Jean Christophe, Vol. I by Romain Rolland

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* * * * *

The vast tide of the days moves slowly. Day and night come up and go down
with unfailing regularity, like the ebb and low of an infinite ocean. Weeks
and months go by, and then begin again, and the succession of days is like
one day.

The day is immense, inscrutable, marking the even beat of light and
darkness, and the beat of the life of the torpid creature dreaming in the
depths of his cradle--his imperious needs, sorrowful or glad--so regular
that the night and the day which bring them seem by them to be brought
about.

The pendulum of life moves heavily, and in its slow beat the whole creature
seems to be absorbed. The rest is no more than dreams, snatches of dreams,
formless and swarming, and dust of atoms dancing aimlessly, a dizzy whirl
passing, and bringing laughter or horror. Outcry, moving shadows, grinning
shapes, sorrows, terrors, laughter, dreams, dreams.... All is a dream, both
day and night.... And in such chaos the light of friendly eyes that smile
upon him, the flood of joy that surges through his body from his mother's
body, from her breasts filled with milk--the force that is in him, the
immense, unconscious force gathering in him, the turbulent ocean roaring
in the narrow prison of the child's body. For eyes that could see into it
there would be revealed whole worlds half buried in the darkness, nebulae
taking shape, a universe in the making. His being is limitless. He is all
that there is....

Months pass.... Islands of memory begin to rise above the river of his
life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just peeping above
the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of
the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands,
touched to gold by the sun.

So from the abyss of the soul there emerge shapes definite, and scenes of a
strange clarity. In the boundless day which dawns once more, ever the same,
with its great monotonous beat, there begins to show forth the round of
days, hand in hand, and some of their forms are smiling, others sad. But
ever the links of the chain are broken, and memories are linked together
above weeks and months....

The River ... the Bells ... as long as he can remember--far back in the
abysses of time, at every hour of his life--always their voices, familiar
and resonant, have rung out....

Night--half asleep--a pale light made white the window.... The river
murmurs. Through the silence its voice rises omnipotent; it reigns over
all creatures. Sometimes it caresses their sleep, and seems almost itself
to die away in the roaring of its torrent. Sometimes it grows angry, and
howls like a furious beast about to bite. The clamor ceases. Now there is a
murmuring of infinite tenderness, silvery sounds like clear little bells,
like the laughter of children, or soft singing voices, or dancing music--a
great mother voice that never, never goes to sleep! It rocks the child, as
it has rocked through the ages, from birth to death, the generations that
were before him; it fills all his thoughts, and lives in all his dreams,
wraps him round with the cloak of its fluid harmonies, which still will be
about him when he lies in the little cemetery that sleeps by the water's
edge, washed by the Rhine....

The bells.... It is dawn! They answer each other's call, sad, melancholy,
friendly, gentle. At the sound of their slow voices there rise in him hosts
of dreams--dreams of the past, desires, hopes, regrets for creatures who
are gone, unknown to the child, although he had his being in them, and they
live again in him. Ages of memory ring out in that music. So much mourning,
so many festivals! And from the depths of the room it is as though, when
they are heard, there passed lovely waves of sound through the soft air,
free winging birds, and the moist soughing of the wind. Through the window
smiles a patch of blue sky; a sunbeam slips through the curtains to the
bed. The little world known to the eyes of the child, all that he can see
from his bed every morning as he awakes, all that with so much effort he is
beginning to recognize and classify, so that he may be master of it--his
kingdom is lit up. There is the table where people eat, the cupboard where
he hides to play, the tiled floor along which he crawls, and the wall-paper
which in its antic shapes holds for him so many humorous or terrifying
stories, and the clock which chatters and stammers so many words which he
alone can understand. How many things there are in this room! He does not
know them all. Every day he sets out on a voyage of exploration in this
universe which is his. Everything is his. Nothing is immaterial; everything
has its worth, man or fly, Everything lives--the cat, the fire, the table,
the grains of dust which dance in a sunbeam. The room is a country, a day
is a lifetime. How is a creature to know himself in the midst of these vast
spaces? The world is so large! A creature is lost in it. And the faces, the
actions, the movement, the noise, which make round about him an unending
turmoil!... He is weary; his eyes close; he goes to sleep. That sweet deep
sleep that overcomes him suddenly at any time, and wherever he may be--on
his mother's lap, or under the table, where he loves to hide!... It is
good. All is good....

These first days come buzzing up in his mind like a field of corn or a wood
stirred by the wind, and cast in shadow by the great fleeting clouds....

* * * * *

The shadows pass; the sun penetrates the forest. Jean-Christophe begins to
find his way through the labyrinth of the day.

It is morning. His parents are asleep. He is in his little bed, lying on
his back. He looks at the rays of light dancing on the ceiling. There is
infinite amusement in it. Now he laughs out loud with one of those jolly
children's laughs which stir the hearts of those that hear them. His mother
leans out of her bed towards him, and says: "What is it, then, little mad
thing?" Then he laughs again, and perhaps he makes an effort to laugh
because he has an audience. His mamma looks severe, and lays a finger on
her lips to warn him lest he should wake his father: but her weary eyes
smile in spite of herself. They whisper together. Then there is a furious
growl from his father. Both tremble. His mother hastily turns her back on
him, like a naughty little girl: she pretends to be asleep. Jean-Christophe
buries himself in his bed, and holds his breath.... Dead silence.

After some time the little face hidden under the clothes comes to the
surface again. On the roof the weathercock creaks. The rain-pipe gurgles;
the Angelus sounds. When the wind comes from the east, the distant bells
of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows
foregathered in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three
or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the others,
just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon coos at the top of a
chimney. The child abandons himself to the lullaby of these sounds. He hums
to himself softly, then a little more loudly, then quite loudly, then very
loudly, until once more his father cries out in exasperation: "That little
donkey never will be quiet! Wait a little, and I'll pull your ears!" Then
Jean-Christophe buries himself in the bedclothes again, and does not know
whether to laugh or cry. He is terrified and humiliated; and at the same
time the idea of the donkey with which his father has compared him makes
him burst out laughing. From the depths of his bed he imitates its braying.
This time he is whipped. He sheds every tear that is in him. What has he
done? He wanted so much to laugh and to get up! And he is forbidden to
budge. How do people sleep forever? When will they get up?...

One day he could not contain himself. He heard a cat and a dog and
something queer in the street. He slipped out of bed, and, creeping
awkwardly with his bare feet on the tiles, he tried to go down the stairs
to see what it was; but the door was shut. To open it, he climbed on to
a chair; the whole thing collapsed, and he hurt himself and howled. And
once more at the top of the stairs he was whipped. He is always being
whipped!...

* * * * *

He is in church with his grandfather. He is bored. He is not very
comfortable. He is forbidden to stir, and all the people are saying all
together words that he does not understand. They all look solemn and
gloomy. It is not their usual way of looking. He looks at them, half
frightened. Old Lena, their neighbor, who is sitting next to him, looks
very cross; there are moments when he does not recognize even his
grandfather. He is afraid a little. Then he grows used to it, and tries to
find relief from boredom by every means at his disposal. He balances on
one leg, twists his neck to look at the ceiling, makes faces, pulls his
grandfather's coat, investigates the straws in his chair, tries to make a
hole in them with his finger, listens to the singing of birds, and yawns so
that he is like to dislocate his jaw.

Suddenly there is a deluge of sound; the organ is played. A thrill goes
down his spine. He turns and stands with his chin resting on the back of
his chair, and he looks very wise. He does not understand this noise; he
does not know the meaning of it; it is dazzling, bewildering, and he can
hear nothing clearly. But it is good. It is as though he were no longer
sitting there on an uncomfortable chair in a tiresome old house. He is
suspended in mid-air, like a bird; and when the flood of sound rushes from
one end of the church to the other, filling the arches, reverberating
from wall to wall, he is carried with it, flying and skimming hither and
thither, with nothing to do but to abandon himself to it. He is free; he is
happy. The sun shines.... He falls asleep.

His grandfather is displeased with him. He behaves ill at Mass.

* * * * *

He is at home, sitting on the ground, with his feet in his hands. He has
just decided that the door-mat is a boat, and the tiled floor a river. He
all but drowned in stepping off the carpet. He is surprised and a little
put out that the others pay no attention to the matter as he does when he
goes into the room. He seizes his mother by the skirts. "You see it is
water! You must go across by the bridge." (The bridge is a series of holes
between the red tiles.) His mother crosses without even listening to him.
He is vexed, as a dramatic author is vexed when he sees his audience
talking during his great work.

Next moment he thinks no more of it. The tiled floor is no longer the sea.
He is lying down on it, stretched full-length, with his chin on the tiles,
humming music of his own composition, and gravely sucking his thumb and
dribbling. He is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The
lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole grows larger,
and becomes a valley; there are mountains about it. A centipede moves: it
is as large as an elephant. Thunder might crash, the child would not hear
it.

No one bothers about him, and he has no need of any one. He can even do
without door-mat boats, and caverns in the tiled floor, with their
fantastic fauna. His body is enough. What a source of entertainment! He
spends hours in looking at his nails and shouting with laughter. They have
all different faces, and are like people that he knows. And the rest of
his body!... He goes on with the inspection of all that he has. How many
surprising things! There are so many marvels. He is absorbed in looking at
them.

But he was very roughly picked up when they caught him at it.

* * * * *

Sometimes he takes advantage of his mother's back being turned, to escape
from the house. At first they used to run after him and bring him back.
Then they got used to letting him go alone, only so he did not go too
far away. The house is at the end of the town; the country begins almost
at once. As long as he is within sight of the windows he goes without
stopping, very deliberately, and now and then hopping on one foot. But as
soon as he has passed the corner of the road, and the brushwood hides him
from view, he changes abruptly. He stops there, with his finger in his
mouth, to find out what story he shall tell himself that day; for he is
full of stories. True, they are all very much like each other, and every
one of them could be told in a few lines. He chooses. Generally he takes up
the same story, sometimes from the point where it left off, sometimes from
the beginning, with variations. But any trifle--a word heard by chance--is
enough to set his mind off on another direction.

Chance was fruitful of resources. It is impossible to imagine what can be
made of a simple piece of wood, a broken bough found alongside a hedge.
(You break them off when you do not find them.) It was a magic wand. If it
were long and thin, it became a lance, or perhaps a sword; to brandish it
aloft was enough to cause armies to spring from the earth. Jean-Christophe
was their general, marching in front of them, setting them an example, and
leading them to the assault of a hillock. If the branch were flexible,
it changed into a whip. Jean-Christophe mounted on horseback and leaped
precipices. Sometimes his mount would slip, and the horseman would find
himself at the bottom of the ditch, sorrily looking at his dirty hands
and barked knees. If the wand were lithe, then Jean-Christophe would make
himself the conductor of an orchestra: he would be both conductor and
orchestra; he conducted and he sang; and then he would salute the bushes,
with their little green heads stirring in the wind.

He was also a magician. He walked with great strides through the fields,
looking at the sky and waving his arms. He commanded the clouds. He wished
them to go to the right, but they went to the left. Then he would abuse
them, and repeat his command. He would watch them out of the corner of his
eye, and his heart would beat as he looked to see if there were not at
least a little one which would obey him. But they went on calmly moving to
the left. Then he would stamp his foot, and threaten them with his stick,
and angrily order them to go to the left; and this time, in truth, they
obeyed him. He was happy and proud of his power. He would touch the flowers
and bid them change into golden carriages, as he had been told they did in
the stories; and, although it never happened, he was quite convinced that
it would happen if only he had patience. He would look for a grasshopper to
turn into a hare; he would gently lay his stick on its back, and speak a
rune. The insect would escape: he would bar its way. A few moments later he
would be lying on his belly near to it, looking at it. Then he would have
forgotten that he was a magician, and just amuse himself with turning the
poor beast on its back, while he laughed aloud at its contortions.

It occurred to him also to tie a piece of string to his magic wand, and
gravely cast it into the river, and wait for a fish to come and bite. He
knew perfectly well that fish do not usually bite at a piece of string
without bait or hook; but he thought that for once in a way, and for him,
they might make an exception to their rule; and in his inexhaustible
confidence, he carried it so far as to fish in the street with a whip
through the grating of a sewer. He would draw up the whip from time to time
excitedly, pretending that the cord of it was more heavy, and that he had
caught a treasure, as in a story that his grandfather had told him....

And always in the middle of all these games there used to occur to him
moments of strange dreaming and complete forgetfulness. Everything about
him would then be blotted out; he would not know what he was doing, and
was not even conscious of himself. These attacks would take him unawares.
Sometimes as he walked or went upstairs a void would suddenly open before
him. He would seem then to have lost all thought. But when he came back
to himself, he was shocked and bewildered to find himself in the same
place on the dark staircase. It was as though he had lived through a whole
lifetime--in the space of a few steps.

His grandfather used often to take him with him on his evening walk. The
little boy used to trot by his side and give him his hand. They used to
go by the roads, across plowed fields, which smelled strong and good. The
grasshoppers chirped. Enormous crows poised along the road used to watch
them approach from afar, and then fly away heavily as they came up with
them.

His grandfather would cough. Jean-Christophe knew quite well what that
meant. The old man was burning with the desire to tell a story; but he
wanted it to appear that the child had asked him for one. Jean-Christophe
did not fail him; they understood each other. The old man had a tremendous
affection for his grandson, and it was a great joy to find in him a willing
audience. He loved to tell of episodes in his own life, or stories of great
men, ancient and modern. His voice would then become emphatic and filled
with emotion, and would tremble with a childish joy, which he used to
try to stifle. He seemed delighted to hear his own voice. Unhappily,
words used to fail him when he opened his mouth to speak. He was used to
such disappointment, for it always came upon him with his outbursts of
eloquence. And as he used to forget it with each new attempt, he never
succeeded in resigning himself to it.

He used to talk of Regulus, and Arminius, of the soldiers of Luetzow, of
Koerner, and of Frederic Stabs, who tried to kill the Emperor Napoleon.
His face would glow as he told of incredible deeds of heroism. He used to
pronounce historic words in such a solemn voice that it was impossible to
hear them, and he used to try artfully to keep his hearer on tenterhooks at
the thrilling moments. He would stop, pretend to choke, and noisily blow
his nose; and his heart would leap when the child asked, in a voice choking
with impatience: "And then, grandfather?"

There came a day, when Jean-Christophe was a little older, when he
perceived his grandfather's method; and then he wickedly set himself to
assume an air of indifference to the rest of the story, and that hurt the
poor old man. But for the moment Jean-Christophe is altogether held by the
power of the story-teller. His blood leaped at the dramatic passages. He
did not know what it was all about, neither where nor when these deeds were
done, or whether his grandfather knew Arminius, or whether Regulus were
not--God knows why!--some one whom he had seen at church last Sunday. But
his heart and the old man's heart swelled with joy and pride in the tale of
heroic deeds, as though they themselves had done them; for the old man and
the child were both children.

Jean-Christophe was less happy when his grandfather interpolated in the
pathetic passages one of those abstruse discourses so dear to him. There
were moral thoughts generally traceable to some idea, honest enough, but
a little trite, such as "Gentleness is better than violence," or "Honor
is the dearest thing in life," or "It is better to be good than to be
wicked"--only they were much more involved. Jean-Christophe's grandfather
had no fear of the criticism of his youthful audience, and abandoned
himself to his habitual emphatic manner; he was not afraid of repeating the
same phrases, or of not finishing them, or even, if he lost himself in his
discourse, of saying anything that came into his head, to stop up the gaps
in his thoughts; and he used to punctuate his words, in order to give them
greater force, with inappropriate gestures. The boy used to listen with
profound respect, and he thought his grandfather very eloquent, but a
little tiresome.

Both of them loved to return again and again to the fabulous legend of the
Corsican conqueror who had taken Europe. Jean-Christophe's grandfather had
known him. He had almost fought against him. But he was a man to admit the
greatness of his adversaries: he had said so twenty times. He would have
given one of his arms for such a man to have been born on this side of the
Rhine. Fate had decreed otherwise; he admired him, and had fought against
him--that is, he had been on the point of fighting against him. But when
Napoleon had been no farther than ten leagues away, and they had marched
out to meet him, a sudden panic had dispersed the little band in a forest,
and every man had fled, crying, "We are betrayed!" In vain, as the old man
used to tell, in vain did he endeavor to rally the fugitives; he threw
himself in front of them, threatening them and weeping: he had been swept
away in the flood of them, and on the morrow had found himself at an
extraordinary distance from the field of battle--For so he called the place
of the rout. But Jean-Christophe used impatiently to bring him back to
the exploits of the hero, and he was delighted by his marvelous progress
through the world. He saw him followed by innumerable men, giving vent to
great cries of love, and at a wave of his hand hurling themselves in swarms
upon flying enemies--they were always in flight. It was a fairy-tale. The
old man added a little to it to fill out the story; he conquered Spain, and
almost conquered England, which he could not abide.

Old Krafft used to intersperse his enthusiastic narratives with indignant
apostrophes addressed to his hero. The patriot awoke in him, more perhaps
when he told of the Emperor's defeats than of the Battle of Jena. He would
stop to shake his fist at the river, and spit contemptuously, and mouth
noble insults--he did not stoop to less than that. He would call him
"rascal," "wild beast," "immoral." And if such words were intended to
restore to the boy's mind a sense of justice, it must be confessed that
they failed in their object; for childish logic leaped to this conclusion:
"If a great man like that had no morality, morality is not a great thing,
and what matters most is to be a great man." But the old man was far from
suspecting the thoughts which were running along by his side.

They would both be silent, pondering each after his own fashion, these
admirable stories--except when the old man used to meet one of his noble
patrons taking a walk. Then he would stop, and bow very low, and breathe
lavishly the formulae of obsequious politeness. The child used to blush for
it without knowing why. But his grandfather at heart had a vast respect for
established power and persons who had "arrived"; and possibly his great
love for the heroes of whom he told was only because he saw in them persons
who had arrived at a point higher than the others.

When it was very hot, old Krafft used to sit under a tree, and was not long
in dozing off. Then Jean-Christophe used to sit near him on a heap of loose
stones or a milestone, or some high seat, uncomfortable and peculiar; and
he used to wag his little legs, and hum to himself, and dream. Or sometimes
he used to lie on his back and watch the clouds go by; they looked like
oxen, and giants, and hats, and old ladies, and immense landscapes. He used
to talk to them in a low voice, or be absorbed in a little cloud which a
great one was on the point of devouring. He was afraid of those which were
very black, almost blue, and of those which went very fast. It seemed to
him that they played an enormous part in life, and he was surprised that
neither his grandfather nor his mother paid any attention to them. They
were terrible beings if they wished to do harm. Fortunately, they used to
go by, kindly enough, a little grotesque, and they did not stop. The boy
used in the end to turn giddy with watching them too long, and he used to
fidget with his legs and arms, as though he were on the point of falling
from the sky. His eyelids then would wink, and sleep would overcome him.
Silence.... The leaves murmur gently and tremble in the sun; a faint mist
passes through the air; the uncertain flies hover, booming like an organ;
the grasshoppers, drunk with the summer, chirp eagerly and hurriedly; all
is silent.... Under the vault of the trees the cry of the green woodpecker
has magic sounds. Far away on the plain a peasant's voice harangues his
oxen; the shoes of a horse ring out on the white road. Jean-Christophe's
eyes close. Near him an ant passes along a dead branch across a furrow. He
loses consciousness.... Ages have passed. He wakes. The ant has not yet
crossed the twig.

Sometimes the old man would sleep too long, and his face would grow rigid,
and his long nose would grow longer, and his mouth stand open.
Jean-Christophe used then to look at him uneasily, and in fear of seeing
his head change gradually into some fantastic shape. He used to sing
loudly, so as to wake him up, or tumble down noisily from his heap of
stones. One day it occurred to him to throw a handful of pine-needles in
his grandfather's face, and tell him that they had fallen from the tree.
The old man believed him, and that made Jean-Christophe laugh. But,
unfortunately, he tried the trick again, and just when he had raised his
hand he saw his grandfather's eyes watching him. It was a terrible affair.
The old man was solemn, and allowed no liberty to be taken with the respect
due to himself. They were estranged for more than a week.