down the narrow path, thick with sharp stones, among which coiled the
gnarled roots of the little stunted oaks: he did not know where he was
going, and yet he was more surefooted than if he had been moving under
the lucid direction of his will. He had not slept, he had hardly eaten
anything for several days. He saw a mist in front of his eyes. He walked
down towards the valley.--It was Easter-week. A cloudy day. The last
assault of winter had been overcome. The warmth of spring was brooding.
From the villages far down the sound of bells came up: first from a
village nestling in a hollow at the foot of the mountain, with its
dappled thatched roofs, dark and light in patches, covered with thick,
velvety moss. Then from another, out of sight, on the other slope of the
hill. Then, others down on the plain beyond the river. And the distant
hum of a town seen hazily in the mist. Christophe stopped. His heart
almost stopped beating. Their voices seemed to be saying:
"Come with us. Here is peace. Here sorrow is dead. Dead, and thought is
dead too. We croon so sweetly to the soul that it sleeps in our arms,
Come, and rest, and thou shalt not wake again."
He felt so worn out! He was so fain to sleep! But he shook his head and
said:
"It is not peace that I seek, but life."
He went on his way. He walked for miles without noticing it. In his
state of weakness and hallucination the simplest sensations came to him
with unexpected resonance. Over earth and air his mind cast fantastic
lights. A shadow, with nothing to cause it that he could see, going
before him on the white and sunless road, made him tremble.
As he emerged from a wood he found himself near a village. He turned
back: the sight of men hurt him. However, he could not avoid passing by
a lonely house above the hamlet: it was built on the side of the
mountain, and looked like a sanatorium: it was surrounded by a large
garden open to the sun; a few men were wandering with faltering
footsteps along the gravel paths. Christophe did not look at it
particularly: but at a turn of the path he came face to face with a man
with pale eyes and a fat, yellow face, staring blankly, who had sunk
down on a seat at the foot of two poplar trees. Another man was sitting
by his side: they were both silent. Christophe walked past them. But, a
few yards on, he stopped: the man's eyes had seemed familiar to him. He
turned. The man had not stirred: he was still staring fixedly at
something in front of him. But his companion looked at Christophe, who
beckoned to him. He came up.
"Who is he?" asked Christophe.
"A patient in the asylum," said the man, pointing to the house.
"I think I know him," said Christophe.
"Possibly," replied the man. "He was a well-known writer in Germany."
Christophe mentioned a name.--Yes. That was the name.--He had met him
once in the days when he was writing for Mannheim's review. Then, they
were enemies: Christophe was only just beginning, and the other was
already famous. He had been a man of considerable power, very
self-confident, very contemptuous of other men's work, a novelist whose
realistic and sensual writings had stood out above the mediocrity of the
productions of his day. Christophe, who detested the man, could not help
admiring the perfection of his materialistic art, which was sincere,
though limited.
"He went mad a year ago," said the keeper. "He was treated, regarded as
cured, and sent home. Then he went mad again. One evening he threw
himself out of the window. At first, when he came here, he used to fling
himself about and shout. But now he is quite quiet. He spends his days
sitting there, as you see."
"What is he looking at?" asked Christophe.
He went up to the seat, and looked pitifully at the pale face of the
madman, with his heavy eyelids drooping over his eyes: one of them
seemed to be almost shut. The madman seemed to be unaware of
Christophe's presence. Christophe spoke to him by name and took his
hand--a soft, clammy hand, which lay limp in his like a dead thing: he
had not the courage to keep it in his: the man raised his glazing eyes
to Christophe for a moment, then went on staring straight in front of
him with his besotted smile. Christophe asked:
"What are you looking at?"
The man said, without moving, in a whisper:
"I am waiting."
"What for?"
"The Resurrection."
Christophe started back. He walked hurriedly away. The word had burnt
into his very soul.
He plunged into the forest, and climbed up the hillside in the direction
of his own house. In his confusion he missed his way, and found himself
in the middle of an immense pine-wood. Darkness and silence. A few
patches of sunlight of a pale, ruddy gold, come it was impossible to
tell whence, fell aslant the dense shadows. Christophe was hypnotized by
these patches of light. Round him everything seemed to be in darkness.
He walked along over the carpet of pine-needles, tripping over the roots
which stood out like swollen veins. At the foot of the trees were
neither plants nor moss. In the branches was never the song of a bird.
The lower branches were dead. All the life of the place had fled upwards
to meet the sun. Soon even the life overhead would be gone. Christophe
passed into a part of the wood which was visited by some mysterious
pestilence. A kind of long, delicate lichen, like spiders' webs, had
fastened upon the branches of the red pines, and wrapped them about with
its meshes, binding them from hand to foot, passing from tree to tree,
choking the life out of the forest. It was like the deep-sea alga with
its subtle tentacles. There was in the place the silence of the depths
of the ocean. High overhead hung the pale sun. Mists which had crept
insidiously through the forest encompassed Christophe. Everything
disappeared: there was nothing to be seen. For half an hour Christophe
wandered at random in the web of the white mist, which grew slowly
thicker, black, and crept down into his throat: he thought he was going
straight: but he was walking in a circle beneath the gigantic spiders'
webs hanging from the stifled pines: the mist, passing through them,
left them enriched with shivering drops of water. At last the meshes
were rent asunder, a hole was made, and Christophe managed to make his
way out of the submarine forest. He came to living woods and the silent
conflict of the pines and the beeches. But everywhere there was the same
stillness. The silence, which had been brooding for hours, was
agonizing. Christophe stopped to listen....
Suddenly, in the distance, there came a storm. A premonitory gust of
wind blew up from the depths of the forest. Like a galloping horse it
rushed over the swaying tree-tops. It was like the God of Michael Angelo
passing in a water-spout. It passed over Christophe's head. The forest
rustled, and Christophe's heart quivered. It was the Annunciation....
Silence came again. In a state of holy terror Christophe walked quickly
home, with his legs giving way beneath him. At the door of the house he
glanced fearfully behind him, like a hunted man. All Nature seemed dead.
The forests which covered the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying
heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and
transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a
stream--water eating away the rock--sounded the knell of the earth,
Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts
stirred as restlessly and uneasily as he....
Night. He had dozed off. In the silence the distant storm arose once
more. The wind returned, like a hurricane now,--the _foehn_ of the
spring, with its burning breath warming the still sleeping, chilly
earth, the _foehn_ which melts the ice and gathers fruitful rains.
It rumbled like thunder in the forests on the other side of the ravine.
It came nearer, swelled, charged up the slopes: the whole mountain
roared. In the stable a horse neighed and the cows lowed. Christophe's
hair stood on end, he sat up in bed and listened. The squall came up
screaming, set the shutters banging, the weather-cocks squeaking, made
the slates of the roof go crashing down, and the whole house shake. A
flower-pot fell and was smashed. Christophe's window was insecurely
fastened, and was burst open with a bang, and the warm wind rushed in.
Christophe received its blast full in his face and on his naked chest.
He jumped out of bed gaping, gasping, choking. It was as though the
living God were rushing into his empty soul. The Resurrection!... The
air poured down his throat, the flood of new life swelled through him
and penetrated to his very marrow. He felt like to burst, he wanted to
shout, to shout for joy and sorrow: and there would only come
inarticulate sounds from his mouth. He reeled, he beat on the walls with
his arms, while all around him were sheets of paper flying on the wind.
He fell down in the middle of the room and cried:
"O Thou, Thou! Thou art come back to me at last!"
"Thou art come back to me, Thou art come back to me! O Thou, whom I had
lost!... Why didst Thou abandon me?"
"To fulfil My task, that thou didst abandon."
"What task?"
"My fight."
"What need hast Thou to fight? Art Thou not master of all?"
"I am not the master."
"Art Thou not All that Is?"
"I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not
Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night.
I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the
fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with
Me."
"I am conquered. I am good for nothing."
"Thou art conquered? All seems lost to thee? Others will be conquerors.
Think not of thyself, think of My army."
"I am alone. I have none but myself. I belong to no army."
"Thou art not alone, and thou dost not belong to thyself. Thou art one
of My voices, thou art one of My arms. Speak and strike for Me. But if
the arm be broken, or the voice be weary, then still I hold My ground: I
fight with other voices, other arms than thine. Though thou art
conquered, yet art thou of the army which is never vanquished. Remember
that and thou wilt fight even unto death."
"Lord, I have suffered much!"
"Thinkest thou that I do not suffer also? For ages death has hunted Me
and nothingness has lain in wait for Me. It is only by victory in the
fight that I can make My way. The river of life is red with My blood."
"Fighting, always fighting?"
"We must always fight. God is a fighter, even He Himself. God is a
conqueror. He is a devouring lion. Nothingness hems Him in and He hurls
it down. And the rhythm of the fight is the supreme harmony. Such
harmony is not for thy mortal ears. It is enough for thee to know that
it exists. Do thy duty in peace and leave the rest to the Gods."
"I have no strength left."
"Sing for those who are strong."
"My voice is gone."
"Pray."
"My heart is foul."
"Pluck it out. Take Mine."
"Lord, it is easy to forget myself, to cast away my dead soul. But how
can I cast out the dead? how can I forget those whom I have loved?"
"Abandon the dead with thy dead soul. Thou wilt find them alive with My
living soul."
"Thou hast left me once: wilt Thou leave me again?"
"I shall leave thee again. Never doubt that. It is for thee never to
leave Me more."
"But if the flame of my life dies down?"
"Then do thou kindle others."
"And if death is in me?"
"Life is otherwhere. Go, open thy gates to life. Thou insensate man, to
shut thyself up in thy ruined house! Quit thyself. There are other
mansions."
"O Life, O Life! I see ... I sought thee in myself, in my own empty
shut-in soul. My soul is broken: the sweet air pours in through the
windows of my wounds: I breathe again, I have found Thee once more, O
Life!..."
"I have found thee again.... Hold thy peace, and listen."
* * * * *
And like the murmuring of a spring, Christophe heard the song of life
bubbling up in him. Leaning out of his window, he saw the forest, which
yesterday had been dead, seething with life under the sun and the wind,
heaving like the Ocean. Along the stems of the trees, like thrills of
joy, the waves of the wind passed: and the yielding branches held their
arms in ecstasy up to the brilliant sky. And the torrent rang out
merrily as a bell. The countryside had risen from the grave in which
yesterday it had been entombed: life had entered it at the time when
love passed into Christophe's heart. Oh! the miracle of the soul touched
by grace, awaking to new life! Then everything comes to life again all
round it. The heart begins to beat once more. The eye of the spirit is
opened. The dried-up fountains begin once more to flow.
And Christophe returned to the Divine conflict.... How his own fight,
how all the conflicts of men were lost in that gigantic battle, wherein
the suns rain down like flakes of snow tossing on the wind!... He had
laid bare his soul. And, just as in those dreams in which one hovers in
space, he felt that he was soaring above himself, he saw himself from
above, in the general plan of the world; and the meaning of his efforts,
the price of his suffering, were revealed to him at a glance. His
struggles were a part of the great fight of the worlds. His overthrow
was a momentary episode, immediately repaired. Just as he fought for
all, so all fought for him. They shared his trials, he shared their
glory.
* * * * *
"Companions, enemies, walk over me, crush me, let me feel the cannons
which shall win victory pass over my body! I do not think of the iron
which cuts deep into my flesh, I do not think of the foot that tramples
down my head, I think of my Avenger, the Master, the Leader of the
countless army. My blood shall cement the victory of the future...."
God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass
watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God
was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who
fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen
into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night.
But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease:
and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the
very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole!
Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries
war into the eternal peace.
The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a
shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls,
and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that
sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang
of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were
victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid
low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song.
It was so drunk with it that it could not hear its own song. Like the
spring rains, the torrents of music disappeared into the earth that was
cracked by the winter. Shame, grief, bitterness now revealed their
mysterious mission: they had decomposed the earth and they had
fertilized it. The share of sorrow, breaking the heart, had opened up
new sources of life. The waste land had once more burst into flower. But
they were not the old spring flowers. A new soul had been born.
Every moment it was springing into birth. For it was not yet shaped and
hardened, like the souls that have come to the end of their belief, the
souls which are at the point of death. It was not the finished statue.
It was molten metal. Every second made a new universe of it. Christophe
had no thought of setting bounds upon himself. He gave himself up to the
joy of a man leaving behind him the burden of his past and setting out
on a long voyage, with youth in his blood, freedom in his heart, to
breathe the sea air, and think that the voyage will never come to an
end. Now that he was caught up again by the creative force which flows
through the world, he was amazed to the point of ecstasy at the world's
wealth. He loved, he _was_, his neighbor as himself. And all things
were "neighbors" to him, from the grass beneath his feet to the man
whose hand he clasped. A fine tree, the shadow of a cloud on the
mountain, the breath of the fields borne upward on the wind, and, at
night, the hive of heaven buzzing with the swarming suns ... his blood
raced through him ... he had no desire to speak or to think, he desired
only to laugh and to cry, and to melt away into the living marvel of it
all. Write? Why should he write? Can a man write the inexpressible?...
But whether it were possible or no, he had to write. It was his law.
Ideas would come to him in flashes, wherever he might be, most often
when he was out walking. He could not wait. Then he would write with
anything, on anything that came to hand: and very often he could not
have told the meaning of the phrases which came rushing forth from him
with irresistible impetuosity: and, as he wrote, more ideas would come,
more and more: and he would write and write, on his shirt cuffs, in the
lining of his hat. Quickly though he wrote, yet his thoughts would leap
ahead, and he had to use a sort of shorthand.
They were only rough notes. The difficulty began when he tried to turn
his ideas into the ordinary musical forms: he discovered that none of
the conventional molds were in the least suitable: if he wanted to fix
his visions with any sort of fidelity, he had to begin by forgetting all
the music he had ever heard, everything he had ever written, make a
clean sweep of all the formulae he had ever learned, and the traditional
technique; fling away all such crutches of the impotent mind, the
comfortable bed made for the indolence of those who lie back on the
thoughts of other men to save themselves the trouble of thinking for
themselves. A short while ago, when he thought that he had reached
maturity in life and art--(as a matter of fact he had only been at the
end of one of his lives and one of his incarnations in art),--he had
expressed himself in a preexisting language: his feelings had submitted
without revolt to the logic of a pre-established development, which
dictated a portion of his phrases in advance, and had led him, docilely
enough, along the beaten track to the appointed spot where the public
was awaiting him. Now there was no road marked out, and his feelings had
to carve out their own path: his mind had only to follow. It was no
longer appointed to describe or to analyze passion: it had to become
part and parcel of it, and seek to wed its inward law.
At the same time he shed all the contradictions in which he had long
been involved, though he had never willingly submitted to them. For,
although he was a pure artist, he had often incorporated in his art
considerations which are foreign to art: he had endowed it with a social
mission. And he had not perceived that there were two men in him: the
creative artist who never worried himself about any moral aim, and the
man of action, the thinker, who wanted his art to be moral and social.
The two would sometimes bring each other to an awkward pass. But now
that he was subject to every creative idea, with its organic law, like a
reality superior to all reality, he had broken free of practical reason.
In truth, he shed none of his contempt for the flabby and depraved
immorality of the age: in truth, he still thought that its impure and
unwholesome art was the lowest rung of art, because it is a disease, a
fungus growing on a rotting trunk: but if art for pleasure's sake is the
prostration of art, Christophe by no means opposed to it the
short-sighted utilitarianism of art for morality's sake, that winged
Pegasus harnessed to the plow. The highest art, the only art which is
worthy of the name, is above all temporary laws: it is a comet sweeping
through the infinite. It may be that its force is useful, it may be that
it is apparently useless and dangerous in the existing order of the
workaday world: but it is force, it is movement and fire: it is the
lightning darted from heaven: and, for that very reason, it is sacred,
for that very reason it is beneficent. The good it does may be of the
practical order: but its real, its Divine benefits are, like faith, of
the supernatural order. It is like the sun whence it is sprung. The sun
is neither moral nor immoral. It is that which Is. It lightens the
darkness of space. And so does art.
And Christophe, being delivered up to art, was amazed to find unknown
and unsuspected powers teeming in himself: powers quite apart from his
passions, his sorrows, his conscious soul, a stranger soul, indifferent
to all his loves and sufferings, to all his life, a joyous, fantastic,
wild, incomprehensible soul. It rode him and dug its spurs into his
sides. And, in the rare moments when he could stop to take breath, he
wondered as he read over what he had written:
"How could such things have come out of me?"
He was a prey to that delirium of the mind which is known to every man
of genius, that will which is independent of the will, _"the ineffable
enigma of the world and life"_ which Goethe calls _"the demoniac,"_
against which he was always armed, though it always overcame him.
And Christophe wrote and wrote. For days and weeks. There are times when
the mind, being impregnated, can feed upon itself and go on producing
almost indefinitely. The faintest contact with things, the pollen of a
flower borne by the wind were enough to make the inward germs, the
myriads of germs put forth and come to blossom. Christophe had no time
to think, no time to live. His creative soul reigned sovereign over the
ruins of his life.
* * * * *
And suddenly it stopped. Christophe came out of that state broken,
scorched, older by ten years--but saved. He had left Christophe and gone
over to God.
Streaks of white hair had suddenly appeared in his black mane, like
those autumn flowers which spring up in the fields in September nights.
There were fresh lines on his cheeks. But his eyes had regained their
calm expression, and his mouth bore the marks of resignation. He was
appeased. He understood now. He understood the vanity of his pride, the
vanity of human pride, under the terrible hand of the Force which moves
the worlds. No man is surely master of himself. A man must watch. For if
he slumbers that Force rushes into him and whirls him headlong ... into
what dread abysses? or the torrent which bears him along sinks and
leaves him on its dry bed. To fight the fight it is not enough to will.
A man must humiliate himself before the unknown God, who _fiat ubi
vult_, who blows where and when He listeth, love, death, or life.
Human will can do nothing without God's. One second is enough for Him to
obliterate the work of years of toil and effort. And, if it so please
Him, He can cause the eternal to spring forth from dust and mud. No man
more than the creative artist feels at the mercy of God: for, if he is
truly great, he will only say what the Spirit bids him.
And Christophe understood the wisdom of old Haydn who went down on his
knees each morning before he took pen in hand.... _Vigila et ora_.
Watch and pray. Pray to God that He may be with you. Keep in loving and
pious communion with the Spirit of life.
* * * * *
Towards the end of summer a Parisian friend of Christophe's, who was
passing through Switzerland, discovered his retreat. He was a musical
critic who in old days had been an excellent judge of his compositions.
He was accompanied by a well-known painter, who was avowedly a
whole-hearted admirer of Christophe's. They told him of the very
considerable success of his work, which was being played all over
Europe. Christophe showed very little interest in the news: the past was
dead to him, and his old compositions did not count. At his visitors'
request he showed them the music he had written recently. The critic
could make nothing of it. He thought Christophe had gone mad.
"No melody, no measure, no thematic workmanship: a sort of liquid core,
molten matter which had not hardened, taking any shape, but possessing
none of its own: it is like nothing on earth: a glimmering of light in
chaos."
Christophe smiled:
"It is quite like that," he said. "The eyes of chaos shining through the
veil of order...."
But the critic did not understand Novalis' words:
("He is cleaned out," he thought.)
Christophe did not try to make him understand.
When his visitors were ready to go he walked with them a little, so as
to do the honors of his mountain. But he did not go far. Looking down at
a field, the musical critic called to mind the scenery of a Parisian
theater: and the painter criticised the colors, mercilessly remarking on
the awkwardness of their combination, and declaring that to him they had
a Swiss flavor, sour, like rhubarb, musty and dull, _à la_ Hodler;
further, he displayed an indifference to Nature which was not altogether
affectation. He pretended to ignore Nature.
"Nature! What on earth is Nature? I don't know. Light, color, very well!
But I don't care a hang for Nature!"
Christophe shook hands with them and let them go. That sort of thing had
no effect on him now. They were on the other side of the ravine. That
was well. He said to nobody in particular:
"If you wish to come up to me, you must take the same road."