without peril upon a form which--if it is meant to be beautiful and really
artistic--is the most difficult of all. That art especially demands one
essential condition, the perfect harmony of the combined efforts of the
poet, the musicians, and the actors. Christophe had no tremors about it: he
hurled himself blindly at an unknown art of which the laws were only known
to himself.
His first idea had been to clothe in music a fairy fantasy of Shakespeare
or an act of the second part of _Faust_. But the theaters showed little
disposition to make the experiment. It would be too costly and appeared
absurd. They were quite willing to admit Christophe's efficiency in music,
but that he should take upon himself to have ideas about poetry and the
theater made them smile. They did not take him seriously. The world of
music and the world of poesy were like two foreign and secretly hostile
states. Christophe had to accept the collaboration of a poet to be able to
set foot upon poetic territory, and he was not allowed to choose his own
poet. He would not have dared to choose himself. He did not trust his taste
in poetry. He had been told that he knew nothing about it; and, indeed, he
could not understand the poetry which was admired by those about him. With
his usual honesty and stubbornness, he had tried hard sometimes to feel the
beauty of some of these works, but he had always been bewildered and a
little ashamed of himself. No, decidedly he was not a poet. In truth, he
loved passionately certain old poets, and that consoled him a little. But
no doubt he did not love them as they should be loved. Had he not once
expressed, the ridiculous idea that those poets only are great who remain
great even when they are translated into prose, and even into the prose of
a foreign language, and that words have no value apart from the soul which
they express? His friends had laughed at him. Mannheim had called him a
goose. He did not try to defend himself. As every day he saw, through the
example of writers who talk of music, the absurdity of artists who attempt
to image any art other than their own, he resigned himself--though a little
incredulous at heart--to his incompetence in poetry, and he shut his eyes
and accepted the judgments of those whom he thought were better informed
than himself. So he let his friends of the Review impose one of their
number on him, a great man of a decadent coterie, Stephen von Hellmuth, who
brought him an _Iphigenia_. It was at the time when German poets (like
their colleagues in France) were recasting all the Greek tragedies. Stephen
von Hellmuth's work was one of those astounding Græco-German plays in which
Ibsen, Homer, and Oscar Wilde are compounded--and, of course, a few manuals
of archeology. Agamemnon was neurasthenic and Achilles impotent: they
lamented their condition at length, and naturally their outcries produced
no change. The energy of the drama was concentrated in the rôle of
Iphigenia--a nervous, hysterical, and pedantic Iphigenia, who lectured the
hero, declaimed furiously, laid bare for the audience her Nietzschian
pessimism and, glutted with death, cut her throat, shrieking with laughter.
Nothing could be more contrary to Christophe's mind than such pretentious,
degenerate, Ostrogothic stuff, in Greek dress. It was hailed as a
masterpiece by everybody about him. He was cowardly and was overpersuaded.
In truth, he was bursting with music and thinking much more of his music
than of the text. The text was a new bed into which to let loose the flood
of his passions. He was as far as possible from the state of abnegation and
intelligent impersonality proper to musical translation of a poetic work.
He was thinking only of himself and not at all of the work. He never
thought of adapting himself to it. He was under an illusion: he saw in the
poem something absolutely different from what was actually in it--just as
when he was a child he used to compose in his mind a play entirely
different from that which was upon the stage.
It was not until it came to rehearsal that he saw the real play. One day he
was listening to a scene, and he thought it so stupid that he fancied the
actors must be spoiling it, and went so far as to explain it to them in
the poet's presence; but also to explain it to the poet himself, who was
defending his interpretation. The author refused bluntly to hear him, and
said with some asperity that he thought he knew what he had meant to write.
Christophe would not give in, and maintained that Hellmuth knew nothing
about it. The general merriment told him that he was making himself
ridiculous. He said no more, agreeing that after all it was not he who had
written the poem. Then he saw the appalling emptiness of the play and was
overwhelmed by it: he wondered how he could ever have been persuaded to
try it. He called himself an idiot and tore his hair. He tried in vain to
reassure himself by saying: "You know nothing about it; it is not your
business. Keep to your music." He was so much ashamed of certain idiotic
things in it, of the pretentious pathos, the crying falsity of the words,
the gestures and attitudes, that sometimes, when he was conducting the
orchestra, he hardly had the strength to raise his baton. He wanted to go
and hide in the prompter's box. He was too frank and too little politic to
conceal what he thought. Every one noticed it: his friends, the actors, and
the author. Hellmuth said to him with a frigid smile:
"Is it not fortunate enough to please you?"
Christophe replied honestly:
"Truth to tell, no. I don't understand it,"
"Then you did not read it when you set it to music?"
"Yes," said Christophe naïvely, "but I made a mistake. I understood it
differently."
"It is a pity you did not write what you understood yourself."
"Oh! If only I could have done so!" said Christophe.
The poet was vexed, and in his turn criticised the music. He complained
that it was in the way and prevented his words being heard.
If the poet did not understand the musician, or the musician the poet, the
actors understood neither the one nor the other, and did not care. They
were only asking for sentences in their parts on which to bring in their
usual effects. They had no idea of adapting their declamation to the
formality of the piece and the musical rhythm. They went one way, the
music another. It was as though they were constantly singing out of tune.
Christophe ground his teeth and shouted the note at them until he was
hoarse. They let him shout and went on imperturbably, not even
understanding what he wanted them to do.
Christophe would have flung the whole thing up if the rehearsals had not
been so far advanced, and he had not been bound to go on by fear of legal
proceedings. Mannheim, to whom he confided his discouragement, laughed at
him:
"What is it?" he asked. "It is all going well. You don't understand each
other? What does that matter? Who has ever understood his work but the
author? It is a toss-up whether he understands it himself!"
Christophe was worried about the stupidity of the poem, which, he said,
would ruin the music. Mannheim made no difficulty about admitting that
there was no common sense in the poem and that Hellmuth was "a muff," but
he would not worry about him: Hellmuth gave good dinners and had a pretty
wife. What more did criticism want?
Christophe shrugged his shoulders and said that he had no time to listen to
nonsense.
"It is not nonsense!" said Mannheim, laughing. "How serious people are!
They have no idea of what matters in life."
And he advised Christophe not to bother so much about Hellmuth's business,
but to attend to his own. He wanted him to advertise a little. Christophe
refused indignantly. To a reporter who came and asked for a history of his
life, he replied furiously:
"It is not your affair!"
And when they asked for his photograph for a review, he stamped with rage
and shouted that he was not, thank God! an emperor, to have his face
passed from hand to hand. It was impossible to bring him into touch with
influential people. He never replied to invitations, and when he had been
forced by any chance to accept, he would forget to go or would go with such
a bad grace that he seemed to have set himself to be disagreeable to
everybody.
But the climax came when he quarreled with his review, two days before the
performance.
* * * * *
The thing was bound to happen. Mannheim had gone on revising Christophe's
articles, and he no longer scrupled about deleting whole lines of criticism
and replacing them with compliments.
One day, out visiting, Christophe met a certain virtuoso--a foppish pianist
whom he had slaughtered. The man came and thanked him with a smile that
showed all his white teeth. He replied brutally that there was no reason
for it. The other insisted and poured forth expressions of gratitude.
Christophe cut him short by saying, that if he was satisfied with the
article that was his affair, but that the article had certainly not been
written with a view to pleasing him. And he turned his back on him. The
virtuoso thought him a kindly boor and went away laughing. But Christophe
remembered having received a card of thanks from another of his victims,
and a suspicion flashed upon him. He went out, bought the last number of
the Review at a news-stand, turned to his article, and read... At first he
wondered if he were going mad. Then he understood, and, mad with rage, he
ran to the office of the _Dionysos_.
Waldhaus and Mannheim were there, talking to an actress whom they knew.
They had no need to ask Christophe what brought him. Throwing a number of
the Review on the table, Christophe let fly at them without stopping to
take breath, with extraordinary violence, shouting, calling them rogues,
rascals, forgers, thumping on the floor with a chair. Mannheim began to
laugh. Christophe tried to kick him. Mannheim took refuge behind the table
and rolled with laughter. But Waldhaus took it very loftily. With dignity,
formally, he tried to make himself heard through the row, and said that he
would not allow any one to talk to him in such a tone, that Christophe
should hear from him, and he held out his card. Christophe flung it in his
face.
"Mischief-maker!--I don't need your card to know what you are.... You are a
rascal and a forger!... And you think I would fight with you ... a
thrashing is all you deserve!..."
His voice could be heard in the street. People stopped to listen. Mannheim
closed the windows. The actress tried to escape, but Christophe was
blocking the way. Waldhaus was pale and choking. Mannheim was stuttering
and stammering and trying to reply. Christophe did not let them speak. He
let loose upon them every expression he could think of, and never stopped
until he was out of breath and had come to an end of his insults. Waldhaus
and Mannheim only found their tongues after he had gone. Mannheim quickly
recovered himself: insults slipped from him like water from a duck's back.
But Waldhaus was still sore: his dignity had been outraged, and what made
the affront more mortifying was that there had been witnesses. He would
never forgive it. His colleagues joined chorus with him. Mannheim only of
the staff of the Review was not angry with Christophe. He had had his fill
of entertainment out of him: it did not seem to him a heavy price to pay
for his pound of flesh, to suffer a few violent words. It had been a good
joke. If he had been the butt of it he would have been the first to laugh.
And so he was quite ready to shake hands with Christophe as though nothing
had happened. But Christophe was more rancorous and rejected all advances.
Mannheim did not care. Christophe was a toy from which he had extracted all
the amusement possible. He was beginning to want a new puppet. From that
very day all was over between them. But that did not prevent Mannheim still
saying, whenever Christophe was mentioned in his presence, that they were
intimate friends. And perhaps he thought they were.
Two days after the quarrel the first performance of _Iphigenia_ took place.
It was an utter failure. Waldhaus' review praised the poem and made no
mention of the music. The other papers and reviews made merry over it. They
laughed and hissed. The piece was withdrawn after the third performance,
but the jokes at its expense did not disappear so quickly. People were
only too glad of the opportunity of having a fling at Christophe, and for
several weeks the _Iphigenia_ remained an unfailing subject for joking.
They knew that Christophe had no weapon of defense, and they took advantage
of it. The only thing which held them back a little was his position at the
Court. Although his relation with the Grand Duke had become quite cold, for
the Prince had several times made remarks to which he had paid no attention
whatever, he still went to the Palace at intervals, and still enjoyed, in
the eye of the public, a sort of official protection, though it was more
visionary than real. He took upon himself to destroy even that last
support.
He suffered from the criticisms. They were concerned not only with his
music, but also with his idea of a new form of art, which the writers did
not take the trouble to understand. It was very easy to travesty it and
make fun of it. Christophe was not yet wise enough to know that the best
reply to dishonest critics is to make none and to go on working. For some
months past he had fallen into the bad habit of not letting any unjust
attack go unanswered. He wrote an article in which he did not spare certain
of his adversaries. The two papers to which he took it returned it with
ironically polite excuses for being unable to publish it. Christophe stuck
to his guns. He remembered that the socialist paper in the town had made
advances to him. He knew one of the editors. They used to meet and talk
occasionally. Christophe was glad to find some one who would talk freely
about power, the army and oppression and archaic prejudices. But they could
not go far with each other, for the socialist always came back to Karl
Marx, about whom Christophe cared not a rap. Moreover, Christophe used to
find in his speeches about the free man--besides a materialism which was
not much to his taste--a pedantic severity and a despotism of thought, a
secret cult of force, an inverse militarism, all of which did not sound
very different from what he heard every day in German.
However, he thought of this man and his paper when he saw all other doors
in journalism closed to him. He knew that his doing so would cause a
scandal. The paper was violent, malignant, and always being condemned. But
as Christophe never read it, he only thought of the boldness of its ideas,
of which he was not afraid, and not of the baseness of its tone, which
would have repelled him. Besides, he was so angry at seeing the other
papers in alliance to suppress him that perhaps he would have gone on even
if he had been warned. He wanted to show people that he was not so easily
got rid of. So he took his article to the socialist paper, which received
it with open arms. The next day the article appeared, and the paper
announced in large letters that it had engaged the support of the young and
talented maestro, Jean-Christophe Krafft, whose keen sympathy with the
demands of the working classes was well known.
Christophe read neither the note nor the article, for he had gone out
before dawn for a walk in the country, it being Sunday. He was in fine
fettle. As he saw the sun rise he shouted, laughed, yodeled, leaped, and
danced. No more review, no more criticisms to do! It was spring and there
was once more the music of the heavens and the earth, the most beautiful
of all. No more dark concert rooms, stuffy and smelly, unpleasant people,
dull performers. Now the marvelous song of the murmuring forests was to be
heard, and over the fields like waves there passed the intoxicating scents
of life, breaking through the crust of the earth and issuing from the
grave.
He went home with his head buzzing with light and music, and his mother
gave him a letter which had been brought from the Palace while he was away.
The letter was in an impersonal form, and told Herr Krafft that he was to
go to the Palace that morning. The morning was past, it was nearly one
o'clock. Christophe was not put about.
"It is too late now," he said. "It will do to-morrow."
But his mother said anxiously:
"No, no. You cannot put off an appointment with His Highness like that: you
must go at once. Perhaps it is a matter of importance."
Christophe shrugged his shoulders.
"Important! As if those people could have anything important to say!...
He wants to tell me his ideas about music. That will be funny!... If only
he has not taken it into his head to rival Siegfried Meyer [Footnote: A
nickname given by German pamphleteers to H.M. (His Majesty) the Emperor.]
and wants to show me a _Hymn to Aegis_! I vow that I will not spare him.
I shall say: 'Stick to politics. You are master there. You will always
be right. But beware of art! In art you are seen without your plumes,
your helmet, your uniform, your money, your titles, your ancestors, your
policemen--and just think for a moment what will be left of you then!'"
Poor Louisa took him quite seriously and raised her hands in horror.
"You won't say that!... You are mad! Mad!"
It amused him to make her uneasy by playing upon her credulity until he
became so extravagant that Louisa began to see that he was making fun of
her.
"You are stupid, my boy!"
He laughed and kissed her. He was in a wonderfully good humor. On his walk
he had found a beautiful musical theme, and he felt it frolicking in him
like a fish in water. He refused to go to the Palace until he had had
something to eat. He was as hungry as an ape. Louisa then supervised his
dressing, for he was beginning to tease her again, pretending that he
was quite all right as he was with his old clothes and dusty boots. But
he changed them all the same, and cleaned his boots, whistling like a
blackbird and imitating all the instruments in an orchestra. When he
had finished his mother inspected him and gravely tied his tie for him
again. For once in a way he was very patient, because he was pleased with
himself--which was not very usual. He went off saying that he was going to
elope with Princess Adelaide--the Grand Duke's daughter, quite a pretty
woman, who was married to a German princeling and had come to stay with her
parents for a few weeks. She had shown sympathy for Christophe when he was
a child, and he had a soft side for her. Louisa used to declare that he was
in love with her, and he would pretend to be so in fun.
He did not hurry; he dawdled and looked into the shops, and stopped to
pat some dog that he knew as it lay on its side and yawned in the sun.
He jumped over the harmless railings which inclosed the Palace square--a
great empty square, surrounded with houses, with two little fountains, two
symmetrical bare flower-beds, divided, as by a parting, by a gravel path,
carefully raked and bordered by orange trees in tubs. In the middle was
the bronze statue of some unknown Grand Duke in the costume of Louis
Philippe, on a pediment adorned at the four corners by allegorical figures
representing the Virtues. On a seat one solitary man was dozing over his
paper. Behind the silly moat of the earthworks of the Palace two sleepy
cannon yawned upon the sleepy town. Christophe laughed at the whole thing.
He entered the Palace without troubling to take on a more official manner.
At most he stopped humming, but his thoughts went dancing on inside him. He
threw his hat on the table in the hall and familiarly greeted the old
usher, whom he had known since he was a child. (The old man had been there
on the day when Christophe had first entered the Palace, on the evening
when he had seen Hassler.) But to-day the old man, who always used to reply
good-humoredly to Christophe's disrespectful sallies, now seemed a little
haughty. Christophe paid no heed to it. A little farther on, in the
ante-chamber, he met a clerk of the chancery, who was usually full of
conversation and very friendly. He was surprised to see him hurry past him
to avoid having to talk. However, he did not attach any significance to it,
and went on and asked to be shown in.
He went in. They had just finished dinner. His Highness was in one of the
drawing-rooms. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, smoking, and talking
to his guests, among whom Christophe saw _his_ princess, who was also
smoking. She was lying back in an armchair and talking in a loud voice to
some officers who made a circle about her. The gathering was lively. They
were all very merry, and when Christophe entered he heard the Grand Duke's
thick laugh. But he stopped dead when he saw Christophe. He growled and
pounced on him.
"Ah! There you are!" he said. "You have condescended to come at last? Do
you think you can go on making fun of me any longer? You're a blackguard,
sir!"
Christophe was so staggered by this brutal attack that it was some time
before he could utter a word. He was thinking that he was only late, and
that that could not have provoked such violence. He murmured:
"What have I done, Your Highness?"
His Highness did not listen and went on angrily:
"Be silent! I will not be insulted by a blackguard!" Christophe turned
pale, and gulped so as to try to speak, for he was choking. He made an
effort, and said:
"Your Highness, you have no right--you have no right to insult me without
telling me what I have done."
The Grand Duke turned to his secretary, who produced a paper from his
pocket and held it out to him. He was in such a state of exasperation as
could not be explained only by his anger: the fumes of good wine had their
share in it, too. He came and stood in front of Christophe, and like a
toreador with his cape, furiously waved the crumpled newspaper in his face
and shouted:
"Your muck, sir!... You deserve to have your nose rubbed in it!"
Christophe recognized the socialist paper.
"I don't see what harm there is in it," he said.
"What! What!" screamed the Grand Duke. "You are impudent!... This rascally
paper, which insults me from day to day, and spews out filthy insults upon
me!..."
"Sire," said Christophe, "I have not read it."
"You lie!" shouted the Grand Duke.
"You shall not call me a liar," said Christophe. "I have not read it. I am
only concerned with reviews, and besides, I have the right to write in
whatever paper I like."
"You have no right but to hold your tongue. I have been too kind to you. I
have heaped kindness upon you, you and yours, in spite of your misconduct
and your father's, which would have justified me in cutting you off. I
forbid you to go on writing in a paper which is hostile to me. And further:
I forbid you altogether to write anything in future without my authority.
I have had enough of your musical polemics. I will not allow any one who
enjoys my patronage to spend his time in attacking everything which is dear
to people of taste and feeling, to all true Germans. You would do better to
write better music, or if that is impossible, to practise your scales and
exercises. I don't want to have anything to do with a musical Bebel who
amuses himself by decrying all our national glories and upsetting the minds
of the people. We know what is good, thank God. We do not need to wait for
you to tell us. Go to your piano, sir, or leave us in peace!"
Standing face to face with Christophe the fat man glared at him
insultingly. Christophe was livid, and tried to speak. His lips moved; he
stammered:
"I am not your slave. I shall say what I like and write what I like ..."
He choked. He was almost weeping with shame and rage. His legs were
trembling. He jerked his elbow and upset an ornament on a table by his
side. He felt that he was in a ridiculous position. He heard people
laughing. He looked down the room, and as through a mist saw the princess
watching the scene and exchanging ironically commiserating remarks with her
neighbors. He lost count of what exactly happened. The Grand Duke shouted.
Christophe shouted louder than he without knowing what he said. The
Prince's secretary and another official came towards him and tried to stop
him. He pushed them away, and while he talked he waved an ash-tray which he
had mechanically picked up from the table against which he was leaning. He
heard the secretary say:
"Put it down! Put it down!"