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

yours….

That may show you that my taste is not so bad….”

 

“Oh!” said Christophe skeptically, though he was flattered all the same,

“that proves nothing.”

 

“You are difficult to please…. Good!… I think as you do: that proves

nothing. And I don’t venture to judge what you say of German musicians.

But, anyhow, it is so true of the Germans in general, the old Germans, all

the romantic idiots with their rancid thought, their sloppy emotion, their

senile reiteration which we are asked to admire, ‘_the eternal Yesterday,

which has always been, and always will be, and will be law to-morrow

because it is law to-day._’ …!”

 

He recited a few lines of the famous passage in Schiller:

 

“… _Das ewig Gestrige,

Das immer war imd immer wiederkehrt_….”

 

“Himself, first of all!” He stopped in the middle of his recitation.

 

“Who?” asked Christophe.

 

“The pump-maker who wrote that!”

 

Christophe did not understand. But Mannheim went on:

 

“I should like to have a general cleaning up of art and thought every fifty

years—nothing to be left standing.”

 

“A little drastic,” said Christophe, smiling.

 

“No, I assure you. Fifty years is too much: I should say thirty…. And

even less!… It is a hygienic measure. One does not keep one’s ancestors

in one’s house. One gets rid of them, when they are dead, and sends, them

elsewhere,—there politely to rot, and one places stones on them to be

quite sure that they will not come back. Nice people put flowers on them,

too. I don’t mind if they like it. All I ask is to be left in peace. I

leave them alone! Each for his own side, say I: the dead and the living.”

 

“There are some dead who are more alive than the living.”

 

“No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some living who are

more dead than the dead.”

 

“Maybe. In any case, there are old things which are still young.”

 

“Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves…. But I

don’t believe it. What has been good once never is good again. Nothing is

good but change. Before all we have to rid ourselves of the old men and

things. There are too many of them in Germany. Death to them, say I!”

 

Christophe listened to these squibs attentively and labored to discuss

them: he was in part in sympathy with them, he recognized certain of his

own thoughts in them: and at the same time he felt a little embarrassed at

having them so blown out to the point of caricature. But as he assumed that

everybody else was as serious as himself, he thought that perhaps Mannheim,

who seemed to be more learned than himself and spoke more easily, was

right, and was drawing the logical conclusions from his principles. Vain

Christophe, whom so many people could not forgive for his faith in himself,

was really most naïvely modest often tricked by his modesty when he was

with those who were better educated than himself,—especially, when they

consented not to plume themselves on it to avoid an awkward discussion.

Mannheim, who was amusing himself with his own paradoxes, and from one

sally to another had reached extravagant quips and cranks, at which he

was laughing immensely, was not accustomed to being taken seriously: he

was delighted with the trouble that Christophe was taking to discuss his

nonsense, and even to understand it: and while he laughed, he was grateful

for the importance which Christophe gave him: he thought him absurd and

charming.

 

They parted very good friends: and Christophe was not a little surprised

three hours later at rehearsal to see Mannheim’s head poked through the

little door leading to the orchestra, smiling and grimacing, and making

mysterious signs at him. When the rehearsal was over Christophe went to

him. Mannheim took his arm familiarly.

 

“You can spare a moment?… Listen. I have an idea. Perhaps you will think

it absurd…. Would not you like for once in a way to write what you think

of music and the musicos? Instead of wasting your breath in haranguing four

dirty knaves of your band who are good for nothing but scraping and blowing

into bits of wood, would it not be better to address the general public?”

 

“Not better? Would I like?… My word! And when do you want me to write? It

is good of you!…”

 

“I’ve a proposal for you…. Some friends and I: Adalbert von Waldhaus,

Raphael Goldenring, Adolf Mai, and Lucien Ehrenfeld,—have started a

Review, the only intelligent Review in the town: the Dionysos.—(You must

know it….)—We all admire each other and should be glad if you would join

us. Will you take over our musical criticism?”

 

Christophe was abashed by such an honor: he was longing to accept: he was

only afraid of not being worthy: he could not write.

 

“Oh! come,” said Mannheim, “I am sure you can. And besides, as soon as you

are a critic you can do anything you like. You’ve no need to be afraid of

the public. The public is incredibly stupid. It is nothing to be an artist:

an artist is only a sort of comedian: an artist can be hissed. But a critic

has the right to say: ‘Hiss me that man!’ The whole audience lets him do

its thinking. Think whatever you like. Only look as if you were thinking

something. Provided you give the fools their food, it does not much matter

what, they will gulp down anything.”

 

In the end Christophe consented, with effusive thanks. He only made it a

condition that he should be allowed to say what he liked.

 

“Of course, of course,” said Mannheim. “Absolute freedom! We are all free.”

 

He looked him up at the theater once more after the performance to

introduce him to Adalbert von Waldhaus and his friends. They welcomed him

warmly.

 

With the exception of Waldhaus, who belonged to one of the noble families

of the neighborhood, they were all Jews and all very rich: Mannheim

was the son of a banker: Mai the son of the manager of a metallurgical

establishment: and Ehrenfeld’s father was a great jeweler. Their fathers

belonged to the older generation of Jews, industrious and acquisitive,

attached to the spirit of their race, building their fortunes with keen

energy, and enjoying their energy much more than their fortunes. Their sons

seemed to be made to destroy what their fathers had builded: they laughed

at family prejudice and their ant-like mania for economy and delving: they

posed as artists, affected to despise money and to fling it out of window.

But in reality they hardly ever let it slip through their fingers: and in

vain did they do all sorts of foolish things: they never could altogether

lead astray their lucidity of mind and practical sense. For the rest, their

parents kept an eye on them, and reined them in. The most prodigal of them,

Mannheim, would sincerely have given away all that he had: but he never had

anything: and although he was always loudly inveighing against his father’s

niggardliness, in his heart he laughed at it and thought that he was right.

In fine, there was only Waldhaus really who was in control of his fortune,

and went into it wholeheartedly and reckless of cost, and bore that of the

Review. He was a poet. He wrote “Polymètres” in the manner of Arno Holz

and Walt Whitman, with lines alternately very long and very short, in which

stops, double and triple stops, dashes, silences, commas, italics and

italics, played a great part. And so did alliteration and repetition—of

a word—of a line—of a whole phrase. He interpolated words of every

language. He wanted—(no one has ever known why)—to render the Cézanne

into verse. In truth, he was poetic enough and had a distinguished taste

for stale things. He was sentimental and dry, naïve and foppish: his

labored verses affected a cavalier carelessness. He would have been a

good poet for men of the world. But there are too many of the kind in the

Reviews and artistic circles: and he wished to be alone. He had taken it

into his head to play the great gentleman who is above the prejudices of

his caste. He had more prejudices than anybody. He did not admit their

existence. He took a delight in surrounding himself with Jews in the Review

which he edited, to rouse the indignation of his family, who were very

anti-Semite, and to prove his own freedom of mind to himself. With his

colleagues, he assumed a tone of courteous equality. But in his heart he

had a calm and boundless contempt for them. He was not unaware that they

were very glad to make use of his name and money: and he let them do so

because it pleased him to despise them.

 

And they despised him for letting them do so: for they knew very well that

it served his turn. A fair exchange, Waldhaus lent them his name and

fortune: and they brought him their talents, their eye for business and

subscribers. They were much more intelligent than he. Not that they had

more personality. They had perhaps even less. But in the little town they

were, as the Jews are everywhere and always,—by the mere fact of their

difference of race which for centuries has isolated them and sharpened

their faculty for making observation—they were the most advanced in mind,

the most sensible of the absurdity of its moldy institutions and decrepit

thought. Only, as their character was less free than their intelligence,

it did not help them, while they mocked, from trying rather to turn those

institutions and ideas to account than to reform them. In spite of their

independent professions of faith, they were like the noble Adalbert, little

provincial snobs, rich, idle young men of family, who dabbled and flirted

with letters for the fun of it. They were very glad to swagger about as

giant-killers: but they were kindly enough and never slew anybody but a few

inoffensive people or those whom they thought could never harm them. They

cared nothing for setting by the ears a society to which they knew very

well they would one day return and embrace all the prejudices which they

had combated. And when they did venture to make a stir on a little scandal,

or loudly to declare war on some idol of the day,—who was beginning to

totter,—they took care never to burn their boats: in case of danger they

re-embarked. Whatever then might be the issue of the campaign,—when it

was finished it was a long time before war would break out again: the

Philistines could sleep in peace. All that these new Davidsbündler wanted

to do was to make it appear that they could have been terrible if they had

so desired: but they did not desire. They preferred to be on friendly terms

with artists and to give suppers to actresses.

 

Christophe was not happy in such a set. They were always talking of women

and horses: and their talk was not refined. They were stiff and formal.

Adalbert spoke in a mincing, slow voice, with exaggerated, bored, and

boring politeness. Adolf Mai, the secretary of the Review, a heavy,

thick-set, bull-necked, brutal-looking young man, always pretended to be

in the right: he laid down the law, never listened to what anybody said,

seemed to despise the opinion of the person he was talking to, and also

that person. Goldenring, the art critic, who had a twitch, and eyes

perpetually winking behind his large spectacles,—no doubt in imitation

of the painters whose society he cultivated, wore long hair, smoked in

silence, mumbled scraps of sentences