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

>“What is the good of my shouting myself hoarse with telling you ‘No’, for

the last hour?… I tell you that I will never set foot inside it again! I

loathe all these Wagner-Vereine, all these Vereine, all these flocks of

sheep who have to huddle together to be able to baa in unison. Go and tell

those sheep from me that I am a wolf, that I have teeth, and am not made

far the pasture!”

 

“Good, good, I will tell them,” said Mannheim, as he went. He was delighted

with his morning’s entertainment. He thought:

 

“He is mad, mad, mad as a hatter….”

 

His sister, to whom he reported the interview, at once shrugged her

shoulders and said:

 

“Mad? He would like us to think so!… He is stupid, and absurdly vain….”

 

*

 

Christophe went on with his fierce campaign in Waldhaus’s Review. It was

not that it gave him pleasure: criticism disgusted him, and he was always

wishing it at the bottom of the sea. But he stuck to it because people were

trying to stop him: he did not wish to appear to have given in.

 

Waldhaus was beginning to be uneasy. As long as he was out of reach he had

looked on at the affray with the calmness of an Olympian god. But for some

weeks past the other papers had seemed to be beginning to disregard his

inviolability: they had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a

rare malevolence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have

recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the attacks were

cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Goldenring: they could see no other

way of inducing him to stop Christophe’s polemics. Their perception was

justified. Waldhaus at once declared that Christophe was beginning to weary

him: and he withdrew his support. All the staff of the Review then tried

hard to silence Christophe! But it were as easy to muzzle a dog who

is about to devour his prey! Everything they said to him only excited

him more. He called them poltroons and declared that he would say

everything—everything that he ought to say. If they wished to get rid of

him, they were free to do so! The whole town would know that they were as

cowardly as the rest: but he would not go of his own accord.

 

They looked at each other in consternation, bitterly blaming Mannheim for

the trick he had played them in bringing such a madman among them. Mannheim

laughed and tried hard to curb Christophe himself: and he vowed that with

the next article Christophe would water his wine. They were incredulous:

but the event proved that Mannheim had not boasted vainly. Christophe’s

next article, though not a model of courtesy, did not contain a single

offensive remark about anybody. Mannheim’s method was very simple: they

were all amazed at not having thought of it before: Christophe never read

what he wrote in the Review, and he hardly read the proofs of his articles,

only very quickly and carelessly. Adolf Mai had more than once passed

caustic remarks on the subject: he said that a printer’s error was a

disgrace to a Review: and Christophe, who did not regard criticism

altogether as an art, replied that those who were upbraided in it would

understand well enough. Mannheim turned this to account: he said that

Christophe was right and that correcting proofs was printers’ work: and he

offered to take it over. Christophe was overwhelmed with gratitude: but

they told him that such an arrangement would be of service to them and a

saving of time for the Review. So Christophe left his proofs to Mannheim

and asked him to correct them carefully. Mannheim did: it was sport for

him. At first he only ventured to tone down certain phrases and to delete

here and there certain ungracious epithets. Emboldened by success, he

went further with his experiments: he began to alter sentences and their

meaning: and he was really skilful in it. The whole art of it consisted in

preserving the general appearance of the sentence and its characteristic

form while making it say exactly the opposite of what Christophe had meant.

Mannheim took far more trouble to disfigure Christophe’s articles than he

would have done to write them himself: never had he worked so hard. But he

enjoyed the result: certain musicians whom Christophe had hitherto pursued

with his sarcasms were astounded to see him grow gradually gentle and at

last sing their praises. The staff of the Review were delighted. Mannheim

used to read aloud his lucubrations to them. They roared with laughter.

Ehrenfeld and Goldenring would say to Mannheim occasionally:

 

“Be careful! You are going too far.”

 

“There’s no danger,” Mannheim would say. And he would go on with it.

 

Christophe never noticed anything. He used to go to the office of the

Review, leave his copy, and not bother about it any more. Sometimes he

would take Mannheim aside and say:

 

“This time I really have done for the swine. Just read….”

 

Mannheim would read.

 

“Well, what do you think of it?”

 

“Terrible, my dear fellow, there’s nothing left of them!”

 

“What do you think they will say?”

 

“Oh! there will be a fine row.”

 

But there never was a row. On the contrary, everybody beamed at Christophe:

people whom he detested would bow to him in the street. One day he came to

the office uneasy and scowling: and, throwing a visiting card on the table,

he asked:

 

“What does this mean?”

 

It was the card of a musician whom he slaughtered.

 

“A thousand thanks.”

 

Mannheim replied with a laugh:

 

“It is ironical.”

 

Christophe was set at rest.

 

“Oh!” he said. “I was afraid my article had pleased him.”

 

“He is furious,” said Ehrenfeld: “but he does not wish to seem so: he is

posing as the strong man, and is just laughing.”

 

“Laughing?… Swine!” said Christophe, furious once more. “I shall write

another article about him. He laughs best who laughs last.”

 

“No, no,” said Waldhaus anxiously. “I don’t think he is laughing at you. It

is humility: he is a good Christian. He is holding out the other cheek to

the smiter.”

 

“So much the better!” said Christophe. “Ah! Coward! He has asked for it: he

shall have his flogging.”

 

Waldhaus tried to intervene. But the others laughed.

 

“Let him be….” said Mannheim.

 

“After all …” replied Waldhaus, suddenly reassured, “a little more or

less makes no matter!…”

 

Christophe went away. His colleagues rocked and roared with laughter. When

they had had their fill of it Waldhaus said to Mannheim:

 

“All the same, it was a narrow squeak…. Please be careful. We shall be

caught yet.”

 

“Bah!” said Mannheim. “We have plenty of time…. And besides, I am making

friends for him.”

II ENGULFED

Christophe had got so far with his clumsy efforts towards the reform of

German art when there happened to pass through the town a troupe of French

actors. It would be more exact to say, a band; for, as usual, they were

a collection of poor devils, picked up goodness knows where, and young

unknown players too happy to learn their art, provided they were allowed to

act. They were all harnessed to the chariot of a famous and elderly actress

who was making tour of Germany, and passing through the little princely

town, gave their performances there.

 

Waldhaus’ review made a great fuss over them. Mannheim and his friends knew

or pretended to know about the literary and social life of Paris: they used

to repeat gossip picked up in the boulevard newspapers and more or less

understood; they represented the French spirit in Germany. That robbed

Christophe of any desire to know more about it. Mannheim used to overwhelm

him with praises of Paris. He had been there several times; certain members

of his family were there. He had relations in every country in Europe, and

they had everywhere assumed the nationality and aspect of the country:

this tribe of the seed of Abraham included an English baronet, a Belgian

senator, a French minister, a deputy in the Reichstag, and a Papal Count;

and all of them, although they were united and filled with respect for the

stock from which they sprang, were sincerely English, Belgian, French,

German, or Papal, for their pride never allowed of doubt that the country

of their adoption was the greatest of all. Mannheim was paradoxically the

only one of them who was pleased to prefer all the countries to which he

did not belong. He used often to talk of Paris enthusiastically, but as he

was always extravagant in his talk, and, by way of praising the Parisians,

used to represent them as a species of scatterbrains, lewd and rowdy,

who spent their time in love-making and revolutions without ever taking

themselves seriously, Christophe was not greatly attracted by the

“Byzantine and decadent republic beyond the Vosges.” He used rather to

imagine Paris as it was presented in a naïve engraving which he had seen

as a frontispiece to a book that had recently appeared in a German art

publication; the Devil of Notre Dame appeared huddled up above the roofs

of the town with the legend:

 

“_Eternal luxury like an insatiable Vampire devours its prey above the

great city._”

 

Like a good German he despised the debauched Volcae and their literature,

of which he only knew lively buffooneries like _L’Aiglon, Madame Sans

Gêne_, and a few café songs. The snobbishness of the little town, where

those people who were most notoriously incapable of being interested in

art flocked noisily to take places at the box office, brought him to an

affectation of scornful indifference towards the great actress. He vowed

that he would not go one yard to hear her. It was the easier for him to

keep his promise as seats had reached an exorbitant price which he could

not afford.

 

The repertory which the French actors had brought included a few classical

pieces; but for the most part it was composed of those idiotic pieces which

are expressly manufactured in Paris for exportation, for nothing is more

international than mediocrity. Christophe knew La Tosca, which was to be

the first production of the touring actors; he had seen it in translation

adorned with all those easy graces which the company of a little Rhenish

theater can give to a French play: and he laughed scornfully and declared

that he was very glad, when he saw his friends go off to the theater, not

to have to see it again. But next day he listened none the less eagerly,

without seeming to listen, to the enthusiastic tales of the delightful

evening they had had: he was angry at having lost the right to contradict

them by having refused to see what everybody was talking about.

 

The second production announced was a French translation of Hamlet.

Christophe had never missed an opportunity of seeing a play of

Shakespeare’s. Shakespeare was to him of the same order as Beethoven, an

inexhaustible spring of life. Hamlet had been specially dear to him

during the period of stress and tumultuous doubts through which he had just

passed. In spite of his fear of seeing himself reflected in that magic

mirror he was fascinated by it: and he prowled about the theater notices,

though he did not admit that he was longing to book a seat. But he was so

obstinate that after what he had said to his friends he would not eat his

words: and he would have stayed at