Jean Christophe, Vol. I by Romain Rolland

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JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VOLUME I

DAWN, MORNING, YOUTH, REVOLT

by Romain Rolland

Translated by Gilbert Cannan

PREFACE

"Jean-Christophe" is the history of the development of a musician of
genius. The present volume comprises the first four volumes of the original
French, viz.: "L'Aube," "Le Matin," "L'Adolescent," and "La Revolte," which
are designated in the translation as Part I--The Dawn; Part II--Morning;
Part III--Youth; Part IV--Revolt. Parts I and II carry Jean-Christophe from
the moment of his birth to the day when, after his first encounter with
Woman, at the age of fifteen, he falls back upon a Puritan creed. Parts
III and IV describe the succeeding five years of his life, when, at the
age of twenty, his sincerity, integrity, and unswerving honesty have made
existence impossible for him in the little Rhine town of his birth. An act
of open revolt against German militarism compels him to cross the frontier
and take refuge in Paris, and the remainder of this vast book is devoted to
the adventures of Jean-Christophe in France.

His creator has said that he has always conceived and thought of the life
of his hero and of the book as a river. So far as the book has a plan, that
is its plan. It has no literary artifice, no "plot." The words of it hang
together in defiance of syntax, just as the thoughts of it follow one on
the other in defiance of every system of philosophy. Every phase of the
book is pregnant with the next phase. It is as direct and simple as life
itself, for life is simple when the truth of it is known, as it was known
instinctively by Jean-Christophe. The river is explored as though it were
absolutely uncharted. Nothing that has ever been said or thought of life is
accepted without being brought to the test of Jean-Christophe's own life.
What is not true for him does not exist; and, as there are very few of
the processes of human growth or decay which are not analysed, there is
disclosed to the reader the most comprehensive survey of modern life which
has appeared in literature in this century.

To leave M. Rolland's simile of the river, and to take another, the book
has seemed to me like a, mighty bridge leading from the world of ideas of
the nineteenth century to the world of ideas of the twentieth. The whole
thought of the nineteenth century seems to be gathered together to make the
starting-point for Jean-Christophe's leap into the future. All that was
most religious in that thought seems to be concentrated in Jean-Christophe,
and when the history of the book is traced, it appears that M. Rolland has
it by direct inheritance.

M. Rolland was born in 1866 at Clamecy, in the center of France, of a
French family of pure descent, and educated in Paris and Rome. At Rome, in
1890, he met Malwida von Meysenburg, a German lady who had taken refuge
in England after the Revolution of 1848, and there knew Kossuth, Mazzini,
Herzen, Ledin, Rollin, and Louis Blanc. Later, in Italy, she counted among
her friends Wagner, Liszt, Lenbach, Nietzsche, Garibaldi, and Ibsen. She
died in 1908. Rolland came to her impregnated with Tolstoyan ideas, and
with her wide knowledge of men and movements she helped him to discover his
own ideas. In her "Memoires d'une Idealiste" she wrote of him: "In this
young Frenchman I discovered the same idealism, the same lofty aspiration,
the same profound grasp of every great intellectual manifestation that I
had already found in the greatest men of other nationalities."

The germ of "Jean-Christophe" was conceived during this period--the
"Wanderjahre"--of M. Rolland's life. On his return to Paris he became
associated with a movement towards the renascence of the theater as a
social machine, and wrote several plays. He has since been a musical critic
and a lecturer on music and art at the Sorbonne. He has written Lives of
Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Hugo Wolf. Always his endeavor has been the
pursuit of the heroic. To him the great men are the men of absolute truth.
Jean-Christophe must have the truth and tell the truth, at all costs, in
despite of circumstance, in despite of himself, in despite even of life.
It is his law. It is M. Rolland's law. The struggle all through the book
is between the pure life of Jean-Christophe and the common acceptance of
the second-rate and the second-hand by the substitution of civic or social
morality, which is only a compromise, for individual morality, which
demands that every man should be delivered up to the unswerving judgment of
his own soul. Everywhere Jean-Christophe is hurled against compromise and
untruth, individual and national. He discovers the German lie very quickly;
the French lie grimaces at him as soon as he sets foot in Paris.

The book itself breaks down the frontier between France and Germany. If one
frontier is broken, all are broken. The truth about anything is universal
truth, and the experiences of Jean-Christophe, the adventures of his soul
(there are no other adventures), are in a greater or less degree those of
every human being who passes through this life from the tyranny of the past
to the service of the future.

The book contains a host of characters who become as friends, or, at least,
as interesting neighbors, to the reader. Jean-Christophe gathers people
in his progress, and as they are all brought to the test of his genius,
they appear clearly for what they are. Even the most unpleasant of them is
human, and demands sympathy.

The recognition of Jean-Christophe as a book which marks a stage in
progress was instantaneous in France. It is hardly possible yet to judge
it. It is impossible to deny its vitality. It exists. Christophe is as real
as the gentlemen whose portraits are posted outside the Queen's Hall, and
much more real than many of them. The book clears the air. An open mind
coming to it cannot fail to be refreshed and strengthened by its voyage
down the river of a man's life, and if the book is followed to its end, the
voyager will discover with Christophe that there is joy beneath sorrow, joy
through sorrow ("Durch Leiden Freude").

Those are the last words of M. Rolland's life of Beethoven; they are words
of Beethoven himself: "La devise de tout ame heroique."

In his preface, "To the Friends of Christophe," which precedes the seventh
volume, "Dans la Maison," M. Rolland writes:

"I was isolated: like so many others in France I was stifling in a world
morally inimical to me: I wanted air: I wanted to react against an
unhealthy civilization, against ideas corrupted by a sham elite: I wanted
to say to them: 'You lie! You do not represent France!' To do so I needed a
hero with a pure heart and unclouded vision, whose soul would be stainless
enough for him to have the right to speak; one whose voice would be loud
enough for him to gain a hearing, I have patiently begotten this hero. The
work was in conception for many years before I set myself to write a word
of it. Christophe only set out on his journey when I had been able to see
the end of it for him."

If M. Rolland's act of faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned
with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal
evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it
is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be
the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: "Every man has a right to utter
what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for
it...."

By its truth and its absolute integrity--since Tolstoy I know of no
writing so crystal clear--"Jean-Christophe" is the first great book of the
twentieth century. In a sense it begins the twentieth century. It bridges
transition, and shows us where we stand. It reveals the past and the
present, and leaves the future open to us....

GILBERT CANNAN

CONTENTS

THE DAWN

I
II
III

MORNING

I. THE DEATH OF JEAN MICHEL
II. OTTO
III. MINNA

YOUTH

I. THE HOUSE OF EULER
II. SABINE
III. ADA

REVOLT

I. SHIFTING SANDS
II. ENGULFED
III. DELIVERANCE

THE DAWN

Dianzi, nell'alba che precede al giorno,
Quando l'anima tua dentro dormia....
_Purgatorio_, ix.

I

Come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi
A diradar cominciansi, la spera
Del sol debilemente entra per essi....
_Purgatorio_, xvii.

From behind the house rises the murmuring of the river. All day long the
rain has been beating against the window-panes; a stream of water trickles
down the window at the corner where it is broken. The yellowish light of
the day dies down. The room is dim and dull.

The new-born child stirs in his cradle. Although the old man left his
sabots at the door when he entered, his footsteps make the floor creak. The
child begins to whine. The mother leans out of her bed to comfort it; and
the grandfather gropes to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be
frightened by the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up old
Jean Michel's red face, with its rough white beard and morose expression
and quick eyes. He goes near the cradle. His cloak smells wet, and as he
walks he drags his large blue list slippers, Louisa signs to him not to go
too near. She is fair, almost white; her features are drawn; her gentle,
stupid face is marked with red in patches; her lips are pale and' swollen,
and they are parted in a timid smile; her eyes devour the child--and her
eyes are blue and vague; the pupils are small, but there is an infinite
tenderness in them.

The child wakes and cries, and his eyes are troubled. Oh! how terrible! The
darkness, the sudden flash of the lamp, the hallucinations of a mind as
yet hardly detached from chaos, the stifling, roaring night in which it is
enveloped, the illimitable gloom from which, like blinding shafts of light,
there emerge acute sensations, sorrows, phantoms--those enormous faces
leaning over him, those eyes that pierce through him, penetrating, are
beyond his comprehension!... He has not the strength to cry out; terror
holds him motionless, with eyes and mouth wide open and he rattles in his
throat. His large head, that seems to have swollen up, is wrinkled with the
grotesque and lamentable grimaces that he makes; the skin of his face and
hands is brown and purple, and spotted with yellow....

"Dear God!" said the old man with conviction: "How ugly he is!"

He put the lamp down on the table.

Louisa pouted like a scolded child. Jean Michel looked at her out of the
corner of his eye and laughed.

"You don't want me to say that he is beautiful? You would not believe it.
Come, it is not your fault. They are all like that."

The child came out of the stupor and immobility into which he had been
thrown by the light of the lamp and the eyes of the old man. He began to
cry. Perhaps he instinctively felt in his mother's eyes a caress which made
it possible for him to complain. She held out her arms for him and said:

"Give him to me."

The old man began, as usual, to air his theories:

"You ought not to give way to children when they cry. You must just let
them cry."

But he came and took the child and grumbled:

"I never saw one quite so ugly."

Louisa took the child feverishly and pressed it to her bosom. She looked at
it with a bashful and delighted smile.

"Oh, my poor child!" she said shamefacedly. "How ugly you are--how ugly!
and how I love you!"

Jean Michel went back to the fireside. He began to poke the fire in
protest, but a smile gave the lie to the moroseness and solemnity of his
expression.

"Good girl!" he said. "Don't worry about it. He has plenty of time to
alter. And even so, what does it matter? Only one thing is asked of him:
that he should grow into an honest man."

The child was comforted by contact with his mother's warm body. He could be
heard sucking her milk and gurgling and snorting. Jean Michel turned in his
chair, and said once more, with some emphasis:

"There's nothing finer than an honest man."

He was silent for a moment, pondering whether it would not be proper to
elaborate this thought; but he found nothing more to say, and after a
silence he said irritably:

"Why isn't your husband here?"

"I think he is at the theater," said Louisa timidly. "There is a
rehearsal."

"The theater is closed. I passed it just now. One of his lies."

"No. Don't be always blaming him. I must have misunderstood. He must have
been kept for one of his lessons."

"He ought to have come back," said the old man, not satisfied. He stopped
for a moment, and then asked, in a rather lower voice and with some shame:

"Has he been ... again?"

"No, father--no, father," said Louisa hurriedly.

The old man looked at her; she avoided his eyes.

"It's not true. You're lying."

She wept in silence.

"Dear God!" said the old man, kicking at the fire with his foot. The poker
fell with a clatter. The mother and the child trembled.

"Father, please--please!" said Louisa. "You will make him cry."

The child hesitated for a second or two whether to cry or to go on with his
meal; but not being able to do both at once, he went on with the meal.

Jean Michel continued in a lower tone, though with outbursts of anger:

"What have I done to the good God to have this drunkard for my son? What
is the use of my having lived as I have lived, and of having denied myself
everything all my life! But you--you--can't you do anything to stop it?
Heavens! That's what you ought to do.... You should keep him at home!..."

Louisa wept still more.

"Don't scold me!... I am unhappy enough as it is! I have done everything
I could. If you knew how terrified I am when I am alone! Always I seem to
hear his step on the stairs. Then I wait for the door to open, or I ask
myself: 'O God! what will he look like?' ... It makes me ill to think of
it!"

She was shaken by her sobs. The old man grew anxious. He went to her and
laid the disheveled bedclothes about her trembling shoulders and caressed
her head with his hands.

"Come, come, don't be afraid. I am here."

She calmed herself for the child's sake, and tried to smile.

"I was wrong to tell you that."

The old man shook his head as he looked at her.

"My poor child, it was not much of a present that I gave you."

"It's my own fault," she said. "He ought not to have married me. He is
sorry for what he did."

"What, do you mean that he regrets?..."

"You know. You were angry yourself because I became his wife."

"We won't talk about that. It is true I was vexed. A young man like that--I
can say so without hurting you--a young man whom I had carefully brought
up, a distinguished musician, a real artist--might have looked higher than
you, who had nothing and were of a lower class, and not even of the same
trade. For more than a hundred years no Krafft has ever married a woman who
was not a musician! But, you know, I bear you no grudge, and am fond of
you, and have been ever since I learned to know you. Besides, there's no
going back on a choice once it's made; there's nothing left but to do one's
duty honestly."

He went and sat down again, thought for a little, and then said, with the
solemnity in which he invested all his aphorisms:

"The first thing in life is to do one's duty."

He waited for contradiction, and spat on the fire. Then, as neither mother
nor child raised any objection, he was for going on, but relapsed into
silence.

* * * * *

They said no more. Both Jean Michel, sitting by the fireside, and Louisa,
in her bed, dreamed sadly. The old man, in spite of what he had said, had
bitter thoughts about his son's marriage, and Louisa was thinking of it
also, and blaming herself, although she had nothing wherewith to reproach
herself.

She had been a servant when, to everybody's surprise, and her own
especially, she married Melchior Krafft, Jean Michel's son. The Kraffts
were without fortune, but were considerable people in the little Rhine
town in which the old man had settled down more than fifty years before.
Both father and son were musicians, and known to all the musicians of
the country from Cologne to Mannheim. Melchior played the violin at the
Hof-Theater, and Jean Michel had formerly been director of the grand-ducal
concerts. The old man had been profoundly humiliated by his son's marriage,
for he had built great hopes upon Melchior; he had wished to make him the
distinguished man which he had failed to become himself. This mad freak
destroyed all his ambitions. He had stormed at first, and showered curses
upon Melchior and Louisa. But, being a good-hearted creature, he forgave
his daughter-in-law when he learned to know her better; and he even came
by a paternal affection for her, which showed itself for the most part in
snubs.

No one ever understood what it was that drove Melchior to such a
marriage--least of all Melchior. It was certainly not Louisa's beauty. She
had no seductive quality: she was small, rather pale, and delicate, and
she was a striking contrast to Melchior and Jean Michel, who were both big
and broad, red-faced giants, heavy-handed, hearty eaters and drinkers,
laughter-loving and noisy. She seemed to be crushed by them; no one
noticed her, and she seemed to wish to escape even what little notice she
attracted. If Melchior had been a kind-hearted man, it would have been
credible that he should prefer Louisa's simple goodness to every other
advantage; but a vainer man never was. It seemed incredible that a young
man of his kidney, fairly good-looking, and quite conscious of it, very
foolish, but not without talent, and in a position to look for some
well-dowered match, and capable even--who knows?--of turning the head of
one of his pupils among the people of the town, should suddenly have chosen
a girl of the people--poor, uneducated, without beauty, a girl who could in
no way advance his career.

But Melchior was one of those men who always do the opposite of what is
expected of them and of what they expect of themselves. It is not that they
are not warned--a man who is warned is worth two men, says the proverb.
They profess never to be the dupe of anything, and that they steer their
ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they reckon without
themselves, for they do not know themselves. In one of those moments of
forgetfulness which are habitual with them they let go the tiller, and, as
is natural when things are left to themselves, they take a naughty pleasure
in rounding on their masters. The ship which is released from its course at
once strikes a rock, and Melchior, bent upon intrigue, married a cook. And
yet he was neither drunk nor in a stupor on the day when he bound himself
to her for life, and he was not under any passionate impulse; far from it.
But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even
than the senses--mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments
when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior
had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so
timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river,
and had sat down beside her in the reeds--without knowing why--and had
given her his hand.

Hardly was he married than he was appalled by what he had done, and he did
not hide what he felt from poor Louisa, who humbly asked his pardon. He
was not a bad fellow, and he willingly granted her that; but immediately
remorse would seize him again when he was with his friends or in the houses
of his rich pupils, who were disdainful in their treatment of him, and no
longer trembled at the touch of his hand when he corrected the position of
their fingers on the keyboard. Then he would return gloomy of countenance,
and Louisa, with a catch at her heart, would read in it with the first
glance the customary reproach; or he would stay out late at one inn or
another, there to seek self-respect or kindliness from others. On such
evenings he would return shouting with laughter, and this was more doleful
for Louisa than the hidden reproach and gloomy rancor that prevailed on
other days. She felt that she was to a certain extent responsible for the
fits of madness in which the small remnant of her husband's sense would
disappear, together with the household money. Melchior sank lower and
lower. At an age when he should have been engaged in unceasing toil to
develop his mediocre talent, he just let things slide, and others took his
place.

But what did that matter to the unknown force which had thrown him in with
the little flaxen-haired servant? He had played his part, and little
Jean-Christophe had just set foot on this earth whither his destiny had
thrust him.

* * * * *

Night was fully come. Louisa's voice roused old Jean Michel from the torpor
into which he had sunk by the fireside as he thought of the sorrows of the
past and present.

"It must be late, father," said the young woman affectionately. "You ought
to go home; you have far to go."

"I am waiting for Melchior," replied the old man.

"Please, no. I would rather you did not stay."

"Why?"

The old man raised his head and looked fiercely at her.

She did not reply.

He resumed.

"You are afraid. You do not want me to meet him?"

"Yes, yes; it would only make things worse. You would make each other
angry, and I don't want that. Please, please go!"

The old man sighed, rose, and said:

"Well ... I'll go."

He went to her and brushed her forehead with his stiff beard. He asked
if she wanted anything, put out the lamp, and went stumbling against the
chairs in the darkness of the room. But he had no sooner reached the
staircase than he thought of his son returning drunk, and he stopped at
each step, imagining a thousand dangers that might arise if Melchior were
allowed to return alone....

In the bed by his mother's side the child was stirring again. An unknown
sorrow had arisen from the depths of his being. He stiffened himself
against her. He twisted his body, clenched his fists, and knitted
his brows. His suffering increased steadily, quietly, certain of its
strength. He knew not what it was, nor whence it came. It appeared
immense,--infinite, and he began to cry lamentably. His mother caressed him
with her gentle hands. Already his suffering was less acute. But he went on
weeping, for he felt it still near, still inside himself. A man who suffers
can lessen his anguish by knowing whence it comes. By thought he can locate
it in a certain portion of his body which can be cured, or, if necessary,
torn away. He fixes the bounds of it, and separates it from himself. A
child has no such illusive resource. His first encounter with suffering is
more tragic and more true. Like his own being, it seems infinite. He feels
that it is seated in his bosom, housed in his heart, and is mistress of his
flesh. And it is so. It will not leave his body until it has eaten it away.

His mother hugs him to her, murmuring: "It is done--it is done! Don't
cry, my little Jesus, my little goldfish...." But his intermittent outcry
continues. It is as though this wretched, unformed, and unconscious mass
had a presentiment of a whole life of sorrow awaiting, him, and nothing can
appease him....

The bells of St. Martin rang out in the night. Their voices are solemn and
slow. In the damp air they come like footsteps on moss. The child became
silent in the middle of a sob. The marvelous music, like a flood of milk,
surged sweetly through him. The night was lit up; the air was moist and
tender. His sorrow disappeared, his heart began to laugh, and he slid, into
his dreams with a sigh of abandonment.

The three bells went on softly ringing in the morrow's festival. Louisa
also dreamed, as she listened to them, of her own past misery and of what
would become in the future of the dear little child sleeping by her side.
She had been for hours lying in her bed, weary and suffering. Her hands and
her body were burning; the heavy eiderdown crushed her; she felt crushed
and oppressed by the darkness; but she dared not move. She looked at the
child, and the night did not prevent her reading his features, that looked
so old. Sleep overcame her; fevered images passed through her brain. She
thought she heard Melchior open the door, and her heart leaped.
Occasionally the murmuring of the stream rose more loudly through the
silence, like the roaring of some beast. The window once or twice gave a
sound under the beating of the rain. The bells rang out more slowly, and
then died down, and Louisa slept by the side of her child.

All this time Jean Michel was waiting outside the house, dripping with
rain, his beard wet with the mist. He was waiting for the return of his
wretched son: for his mind, never ceasing, had insisted on telling him all
sorts of tragedies brought about by drunkenness; and although he did not
believe them, he could not hate slept a wink if he had gone away without
having seen his son return. The sound of the bells made him: melancholy,
for he remembered all his shattered hopes. He thought of what he was doing
at such an hour in the street, and for very shame he wept.