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

lasted

for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest

of all shouted “Encore!” A bass voice coming from a stage box began to

imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and imitated it

also. Some one shouted “Author!” It was long since these witty folk had

been so highly entertained.

 

When the tumult was calmed down a little the Kapellmeister, standing

quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience though he

was pretending not to see it—(the audience was still supposed to be

non-existent)—made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak.

There was a cry of “Ssh,” and silence. He waited a moment longer;

then—(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):

 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I should certainly not have let that he played

through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of the gentleman

who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.”

 

That was all; and jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from

the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on for

a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went away. The

audience decided to go too. The concert was over.

 

It had been a good day.

 

Christophe had gone already. Hardly had he seen the wretched conductor

leave his desk when he had rushed from the box; he plunged down the stairs

from the first floor to meet him and slap his face. His friend who had

brought him followed and tried to hold him back, but Christophe brushed him

aside and almost threw him downstairs;—(he had reason to believe that the

fellow was concerned in the trick which had been played him). Fortunately

for H. Euphrat and himself the door leading to the stage was shut; and his

furious knocking could not make them open it. However the audience was

beginning to leave the hall. Christophe could not stay there. He fled.

 

He was in an indescribable condition. He walked blindly, waving his arms,

rolling his eyes, talking aloud like a madman; he suppressed his cries

of indignation and rage. The street was almost empty. The concert hall

had been built the year before in a new neighborhood a little way out of

the town; and Christophe instinctively fled towards the country across

the empty fields in which were a few lonely shanties and scaffoldings

surrounded by fences. His thoughts were murderous; he could have killed the

man who had put such an affront upon him. Alas! and when he had killed him

would there he any change in the animosity of those people whose insulting

laughter was still ringing in his ears? They were too many; he could do

nothing against them; they were all agreed—they who were divided about so

many things—to insult and crush him. It was past understanding; there was

hatred in them. What had he done to them all? There were beautiful things

in him, things to do good and make the heart big; he had tried to say them,

to make others enjoy them; he thought they would be happy like himself.

Even if they did not like them they should he grateful to him for his

intentions; they could, if need be, show him kindly where he had been

wrong; but that they should take such a malignant joy in insulting and

odiously travestying his ideas, in trampling them underfoot, and killing

him by ridicule, how was it possible? In his excitement he exaggerated

their hatred; he thought it much more serious than such mediocre people

could ever be. He sobbed: “What have I done to them?” He choked, he thought

that all was lost, just as he did when he was a child coming into contact

for the first time with human wickedness.

 

And when he looked about him he suddenly saw that he had reached the edge

of the mill-race, at the very spot where a few years before his father had

been drowned. And at once he thought of drowning himself too. He was just

at the point of making the plunge.

 

But as he leaned over the steep bank, fascinated by the calm clean aspect

of the water, a tiny bird in a tree by his side began to sing—to sing

madly. He held his breath to listen. The water murmured. The ripening corn

moaned as it waved under the soft caressing wind; the poplars shivered.

Behind the hedge on the road, out of sight, bees in hives in a garden

filled the air with their scented music. From the other side of the stream

a cow was chewing the cud and gazing with soft eyes. A little fair-haired

girl was sitting on a wall, with a light basket on her shoulders, like a

little angel with wings, and she was dreaming, and swinging her bare legs

and humming aimlessly. Far away in a meadow a white dog was leaping and

running in wide circles. Christophe leaned against a tree and listened and

watched the earth in Spring; he was caught up by the peace and joy of these

creatures; he could forget, he could forget. Suddenly he clasped the tree

with his arms and leaned his cheek against it. He threw himself on the

ground; he buried his face in the grass; he laughed nervously, happily.

All the beauty, the grace, the charm of life wrapped him round, imbued his

soul, and he sucked them up like a sponge. He thought:

 

“Why are you so beautiful, and they—men—so ugly?”

 

No matter! He loved it, he loved it, he felt that he would always love it,

and that nothing could ever take it from him. He held the earth to his

breast. He held life to his breast:

 

“I love you! You are mine. They cannot take you from me. Let them do what

they will! Let them make me suffer!… Suffering also is life!”

 

Christophe began bravely to work again. He refused to have anything more

to do with “men of letters”—well named—makers of phrases, the sterile

babblers, journalists, critics, the exploiters and traffickers of art. As

for musicians he would waste no more time in battling with their prejudices

and jealousy. They did not want him? Very well! He did not want them.

He had his work to do; he would do it. The Court had given him back his

liberty; he was grateful for it. He was grateful to the people for their

hostility; he could work in peace.

 

Louisa approved with all her heart. She had no ambition; she was not a

Krafft; she was like neither his father nor his grandfather. She did not

want honors or reputation for her son. She would have liked him to be rich

and famous; but if those advantages could only be bought at the price of so

much unpleasantness she much preferred not to bother about them. She had

been more upset by Christophe’s grief over his rupture with the Palace than

by the event itself; and she was heartily glad that he had quarreled with

the review and newspaper people. She had a peasant’s distrust of blackened

paper; it was only a waste of time and made enemies. She had sometimes

heard his young friends of the Review talking to Christophe; she had been

horrified by their malevolence; they tore everything to pieces and said

horrible things about everybody; and the worse things they said the better

pleased they were. She did not like them. No doubt they were very clever

and very learned, but they were not kind, and she was very glad that

Christophe saw no more of them. She was full of common sense: what good

were they to him?

 

“They may say, write, and think what they like of me,” said Christophe.

“They cannot prevent my being myself. What do their ideas or their art

matter to me? I deny them!”

 

*

 

It is all very fine to deny the world. But the world is not so easily

denied by a young man’s boasting. Christophe was sincere, but he was under

illusion; he did not know himself. He was not a monk; he had not the

temperament for renouncing the world, and besides he was not old enough to

do so. At first he did not suffer much, he was plunged in composition; and

while his work lasted he did not feel the want of anything. But when he

came to the period of depression which follows the completion of a work and

lasts until a new work takes possession of the mind, he looked about him

and was horrified by his loneliness. He asked himself why he wrote. While

a man is writing he never asks himself that question; he must write, there

is no arguing about it. And then he finds himself with the work that he has

begotten: the great instinct which caused it to spring forth is silent; he

does not understand why it was born: he hardly recognizes it, it is almost

a stranger to him; he longs to forget it. And that is impossible as long as

it is not published or played, or living its own life in the world. Till

then it is like a newborn child attached to its mother, a living thing

bound fast to his living flesh; it must be amputated at all costs or it

will not live. The more Christophe composed the more he suffered under

the weight of these creatures who had sprung forth from himself and could

neither live nor die. He was haunted by them. Who could deliver him from

them? Some obscure impulse would stir in these children of his thoughts;

they longed desperately to break away from him to expand into other souls

like the quick and fruitful seed which the wind scatters over the universe.

Must he remain imprisoned in his sterility? He raged against it.

 

Since every outlet—theaters, concerts—was closed to him, and nothing

would induce him to approach those managers who had once failed him, there

was nothing left but for him to publish his writings, but he could not

flatter himself that it would be easier to find a publisher to produce his

work than an orchestra to play it. The two or three clumsy attempts that he

had made were enough; rather than expose himself to another rebuff, or to

bargain with one of these music merchants and put up with his patronizing

airs, he preferred to publish it at his own expense. It was an act of

madness; he had some small savings out of his Court salary and the proceeds

of a few concerts, but the source from which the money had come was dried

up and it would be a long time before he could find another; and he should

have been prudent enough to be careful with his scanty funds which had to

help him over the difficult period upon which he was entering. Not only did

he not do so; but, as his savings were not enough to cover the expenses of

publication, he did not shrink from getting into debt. Louisa dared not say

anything; she found him absolutely unreasonable, and did not understand how

anybody could spend money for the sake of seeing his name on a book; but

since it was a way of making him be patient and of keeping him with her,

she was only too happy for him to have that satisfaction.

 

Instead of offering the public compositions of a familiar and undisturbing

kind, in which it could feel at home, Christophe chose from among his

manuscripts a suite very individual in character, which he valued highly.

They were piano pieces mixed with Lieder, some very short and popular in

style, others