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

him drowsy. The horse’s

little bells danced—ding, ding; dong, ding. Music awoke in the air, and

hovered about the silvery bells, like a swarm of bees. It beat gaily with

the rhythm of the cart—an endless source of song, and one song came

on another’s heels. To Jean-Christophe they were superb. There was one

especially which he thought so beautiful that he tried to draw his

grandfather’s attention to it. He sang it aloud. They took no heed of

him. He began it again in a higher key, then again shrilly, and then old

Jean Michel said irritably: “Be quiet; you are deafening me with your

trumpet-call!” That took away his breath. He blushed and was silent and

mortified. He crushed with his contempt the two stockish imbeciles who did

not understand the sublimity of his song, which opened wide the heavens! He

thought them very ugly, with their week-old beards, and they smelled very

ill.

 

He found consolation, in watching the horse’s shadow. That an astonishing

sight. The beast ran along with them lying on its side. In the evening,

when they returned, it covered a part of the field. They came upon a rick,

and the shadow’s head would rise up and then return to its place when they

had passed. Its snout was flattened out like a burst balloon; its ears were

large, and pointed like candles. Was it really a shadow or a creature?

Jean-Christophe would not have liked to encounter it alone. He would not

have run after it as he did after his grandfather’s shadow, so as to walk

on its head and trample it under foot. The shadows of the trees when the

sun was low were also objects of meditation. They made barriers along the

road, and looked like phantoms, melancholy and grotesque, saying, “Go no

farther!” and the creaking axles and the horse’s shoes repeated, “No

farther!”

 

Jean-Christophe’s grandfather and the driver never ceased their endless

chatter. Sometimes they would raise their voices, especially when they

talked of local affairs or things going wrong. The child would cease to

dream, and look at them uneasily. It seemed to him that they were angry

with each other, and he was afraid that they would come to blows. However,

on the contrary, they best understood each other in their common dislikes.

For the most part, they were without haired or the least passion; they

talked of small matters loudly, just for the pleasure of talking, as

is the joy of the people. But Jean-Christophe, not understanding their

conversation, only heard the loud tones of their voices and saw their

agitated faces, and thought fearfully: “How wicked he looks! Surely they

hate each other! How he rolls his eyes, and how wide he opens his mouth! He

spat on my nose in his fury. O Lord, he will kill my grandfather!…”

 

The carriage stopped. The peasant said: “Here you are.” The two deadly

enemies shook hands. Jean-Christophe’s grandfather got down first; the

peasant handed him the little boy. The whip flicked the horse, the carriage

rolled away, and there they were by the little sunken road near the Rhine.

The sun dipped down below the fields. The path wound almost to the water’s

edge. The plentiful soft grass yielded under their feet, crackling.

Alder-trees leaned over the river, almost half in the water. A cloud of

gnats danced. A boat passed noiselessly, drawn on by the peaceful current,

striding along. The water sucked the branches of the willows with a little

noise like lips. The light was soft and misty, the air fresh, the river

silvery gray. They reached their home, and the crickets chirped, and on the

threshold smiled his mother’s dear face….

 

Oh, delightful memories, kindly visions, which will hum their melody in

their tuneful flight through life!… Journeys in later life, great towns

and moving seas, dream countries and loved faces, are not so exactly graven

in the soul as these childish walks, or the corner of the garden seen every

day through the window, through the steam and mist made by the child’s

mouth glued to it for want of other occupation….

 

Evening now, and the house is shut up. Home … the refuge from all

terrifying things—darkness, night, fear, things unknown. No enemy can pass

the threshold…. The fire flares. A golden duck turns slowly on the spit;

a delicious smell of fat and of crisping flesh scents the room. The joy of

eating, incomparable delight, a religious enthusiasm, thrills of joy! The

body is too languid with the soft warmth, and the fatigues of the day,

and the familiar voices. The act of digestion plunges it in ecstasy, and

faces, shadows, the lampshade, the tongues of flame dancing with a shower

of stars in the fireplace—all take on a magical appearance of delight.

Jean-Christophe lays his cheek on his plate, the better to enjoy all this

happiness….

 

He is in his soft bed. How did he come there? He is overcome with

weariness. The buzzing of the voices in the room and the visions of the

day are intermingled in his mind. His father takes his violin; the shrill

sweet sounds cry out complaining in the night. But the crowning joy is

when his mother comes and takes Jean-Christophe’s hands. He is drowsy,

and, leaning over him, in a low voice she sings, as he asks, an, old song

with words that have no meaning. His father thinks such music stupid, but

Jean-Christophe never wearies of it. He holds his breath, and is between

laughing and crying. His heart is intoxicated. He does not know where he

is, and he is overflowing with tenderness. He throws his little arms round

his mother’s neck, and hugs her with all his strength. She says, laughing:

 

“You want to strangle me?”

 

He hugs her close. How he loves her! How he loves everything! Everybody,

everything! All is good, all is beautiful…. He sleeps. The cricket on the

hearth cheeps. His grandfather’s tales, the great heroes, float by in the

happy night…. To be a hero like them!… Yes, he will be that … he is

that…. Ah, how good it is to live!

 

*

 

What an abundance of strength, joy, pride, is in that little creature! What

superfluous energy! His body and mind never cease to move; they are carried

round and round breathlessly. Like a little salamander, he dances day and

night in the flames. His is an unwearying enthusiasm finding its food in

all things. A delicious dream, a bubbling well, a treasure of inexhaustible

hope, a laugh, a song, unending drunkenness. Life does not hold him yet;

always he escapes it. He swims in the infinite. How happy he is! He is made

to be happy! There is nothing in him that does not believe in happiness,

and does not cling to it with all his little strength and passion!…

 

Life will soon see to it that he is brought to reason.

II

L’alba vinceva l’ora, mattutina.

Che fuggia ‘nnanzi, si che di lontano

Conobbi il tremolar della marina….

Purgatorio, i.

 

The Kraffts came originally from Antwerp. Old Jean Michel had left the

country as a result of a boyish freak, a violent quarrel, such as he had

often had, for he was devilish pugnacious, and it had had an unfortunate

ending. He settled down, almost fifty years ago, in the little town of the

principality, with its red-pointed roofs and shady gardens, lying on the

slope of a gentle hill, mirrored in the pale green eyes of Vater Rhein.

An excellent musician, he had readily gained appreciation in a country of

musicians. He had taken root there by marrying, forty years ago, Clara

Sartorius, daughter of the Prince’s Kapellmeister, whose duties he took

over. Clara was a placid German with two passions—cooking and music. She

had for her husband a veneration only equaled by that which she had for her

father, Jean Michel no less admired his wife. They had lived together in

perfect amity for fifteen years, and they had four children. Then Clara

died; and Jean Michel bemoaned her loss, and then, five months later,

married Ottilia Schütz, a girl of twenty, with red cheeks, robust and

smiling. After eight years of marriage she also died, but in that time

she gave him seven children—eleven children in all, of whom only one had

survived. Although he loved them much, all these bereavements had not

shaken his good-humor. The greatest blow had been the death of Ottilia,

three years ago, which had come to him at an age when it is difficult to

start life again and to make a new home. But after a moment’s confusion old

Jean Michel regained his equilibrium, which no misfortune seemed able to

disturb.

 

He was an affectionate man, but health was the strongest thing in him. He

had a physical repugnance from sadness, and a need of gaiety, great gaiety,

Flemish fashion—an enormous and childish laugh. Whatever might be his

grief, he did not drink one drop the less, nor miss one bite at table, and

his band never had one day off. Under his direction the Court orchestra

won a small celebrity in the Rhine country, where Jean Michel had become

legendary by reason of his athletic stature and his outbursts of anger. He

could not master them, in spite of all his efforts, for the violent man was

at bottom timid and afraid of compromising himself. He loved decorum and

feared opinion. But his blood ran away with him. He used to see red, and

he used to be the victim of sudden fits of crazy impatience, not only at

rehearsals, but at the concerts, where once in the Prince’s presence he

had hurled his bâton and had stamped about like a man possessed, as he

apostrophized one of the musicians in a furious and stuttering voice. The

Prince was amused, but the artists in question were rancorous against

him. In vain did Jean Michel, ashamed of his outburst, try to pass it by

immediately in exaggerated obsequiousness. On the next occasion he would

break out again, and as this extreme irritability increased with age, in

the end it made his position very difficult. He felt it himself, and one

day, when his outbursts had all but caused the whole orchestra to strike,

he sent in his resignation. He hoped that in consideration of his services

they would make difficulties about accepting it, and would ask him to stay.

There was nothing of the kind, and as he was too proud to go back on his

offer, he left, brokenhearted, and crying out upon the ingratitude of

mankind.

 

Since that time he had not known how to fill his days. He was more than

seventy, but he was still vigorous, and he went on working and going up and

down the town from morning to night, giving lessons, and entering into

discussions, pronouncing perorations, and entering into everything. He

was ingenious, and found all sorts of ways of keeping himself occupied.

He began to repair musical instruments; he invented, experimented, and

sometimes discovered improvements. He composed also, and set store by his

compositions. He had once written a Missa Solennis, of which he used

often to talk, and it was the glory of his family. It had cost him so much

trouble that he had all but brought about a congestion of the mind in the

writing of it. He tried to persuade himself that it was a work of genius,

but he knew perfectly well with what emptiness of thought it had been

written, and he dared not look again at the manuscript, because every time

he did so he recognized in the phrases that he had thought to be his own,

rags taken from other authors, painfully pieced together haphazard.