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

action, and the closer the

walls of Jean-Christophe’s prison of care and banal tasks were drawn about

him, the more his heart in its revolt felt its independence. In a life

without obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance and

to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could be free only for

an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into that space of time like a

river between walls of rock. It is a good discipline for art for a man to

confine his efforts between unshakable bounds. In that sense it may be said

that misery is a master, not only of thought, but of style; it teaches

sobriety to the mind as to the body. When time is doled out and thoughts

measured, a man says no word too much, and grows accustomed to thinking

only what is essential; so he lives at double pressure, having less time

for living.

 

This had happened in Jean-Christophe’s case. Under his yoke he took

full stock of the value of liberty and he never frittered away the

precious minutes with useless words or actions. His natural tendency

to write diffusely, given up to all the caprice of a mind sincere but

indiscriminating, found correction in being forced to think and do as much

as possible in the least possible time. Nothing had so much influence on

his artistic and moral development—not the lessons of his masters, nor the

example of the masterpieces. During the years when the character is formed

he came to consider music as an exact language, in which every sound has a

meaning, and at the same time he came to loathe those musicians who talk

without saying anything.

 

And yet the compositions which he wrote at this time were still far from

expressing himself completely, because he was still very far from having

completely discovered himself. He was seeking himself through the mass of

acquired feelings which education imposes on a child as second nature. He

had only intuitions of his true being, until he should feel the passions

of adolescence, which strip the personality of its borrowed garments as a

thunderclap purges the sky of the mists that hang over it. Vague and great

forebodings were mingled in him with strange memories, of which he could

not rid himself. He raged against these lies; he was wretched to see how

inferior what he wrote was to what he thought; he had bitter doubts of

himself. But he could not resign himself to such a stupid defeat. He longed

passionately to do better, to write great things, and always he missed

fire. After a moment of illusion as he wrote, he saw that what he had done

was worthless. He tore it up; he burned everything that he did; and, to

crown his humiliation, he had to see his official works, the most mediocre

of all, preserved, and he could not destroy them—the concerto, _The

Royal Eagle_, for the Prince’s birthday and the cantata, _The Marriage

of Pallas_, written on the occasion of the marriage of Princess

Adelaide—published at great expense in éditions de luxe, which

perpetuated his imbecilities for posterity; for he believed in posterity.

He wept in his humiliation.

 

Fevered years! No respite, no release—nothing to create a diversion from

such maddening toil; no games, no friends. How should he have them? In the

afternoon, when other children played, young Jean-Christophe, with his

brows knit in attention, was at his place in the orchestra in the dusty and

ill-lighted theater; and in the evening, when other children were abed, he

was still there, sitting in his chair, bowed with weariness.

 

No intimacy with his brothers. The younger, Ernest, was twelve. He was a

little ragamuffin, vicious and impudent, who spent his days with other

rapscallions like himself, and from their company had caught not only

deplorable manners, but shameful habits which good Jean-Christophe, who

had never so much as suspected their existence, was horrified to see one

day. The other, Rodolphe, the favorite of Uncle Theodore, was to go into

business. He was steady, quiet, but sly. He thought himself much superior

to Jean-Christophe, and did not admit his authority in the house, although

it seemed natural to him to eat the food that he provided. He had espoused

the cause of Theodore and Melchior’s ill-feeling against Jean-Christophe

and used to repeat their absurd gossip. Neither of the brothers cared for

music, and Rodolphe, in imitation of his uncle, affected to despise it.

Chafing against Jean-Christophe’s authority and lectures—for he took

himself very seriously as the head of the family—the two boys had tried to

rebel; but Jean-Christophe, who had lusty fists and the consciousness of

right, sent them packing. Still they did not for that cease to do with him

as they liked. They abused his credulity, and laid traps for him, into

which he invariably fell. They used to extort money from him with barefaced

lies, and laughed at him behind his back. Jean-Christophe was always taken

in. He had so much need of being loved that an affectionate word was enough

to disarm his rancor. He would have forgiven them everything for a little

love. But his confidence was cruelly shaken when he heard them laughing at

his stupidity after a scene of hypocritical embracing which had moved him

to tears, and they had taken advantage of it to rob him of a gold watch, a

present from the Prince, which they coveted. He despised them, and yet went

on letting himself be taken in from his unconquerable tendency to trust and

to love. He knew it. He raged against himself, and he used to thrash his

brothers soundly when he discovered once more that they had tricked him.

That did not keep him from swallowing almost immediately the fresh hook

which it pleased them to bait for him.

 

A more bitter cause of suffering was in store for him. He learned from

officious neighbors that his father was speaking ill of him. After having

been proud of his son’s successes, and having boasted of them everywhere,

Melchior was weak and shameful enough to be jealous of them. He tried to

decry them. It was stupid to weep; Jean-Christophe could only shrug his

shoulders in contempt. It was no use being angry about it, for his father

did not know what he was doing, and was embittered by his own downfall. The

boy said nothing. He was afraid, if he said anything, of being too hard;

but he was cut to the heart.

 

They were melancholy gatherings at the family evening meal round the lamp,

with a spotted cloth, with all the stupid chatter and the sound of the jaws

of these people whom he despised and pitied, and yet loved in spite of

everything. Only between himself and his brave mother did Jean-Christophe

feel a bond of affection. But Louisa, like himself, exhausted herself

during the day, and in the evening she was worn out and hardly spoke, and

after dinner used to sleep in her chair over her darning. And she was so

good that she seemed to make no difference in her love between her husband

and her three sons. She loved them all equally. Jean-Christophe did not

find in her the trusted friend that he so much needed.

 

So he was driven in upon himself. For days together he would not speak,

fulfilling his tiresome and wearing task with a sort of silent rage. Such

a mode of living was dangerous, especially for a child at a critical age,

when he is most sensitive, and is exposed to every agent of destruction

and the risk of being deformed for the rest of his life. Jean-Christophe’s

health suffered seriously. He had been endowed by his parents with a

healthy constitution and a sound and healthy body; but his very healthiness

only served to feed his suffering when the weight of weariness and too

early cares had opened up a gap by which it might enter. Quite early in

life there were signs of grave nervous disorders. When he was a small boy

he was subject to fainting-fits and convulsions and vomiting whenever he

encountered opposition. When he was seven or eight, about the time of the

concert, his sleep had been troubled. He used to talk, cry, laugh and weep

in his sleep, and this habit returned to him whenever he had too much to

think of. Then he had cruel headaches, sometimes shooting pains at the base

of his skull or the top of his head, sometimes a leaden heaviness. His eyes

troubled him. Sometimes it was as though red-hot needles were piercing his

eyeballs. He was subject to fits of dizziness, when he could not see to

read, and had to stop for a minute or two. Insufficient and unsound food

and irregular meals ruined the health of his stomach. He was racked by

internal pains or exhausted by diarrhea. But nothing brought him more

suffering than his heart. It beat with a crazy irregularity. Sometimes it

would leap in his bosom, and seem like to break; sometimes it would hardly

beat at all, and seem like to stop. At night his temperature would vary

alarmingly; it would change suddenly from fever-point to next to nothing.

He would burn, then shiver with cold, pass through agony. His throat would

go dry; a lump in it would prevent his breathing. Naturally his imagination

took fire. He dared not say anything to his family of what he was going

through, but he was continually dissecting it with a minuteness which

either enlarged his sufferings or created new ones. He decided that he had

every known illness one after the other. He believed that he was going

blind, and as he sometimes used to turn giddy as he walked, he thought that

he was going to fall down dead. Always that dreadful fear of being stopped

on his road, of dying before his time, obsessed him, overwhelmed him, and

pursued him. Ah, if he had to die, at least let it not be now, not before

he had tasted victory!…

 

Victory … the fixed idea which never ceases to burn within him without

his being fully aware of it—the idea which bears him up through all his

disgust and fatigues and the stagnant morass of such a life! A dim and

great foreknowledge of what he will be some day, of what he is already!…

What is he? A sick, nervous child, who plays the violin in the orchestra

and writes mediocre concertos? No; far more than such a child. That is no

more than the wrapping, the seeming of a day; that is not his Being. There

is no connection between his Being and the existing shape of his face and

thought. He knows that well. When he looks at himself in the mirror he does

not know himself. That broad red face, those prominent eyebrows, those

little sunken eyes, that short thick nose, that sullen mouth—the whole

mask, ugly and vulgar, is foreign to himself. Neither does he know himself

in his writings. He judges, he knows that what he does and what he is are

nothing; and yet he is sure of what he will be and do. Sometimes he falls

foul of such certainty as a vain lie. He takes pleasure in humiliating

himself and bitterly mortifying himself by way of punishment. But his

certainty endures; nothing can alter it. Whatever he does, whatever he

thinks, none of his thoughts, actions, or writings contain him or express

him, He knows, he has this strange presentiment, that the more that he is,

is not contained in the present but is what he will be, what he _will be

to-morrow. He will be!_… He is fired by that faith, he is intoxicated by

that light! Ah, if only To-day does not block