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Jean Christophe, Vol. I

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




At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was the
turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion which lasted
for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest
of all shouted "Encore!" A bass voice coming from a stage box began to
imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and imitated it
also. Some one shouted "Author!" It was long since these witty folk had
been so highly entertained.

When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing
quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience though he
was pretending not to see it--(the audience was still supposed to be
non-existent)--made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak.
There was a cry of "Ssh," and silence. He waited a moment longer;
then--(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):

"Gentlemen," he said, "I should certainly not have let _that_ he played
through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of the gentleman
who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms."

That was all; and jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from
the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on for
a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went away. The
audience decided to go too. The concert was over.

It had been a good day.

Christophe had gone already. Hardly had he seen the wretched conductor
leave his desk when he had rushed from the box; he plunged down the stairs
from the first floor to meet him and slap his face. His friend who had
brought him followed and tried to hold him back, but Christophe brushed him
aside and almost threw him downstairs;--(he had reason to believe that the
fellow was concerned in the trick which had been played him). Fortunately
for H. Euphrat and himself the door leading to the stage was shut; and his
furious knocking could not make them open it. However the audience was
beginning to leave the hall. Christophe could not stay there. He fled.

He was in an indescribable condition. He walked blindly, waving his arms,
rolling his eyes, talking aloud like a madman; he suppressed his cries
of indignation and rage. The street was almost empty. The concert hall
had been built the year before in a new neighborhood a little way out of
the town; and Christophe instinctively fled towards the country across
the empty fields in which were a few lonely shanties and scaffoldings
surrounded by fences. His thoughts were murderous; he could have killed the
man who had put such an affront upon him. Alas! and when he had killed him
would there he any change in the animosity of those people whose insulting
laughter was still ringing in his ears? They were too many; he could do
nothing against them; they were all agreed--they who were divided about so
many things--to insult and crush him. It was past understanding; there was
hatred in them. What had he done to them all? There were beautiful things
in him, things to do good and make the heart big; he had tried to say them,
to make others enjoy them; he thought they would be happy like himself.
Even if they did not like them they should he grateful to him for his
intentions; they could, if need be, show him kindly where he had been
wrong; but that they should take such a malignant joy in insulting and
odiously travestying his ideas, in trampling them underfoot, and killing
him by ridicule, how was it possible? In his excitement he exaggerated
their hatred; he thought it much more serious than such mediocre people
could ever be. He sobbed: "What have I done to them?" He choked, he thought
that all was lost, just as he did when he was a child coming into contact
for the first time with human wickedness.

And when he looked about him he suddenly saw that he had reached the edge
of the mill-race, at the very spot where a few years before his father had
been drowned. And at once he thought of drowning himself too. He was just
at the point of making the plunge.

But as he leaned over the steep bank, fascinated by the calm clean aspect
of the water, a tiny bird in a tree by his side began to sing--to sing
madly. He held his breath to listen. The water murmured. The ripening corn
moaned as it waved under the soft caressing wind; the poplars shivered.
Behind the hedge on the road, out of sight, bees in hives in a garden
filled the air with their scented music. From the other side of the stream
a cow was chewing the cud and gazing with soft eyes. A little fair-haired
girl was sitting on a wall, with a light basket on her shoulders, like a
little angel with wings, and she was dreaming, and swinging her bare legs
and humming aimlessly. Far away in a meadow a white dog was leaping and
running in wide circles. Christophe leaned against a tree and listened and
watched the earth in Spring; he was caught up by the peace and joy of these
creatures; he could forget, he could forget. Suddenly he clasped the tree
with his arms and leaned his cheek against it. He threw himself on the
ground; he buried his face in the grass; he laughed nervously, happily.
All the beauty, the grace, the charm of life wrapped him round, imbued his
soul, and he sucked them up like a sponge. He thought:

"Why are you so beautiful, and they--men--so ugly?"

No matter! He loved it, he loved it, he felt that he would always love it,
and that nothing could ever take it from him. He held the earth to his
breast. He held life to his breast:

"I love you! You are mine. They cannot take you from me. Let them do what
they will! Let them make me suffer!... Suffering also is life!"

Christophe began bravely to work again. He refused to have anything more
to do with "men of letters"--well named--makers of phrases, the sterile
babblers, journalists, critics, the exploiters and traffickers of art. As
for musicians he would waste no more time in battling with their prejudices
and jealousy. They did not want him? Very well! He did not want them.
He had his work to do; he would do it. The Court had given him back his
liberty; he was grateful for it. He was grateful to the people for their
hostility; he could work in peace.

Louisa approved with all her heart. She had no ambition; she was not a
Krafft; she was like neither his father nor his grandfather. She did not
want honors or reputation for her son. She would have liked him to be rich
and famous; but if those advantages could only be bought at the price of so
much unpleasantness she much preferred not to bother about them. She had
been more upset by Christophe's grief over his rupture with the Palace than
by the event itself; and she was heartily glad that he had quarreled with
the review and newspaper people. She had a peasant's distrust of blackened
paper; it was only a waste of time and made enemies. She had sometimes
heard his young friends of the Review talking to Christophe; she had been
horrified by their malevolence; they tore everything to pieces and said
horrible things about everybody; and the worse things they said the better
pleased they were. She did not like them. No doubt they were very clever
and very learned, but they were not kind, and she was very glad that
Christophe saw no more of them. She was full of common sense: what good
were they to him?

"They may say, write, and think what they like of me," said Christophe.
"They cannot prevent my being myself. What do their ideas or their art
matter to me? I deny them!"

* * * * *

It is all very fine to deny the world. But the world is not so easily
denied by a young man's boasting. Christophe was sincere, but he was under
illusion; he did not know himself. He was not a monk; he had not the
temperament for renouncing the world, and besides he was not old enough to
do so. At first he did not suffer much, he was plunged in composition; and
while his work lasted he did not feel the want of anything. But when he
came to the period of depression which follows the completion of a work and
lasts until a new work takes possession of the mind, he looked about him
and was horrified by his loneliness. He asked himself why he wrote. While
a man is writing he never asks himself that question; he must write, there
is no arguing about it. And then he finds himself with the work that he has
begotten: the great instinct which caused it to spring forth is silent; he
does not understand why it was born: he hardly recognizes it, it is almost
a stranger to him; he longs to forget it. And that is impossible as long as
it is not published or played, or living its own life in the world. Till
then it is like a new-born child attached to its mother, a living thing
bound fast to his living flesh; it must be amputated at all costs or it
will not live. The more Christophe composed the more he suffered under
the weight of these creatures who had sprung forth from himself and could
neither live nor die. He was haunted by them. Who could deliver him from
them? Some obscure impulse would stir in these children of his thoughts;
they longed desperately to break away from him to expand into other souls
like the quick and fruitful seed which the wind scatters over the universe.
Must he remain imprisoned in his sterility? He raged against it.

Since every outlet--theaters, concerts--was closed to him, and nothing
would induce him to approach those managers who had once failed him, there
was nothing left but for him to publish his writings, but he could not
flatter himself that it would be easier to find a publisher to produce his
work than an orchestra to play it. The two or three clumsy attempts that he
had made were enough; rather than expose himself to another rebuff, or to
bargain with one of these music merchants and put up with his patronizing
airs, he preferred to publish it at his own expense. It was an act of
madness; he had some small savings out of his Court salary and the proceeds
of a few concerts, but the source from which the money had come was dried
up and it would be a long time before he could find another; and he should
have been prudent enough to be careful with his scanty funds which had to
help him over the difficult period upon which he was entering. Not only did
he not do so; but, as his savings were not enough to cover the expenses of
publication, he did not shrink from getting into debt. Louisa dared not say
anything; she found him absolutely unreasonable, and did not understand how
anybody could spend money for the sake of seeing his name on a book; but
since it was a way of making him be patient and of keeping him with her,
she was only too happy for him to have that satisfaction.

Instead of offering the public compositions of a familiar and undisturbing
kind, in which it could feel at home, Christophe chose from among his
manuscripts a suite very individual in character, which he valued highly.
They were piano pieces mixed with _Lieder_, some very short and popular in
style, others very elaborate and almost dramatic. The whole formed a series
of impressions, joyous or mild, linked together naturally and written
alternately for the piano and the voice, alone or accompanied. "For," said
Christophe, "when I dream, I do not always formulate what I feel. I suffer,
I am happy, and have no words to say; but then comes a moment when I must
say what I am feeling, and I sing without thinking of what I am doing;
sometimes I sing only vague words, a few disconnected phrases, sometimes
whole poems; then I begin to dream again. And so the day goes by; and I
have tried to give the impression of a day. Why these gathered impressions
composed only of songs or preludes? There is nothing more false or less
harmonious. One must try to give the free play of the soul." He had called
his suite: _A Day_. The different parts of the composition bore sub-titles,
shortly indicating the succession of his inward dreams. Christophe had
written mysterious dedications, initials, dates, which only he could
understand, as they reminded Mm of poetic moments or beloved faces: the gay
Corinne, the languishing Sabine, and the little unknown Frenchwoman.

Besides this work he selected thirty of his _Lieder_--those which
pleased him most, and consequently pleased the public least. He avoided
choosing the most "melodious" of his melodies, but he did choose the
most characteristic. (The public always has a horror of anything
"characteristic." Characterless things are more likely to please them.)

These _Lieder_ were written to poems of old Silesian poets of the
seventeenth century that Christophe had read by chance in a popular
collection, and whose loyalty he had loved. Two especially were dear to
him, dear as brothers, two creatures full of genius and both had died at
thirty: the charming Paul Fleming, the traveler to the Caucasus and to
Ispahan, who preserved his soul pure, loving and serene in the midst of
the savagery of war, the sorrows of life, and the corruption of his time,
and Johann Christian Günther, the unbalanced genius who wore himself out
in debauchery and despair, casting his life to the four winds. He had
translated Günther's cries of provocation and vengeful irony against the
hostile God who overwhelms His creatures, his furious curses like those of
a Titan overthrown hurling the thunder back against the heavens. He had
selected Fleming's love songs to Anemone and Basilene, soft and sweet as
flowers, and the rondo of the stars, the _Tanzlied_ (dancing song) of
hearts glad and limpid--and the calm heroic sonnet To Himself (_An Sich_),
which Christophe used to recite as a prayer every morning.

The smiling optimism of the pious Paul Gerhardt also had its charm for
Christophe. It was a rest for him on recovering from his own sorrows. He
loved that innocent vision of nature as God, the fresh meadows, where
the storks walk gravely among the tulips and white narcissus, by little
brooks singing on the sands, the transparent air wherein there pass the
wide-winged, swallows and flying doves, the gaiety of a sunbeam piercing
the rain, and the luminous sky smiling through the clouds, and the serene
majesty of the evening, the sweet peace of the forests, the cattle, the
bowers and the fields. He had had the impertinence to set to music several
of those mystic canticles which are still sung in Protestant communities.
And he had avoided preserving the choral character. Far from it: he had
a horror of it; he had given them a free and vivacious character. Old
Gerhardt would have shuddered at the devilish pride which was breathed
forth now in certain lines of his _Song of the Christian Traveler_, or
the pagan delight which made this peaceful stream of his _Song of Summer_
bubble over like a torrent.

The collection was published without any regard for common sense, of
course. The publisher whom Christophe paid for printing and storing his
_Lieder_ had no other claim to his choice than that of being his neighbor.
He was not equipped for such important work; the printing went on for
months; there were mistakes and expensive corrections. Christophe knew
nothing about it and the whole thing cost more by a third than it need have
done; the expenses far exceeded anything he had anticipated. Then when it
was done, Christophe found an enormous edition on his hands and did not
know what to do with it. The publisher had no customers; he took no steps
to circulate the work. And his apathy was quite in accord with Christophe's
attitude. When he asked him, to satisfy his conscience, to write him a
short advertisement of it, Christophe replied that "he did not want any
advertisement; if his music was good it would speak for itself." The
publisher religiously respected his wishes; he put the edition away in his
warehouse. It was well kept; for in six months not a copy was sold.

* * * * *

While he was waiting for the public to make up its mind Christophe had to
find some way of repairing the hole he had made in his means; and he could
not be nice about it, for he had to live and pay his debts. Not only were
his debts larger than he had imagined but he saw that the moneys on which
he had counted were less than he had thought. Had he lost money without
knowing it or--what was infinitely more probable--had he reckoned up
wrongly? (He had never been able to add correctly.) It did not matter much
why the money was missing; it was missing without a doubt. Louisa had to
give her all to help her son. He was bitterly remorseful and tried to pay
her back as soon as possible and at all costs. He tried to get lessons,
though it was painful to him to ask and to put up with refusals. He was out
of favor altogether; he found it very difficult to obtain pupils again. And
so when it was suggested that he should teach at a school he was only too
glad.

It was a semi-religious institution. The director, an astute gentleman, had
seen, though he was no musician, how useful Christophe might be, and how
cheaply in his present position. He was pleasant and paid very little. When
Christophe ventured to make a timid remark the director told him with a
kindly smile that as he no longer held an official position he could not
very well expect more.

It was a sad task! It was not so much a matter of teaching the pupils music
as of making their parents and themselves believe that they had learned it.
The chief thing was to make them able to sing at the ceremonies to which
the public were admitted. It did not matter how it was done, Christophe
was in despair; he had not even the consolation of telling himself as he
fulfilled his task that he was doing useful work; his conscience reproached
him with it as hypocrisy. He tried to give the children more solid
instruction and to make them acquainted with and love serious music; but
they did not care for it a bit. Christophe could not succeed in making them
listen to it; he had no authority over them; in truth he was not made for
teaching children. He took no interest in their floundering; he tried to
explain to them all at once the theory of music. When he had to give a
piano lesson he would set his pupil a symphony of Beethoven which he would
play as a duet with her. Naturally that could not succeed; he would explode
angrily, drive the pupil from the piano and go on playing alone for a long
time. He was just the same with his private pupils outside the school. He
had not an ounce of patience; for instance he would tell a young lady who
prided herself on her aristocratic appearance and position, that she played
like a kitchen maid; or he would even write to her mother and say that he
gave it up, that it would kill him if he went on long bothering about a
girl so devoid of talent. All of which did not improve his position. His
few pupils left him; he could not keep any of them more than a few months.
His mother argued with him; he would argue with himself. Louisa made him
promise that at least he would not break with the school he had joined;
for if he lost that position he did not know what he should do for a
living. And so he restrained himself in spite of his disgust; he was most
exemplarily punctual. But how could he conceal his thoughts when a donkey
of a pupil blundered for the tenth time in some passages, or when he had to
coach his class for the next concert in some foolish chorus!--(For he was
not even allowed to choose his programme: his taste was not trusted)--He
was not exactly zealous about it all. And yet he went stubbornly on,
silent, frowning, only betraying his secret wrath by occasionally thumping
on his desk and making his pupils jump in their seats. But sometimes the
pill was too bitter; he could not bear it any longer. In the middle of the
chorus he would interrupt the singers:

"Oh! Stop! Stop! I'll play you some Wagner instead."

They asked nothing better. They played cards behind his back. There was
always someone who reported the matter to the director; and Christophe
would be reminded that he was not there to make his pupils like music
but to make them sing. He received his scoldings with a shudder; but he
accepted them; he did not want to lose his work. Who would have thought a
few years before, when his career looked so assured and brilliant (when he
had done nothing), that he would be reduced to such humiliation just as he
was beginning to be worth something?

Among the hurts to his vanity that he came by in his work at the school,
one of the most painful was having to call on his colleagues. He paid two
calls at random; and they bored him so that he had not the heart to go on.
The two privileged persons were not at all pleased about it, but the others
were personally affronted. They all regarded Christophe as their inferior
in position and intelligence; and they assumed a patronizing manner towards
him. Sometimes he was overwhelmed by it, for they seemed to be so sure of
themselves and the opinion they had of him that he began to share it; he
felt stupid with them; what could he have found to say to them? They were
full of their profession and saw nothing beyond it. They were not men. If
only they had been books! But they were only notes to books, philological
commentaries.

Christophe avoided meeting them. But sometimes he was forced to do so. The
director was at home once a month in the afternoon; and he insisted on
all his people being there. Christophe, who had cut the first afternoon,
without excuse, in the vain hope that his absence would not be noticed, was
ever afterwards the object of sour attention. Next time he was lectured by
his mother and decided to go; he was as solemn about it as though he were
going to a funeral.

He found himself at a gathering of the teachers of the school and other
institutions of the town, and their wives and daughters. They were all
huddled together in a room too small for them, and grouped hierarchically.
They paid no attention to him. The group nearest him was talking of
pedagogy and cooking. All the wives of the teachers had culinary recipes
which they set out with pedantic exuberance and insistence. The men were no
less interested in these matters and hardly less competent. They were as
proud of the domestic talents of their wives as they of their husbands'
learning. Christophe stood by a window leaning against the wall, not
knowing how to look, now trying to smile stupidly, now gloomy with a fixed
stare and unmoved features, and he was bored to death. A little away from
him, sitting in the recess of the window, was a young woman to whom nobody
was talking and she was as bored as he. They both looked at the room and
not at each other. It was only after some time that they noticed each
other just as they both turned away to yawn, both being at the limit of
endurance. Just at that moment their eyes met. They exchanged a look of
friendly understanding. He moved towards her. She said in a low voice:

"Are you amused?"

He turned his back on the room, and, looking out of the window, put out his
tongue. She burst out laughing, and suddenly waking up she signed to him
to sit down by her side. They introduced themselves; she was the wife of
Professor Reinhart, who lectured on natural history at the school, and was
newly come to the town, where they knew nobody. She was not beautiful; she
had a large nose, ugly teeth, and she lacked freshness; but she had keen,
clever eyes and a kindly smile. She chattered like a magpie; he answered
her solemnly; she had an amusing frankness and a droll wit; they laughingly
exchanged impressions out loud without bothering about the people round
them. Their neighbors, who had not deigned to notice their existence when
it would have been charitable to help them out of their loneliness, now
threw angry looks at them; it was in bad taste to be so much amused. But
they did not care what the others might think of them; they were taking
their revenge in their chatter.

In the end Frau Reinhart introduced her husband to Christophe. He was
extremely ugly; he had a pale, greasy, pockmarked, rather sinister face,
but he looked very kind. He spoke low down in his throat and pronounced his
words sententiously, stammeringly, pausing between each syllable.

They had been married a few months only and these two plain people were
in love with each other; they had an affectionate way of looking at each
other, talking to each other, taking each other's hands in the presence of
everybody--which was comic and touching. If one wanted anything the other
would want it too. And so they invited Christophe to go and sup with them
after the reception. Christophe began jokingly to beg to be excused; he
said that the best thing to do that evening would be to go to bed; he was
quite worn out with boredom, as tired as though he had walked ten miles.
But Frau Reinhart said that he could not be left in that condition; it
would be dangerous to spend the night with such gloomy thoughts. Christophe
let them drag him off. In his loneliness he was glad to have met these good
people, who were not very distinguished in their manners but were simple
and _gemütlich_.

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