and shook hands with her after the concert. She was grateful to him for
it: there were very few people at the concert, and she was not so used
to compliments as to take no delight in them. As she had never been
clever enough to throw in her lot with any musical coterie, or cunning
enough to surround herself with a group of worshipers, and as she never
attempted to make herself particular, either by technical mannerisms or
by a fantastic interpretation of the hallowed compositions, or by
assuming an exclusive right to play some particular master, such as
Johann Sebastian Bach, or Beethoven, and as she had no theories about
what she played, but contented herself with playing simply what she
felt--nobody paid any attention to her, and the critics ignored her: for
nobody told them that she played well, and they were not likely to find
it out for themselves.
Christophe saw a good deal of Cécile. Her strength and tranquillity
attracted him as a mystery. She was vigorous and apathetic. In his
indignation at her not being better known he proposed that he should get
his friends of the _Grand Journal_ to write about her. But although
she would have liked to be praised, she begged him not to do anything to
procure it. She did not want to have the struggle or the bother or the
jealousies it would entail: she wanted to be left in peace. She was not
talked about: so much the better! She was not envious, and she was the
first to be enthusiastic about the technique of other virtuosi. She had
no ambition, and no desire for anything. She was much too lazy in mind!
When she had not any immediate and definite work to do, she did nothing,
nothing; she did not even dream, not even at night, in bed: she either
slept or thought of nothing. She had not the morbid preoccupation with
marriage, which poisons the lives of girls who shiver at the thought of
dying old maids. When she was asked if she would not like to have a
husband, she would say:
"Why not throw in fifty thousand a year? One has to take what comes. If
any one offers, so much the better! If not, one goes without. Because
one can't have cake, I don't see why one shouldn't be glad of honest
bread. Especially when one has had to eat stale bread for so long!"
"Besides," her mother would say, "there are plenty of people who never
get any bread to eat at all!"
Cécile had good reason to fight shy of men. Her father, who had been
dead some years, was a weak, lazy creature: he had wronged his wife and
his family. She had also a brother who had turned out badly and did not
know what had become of him: every now and then he would turn up and ask
for money: she and her mother were afraid of him and ashamed of him, and
fearful of what they might hear about him any day: and yet they loved
him. Christophe met him once. He was at Cécile's house: there was a ring
at the door: and her mother answered it. He heard a conversation being
carried on in the next room, and the voices were raised every now and
then. Cécile seemed ill at ease, and went out also, leaving Christophe
alone. The discussion went on, and the stranger's voice assumed a
threatening tone: Christophe thought it time to intervene, and opened
the door. He hardly had time to do more than catch a glimpse of a young
and slightly deformed man, whose back was turned towards him, for Cécile
rushed towards him and implored him to go back. She went with him, and
they sat in silence. In the next room the visitor went on shouting for a
few minutes longer, and then took his leave and slammed the door. Then
Cécile sighed, and said to Christophe:
"Yes.... He is my brother."
Christophe understood:
"Ah!" he said.... "I know.... I have a brother, too...."
Cécile took his hand with an air of affectionate commiseration:
"You too?"
"Yes," he said.... "These are the joys of a family."
Cécile laughed, and they changed the conversation. No, the joys of a
family had no enchantment for her, nor had the idea of marriage any
fascination: men were rather a worthless lot on the whole. Her
independent life had many advantages: her mother had often sighed after
her liberty: she had no desire to lose it. The only day-dream in which
she indulged was that some day--Heaven knows when!--she would not have
to give lessons any more, and would be able to live in the country. But
she did not even take the trouble to imagine such a life in detail: she
found it too fatiguing to think of anything so uncertain: it was better
to sleep,--or do her work....
In the meanwhile, in default of her castle in Spain, she used to hire a
little house in the outskirts of Paris for the summer, and lived there
with her mother. It was twenty minutes' journey by train. The house was
some distance away from the station, standing alone in the midst of a
stretch of waste lands which were called "fields," and Cécile used often
to return late at night. But she was not afraid, and did not believe
there was any danger. She had a revolver, but she always used to leave
it at home. Besides, it was doubtful if she would have known how to use
it.
Sometimes, when he went to see her, Christophe would make her play. It
amused him to see her keen perception of the music, especially when he
had dropped a hint which put her on the track of a feeling that called
for expression. He had discovered that she had an excellent voice, but
she had no idea of it. He made her practise it, and would give her old
German _lieder_ or his own music to sing: it gave her pleasure, and
she made such progress as to surprise herself as much as him. She was
marvelously gifted. The fire of music had miraculously descended upon
this daughter of Parisian middle-class parents who were utterly devoid
of any artistic feeling. Philomela--(for so he used to call her)--used
sometimes to discuss music with Christophe, but always in a practical,
never in a sentimental, way: she seemed only to be interested in the
technique of singing and the piano. Generally, when they were together
and were not playing music, they talked of the most commonplace things,
and Christophe, who could not for a moment have tolerated such
conversations with an ordinary woman, would discuss these subjects as a
matter of course with Philomela.
They used to spend whole evenings alone together, and were genuinely
fond of each other, though their affection was perfectly calm and even
almost cold. One evening, when he had dined with her, and had stayed
talking longer than usual, a violent storm came on: she said:
"You can't go now! Stay until to-morrow morning."
He was fitted up with an improvised bed in the little sitting-room. Only
a thin partition was between it and Cécile's bedroom, and the doors were
not locked. As he lay there he could hear her bed creaking and her soft,
regular breathing. In five minutes she was asleep: and very soon he
followed her example without either of them having had the faintest
shadow of an uneasy thought.
At the same time there came into his life a number of other unknown
friends, drawn to him by reading his works. Most of them lived far away
from Paris or shut up in their homes, and never met him. Even a vulgar
success does a certain amount of good: it makes the artist known to
thousands of good people in remote corners whom he could never have
reached without the stupid articles in the papers. Christophe entered
into correspondence with some of them. There were lonely young men,
living a life of hardship, their whole being aspiring to an ideal of which
they were not sure, and they came greedily to slake their thirst
at the well of Christophe's brotherly spirit. There were humble people
in the provinces who read his _lieder_ and wrote to him, like old
Schulz, and felt themselves one with him. There were poor artists,--a
composer among others,--who had not, and could not attain, not only
success, but self-expression, and it made them glad to have their ideas
realized by Christophe. And dearest of all, perhaps,--there were those
who wrote to him without giving their names, and, being thus more free
to speak, naively laid bare their touching confidence in the elder
brother who had come to their assistance. Christophe's heart would grow
big at the thought that he would never know these charming people whom
it would have given him such joy to love: he would kiss some of these
anonymous letters as the writers of them kissed his _lieder_; and
each to himself would think:
"Dear written sheets, what a deal of good you have done me!"
So, according with the unvaried rhythm of the universe, there was formed
about him the little family of genius, grouped about him, giving him
food and taking it from him, which grows little by little, and in the
end becomes one great collective soul, of which he is the central fire,
like a gleaming world, a moral planet moving through space, mingling its
chorus of brotherhood with the harmony of the spheres.
And as these mysterious links were forged between Christophe and his
unseen friends, a revolution took place in his artistic faculty: it
became larger and more human. He lost all interest in music which was a
monologue, a soliloquy, and even more so in music which was a scientific
structure built entirely for the interest of the profession. He wished
his music to be an act of communion with other men. There is no vital
art save that which is linked with the rest of humanity. Johann Sebastian
Bach, even in his darkest hours of isolation, was linked with the rest
of humanity by his religious faith, which he expressed in his art.
Handel and Mozart, by dint of circumstances, wrote for an audience, and
not for themselves. Even Beethoven had to reckon with the multitude. It
is salutary. It is good for humanity to remind genius every now and then:
"What is there for us in your art? If there is nothing, out you go!"
In such constraint genius is the first to gain. There are, indeed, great
artists who express only themselves. But the greatest of all are those
whose hearts beat for all men. If any man would see the living God face
to face, he must seek Him, not in the empty firmament of his own brain,
but in the love of men.
The artists of that time were far removed from that love. They wrote
only for a more or less anarchical and vain group, uprooted from the
life of the country, who preened themselves on not sharing the
prejudices and passions of the rest of humanity, or else made a mock of
them. It is a fine sort of fame that is won by self-amputation from
life, so as to be unlike other men! Let all such artists perish! We will
go with the living, be suckled at the breasts of the earth, and drink in
all that is most profound and sacred in our people, and all its love
from the family and the soil. In the greatest age of liberty, among the
people with the most ardent worship of beauty, the young Prince of the
Italian Renaissance, Raphael, glorified maternity in his transteverine
Madonnas. Who is there now to give us in music a _Madonna à la
Chaise?_ Who is there to give us music meet for every hour of life?
You have nothing, you have nothing in France. When you want to give your
people songs, you are reduced to bringing up to date the German masters
of the past. In your art, from top to bottom, everything remains to be
done, or to be done again....
Christophe corresponded with Olivier, who was now settled in a provincial
town. He tried to maintain in correspondence that collaboration which had
been so fruitful during the time when they had lived together. He wanted
him to write him fine poetic words closely allied with the thoughts and
deeds of everyday life, like the poems which are the substance of the old
German _lieder_. Short fragments from the Scriptures and the Hindoo poems,
and the old Greek philosophers, short religious and moral poems, little
pictures of Nature, the emotions of love or family life, the whole poetry
of morning, evening, and night, that is in simple, healthy people. Four
lines or six are enough for a _lied_: only the simplest expressions, and
no elaborate development or subtlety of harmony. What have I to do with
your esthetic tricks? Love my life, help me to love it and to live it.
Write me the _Hours of France_, my _Great_ and _Small Hours_. And let us
together find the clearest melody. Let us avoid like the plague any
artistic language that belongs to a caste like that of so many writers,
and especially of so many French musicians of to-day. We must have the
courage to speak like men, and not like "artists." We must draw upon the
common fund of all men, and unashamedly make use of old formulae, upon
which the ages have set their seal, formulas which the ages have filled
with their spirit. Look at what our forefathers have done. It was by
returning to the musical language of all men that the art of the German
classics of the eighteenth century came into being. The melodies of Gluck
and the creators of the symphony are sometimes trivial and commonplace
compared with the subtle and erudite phrases of Johann Sebastian Bach and
Rameau. It is their raciness of the soil that gives such zest to, and has
procured such immense popularity for the German classics. They began with
the simplest musical forms, the _lied_ and the _Singspiel_, the little
flowers of everyday life which impregnated the childhood of men like
Mozart and Weber.--Do you do the same. Write songs for all and sundry.
Upon that basis you will soon build quartettes and symphonies. What is
the good of rushing ahead? The pyramids were not begun at the top. Your
symphonies at present are trunkless heads, ideas without any stuffing.
Oh, you fair spirits, become incarnate! There must be generations of
musicians patiently and joyously and piously living in brotherhood with
these people. No musical art was ever built in a day.
Christophe was not content to apply these principles in music: he urged
Olivier to set himself at the head of a similar movement in literature:
"The writers of to-day," he said, "waste their energy in describing
human rarities, or cases that are common enough in the abnormal groups
of men and women living on the fringe of the great society of active,
healthy human beings. Since they themselves have shut themselves off
from life, leave them and go where there are men. Show the life of every
day to the men and women of every day: that life is deeper and more vast
than the sea. The smallest among you bears the infinite in his soul. The
infinite is in every man who is simple enough to be a man, in the lover,
in the friend, in the woman who pays with her pangs for the radiant
glory of the day of childbirth, in every man and every woman who lives
in obscure self-sacrifice which will never be known to another soul: it
is the very river of life, flowing from one to another, from one to
another, and back again and round.... Write the simple life of one of
these simple men, write the peaceful epic of the days and nights
following, following one like to another, and yet all different, all
sons of the same mother, from the dawning of the first day in the life
of the world. Write it simply, as simple as its own unfolding. Waste no
thought upon the word, and the letter, and the subtle vain researches in
which the force of the artists of to-day is turned to nought. You are
addressing all men: use the language of all men. There are no words
noble or vulgar; there is no style chaste or impure: there are only
words and styles which say or do not say exactly what they have to say.
Be sound and thorough in all you do: think just what you think,--and
feel just what you feel. Let the rhythm of your heart prevail in your
writings! The style is the soul."
Olivier agreed with Christophe, but he replied rather ironically:
"Such a book would be fine: but it would never reach the people who
would care to read it. The critics would strangle it on the way."
"There speaks my little French bourgeois!" replied Christophe. "Worrying
his mind about what the critics will or will not think of his work!...
The critics, my boy, are only there to register victory or defeat. The
great thing is to be victor.... I have managed to get along without
them! You must learn how to disregard them, too...."
* * * * *
But Olivier had learned how to disregard something entirely different!
He had turned aside from art, and Christophe, and everybody. At that
time he was thinking of nothing but Jacqueline, and Jacqueline was
thinking of nothing but him.
The selfishness of their love had cut them off from everything and
everybody: they were recklessly destroying all their future resources.
They were in the blind wonder of the first days, when man and woman,
joined together, have no thought save that of losing themselves in each
other.... With every part of themselves, body and soul, they touch and
taste and seek to probe into the very inmost depths. They are alone
together in a lawless universe, a very chaos of love, when the confused
elements know not as yet what distinguishes one from the other, and
strive greedily to devour each other. Each in other finds nothing save
delight: each in other finds another self. What is the world to them?
Like the antique Androgyne slumbering in his dream of voluptuous and
harmonious delights, their eyes are closed to the world, All the world
is in themselves....
O days, O nights, weaving one web of dreams, hours fleeting like the
floating white clouds in the heavens, leaving nought but a shimmering
wake in dazzled eyes, the warm wind breathing the languor of spring, the
golden warmth of the body, the sunlit arbor of love, shameless chastity,
embraces, and madness, and sighs, and happy laughter, happy tears, what
is there left of the lovers, thrice happy dust? Hardly, it seems, that
their hearts could ever remember to beat: for when they were one then
time had ceased to exist.
And all their days are one like unto another.... Sweet, sweet dawn....
Together, embracing, they issue from the abyss of sleep: they smile
and their breath is mingled, their eyes open and meet, and they kiss....
There is freshness and youth in the morning hours, a virgin air
cooling their fever.... There is a sweet languor in the endless day
still throbbing with the sweetness of the night.... Summer
afternoons, dreams in the fields, on the velvety sward, beneath the
rustling of the tall white poplars.... Dreams in the lovely evenings,
when, under the gleaming sky, they return, clasping each other, to the
house of their love. The wind whispers in the bushes. In the clear lake
of the sky hovers the fleecy light of the silver moon. A star falls and
dies,--hearts give a little throb--a world is silently snuffed out.
Swift silent shadows pass at rare intervals on the road near by. The
bells of the town ring in the morrow's holiday. They stop for a moment,
she nestles close to him, they stand so without a word.... Ah! if only
life could be so forever, as still and silent as that moment!... She
sighs and says:
"Why do I love you so much?..."
After a few weeks' traveling in Italy they had settled in a town in the
west of France, where Olivier had gained an appointment. They saw hardly
anybody. They took no interest in anything. When they were forced to pay
calls, their scandalous indifference was so open that it hurt some,
while it made others smile. Anything that was said to them simply made
no impression. They had the impertinently solemn manner common to young
married people, who seem to say:
"You people don't know anything at all...."
Jacqueline's pretty pouting face, with its absorbed expression,
Olivier's happy eyes that looked so far away, said only:
"If you knew how boring we find you!... When shall we be left alone?"
Even the presence of others could not embarrass them. It was hard not to
see their exchange of glances as they talked. They did not need to look
to see each other: and they would smile: for they knew that they were
thinking of the same things at the same time. When they were alone once
more, after having suffered the constraint of the presence of others,
they would shout for joy--indulge in a thousand childish pranks. They
would talk baby-language, and find grotesque nicknames for each other.
She used to call him Olive, Olivet, Olifant, Fanny, Mami, Mime, Minaud,
Quinaud, Kaunitz, Cosima, Cobourg, Panot, Nacot, Ponette, Naquet, and
Canot. She would behave like a little girl; but she wanted to be all
things at once to him, to give him every kind of love: mother, sister,
wife, sweetheart, mistress.
It was not enough for her to share his pleasures: as she had promised
herself, she shared his work: and that, too, was a game. At first she
brought to bear on it the amused ardor of a woman to whom work is
something new: she seemed really to take a pleasure in the most
ungrateful tasks, copying in the libraries, and translating dull books:
it was part of her plan of life, that it should be pure and serious, and
wholly consecrated to noble thoughts and work in common. And all went
well as long as the light of love was in them: for she thought only of
him, and not of what she was doing. The odd thing was that everything
she did in that way was well done. Her mind found no difficulty in
taking in abstract ideas, which at any other time of her life she would
have found it hard to follow: her whole being was, as it were, uplifted
from the earth by love; she did not know it; like a sleep-walker moving
easily over roofs, gravely and gaily, without seeing anything at all,
she lived on in her dream....
And then she began to see the roofs: but that did not give her any
qualms: only she asked what she was doing so high up, and became herself
again. Work bored her. She persuaded herself that it stood in the way of
her love: no doubt because her love had already become less ardent. But
there was no evidence of that. They could not bear to be out of each
other's sight. They shut themselves off from the world, and closed their
doors and refused all invitations. They were jealous of the affections
of other people, even of their occupations, of everything which
distracted them from their love. Olivier's correspondence with
Christophe dwindled. Jacqueline did not like it: he was a rival to her,
representing a part of Olivier's past life in which she had had no
share; and the more room he filled in Olivier's life, the more she
sought, instinctively, to rob him of it. Without any deliberate
intention, she gradually and steadily alienated Olivier from his friend:
she made sarcastic comments on Christophe's manners, his face, his way
of writing, his artistic projects: there was no malice in what she said,
nor slyness: she was too good-natured for that. Olivier was amused by
her remarks, and saw no harm in them: he thought he still loved
Christophe as much as ever, but he loved only his personality: and that
counts for very little in friendship: he did not see that little by
little he was losing his understanding of him, and his interest in his
ideas, and the heroic idealism in which they had been so united.... Love
is too sweet a joy for the heart of youth: compared with it, what other
faith can hold its ground? The body of the beloved and the soul that
breathes in it are all science and all faith. With what a pitying smile
does a lover regard the object of another's adoration and the things
which he himself once adored! Of all the might of life and its bitter
struggles the lover sees nothing but the passing flower, which he
believes must live forever.... Love absorbed Olivier. In the beginning
his happiness was not so great but it left him with the energy to
express it in graceful verse. Then even that seemed vain to him: it was
a theft of time from love. And Jacqueline also set to work to destroy
their every source of life, to kill the tree of life, without the
support of which the ivy of love must die. Thus in their happiness they
destroyed each other.
Alas! we so soon grow used to happiness! When selfish happiness is the
sole aim of life, life is soon left without an aim. It becomes a habit,
a sort of intoxication which we cannot do without. And how vitally
important it is that we should do without it.... Happiness is an instant
in the universal rhythm, one of the poles between which the pendulum of
life swings: to stop the pendulum it must be broken....