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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 Révólte," 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 "Mémoires d'une Idéaliste" 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 âme héroïque."
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 élite: 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 dormìa....
_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.
* * * * *
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, nebulæ
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 Lützow, of
Koerner, and of Frédéric 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 formulæ 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.