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

he stayed a year longer in the

place he would be lost. He loathed the brutal militarism which he felt

weighing down upon him, the sabers clanking on the pavement, the piles of

arms, and the guns placed outside the barracks, their muzzles gaping down

on the town, ready to fire. Scandalous novels, which were then making a

great stir, denounced the corruption of the garrisons, great and small:

the officers were represented as mischievous creatures, who, outside

their automatic duties, were only idle and spent their time in drinking,

gambling, getting into debt, living on their families, slandering one

another, and from top to bottom of the hierarchy they abused their

authority at the expense of their inferiors. The idea that he would one

day have to obey them stuck in Christophe’s throat. He could not, no, he

could never bear it, and lose his own self-respect by submitting to their

humiliations and injustice…. He had no idea of the moral strength in some

of them, or of all that they might be suffering themselves: lost illusions,

so much strength and youth and honor and faith, and passionate desire for

sacrifice, turned to ill account and spoiled,—the pointlessness of a

career, which, if it is only a career, if it has not sacrifice as its end,

is only a grim activity, an inept display, a ritual which is recited

without belief in the words that are said….

 

His country was not enough for Christophe. He felt in himself that unknown

force which wakes suddenly, irresistibly, in certain species of birds, at

definite times, like the ebb and flow of the tides:—the instinct of the

great migrations. As he read the volumes of Herder and Fichte which old

Schulz had left him, he found souls like his own, not “sons of the soil”

slavishly bound to the globe, but “spirits, sons of the sun” turning

invincibly to the light wheresoever it comes.

 

Whither should he go? He did not know. But instinctively his eyes turned to

the Latin South. And first to France—France, the eternal refuge of Germany

in distress. How often had German thought turned to France, without ceasing

to slander her! Even since seventy, what an attraction emanated from the

town which had been shattered and smoking under the German guns! The most

revolutionary and the most reactionary forms of thought and art had found

alternately and sometimes at once example and inspiration there. Like so

many other great German musicians in distress, Christophe turned towards

Paris…. What did he know of the French? Two women’s faces and some chance

reading. That was enough for him to imagine a country of light, of gaiety,

of courage, and even of a little Gallic boasting, which does not sort ill

with the bold youth of the heart. He believed it all, because he needed to

believe it all, because, with all his soul, he would have liked it to be

so.

 

*

 

He made up his mind to go. But he could not go because of his mother.

 

Louisa was growing old. She adored her son, who was her only joy, and she

was all that he most loved on earth. And yet they were always hurting each

other. She hardly understood Christophe, and did not try to understand him.

She was only concerned to love him. She had a narrow, timid, dull mind, and

a fine heart; an immense need of loving and being loved in which there was

something touching and sad. She respected her son because he seemed to her

to be very learned; but she did all she could to stifle his genius. She

thought he would stay all his life with her in their little town. They

had lived together for years, and she could not imagine that he would not

always be the same. She was happy: why should he not be happy, too? All her

dreams for him soared no higher than seeing him married to some prosperous

citizen of the town, hearing him play the organ at church on Sundays, and

never having him leave her. She regarded her son as though he were still

twelve years old. She would have liked him never to be more than that.

Innocently she inflicted torture on the unhappy man who was suffocated in

that narrow world.

 

And yet there was much truth—moral greatness—in that unconscious

philosophy of the mother, who could not understand ambition and saw all the

happiness of life in the family affections and the accomplishment of humble

duties. She was a creature who wished to love and only to love. Sooner

renounce life, reason, logic, the material world, everything, rather

than love! And that love was infinite, suppliant, exacting: it gave

everything—it wished to be given everything; it renounced life for love,

and it desired that renunciation from others, from the beloved. What a

power is the love of a simple soul! It makes it find at once what the

groping reasoning of an uncertain genius like Tolstoy, or the too refined

art of a dying civilization, discovers after a lifetime—ages—of bitter

struggle and exhausting effort! But the imperious world which was seething

in Christophe had very different laws and demanded another wisdom.

 

For a long time he had been wanting to announce his determination to his

mother. But he was fearful of the grief it would bring to her, and just

as he was about to speak he would lose his courage and put it off. Two or

three times he did timidly allude to his departure, but Louisa did not take

him seriously:—perhaps she preferred not to take him seriously, so as to

persuade him that he was talking in jest. Then he dared not go on; but he

would remain gloomy and thoughtful, or it was apparent that he had some

secret burden upon his soul. And the poor woman, who had an intuition as to

the nature of that secret, tried fearfully to delay the confession of it.

Sometimes in the evening, when they were sitting, silent, in the light of

the lamp, she would suddenly feel that he was going to speak, and then in

terror she would begin to talk, very quickly, at random, about nothing in

particular. She hardly knew what she was saying, but at all costs she must

keep him from speaking. Generally her instinct made her find the best means

of imposing silence on him: she would complain about her health, about

the swelling of her hands and feet, and the cramps in her legs. She would

exaggerate her sickness: call herself an old, useless, bed-ridden woman. He

was not deceived by her simple tricks. He would look at her sadly in dumb

reproach, and after a moment he would get up, saying that he was tired, and

go to bed.

 

But all her devices could not save Louisa for long. One evening, when she

resorted to them once more, Christophe gathered his courage and put his

hand on his mother’s and said:

 

“No, mother. I have something to say to you.” Louisa was horrified, but she

tried to smile and say chokingly:

 

“What is it, my dear?”

 

Christophe stammered out his intention of going. She tried to take it as a

joke and to turn the conversation as usual, but he was not to be put off,

and went on so deliberately and so seriously that there was no possibility

of doubt. Then she said nothing. Her pulse stopped, and she sat there dumb,

frozen, looking at him with terror in her eyes. Such sorrow showed in her

eyes as he spoke that he too stopped, and they sat, both speechless. When

at last she was able to recover her breath, she said—(her lips

trembled)—:

 

“It is impossible…. It is impossible….”

 

Two large tears trickled down her cheeks. He turned his head away in

despair and hid his face in his hands. They wept. After some time he went

to his room and shut himself up until the morrow. They made no reference to

what had happened, and as he did not speak of it again she tried to pretend

that he had abandoned the project. But she lived on tenterhooks.

 

There came a time when he could hold himself in no longer. He had to speak

even if it broke his heart: he was suffering too much. The egoism of his

sorrow mastered the idea of the suffering he would bring to her. He spoke.

He went through with it, never looking at his mother, for fear of being too

greatly moved. He fixed the day for his departure so as to avoid a second

discussion—(he did not know if he could again win the sad courage that was

in him that day). Louisa cried:

 

“No, no! Stop, stop!…”

 

He set his teeth and went on implacably. When he had finished (she was

sobbing) he took her hands and tried to make her understand how it was

absolutely necessary for his art and his life for him to go away for some

time. She refused to listen. She wept and said:

 

“No, no!… I will not….”

 

After trying to reason with her, in vain, he left her, thinking that the

night would bring about a change in her ideas. But when they met next day

at breakfast he began once more to talk of his plans. She dropped the piece

of bread she was raising to her lips and said sorrowfully and

reproachfully:

 

“Why do you want to torture me?”

 

He was touched, but he said:

 

“Dear mother, I must.”

 

“No, no!” she replied. “You must not…. You want to hurt me…. It is a

madness….”

 

They tried to convince each other, but they did not listen to each other.

He saw that argument was wasted; it would only make her suffer more, and he

began ostentatiously to prepare for his departure.

 

When she saw that no entreaty would stop him, Louisa relapsed into a gloomy

stupor. She spent her days locked up in her room and without a light, when

evening came. She did not speak or eat. At night he could hear her weeping.

He was racked by it. He could have cried out in his grief, as he lay all

night twisting and turning in his bed, sleeplessly, a prey to his remorse.

He loved her so. Why must he make her suffer?… Alas! She would not be the

only one: he saw that clearly…. Why had destiny given him the desire and

strength of a mission which must make those whom he loved suffer?

 

“Ah!” he thought. “If I were free, if I were not drawn on by the cruel need

of being what I must be, or else of dying in shame and disgust with myself,

how happy would I make you—you whom I love! Let me live first; do, fight,

suffer, and then I will come hack to you and love you more than ever. How I

would like only to love, love, love!…”

 

He never could have been strong enough to resist the perpetual reproach

of the grief-stricken soul had that reproach been strong enough to remain

silent. But Louisa, who was weak and rather talkative, could not keep the

sorrow that was stifling her to herself. She told her neighbors. She told

her two other sons. They could not miss such a fine opportunity of putting

Christophe in the wrong. Rodolphe especially, who had never ceased to be

jealous of his elder brother, although there was little enough reason for

it at the time—Rodolphe, who was cut to the quick by the least praise

of Christophe, and was secretly afraid of his future success, though he

never dared admit so base a thought—(for he was clever enough