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

thoughts, Lieder. In this as

in other things he was in passionate reaction against current practices.

He would take up the most famous poems, already set to music, and was

impertinent enough to try to treat them differently and with greater truth

than Schumann and Schubert. Sometimes he would try to give to the poetic

figures of Goethe—to Mignon, the Harpist in Wilhelm Meister, their

individual character, exact and changing. Sometimes he would tackle certain

love songs which the weakness of the artists and the dullness of the

audience in tacit agreement had clothed about with sickly sentimentality:

and he would unclothe them: he would restore to them their rough, crude

sensuality. In a word, he set out to make passions and people live for

themselves and not to serve as toys for German families seeking an easy

emotionalism on Sundays when they sat about in some Biergarten.

 

But generally he would find the poets, even the greatest of them, too

literary: and he would select the simplest texts for preference: texts of

old Lieder, jolly old songs, which he had read perhaps in some improving

work: he would take care not to preserve their choral character: he would

treat them with a fine, lively, and altogether lay audacity. Or he would

take words from the Gospel, or proverbs, sometimes even words heard by

chance, scraps of dialogues of the people, children’s thoughts: words often

awkward and prosaic in which there was only pure feeling. With them he was

at his ease, and he would reach a depth with them which was not in his

other compositions, a depth which he himself never suspected.

 

Good or bad, more often bad than good, his works as a whole had abounding

vitality. They were not altogether new: far from it. Christophe was often

banal, through his very sincerity: he repeated sometimes forms already used

because they exactly rendered his thought, because he also felt in that way

and not otherwise. Nothing would have induced him to try to be original: it

seemed to him that a man must be very commonplace to burden himself with

such an idea. He tried to be himself, to say what he felt, without worrying

as to whether what he said had been said before him or not. He took a pride

in believing that it was the best way of being original and that Christophe

had only been and only would be alive once. With the magnificent impudence

of youth, nothing seemed to him to have been done before: and everything

seemed to him to be left for doing—or for doing again. And the feeling

of this inward fullness of life, of a life stretching endless before him,

brought him to a state of exuberant and rather indiscreet happiness. He

was perpetually in a state of jubilation, which had no need of joy: it

could adapt itself to sorrow: its source overflowed with life, was, in its

strength, mother of all happiness and virtue. To live, to live too much!…

A man who does not feel within himself this intoxication of strength, this

jubilation in living—even in the depths of misery,—is not an artist.

That is the touchstone. True greatness is shown in this power of rejoicing

through joy and sorrow. A Mendelssohn or a Brahms, gods of the mists of

October, and of fine rain, have never known the divine power.

 

Christophe was conscious of it: and he showed his joy simply, impudently.

He saw no harm in it, he only asked to share it with others. He did not

see how such joy hurts the majority of men, who never can possess it and

are always envious of it. For the rest he never bothered about pleasing

or displeasing: he was sure of himself, and nothing seemed to him simpler

than to communicate his conviction to others,—to conquer. Instinctively he

compared his riches with the general poverty of the makers of music: and he

thought that it would be very easy to make his superiority recognized. Too

easy, even. He had only to show himself.

 

He showed himself.

 

*

 

They were waiting for him.

 

Christophe had made no secret of his feelings. Since he had become aware

of German Pharisaism, which refuses to see things as they are, he had

made it a law for himself that he should be absolutely, continually,

uncompromisingly sincere in everything without regard for anything or

anybody or himself. And as he could do nothing without going to extremes,

he was extravagant in his sincerity: he would say outrageous things and

scandalize people a thousand times less naïve than himself. He never

dreamed that it might annoy them. When he realized the idiocy of some

hallowed composition he would make haste to impart his discovery to

everybody he encountered: musicians of the orchestra, or amateurs of his

acquaintance. He would pronounce the most absurd judgments with a beaming

face. At first no one took him seriously: they laughed at his freaks. But

it was not long before they found that he was always reverting to them,

insisting on them in a way that was really bad taste. It became evident

that Christophe believed in his paradoxes: and they became less amusing. He

was a nuisance: at concerts he would make ironic remarks in a loud voice,

or would express his scorn for the glorious masters in no veiled fashion

wherever he might be.

 

Everything passed from mouth to mouth in the little town: not a word was

lost. People were already affronted by his conduct during the past year.

They had not forgotten the scandalous fashion in which he had shown himself

abroad with Ada and the troublous times of the sequel. He had forgotten,

it himself: one day wiped out another, and he was very different from what

he had been two months before. But others had not forgotten: those who, in

all small towns, take upon themselves scrupulously to note down all the

faults, all the imperfections, all the sad, ugly, and unpleasant happenings

concerning their neighbors, so that nothing is ever forgotten. Christophe’s

new extravagances were naturally set, side by side with his former

indiscretions, in the scroll. The former explained the latter. The outraged

feelings of offended morality were now bolstered up by those of scandalized

good taste. The kindliest of them said:

 

“He is trying to be particular.”

 

But most alleged:

 

“Total verrückt!” (Absolutely mad.)

 

An opinion no less severe and even more dangerous was beginning to find

currency—an opinion assured of success by reason of its illustrious

origin: it was said that, at the Palace, whither Christophe still went upon

his official duties, he had had the bad taste in conversation with the

Grand Duke himself, with revolting lack of decency, to give vent to his

ideas concerning the illustrious masters: it was said that he had called

Mendelssohn’s Elijah “a clerical humbug’s paternoster,” and he had called

certain Lieder of Schumann “Backfisch Musik“: and that in the face of

the declared preference of the august Princess for those works! The Grand

Duke had cut short his impertinences by saying dryly:

 

“To hear you, sir, one would doubt your being a German.” This vengeful

utterance, coming from so lofty an eminence, reached the lowest depths: and

everybody who thought he had reason to be annoyed with Christophe, either

for his success, or for some more personal if not more cogent reason, did

not fail to call to mind that he was not in fact pure German. His father’s

family, it was remembered, came originally from Belgium. It was not

surprising, therefore, that this immigrant should decry the national

glories. That explained everything and German vanity found reasons therein

for greater self-esteem, and at the same time for despising its adversary.

 

Christophe himself most substantially fed this Platonic vengeance. It is

very imprudent to criticise others when you are yourself on the point of

challenging criticism. A cleverer or less frank artist would have shown

more modesty and more respect for his predecessors. But Christophe could

see no reason for hiding his contempt for mediocrity or his joy in his

own strength, and his joy was shown in no temperate fashion. Although

from childhood Christophe had been turned in upon himself for want of any

creature to confide in, of late he had come by a need of expansiveness. He

had too much joy for himself: his breast was too small to contain it: he

would have burst if he had not shared his delight. Failing a friend, he had

confided in his colleague in the orchestra, the second Kapellmeister,

Siegmund Ochs, a young Wurtemberger, a good fellow, though crafty, who

showed him an effusive deference. Christophe did not distrust him: and,

even if he had, how could it have occurred to him that it might be harmful

to confide his joy to one who did not care, or even to an enemy? Ought they

not rather to be grateful to him? Was it not for them also that he was

working? He brought happiness for all, friends and enemies alike.—He had

no idea that there is nothing more difficult than to make men accept a new

happiness: they almost prefer their old misery: they need food that has

been masticated for ages. But what is most intolerable to them is the

thought that they owe such happiness to another. They cannot forgive that

offense until there is no way of evading it: and in any case, they do

contrive to make the giver pay dearly for it.

 

There were, then, a thousand reasons why Christophe’s confidences should

not be kindly received by anybody. But there were a thousand and one

reasons why they should not be acceptable to Siegmund Ochs. The first

Kapellmeister, Tobias Pfeiffer, was on the point of retiring: and, in

spite of his youth, Christophe had every chance of succeeding him. Ochs

was too good a German not to recognize that Christophe was worthy of the

position, since the Court was on his side. But he had too good an opinion

of himself not to believe that he would have been more worthy had the Court

known him better. And so he received Christophe’s effusions with a strange

smile when, he arrived at the theater in the morning with a face that he

tried hard to make serious, though it beamed in spite of himself.

 

“Well?” he would say slyly as he came up to him, “another masterpiece?”

 

Christophe would take his arm.

 

“Ah! my friend. It is the best of all … If you could hear it!… Devil

take me, it is too beautiful! There has never been anything like it. God

help the poor audience! They will only long for one thing when they have

heard it: to die.”

 

His words did not fall upon deaf ears. Instead of smiling, or of chaffing

Christophe about his childish enthusiasm—he would have been the first

to laugh at it and beg pardon if he had been made to feel the absurdity

of it—Ochs went into ironic ecstasies: he drew Christophe on to further

enormities: and when he left him made haste to repeat them all, making them

even more grotesque. The little circle of musicians chuckled over them: and

every one was impatient for the opportunity of judging the unhappy

compositions.—They were all judged beforehand.

 

At last they appeared—Christophe had chosen from the better of his works

an overture to the Judith of Hebbel, the savage energy of which had

attracted him, in his reaction against German atony, although he was

beginning to lose his taste for it, knowing intuitively the unnaturalness

of such assumption of genius, always and at all costs. He had added a

symphony which bore the bombastic title of