Jean-Christophe, vol 1, Romain Rolland [book club recommendations .txt] 📗

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Title: Jean-Christophe, Vol. I

 

Author: Romain Rolland

 

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7979]

[This file was first posted on June 8, 2003]

 

Edition: 10

 

Language: English

 

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

 

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, JEAN-CHRISTOPHE, VOL. I ***

 

E-text prepared by the Distributed Proofreading Team

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VOLUME I

DAWN, MORNING, YOUTH, REVOLT

 

by Romain Rolland

 

Translated by Gilbert Cannan

PREFACE

“Jean-Christophe” is the history of the development of a musician of

genius. The present volume comprises the first four volumes of the original

French, viz.: “L’Aube,” “Le Matin,” “L’Adolescent,” and “La Révólte,” which

are designated in the translation as Part I—The Dawn; Part II—Morning;

Part III—Youth; Part IV—Revolt. Parts I and II carry Jean-Christophe from

the moment of his birth to the day when, after his first encounter with

Woman, at the age of fifteen, he falls back upon a Puritan creed. Parts

III and IV describe the succeeding five years of his life, when, at the

age of twenty, his sincerity, integrity, and unswerving honesty have made

existence impossible for him in the little Rhine town of his birth. An act

of open revolt against German militarism compels him to cross the frontier

and take refuge in Paris, and the remainder of this vast book is devoted to

the adventures of Jean-Christophe in France.

 

His creator has said that he has always conceived and thought of the life

of his hero and of the book as a river. So far as the book has a plan, that

is its plan. It has no literary artifice, no “plot.” The words of it hang

together in defiance of syntax, just as the thoughts of it follow one on

the other in defiance of every system of philosophy. Every phase of the

book is pregnant with the next phase. It is as direct and simple as life

itself, for life is simple when the truth of it is known, as it was known

instinctively by Jean-Christophe. The river is explored as though it were

absolutely uncharted. Nothing that has ever been said or thought of life is

accepted without being brought to the test of Jean-Christophe’s own life.

What is not true for him does not exist; and, as there are very few of

the processes of human growth or decay which are not analysed, there is

disclosed to the reader the most comprehensive survey of modern life which

has appeared in literature in this century.

 

To leave M. Rolland’s simile of the river, and to take another, the book

has seemed to me like a, mighty bridge leading from the world of ideas of

the nineteenth century to the world of ideas of the twentieth. The whole

thought of the nineteenth century seems to be gathered together to make the

starting-point for Jean-Christophe’s leap into the future. All that was

most religious in that thought seems to be concentrated in Jean-Christophe,

and when the history of the book is traced, it appears that M. Rolland has

it by direct inheritance.

 

M. Rolland was born in 1866 at Clamecy, in the center of France, of a

French family of pure descent, and educated in Paris and Rome. At Rome, in

1890, he met Malwida von Meysenburg, a German lady who had taken refuge

in England after the Revolution of 1848, and there knew Kossuth, Mazzini,

Herzen, Ledin, Rollin, and Louis Blanc. Later, in Italy, she counted among

her friends Wagner, Liszt, Lenbach, Nietzsche, Garibaldi, and Ibsen. She

died in 1908. Rolland came to her impregnated with Tolstoyan ideas, and

with her wide knowledge of men and movements she helped him to discover his

own ideas. In her “Mémoires d’une Idéaliste” she wrote of him: “In this

young Frenchman I discovered the same idealism, the same lofty aspiration,

the same profound grasp of every great intellectual manifestation that I

had already found in the greatest men of other nationalities.”

 

The germ of “Jean-Christophe” was conceived during this period—the

“Wanderjahre”—of M. Rolland’s life. On his return to Paris he became

associated with a movement towards the renascence of the theater as a

social machine, and wrote several plays. He has since been a musical critic

and a lecturer on music and art at the Sorbonne. He has written Lives of

Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Hugo Wolf. Always his endeavor has been the

pursuit of the heroic. To him the great men are the men of absolute truth.

Jean-Christophe must have the truth and tell the truth, at all costs, in

despite of circumstance, in despite of himself, in despite even of life.

It is his law. It is M. Rolland’s law. The struggle all through the book

is between the pure life of Jean-Christophe and the common acceptance of

the second-rate and the second-hand by the substitution of civic or social

morality, which is only a compromise, for individual morality, which

demands that every man should be delivered up to the unswerving judgment of

his own soul. Everywhere Jean-Christophe is hurled against compromise and

untruth, individual and national. He discovers the German lie very quickly;

the French lie grimaces at him as soon as he sets foot in Paris.

 

The book itself breaks down the frontier between France and Germany. If one

frontier is broken, all are broken. The truth about anything is universal

truth, and the experiences of Jean-Christophe, the adventures of his soul

(there are no other adventures), are in a greater or less degree those of

every human being who passes through this life from the tyranny of the past

to the service of the future.

 

The book contains a host of characters who become as friends, or, at least,

as interesting neighbors, to the reader. Jean-Christophe gathers people

in his progress, and as they are all brought to the test of his genius,

they appear clearly for what they are. Even the most unpleasant of them is

human, and demands sympathy.

 

The recognition of Jean-Christophe as a book which marks a stage in

progress was instantaneous in France. It is hardly possible yet to judge

it. It is impossible to deny its vitality. It exists. Christophe is as real

as the gentlemen whose portraits are posted outside the Queen’s Hall, and

much more real than many of them. The book clears the air. An open mind

coming to it cannot fail to be refreshed and strengthened by its voyage

down the river of a man’s life, and if the book is followed to its end, the

voyager will discover with Christophe that there is joy beneath sorrow, joy

through sorrow (“Durch Leiden Freude”).

 

Those are the last words of M. Rolland’s life of Beethoven; they are words

of Beethoven himself: “La devise de tout âme héroïque.”

 

In his preface, “To the Friends of Christophe,” which precedes the seventh

volume, “Dans la Maison,” M. Rolland writes:

 

“I was isolated: like so many others in France I was stifling in a world

morally inimical to me: I wanted air: I wanted to react against an

unhealthy civilization, against ideas corrupted by a sham élite: I wanted

to say to them: ‘You lie! You do not represent France!’ To do so I needed a

hero with a pure heart and unclouded vision, whose soul would be stainless

enough for him to have the right to speak; one whose voice would be loud

enough for him to gain a hearing, I have patiently begotten this hero. The

work was in conception for many years before I set myself to write a word

of it. Christophe only set out on his journey when I had been able to see

the end of it for him.”

 

If M. Rolland’s act of faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned

with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal

evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it

is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be

the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: “Every man has a right to utter

what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for

it….”

 

By its truth and its absolute integrity—since Tolstoy I know of no

writing so crystal clear—“Jean-Christophe” is the first great book of the

twentieth century. In a sense it begins the twentieth century. It bridges

transition, and shows us where we stand. It reveals the past and the

present, and leaves the future open to us….

GILBERT CANNAN CONTENTS THE DAWN I II III MORNING

I. THE DEATH OF JEAN MICHEL

II. OTTO

III. MINNA

YOUTH

I. THE HOUSE OF EULER

II. SABINE

III. ADA

REVOLT

I. SHIFTING SANDS

II. ENGULFED

III. DELIVERANCE

THE DAWN

Dianzi, nell’alba che precede al giorno,

Quando l’anima tua dentro dormìa….

Purgatorio, ix.

I

Come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi

A diradar cominciansi, la spera

Del sol debilemente entra per essi….

Purgatorio, xvii.

 

From behind the house rises the murmuring of the river. All day long the

rain has been beating against the window-panes; a stream of water trickles

down the window at the corner where it is broken. The yellowish light of

the day dies down. The room is dim and dull.

 

The newborn child stirs in his cradle. Although the old man left his

sabots at the door when he entered, his footsteps make the floor creak. The

child begins to whine. The mother leans out of her bed to comfort it; and

the grandfather gropes to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be

frightened by the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up old

Jean Michel’s red face, with its rough white beard and morose expression

and quick eyes. He goes near the cradle. His cloak smells wet, and as he

walks he drags his large blue list slippers, Louisa signs to him not to go

too near. She is fair, almost white; her features are drawn; her gentle,

stupid face is marked with red in patches; her lips are pale and’ swollen,

and they are parted in a timid smile; her eyes devour the child—and her

eyes are blue and vague; the pupils are small, but there is an infinite

tenderness in them.

 

The child wakes and cries, and his eyes are troubled. Oh! how terrible! The

darkness, the sudden flash of the lamp, the hallucinations