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

been his,

lonely and resigned. But it was gone. Passion itself is not so dangerous as

the ruins that it heaps up and leaves behind. In vain did Christophe not

love, in vain—for a moment—did he despise love: he bore the marks of its

talons: his whole being was steeped in it: there was in his heart a void

which must be filled. With that terrible need of tenderness and pleasure

which devours men and women when they have once tasted it, some other

passion was needed, were it only the contrary passion, the passion of

contempt, of proud purity, of faith in virtue.—They were not enough, they

were not enough to stay his hunger: they were only the food of a moment.

His life consisted of a succession of violent reactions—leaps from

one extreme to the other. Sometimes he would bend his passion to rules

inhumanly ascetic: not eating, drinking water, wearing himself out with

walking, heavy tasks, and so not sleeping, denying himself every sort of

pleasure. Sometimes he would persuade himself that strength is the true

morality for people like himself: and he would plunge into the quest of

joy. In either case he was unhappy. He could no longer be alone. He could

no longer not be alone.

 

The only thing that could have saved him would have been to find a true

friendship,—Rosa’s perhaps: he could have taken refuge in that. But the

rupture was complete between the two families. They no longer met. Only

once had Christophe seen Rosa. She was just coming out from Mass. He had

hesitated to bow to her: and when she saw him she had made a movement

towards him: but when he had tried to go to her through the stream of the

devout walking down the steps, she had turned her eyes away: and when he

approached her she bowed coldly and passed on. In the girl’s heart he felt

intense, icy contempt. And he did not feel that she still loved him and

would have liked to tell him so: but she had come to think of her love as a

fault and foolishness: she thought Christophe bad and corrupt, and further

from her than ever. So they were lost to each other forever. And perhaps

it was as well for both of them. In spite of her goodness, she was not

near enough to life to be able to understand him. In spite of his need of

affection and respect he would have stifled in a commonplace and confined

existence, without joy, without sorrow, without air. They would both have

suffered. The unfortunate occurrence which cut them apart was, when all was

told, perhaps, fortunate as often happens—as always happens—to those who

are strong and endure.

 

But at the moment it was a great sorrow and a great misfortune for them.

Especially for Christophe. Such virtuous intolerance, such narrowness of

soul, which sometimes seems to deprive those who have the most of them of

all intelligence, and those who are most good of kindness, irritated him,

hurt him, and flung him back in protest into a freer life.

 

During his loafing with Ada in the beer gardens of the neighborhood he had

made acquaintance with several good fellows—Bohemians, whose carelessness

and freedom of manners had not been altogether distasteful to him. One

of them, Friedemann, a musician like himself, an organist, a man of

thirty, was not without intelligence, and was good at his work, but he was

incurably lazy and rather than make the slightest effort to be more than

mediocre, he would have died of hunger, though not, perhaps, of thirst.

He comforted himself in his indolence by speaking ill of those who lived

energetically, God knows why; and his sallies, rather heavy for the most

part, generally made people laugh. Having more liberty than his companions,

he was not afraid,—though timidly, and with winks and nods and suggestive

remarks,—to sneer at those who held positions: he was even capable of not

having ready-made opinions about music, and of having a sly fling at the

forged reputations of the great men of the day. He had no mercy upon women

either: when he was making his jokes he loved to repeat the old saying of

some misogynist monk about them, and Christophe enjoyed its bitterness just

then more than anybody:

 

“Femina mors animae.”

 

In his state of upheaval Christophe found some distraction in talking

to Friedemann. He judged him, he could not long take pleasure in this

vulgar bantering wit: his mockery and perpetual denial became irritating

before long and he felt the impotence of it all: but it did soothe his

exasperation with the self-sufficient stupidity of the Philistines. While

he heartily despised his companion, Christophe could not do without him.

They were continually seen together sitting with the unclassed and doubtful

people of Friedemann’s acquaintance, who were even more worthless than

himself. They used to play, and harangue, and drink the whole evening.

Christophe would suddenly wake up in the midst of the dreadful smell of

food and tobacco: he would look at the people about him with strange eyes:

he would not recognize them: he would think in agony:

 

“Where am I? Who are these people? What have I to do with them?”

 

Their remarks and their laughter would make him sick. But he could not

bring himself to leave them: he was afraid of going home and of being left

alone face to face with his soul, his desires, and remorse. He was going to

the dogs: he knew it: he was doing it deliberately,—with cruel clarity he

saw in Friedemann the degraded image of what he was—of what he would be

one day: and he was passing through a phase of such disheartenedness and

disgust that instead of being brought to himself by such a menace, it

actually brought him low.

 

He would have gone to the dogs, if he could. Fortunately, like all

creatures of his kind, he had a spring, a succor against destruction which

others do not possess: his strength, his instinct for life, his instinct

against letting himself perish, an instinct more intelligent than his

intelligence, and stronger than his will. And also, unknown to himself,

he had the strange curiosity of the artist, that passionate, impersonal

quality, which is in every creature really endowed with creative power. In

vain did he love, suffer, give himself utterly to all his passions: he saw

them. They were in him but they were not himself. A myriad of little souls

moved obscurely in him towards a fixed point unknown, yet certain, just

like the planetary worlds which are drawn through space into a mysterious

abyss. That perpetual state of unconscious action and reaction was shown

especially in those giddy moments when sleep came over his daily life, and

from the depths of sleep and the night rose the multiform face of Being

with its sphinx-like gaze. For a year Christophe had been obsessed with

dreams in which in a second of time he felt clearly with perfect illusion

that he was at one and the same time several different creatures, often

far removed from each other by countries, worlds, centuries. In his waking

state Christophe was still under his hallucination and uneasiness, though

he could not remember what had caused it. It was like the weariness left by

some fixed idea that is gone, though traces of it are left and there is no

understanding it. But while his soul was so troublously struggling through

the network of the days, another soul, eager and serene, was watching

all his desperate efforts. He did not see it: but it cast over him the

reflection of its hidden light. That soul was joyously greedy to feel

everything, to suffer everything, to observe and understand men, women, the

earth, life, desires, passions, thoughts, even those that were torturing,

even those that were mediocre, even those that were vile: and it was enough

to lend them a little of its light, to save Christophe from destruction. It

made him feel—he did not know how—that he was not altogether alone. That

love of being and of knowing everything, that second soul, raised a rampart

against his destroying passions.

 

But if it was enough to keep his head above water, it did not allow him

to climb out of it unaided. He could not succeed in seeing clearly into

himself, and mastering himself, and regaining possession of himself. Work

was impossible for him. He was passing through an intellectual crisis: the

most fruitful of his life: all his future life was germinating in it: but

that inner wealth for the time being only showed itself in extravagance:

and the immediate effect of such superabundance was not different from that

of the flattest sterility. Christophe was submerged by his life. All his

powers had shot up and grown too fast, all at once, suddenly. Only his will

had not grown with them: and it was dismayed by such a throng of monsters.

His personality was cracking in every part. Of this earthquake, this inner

cataclysm, others saw nothing. Christophe himself could see only his

impotence to will, to create, to be. Desires, instincts, thoughts issued

one after another like clouds of sulphur from the fissures of a volcano:

and he was forever asking himself: “And now, what will come out? What will

become of me? Will it always be so? or is this the end of all? Shall I be

nothing, always?”

 

And now there sprang up in him his hereditary fires, the vices of those who

had gone before him.—He got drunk. He would return home smelling of wine,

laughing, in a state of collapse.

 

Poor Louisa would look at him, sigh, say nothing, and pray.

 

But one evening when he was coming out of an inn by the gates of the town

he saw, a few yards in front of him on the road, the droll shadow of his

uncle Gottfried, with his pack on his back. The little man had not been

home for months, and his periods of absence were growing longer and longer.

Christophe hailed him gleefully. Gottfried, bending under his load, turned

round: he looked at Christophe, who was making extravagant gestures, and

sat down on a milestone to wait for him. Christophe came up to him with

a beaming face, skipping along, and shook his uncle’s hand with great

demonstrations of affection. Gottfried took a long look at him and then he

said:

 

“Good-day, Melchior.”

 

Christophe thought his uncle had made a mistake, and burst out laughing.

 

“The poor man is breaking up,” he thought; “he is losing his memory.”

 

Indeed, Gottfried did look old, shriveled, shrunken, and dried: his

breathing came short and painfully. Christophe went on talking. Gottfried

took his pack on his shoulders again and went on in silence. They went home

together, Christophe gesticulating and talking at the top of his voice,

Gottfried coughing and saying nothing. And when Christophe questioned him,

Gottfried still called him Melchior. And then Christophe asked him:

 

“What do you mean by calling me Melchior? My name is Christophe, you know.

Have you forgotten my name?”

 

Gottfried did not stop. He raised his eyes toward Christophe and looked at

him, shook his head, and said coldly:

 

“No. You are Melchior: I know you.”

 

Christophe stopped dumfounded. Gottfried trotted along: Christophe followed

him without a word. He was sobered. As they passed the door of a café he

went up to the dark panes of glass, in which the gas-jets of the entrance

and the empty streets were reflected, and he looked at himself: he

recognized Melchior. He went home crushed.

 

He spent the night—a night of anguish—in examining himself, in

soul-searching. He understood now. Yes: he recognized the instincts and

vices that had come