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

give signs of a strong grip which it would be as well

to have in their service. Christophe had also let fly certain disrespectful

remarks about the sacred fetish: but they had preferred to close their eyes

to that: and perhaps his attacks, not yet very offensive, had not been

without their influence, unconsciously, in making them so eager to enroll

Christophe before he had time to deliver himself manfully. They came and

very amiably asked his permission to play some of his compositions at one

of the approaching concerts of the Association. Christophe was flattered,

and accepted: he went to the Wagner-Verein, and, urged by Mannheim, he

was made a member.

 

At that time there were at the head of the Wagner-Verein two men, of whom

one enjoyed a certain notoriety as a writer, and the other as a conductor.

Both had a Mohammedan belief in Wagner. The first, Josias Kling, had

compiled a Wagner Dictionary—_Wagner Lexikon_—which made it possible in a

moment to know the master’s thoughts de omni re scibili: it had been his

life’s work. He was capable of reciting whole chapters of it at table, as

the French provincials used to troll the songs of the Maid. He used also

to publish in the Bayreuther Blätter articles on Wagner and the Aryan

Spirit. Of course, Wagner was to him the type of the pure Aryan, of whom

the German race had remained the last inviolable refuge against the

corrupting influences of Latin Semitism, especially the French. He declared

that the impure French spirit was finally destroyed, though he did not

desist from attacking it bitterly day by day as though the eternal enemy

were still a menace. He would only acknowledge one great man in France:

the Count of Gobineau. Kling was a little man, very little, and he used to

blush like a girl.—The other pillar of the Wagner-Verein, Erich Lauber,

had been manager of a chemical works until four years before: then he had

given up everything to become a conductor. He had succeeded by force of

will, and because he was very rich. He was a Bayreuth fanatic: it was said

that he had gone there on foot, from Munich, wearing pilgrim’s sandals. It

was a strange thing that a man who had read much, traveled much, practised

divers professions, and in everything displayed an energetic personality,

should have become in music a sheep of Panurge: all his originality was

expended in his being a little more stupid than the others. He was not

sure enough of himself in music to trust to his own personal feelings,

and so he slavishly followed the interpretations of Wagner given by the

Kapellmeisters, and the licensees of Bayreuth. He desired to reproduce

even to the smallest detail the setting and the variegated costumes which

delighted the puerile and barbarous taste of the little Court of Wahnfried.

He was like the fanatical admirer of Michael Angelo who used to reproduce

in his copies even the cracks in the wall of the moldy patches which had

themselves been hallowed by their appearance in the hallowed pictures.

 

Christophe was not likely to approve greatly of the two men. But they were

men of the world, pleasant, and both well-read: and Lauber’s conversation

was always interesting on any other subject than music. He was a bit of a

crank: and Christophe did not dislike cranks: they were a change from the

horrible banality of reasonable people. He did not yet know that there is

nothing more devastating than an irrational man, and that originality is

even more rare among those who are called “originals” than among the rest.

For these “originals” are simply maniacs whose thoughts are reduced to

clockwork.

 

Josias Kling and Lauber, being desirous of winning Christophe’s support,

were at first very keenly interested in him. Kling wrote a eulogistic

article about him and Lauber followed all his directions when he conducted

his compositions at one of the concerts of the Society. Christophe was

touched by it all. Unfortunately all their attentions were spoiled by the

stupidity of those who paid them. He had not the facility of pretending

about people because they admired him. He was exacting. He demanded that no

one should admire him for the opposite of what he was: and he was always

prone to regard as enemies those who were his friends, by mistake. And

so he was not at all pleased with Kling for seeing in him a disciple of

Wagner, and trying to see connections between passages of his Lieder

and passages of the Tetralogy, which had nothing in common but certain

notes of the scale. And he had no pleasure in hearing one of his

works sandwiched—together with a worthless imitation by a Wagnerian

student—between two enormous blocks of Wagnerian drama.

 

It was not long before he was stifled in the little chapel. It was just

another Conservatoire, as narrow as the old Conservatoires, and more

intolerant because it was the latest comer in art. Christophe began to lose

his illusions about the absolute value of a form of art or of thought.

Hitherto he had always believed that great ideas bear their own light

within themselves. Now he saw that ideas may change, but that men remain

the same: and, in fine, nothing counted but men: ideas were what they were.

If they were born mediocre and servile, even genius became mediocre in its

passage through their souls, and the shout of freedom of the hero breaking

his bonds became the act of slavery of succeeding generations.—Christophe

could mot refrain from expressing his feelings. He let no opportunity

slip of jeering at fetishism in art. He declared that there was no need

of idols, or classics of any sort, and that he only had the right to call

himself the heir of the spirit of Wagner who was capable of trampling

Wagner underfoot and so walking on and keeping himself in close communion

with life. Kling’s stupidity made Christophe aggressive. He set out all

the faults and absurdities he could see in Wagner. The Wagnerians at once

credited him with a grotesque jealousy of their God. Christophe for his

part had no doubt that these same people who exalted Wagner since he was

dead would have been the first to strangle him in his life: and he did

them an injustice. The Klings and the Laubers also had had their hour of

illumination: they had been advanced twenty years ago: and then like most

people they had stopped short at that. Man has so little force that he is

out of breath after the first ascent: very few are long-winded enough to go

on.

 

Christophe’s attitude quickly alienated him from his new friends. Their

sympathy was a bargain: he had to side with them if they were to side with

him: and it was quite evident that Christophe would not yield an inch: he

would not join them. They lost their enthusiasm for him. The eulogies which

he refused to accord to the gods and demi-gods who were approved by the

cult, were withheld from him. They showed less eagerness to welcome his

compositions: and some of the members began to protest against his name

being too often on the programmes. They laughed at him behind his back, and

criticism went on: Kling and Lauber by not protesting seemed to take part

in it. They would have avoided a breach with Christophe if possible: first

because the minds of the Germans of the Rhine like mixed solutions,

solutions which are not solutions, and have the privilege of prolonging

indefinitely an ambiguous situation: and secondly, because they hoped in

spite of everything to be able to make use of him, by wearing him down, if

not by persuasion.

 

Christophe gave them no time for it. Whenever he thought he felt that at

heart any man disliked him, but would not admit it and tried to cover it up

so as to remain on good terms with him, he would never rest until he had

succeeded in proving to him that he was his enemy. One evening at the

Wagner-Verein when he had come up against a wall of hypocritical

hostility, he could bear it no longer and sent in his resignation to Lauber

without wasting words. Lauber could not understand it: and Mannheim

hastened to Christophe to try and pacify him. At his first words Christophe

burst out:

 

“No, no, no,—no! Don’t talk to me about these people. I will not see them

again…. I cannot. I cannot…. I am disgusted, horribly, with men: I can

hardly bear to look at one.”

 

Mannheim laughed heartily. He was thinking much less of smoothing

Christophe down than of having the fun of it.

 

“I know that they are not beautiful,” he said; “but that is nothing new:

what new thing has happened?”

 

“Nothing. I have had enough, that is all…. Yes, laugh, laugh at me:

everybody knows I am mad. Prudent people act in accordance with the laws of

logic and reason and sanity. I am not like that: I am a man who acts only

on his own impulse. When a certain quantity of electricity is accumulated

in me it has to expend itself, at all costs: and so much the worse for the

others if it touches them! And so much the worse for them! I am not made

for living in society. Henceforth I shall belong only to myself.”

 

“You think you can do without everybody else?” said Mannheim. “You cannot

play your music all by yourself. You need singers, an orchestra, a

conductor, an audience, a claque….”

 

Christophe shouted.

 

“No! no! no!”

 

But the last word made him jump.

 

“A claque! Are you not ashamed?”

 

“I am not talking of a paid claque—(although, indeed, it is the only

means yet discovered of revealing the merit of a composition to the

audience).—But you must have a claque: the author’s coterie is a claque,

properly drilled by him: every author has his claque: that is what friends

are for.”

 

“I don’t want any friends!”

 

“Then you will be hissed.”

 

“I want to be hissed!”

 

Mannheim was in the seventh heaven.

 

“You won’t have even that pleasure for long. They won’t play you.”

 

“So be it, then! Do you think I care about being a famous man?… Yes. I

was making for that with all my might…. Nonsense! Folly! Idiocy!… As if

the satisfaction of the vulgarest sort of pride could compensate for all

the sacrifices—weariness, suffering, infamy, insults, degradation, ignoble

concessions—which are the price of fame! Devil take me if I ever bother my

head about such things again! Never again! Publicity is a vulgar infamy. I

will be a private citizen and live for myself and those whom I love….”

 

“Good,” said Mannheim ironically. “You must choose a profession. Why

shouldn’t you make shoes?”

 

“Ah! if I were a cobbler like the incomparable Sachs!” cried Christophe.

“How happy my life would be! A cobbler all through the week,—and a

musician on Sunday, privately, intimately, for my own pleasure and that of

my friends! What a life that would be!… Am I mad, to waste my time and

trouble for the magnificent pleasure of being a prey to the judgment of

idiots? Is it not much better and finer to be loved and understood by a

few honest men than to be heard, criticised, and toadied by thousands of

fools?… The devil of pride and thirst for fame shall never again take me:

trust me for that!”

 

“Certainly,” said Mannheim. He thought:

 

“In an hour he will say just the opposite.” He remarked quietly:

 

“Then I am to go and smooth things down with the Wagner-Verein?”

 

Christophe waved his arms.