Review. So Christophe left his proofs to Mannheim
and asked him to correct them carefully. Mannheim did: it was sport for
him. At first he only ventured to tone down certain phrases and to delete
here and there certain ungracious epithets. Emboldened by success, he
went further with his experiments: he began to alter sentences and their
meaning: and he was really skilful in it. The whole art of it consisted in
preserving the general appearance of the sentence and its characteristic
form while making it say exactly the opposite of what Christophe had meant.
Mannheim took far more trouble to disfigure Christophe's articles than he
would have done to write them himself: never had he worked so hard. But he
enjoyed the result: certain musicians whom Christophe had hitherto pursued
with his sarcasms were astounded to see him grow gradually gentle and at
last sing their praises. The staff of the Review were delighted. Mannheim
used to read aloud his lucubrations to them. They roared with laughter.
Ehrenfeld and Goldenring would say to Mannheim occasionally:

"Be careful! You are going too far."

"There's no danger," Mannheim would say. And he would go on with it.

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