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

frightful sorrow of parting, an intolerable

torture for all loving hearts. The world is empty; life is empty; all is

empty. The heart is choked; it is impossible to breathe; there is mortal

agony; it is difficult, impossible, to live—especially when all around you

there are the traces of the departed loved one, when everything about you

is forever calling up her image, when you remain in the surroundings in

which you lived together, she and you, when it is a torment to try to live

again in the same places the happiness that is gone. Then it is as though

an abyss were opened at your feet; you lean over it; you turn giddy; you

almost fall. You fall. You think you are face to face with Death. And so

you are; parting is one of his faces. You watch the beloved of your heart

pass away; life is effaced; only a black hole is left—nothingness.

 

Jean-Christophe went and visited all the beloved spots, so as to suffer

more. Frau von Kerich had left him the key of the garden, so that he could

go there while they were away. He went there that very day, and was like

to choke with sorrow. It seemed to him as he entered that he might find

there a little of her who was gone; he found only too much of her; her

image hovered over all the lawns; he expected to see her appear at all

the corners of the paths; he knew well that she would not appear, but he

tormented himself with pretending that she might, and he went over the

tracks of his memories of love—the path to the labyrinth, the terrace

carpeted with wistaria, the seat in the arbor, and he inflicted torture on

himself by saying: “A week ago … three days ago … yesterday, it was

so. Yesterday she was here … this very morning….” He racked his heart

with these thoughts until he had to stop, choking, and like to die. In his

sorrow was mingled anger with himself for having wasted all that time, and

not having made use of it. So many minutes, so many hours, when he had

enjoyed the infinite happiness of seeing her, breathing her, and feeding

upon her. And he had not appreciated it! He had let the time go by without

having tasted to the full every tiny moment! And now!… Now it was too

late…. Irreparable! Irreparable!

 

He went home. His family seemed odious to him. He could not bear their

faces, their gestures, their fatuous conversation, the same as that of the

preceding day, the same as that of all the preceding days—always the same.

They went on living their usual life, as though no such misfortune had come

to pass in their midst. And the town had no more idea of it than they.

The people were all going about their affairs, laughing, noisy, busy; the

crickets were chirping; the sky was bright. He hated them all; he felt

himself crushed by this universal egoism. But he himself was more egoistic

than the whole universe. Nothing was worth while to him. He had no

kindness. He loved nobody.

 

He passed several lamentable days. His work absorbed him again

automatically: but he had no heart for living.

 

One evening when he was at supper with his family, silent and depressed,

the postman knocked at the door and left a letter for him. His heart knew

the sender of it before he had seen the handwriting. Four pairs of eyes,

fixed on him with undisguised curiosity, waited for him to read it,

clutching at the hope that this interruption might take them out of their

usual boredom. He placed the letter by his plate, and would not open it,

pretending carelessly that he knew what it was about. But his brothers,

annoyed, would not believe it, and went on prying at it; and so he was in

tortures until the meal was ended. Then he was free to lock himself up in

his room. His heart was beating so that he almost tore the letter as he

opened it. He trembled to think what might be in it; but as soon as he had

glanced over the first words he was filled with joy.

 

A few very affectionate words. Minna was writing to him by stealth. She

called him “Dear Christlein” and told him that she had wept much, had

looked at the star every evening, that she had been to Frankfort, which was

a splendid town, where there were wonderful shops, but that she had never

bothered about anything because she was thinking of him. She reminded him

that he had sworn to be faithful to her, and not to see anybody while she

was away, so that he might think only of her. She wanted him to work all

the time while she was gone, so as to make himself famous, and her too. She

ended by asking him if he remembered the little room where they had said

good-bye on the morning when she had left him: she assured him that she

would be there still in thought, and that she would still say good-bye to

him in the same way. She signed herself, “Eternally yours! Eternally!…”

and she had added a postscript bidding him buy a straw hat instead of his

ugly felt—all the distinguished people there were wearing them—a coarse

straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon.

 

Jean-Christophe read the letter four times before he could quite take it

all in. He was so overwhelmed that he could not even be happy; and suddenly

he felt so tired that he lay down and read and re-read the letter and

kissed it again and again. He put it under his pillow, and his hand was

forever making sure that it was there. An ineffable sense of well-being

permeated his whole soul. He slept all through the night.

 

His life became more tolerable. He had ever sweet, soaring thoughts of

Minna. He set about answering her; but he could not write freely to her;

he had to hide his feelings: that was painful and difficult for him. He

continued clumsily to conceal his love beneath formulæ of ceremonious

politeness, which he always used in an absurd fashion.

 

When he had sent it he awaited Minna’s reply, and only lived in expectation

of it. To win patience he tried to go for walks and to read. But his

thoughts were only of Minna: he went on crazily repeating her name over and

over again; he was so abject in his love and worship of her name that he

carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessing, because the name of Minna

occurred in it, and every day when he left the theater he went a long

distance out of his way so as to pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard

the five adored letters were written.

 

He reproached himself for wasting time when she had bid him so urgently to

work, so as to make her famous. The naïve vanity of her request touched

him, as a mark of her confidence in him. He resolved, by way of fulfilling

it, to write a work which should be not only dedicated, but consecrated,

to her. He could not have written any other at that time. Hardly had the

scheme occurred to him than musical ideas rushed in upon him. It was like

a flood of water accumulated in a reservoir for several months, until it

should suddenly rush down, breaking all its dams. He did not leave his room

for a week. Louisa left his dinner at the door; for he did not allow even

her to enter.

 

He wrote a quintette for clarionet and strings. The first movement was

a poem of youthful hope and desire; the last a lover’s joke, in which

Jean-Christophe’s wild humor peeped out. But the whole work was written for

the sake of the second movement, the larghetto, in which Jean-Christophe

had depicted an ardent and ingenuous little soul, which was, or was meant

to be, a portrait of Minna. No one would have recognized it, least of all

herself; but the great thing was that it was perfectly recognizable to

himself; and he had a thrill of pleasure in the illusion of feeling that he

had caught the essence of his beloved. No work had ever been so easily or

happily written; it was an outlet for the excess of love which the parting

had stored up in him; and at the same time his care for the work of art,

the effort necessary to dominate and concentrate his passion into a

beautiful and clear form, gave him a healthiness of mind, a balance in his

faculties, which gave him a sort of physical delight—a sovereign enjoyment

known to every creative artist. While he is creating he escapes altogether

from the slavery of desire and sorrow; he becomes then master in his turn;

and all that gave him joy or suffering seems then to him to be only the

fine play of his will. Such moments are too short; for when they are done

he finds about him, more heavy than ever, the chains of reality.

 

While Jean-Christophe was busy with his work he hardly had time to think

of his parting from Minna; he was living with her. Minna was no longer in

Minna; she was in himself. But when he had finished he found that he was

alone, more alone than before, more weary, exhausted by the effort; he

remembered that it was a fortnight since he had written to Minna and that

she had not replied.

 

He wrote to her again, and this time he could not bring himself altogether

to exercise the constraint which he had imposed on himself for the

first letter. He reproached Minna jocularly—for he did not believe it

himself—with having forgotten him. He scolded her for her laziness and

teased her affectionately. He spoke of his work with much mystery, so as to

rouse her curiosity, and because he wished to keep it as a surprise for her

when she returned. He described minutely the hat that he had bought; and he

told how, to carry out the little despot’s orders—for he had taken all her

commands literally—he did not go out at all, and said that he was ill as

an excuse for refusing invitations. He did not add that he was even on bad

terms with the Grand Duke, because, in excess of zeal, he had refused to

go to a party at the Palace to which he had been invited. The whole letter

was full of a careless joy, and conveyed those little secrets so dear to

lovers. He imagined that Minna alone had the key to them, and thought

himself very clever, because he had carefully replaced every word of love

with words of friendship.

 

After he had written he felt comforted for a moment; first, because the

letter had given him the illusion of conversation with his absent fair, but

chiefly because he had no doubt but that Minna would reply to it at once.

He was very patient for the three days which he had allowed for the post

to take his letter to Minna and bring back her answer; but when the fourth

day had passed he began once more to find life difficult. He had no energy

or interest in things, except during the hour before the post’s arrival.

Then he was trembling with impatience. He became superstitious, and looked

for the smallest sign—the crackling of the fire, a chance word—to give

him an assurance that the letter would come. Once that hour was passed he

would collapse again. No more work, no more walks; the only object of his

existence was to wait for the