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

just seen the maddening

Gloria pass like a storm over the ocean. You have seen the waterspout of

an athletic and tremendous well, which stops, breaks, reaches up to the

clouds clinging by its two hands above the abyss, then plunging once more

into space in full swing. The squall shrieks and whirls along. And when

the hurricane is at its height there is a sudden modulation, a radiance of

sound which cleaves the darkness of the sky and falls upon the livid sea

like a patch of light. It is the end: the furious flight of the destroying

angel stops short, its wings transfixed by these flashes of lightning.

Around you all is buzzing and quivering. The eye gazes fixedly forward in

stupor. The heart beats, breathing stops, the limbs are paralyzed…. And

hardly has the last note sounded than already you are gay and merry. You

shout, you laugh, you criticise, you applaud…. But you have seen nothing,

heard nothing, felt nothing, understood nothing, nothing, nothing,

absolutely nothing! The sufferings of an artist are a show to you. You

think the tears of agony of a Beethoven are finely painted. You would cry

‘Encore’ to the Crucifixion. A great soul struggles all its life long in

sorrow to divert your idleness for an hour!…”

 

So, without knowing it, he confirmed Goethe’s great words: but he had not

yet attained his lofty serenity:

 

“The people make a sport of the sublime. If they could see it as it is,

they would be unable to bear its aspect.”

 

If he had only stopped at that!—But, whirled along by his enthusiasm, he

swept past the public and plunged like a cannon ball into the sanctuary,

the tabernacle, the inviolable refuge of mediocrity: Criticism. He

bombarded his colleagues. One of them had taken upon himself to attack

the most gifted of living composers, the most advanced representative of

the new school, Hassler, the writer of programme symphonies, extravagant

in truth, but full of genius. Christophe who—as perhaps will be

remembered—had been presented to him when he was a child, had always had a

secret tenderness for him in his gratitude for the enthusiasm and emotion

that he had had then. To see a stupid critic, whose ignorance he knew,

instructing a man of that caliber, calling him to order, and reminding him

of set principles, infuriated him:

 

“Order! Order!” he cried. “You do not know any order but that of the

police. Genius is not to be dragged along the beaten track. It creates

order, and makes its will a law.”

 

After this arrogant declaration he took the unlucky critic, considered all

the idiocies he had written for some time past, and administered

correction.

 

All the critics felt the affront. Up to that time they had stood aside

from the conflict. They did not care to risk a rebuff: they knew

Christophe, they knew his efficiency, and they knew also that he was not

long-suffering. Certain of them had discreetly expressed their regret that

so gifted a composer should dabble in a profession not his own. Whatever

might be their opinion (when they had one), and however hurt they might be

by Christophe, they respected in him their own privilege of being able to

criticise everything without being criticised themselves. But when they saw

Christophe rudely break the tacit convention which bound them, they saw in

him an enemy of public order. With one consent it seemed revolting to them

that a very young man should take upon himself to show scant respect for

the national glories: and they began a furious campaign against him. They

did not write long articles or consecutive arguments—(they were unwilling

to venture upon such ground with an adversary better armed than themselves:

although a journalist has the special faculty of being able to discuss

without taking his adversary’s arguments into consideration, and even

without having read them)—but long experience had taught them that, as the

reader of a paper always agrees with it, even to appear to argue was to

weaken its credit with him: it was necessary to affirm, or better still,

to deny—(negation is twice as powerful as affirmation: it is a direct

consequence of the law of gravity: it is much easier to drop a stone than

to throw it up).—They adopted, therefore, a system of little notes,

perfidious, ironic, injurious, which were repeated day by day, in an easily

accessible position, with unwearying assiduity. They held the insolent

Christophe up to ridicule, though they never mentioned him by name, but

always transparently alluded to him. They twisted his words to make them

look absurd: they told anecdotes about him, true for the most part, though

the rest were a tissue of lies, nicely calculated to set him at loggerheads

with the whole town, and, worse still, with the Court: even his physical

appearance, his features, his manner of dressing, were attacked and

caricatured in a way that by dint of repetition came to be like him.

 

*

 

It would have mattered little to Christophe’s friends if their Review had

not also come in for blows in the battle. In truth, it served rather as an

advertisement: there was no desire to commit the Review to the quarrel:

rather the attempt was made to cut Christophe off from it: there was

astonishment that it should so compromise its good name, and they were

given to understand that if they did not take care steps would be taken,

however unpleasant it might be, to make the whole editorial staff

responsible. There were signs of attack, gentle enough, upon Adolf Mai and

Mannheim, which stirred up the wasps’ nest. Mannheim only laughed at it: he

thought that it would infuriate his father, his uncles, cousins, and his

innumerable family, who took upon themselves to watch everything he did and

to be scandalized by it. But Adolf Mai took it very seriously and blamed

Christophe for compromising the Review. Christophe sent him packing. The

others who had not been attacked found it rather amusing that Mai, who was

apt to pontificate over them, should be their scapegoat. Waldhaus was

secretly delighted: he said that there was never a fight without a few

heads being broken. Naturally he took good care that it should not be his

own: he thought he was sheltered from onslaught by the position of his

family; and his relatives: and he saw no harm in the Jews, his allies,

being mauled a little. Ehrenfeld and Goldenring, who were so far untouched,

would not have been worried by attack: they could reply. But what did touch

them on the raw was that Christophe should go on persistently putting them

in the wrong with their friends, and especially their women friends. They

had laughed loudly at the first articles and thought them good fun: they

admired Christophe’s vigorous window-smashing: they thought they had only

to give the word to check his combativeness, or at least to turn his attack

from men and women whom they might mention.—But no. Christophe would

listen to nothing: he paid no heed to any remark and went on like a madman.

If they let him go on there would be no living in the place. Already their

young women friends, furious and in tears, had come and made scenes at

the offices of the Review. They brought all their diplomacy to bear on

Christophe to persuade him at least to moderate certain of his criticisms:

Christophe changed nothing. They lost their tempers: Christophe lost his,

but he changed nothing. Waldhaus was amused by the unhappiness of his

friends, which in no wise touched him, and took Christophe’s part to

annoy them. Perhaps also he was more capable than they of appreciating

Christophe’s extravagance, who with head down hurled himself upon

everything without keeping any line of retreat, or preparing any refuge for

the future. As for Mannheim he was royally amused by the farce: it seemed

to him a good joke to have introduced this madman among these correct

people, and he rocked with laughter both at the blows which Christophe

dealt and at those which he received. Although under his sister’s influence

he was beginning to think that Christophe was decidedly a little cracked,

he only liked him the more for it—(it was necessary for him to find those

who were in sympathy with him a little absurd).—And so he joined Waldhaus

in supporting Christophe against the others.

 

As he was not wanting in practical sense, in spite of all his efforts to

pretend to the contrary, he thought very justly that it would be to his

friend’s advantage to ally himself with the cause of the most advanced

musical party in the country.

 

As in most German towns, there was in the town a Wagner-Verein, which

represented new ideas against the conservative element.—In truth, there

was no great risk in defending Wagner when his fame was acknowledged

everywhere and his works included in the repertory of every Opera House

in Germany. And yet his victory was rather won by force than by universal

accord, and at heart the majority were obstinately conservative, especially

in the small towns such as this which have been rather left outside the

great modern movements and are rather proud of their ancient fame. More

than anywhere else there reigned the distrust, so innate in the German

people, of anything new, the sort of laziness in feeling anything true or

powerful which has not been pondered and digested by several generations.

It was apparent in the reluctance with which—if not the works of Wagner

which are beyond discussion—every new work inspired by the Wagnerian

spirit was accepted. And so the Wagner-Vereine would have had a useful

task to fulfil if they had set themselves to defend all the young and

original forces in art. Sometimes they did so, and Bruckner or Hugo Wolf

found in some of them their best allies. But too often the egoism of

the master weighed upon his disciples: and just as Bayreuth serves only

monstrously to glorify one man, the offshoots of Bayreuth were little

churches in which Mass was eternally sung in honor of the one God. At

the most the faithful disciples were admitted to the side chapels, the

disciples who applied the hallowed doctrines to the letter, and, prostrate

in the dust, adored the only Divinity with His many faces: music, poetry,

drama, and metaphysics.

 

The Wagner-Verein of the town was in exactly this case.—However, they

went through the form of activity: they were always trying to enroll young

men of talent who looked as though they might be useful to it: and they had

long had their eyes on Christophe. They had discreetly made advances to

him, of which Christophe had not taken any notice, because he felt no need

of being associated with anybody: he could not understand the necessity

which drove his compatriots always to be banding themselves together in

groups, being unable to do anything alone: neither to sing, nor to walk,

nor to drink. He was averse to all Vereinswesen. But on the whole he was

more kindly disposed to the Wagner-Verein than to any other Verein: at

least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: and although he did

not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, he was much nearer them than

to those of any other group in music. He could he thought find common

ground with a party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and

the “Brahmins.” So he let himself be put up for it. Mannheim introduced

him: he knew everybody. Without being a musician he was a member of the

Wagner-Verein.—The managing committee had followed the campaign which

Christophe was conducting in the Review. His slaughter in the opposing camp

had seemed to them to