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

understand that the singer had made a mistake: and

they thought it indecent of Christophe to call their attention to it. They

encored the songs. But Christophe shut the piano firmly.

 

The singer did not notice his insolence: she was too much upset to think

of singing again. She left the stage hurriedly and shut herself up in her

box: and then for a quarter of an hour she relieved her heart of the flood

of wrath and rage that was pent up in it: a nervous attack, a deluge of

tears, indignant outcries and imprecations against Christophe,—she omitted

nothing. Her cries of anger could be heard through the closed door. Those

of her friends who had made their way there told everybody when they left

that Christophe had behaved like a cad. Opinion travels quickly in a

concert hall. And so when Christophe went to his desk for the last piece

of music the audience was stormy. But it was not his composition: it

was the Festmarsch by Ochs, which Christophe had kindly included in

his programme. The audience—who were quite at their ease with the dull

music—found a very simple method of displaying their disapproval of

Christophe without going so far as to hiss him: they acclaimed Ochs

ostentatiously, recalled the composer two or three times, and he appeared

readily. And that was the end of the concert.

 

The Grand Duke and everybody at the Court—the bored, gossiping little

provincial town—lost no detail of what had happened. The papers which were

friendly towards the singer made no allusion to the incident: but they

all agreed in exalting her art while they only mentioned the titles of

the Lieder which she had sung. They published only a few lines about

Christophe’s other compositions, and they all said almost the same things:

“… Knowledge of counterpoint. Complicated writing. Lack of inspiration.

No melody. Written with the head, not with the heart. Want of sincerity.

Trying to be original….” Followed a paragraph on true originality, that

of the masters who are dead and buried, Mozart, Beethoven, Loewe, Schubert,

Brahms, “those who are original without thinking of it.”—Then by a natural

transition they passed to the revival at the Grand Ducal Theater of the

Nachtlager von Granada of Konradin Kreutzer: a long account was given of

“the delicious music, as fresh and jolly as when it was first written.”

 

Christophe’s compositions met with absolute and astonished lack of

comprehension from the most kindly disposed critics: veiled hostility from

those who did not like him, and were arming themselves for later ventures:

and from the general public, guided by neither friendly nor hostile

critics, silence. Left to its own thoughts the general public does not

think at all: that goes without saying.

 

*

 

Christophe was bowled over.

 

And yet there was nothing surprising in his defeat. There were reasons,

three to one, why his compositions should not please. They were immature.

They were, secondly, too advanced to be understood at once. And,

lastly, people were only too glad to give a lesson to the impertinent

youngster.—But Christophe was not cool-headed enough to admit that his

reverse was legitimate. He had none of that serenity which the true artist

gains from the mournful experience of long misunderstanding at the hands of

men and their incurable stupidity. His naïve confidence in the public and

in success which he thought he could easily gain because he deserved it,

crumbled away. He would have thought it natural to have enemies. But what

staggered him was to find that he had not a single friend. Those on whom he

had counted, those who hitherto had seemed to be interested in everything

that he wrote, had not given him a single word of encouragement since the

concert. He tried to probe them: they took refuge behind vague words. He

insisted, he wanted to know what they really thought: the most sincere of

them referred back to his former works, his foolish early efforts.—More

than once in his life he was to hear his new works condemned by comparison,

with the older ones,—and that by the same people who, a few years before,

had condemned his older works when they were new: that is the usual

ordering of these things. Christophe did not like it: he exclaimed loudly.

If people did not like him, well and good: he accepted that: it even

pleased him since he could not be friends with everybody. But that people

should pretend to be fond of him and not allow him to grow up, that they

should try to force him all his life to remain a child, was beyond the

pale! What is good at twelve is not good at twenty: and he hoped not

to stay at that, but to change and to go on changing always…. These

idiots who tried to stop life!… What was interesting in his childish

compositions was not their childishness and silliness, but the force in

them hungering for the future. And they were trying to kill his future!…

No, they had never understood what he was, they had never loved him, never

then or now: they only loved the weakness and vulgarity in him, everything

that he had in common with others, and not himself, not what he really

was: their friendship was a misunderstanding….

 

He was exaggerating, perhaps. It often happens with quite nice people who

are incapable of liking new work which they sincerely love when it is

twenty years old. New life smacks too strong for their weak senses—the

scent of it must evaporate in the winds of Time. A work of art only becomes

intelligible to them when it is crusted over with the dust of years.

 

But Christophe could not admit of not being understood when he was

present and of being understood when he was past. He preferred to think

that he was not understood at all, in any case, even. And he raged against

it. He was foolish enough to want to make himself understood, to explain

himself, to argue. Although no good purpose was served thereby: he would

have had to reform the taste of his time. But he was afraid of nothing. He

was determined by hook or by crook to clean up German taste. But it was

utterly impossible: he could not convince anybody by means of conversation,

in which he found it difficult to find words, and expressed himself with an

excess of violence about the great musicians and even about the men to whom

he was talking: he only succeeded in making a few more enemies. He would

have had to prepare his ideas beforehand, and then to force the public to

hear him….

 

And just then, at the appointed hour, his star—his evil star—gave him the

means of doing so.

 

*

 

He was sitting in the restaurant of the theater in a group of musicians

belonging to the orchestra whom he was scandalizing by his artistic

judgments. They were not all of the same opinion: but they were all ruffled

by the freedom of his language. Old Krause, the alto, a good fellow

and a good musician, who sincerely loved Christophe, tried to turn the

conversation: he coughed, then looked out for an opportunity of making a

pun. But Christophe did not hear him: he went on: and Krause mourned and

thought:

 

“What makes him say such things? God bless him! You can think these things:

but you must not say them.”

 

The odd thing was that he also thought “these things”: at least, he had a

glimmering of them, and Christophe’s words roused many doubts in him: but

he had not the courage to confess it, or openly to agree—half from fear of

compromising himself, half from modesty and distrust of himself.

 

Weigl, the cornet-player, did not want to know anything: he was ready to

admire anything, or anybody, good or bad, star or gas-jet: everything was

the same to him: there were no degrees in his admiration: he admired,

admired, admired. It was a vital necessity to him: it hurt him when anybody

tried to curb him.

 

Old Kuh, the violoncellist, suffered even more. He loved bad music with

all his heart. Everything that Christophe hounded down with his sarcasm

and invective was infinitely dear to him: instinctively his choice pitched

on the most conventional works: his soul was a reservoir of tearful and

high-flown emotion. Indeed, he was not dishonest in his tender regard for

all the sham great men. It was when he tried to pretend that he liked the

real great men that he was lying to himself—in perfect innocence. There

are “Brahmins” who think to find in their God the breath of old men of

genius: they love Beethoven in Brahms. Kuh went one better: he loved Brahms

in Beethoven.

 

But the most enraged of all with. Christophe’s paradoxes was Spitz, the

bassoon. It was not so much his musical instinct that was wounded as his

natural servility. One of the Roman Emperors wished to die standing. Spitz

wished to die, as he had lived, crawling: that was his natural position:

it was delightful to him to grovel at the feet of everything that was

official, hallowed, “arrived”: and he was beside himself when anybody tried

to keep him from playing the lackey, comfortably.

 

So, Kuh groaned, Weigl threw up his hands in despair, Krause made jokes,

and Spitz shouted in a shrill voice. But Christophe went on imperturbably

shouting louder than the rest: and saying monstrous things about Germany

and the Germans.

 

At the next table a young man was listening to him and rocking with

laughter. He had black curly hair, fine, intelligent eyes, a large nose,

which at its end could not make up its mind to go either to right or left,

and rather than go straight on, went to both sides at once, thick lips,

and a clever, mobile face: he was following everything that Christophe

said, hanging on his lips, reflecting every word with a sympathetic and

yet mocking attention, wrinkling up his forehead, his temples, the corners

of his eyes, round his nostrils and cheeks, grimacing with laughter,

and every now and then shaking all over convulsively. He did not join in

the conversation, but he did not miss a word of it. He showed his joy

especially when he saw Christophe, involved in some argument and heckled by

Spitz, flounder about, stammer, and stutter with anger, until he had found

the word he was seeking,—a rock with which to crush his adversary. And his

delight knew no bounds when Christophe, swept along by his passions far

beyond the capacity of his thought, enunciated monstrous paradoxes which

made his hearers snort.

 

At last they broke up, each of them tired out with feeling and alleging his

own superiority. As Christophe, the last to go, was leaving the room he was

accosted by the young man who had listened to his words with such pleasure.

He had not yet noticed him. The other politely removed his hat, smiled, and

asked permission to introduce himself:

 

“Franz Mannheim.”

 

He begged pardon for his indiscretion in listening to the argument, and

congratulated Christophe on the maestria with which he had pulverized his

opponents. He was still laughing at the thought of it. Christophe was glad

to hear it, and looked at him a little distrustfully:

 

“Seriously?” he asked. “You are not laughing at me?”

 

The other swore by the gods. Christophe’s face lit up.

 

“Then you think I am right? You are of my opinion?”

 

“Well,” said Mannheim, “I am not a musician. I know nothing of music. The

only music I like—(if it is not too flattering to say so)—is