its comfortable warmth was still in Christophe's heart. He knew that the
fire would flare up again: if not in himself, then around him. Wherever
it might be, he would love it just the same: it would always be the same
fire. On that September evening he could feel it burning throughout all
Nature.
* * * * *
He climbed up to the house. There had been a storm. The sun had come out
again. The fields were steaming. The ripe fruit was falling from the
apple-trees into the wet grass. Spiders' webs, hanging from the branches
of the trees, still glittering with the rain, were like the ancient
wheels of Mycenaean chariots. At the edge of the dripping forest the
green woodpecker was trilling his jerky laughter; and myriads of little
wasps, dancing in the sunbeams, filled the vault of the woods with their
deep, long-drawn organ note.
Christophe came to a clearing, in the hollow of a shoulder of the
mountain, a little valley shut in at both ends, a perfect oval in shape,
which was flooded with the light of the setting sun: the earth was red:
in the midst lay a little golden field of belated crops, and
rust-colored rushes. Round about it was a girdle of the woods with their
ripe autumn tints: ruddy copper beeches, pale yellow chestnuts, rowans
with their coral berries, flaming cherry-trees with their little tongues
of fire, myrtle-bushes with their leaves of orange and lemon and brown
and burnt tinder. It was like a burning bush. And from the heart of the
flaring cup rose and soared a lark, drunk with the berries and the sun.
And Christophe's soul was like the lark. It knew that it would soon come
down to earth again, and many times. But it knew also that it would
unwearyingly ascend in the fire, singing its "tirra-lirra" which tells
of the light of the heavens to those who are on earth below.
THE NEW DAWN
HERE, AT THE END OF THIS BOOK,
I DEDICATE IT:
TO THE FREE SPIRITS--OF ALL NATIONS--
WHO SUFFER, FIGHT, AND
WILL PREVAIL.
R. R.
PREFACE TO THE LAST VOLUME
OF
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
I have written the tragedy of a generation which is nearing its end. I
have sought to conceal neither its vices nor its virtues, its profound
sadness, its chaotic pride, its heroic efforts, its despondency beneath
the overwhelming burden of a superhuman task, the burden of the whole
world, the reconstruction of the world's morality, its esthetic
principles, its faith, the forging of a new humanity.--Such we have
been.
You young men, you men of to-day, march over us, trample us under your
feet, and press onward. Be ye greater and happier than we.
For myself, I bid the soul that was mine farewell. I cast it from me
like an empty shell. Life is a succession of deaths and resurrections.
We must die, Christophe, to be born again,
ROMAIN ROLLAND.
October, 1912.
[Illustration: Musical notation with caption: Du holde Kunst, in wie
viel grauen Stunden]
Life passes. Body and soul flow onward like a stream. The years are
written in the flesh of the ageing tree. The whole visible world of form
is forever wearing out and springing to new life. Thou only dost not
pass, immortal music. Thou art the inward sea. Thou art the profound
depths of the soul. In thy clear eyes the scowling face of life is not
mirrored. Far, far from thee, like the herded clouds, flies the
procession of days, burning, icy, feverish, driven by uneasiness,
huddling, moving on, on, never for one moment to endure. Thou only dost
not pass. Thou art beyond the world. Thou art a whole world to thyself.
Thou hast thy sun, thy laws, thy ebb and flow. Thou hast the peace of
the stars in the great spaces of the field of night, marking their
luminous track-plows of silver guided by the sure hand of the invisible
ox-herd.
Music, serene music, how sweet is thy moony light to eyes wearied of the
harsh brilliance of this world's sun! The soul that has lived and turned
away from the common horse-pond, where, as they drink, men stir up the
mud with their feet, nestles to thy bosom, and from thy breasts is
suckled with the clear running water of dreams. Music, thou virgin
mother, who in thy immaculate womb bearest the fruit of all passions,
who in the lake of thy eyes, whereof the color is as the color of
rushes, or as the pale green glacier water, enfoldest good and evil,
thou art beyond evil, thou art beyond good; he that taketh refuge with
thee is raised above the passing of time: the succession of days will be
but one day; and death that devours everything on such an one will never
close its jaws.
Music, thou who hast rocked my sorrow-laden soul; music, thou who hast
made me firm in strength, calm and joyous,--my love and my treasure,--I
kiss thy pure lips, I hide my face in thy honey-sweet hair. I lay my
burning eyelids upon the cool palms of thy hands. No word we speak, our
eyes are closed, and I see the ineffable light of thine eyes, and I
drink the smile of thy silent lips: and, pressed close to thy heart, I
listen to the throb of eternal life.
I
Christophe loses count of the fleeting years. Drop by drop life ebbs
away. But _his_ life is elsewhere. It has no history. His history
lies wholly in his creative work. The unceasing buzzing song of music
fills his soul, and makes him insensible to the outward tumult.
Christophe has conquered. His name has been forced upon the world. He is
ageing. His hair is white. That is nothing to him, his heart is ever
young: he has surrendered none of his force, none of his faith. Once
more he is calm, but not as he was before he passed by the Burning Bush.
In the depths of his soul there is still the quivering of the storm, the
memory of his glimpse into the abyss of the raging seas. He knows that
no man may boast of being master of himself without the permission of
the God of battle. In his soul there are two souls. One is a high
plateau swept by winds and shrouded with, clouds. The other, higher
still, is a snowy peak bathed in light. There it is impossible to dwell;
but, when he is frozen by the mists on the lower ground, well he knows
the path that leads to the sun. In his misty soul Christophe is not
alone. Near him he ever feels the presence of an invisible friend, the
sturdy Saint Cecilia, listening with wide, calm eyes to the heavens;
and, like the Apostle Paul,--in Raphael's picture,--silent and
dreaming, leaning on his sword, he is beyond exasperation, and has no
thought of fighting: he dreams, and forges his dreams into form.
During this period of his life he mostly wrote piano and chamber music.
In such work he was more free to dare and be bold: it necessitated fewer
intermediaries between his ideas and their realization; his ideas were
less in danger of losing force in the course of their percolation.
Frescobaldi, Couperin, Schubert, and Chopin, in their boldness of
expression and style, anticipated the revolutionaries in orchestral
music by fifty years. Out of the crude stuff shaped by Christophe's
strong hands came strange and unknown agglomerations of harmony,
bewildering combinations of chords, begotten of the remotest kinships of
sounds accessible to the senses in these days; they cast a magical and
holy spell upon the mind.--But the public must have time to grow
accustomed to the conquests and the trophies which a great artist brings
back with him from his quest in the deep waters of the ocean. Very few
would follow Christophe in the temerity of his later works. His fame was
due to his earlier compositions. The feeling of not being understood,
which is even more painful in success than in the lack of it, because
there seems to be no way out of it, had, since the death of his only
friend, aggravated in Christophe his rather morbid tendency to seek
isolation from the world.
However, the gates of Germany were open to him once more. In France the
tragic brawl had been forgotten. He was free to go whithersoever he
pleased. But he was afraid of the memories that would lie in wait for
him in Paris. And, although he had spent a few months in Germany and
returned there from time to time to conduct performances of his work, he
did not settle there. He found too many things which hurt him. They were
not particular to Germany: he found them elsewhere. But a man expects
more of his own country than any other, and he suffers more from its
foibles. It was true, too, that Germany was bearing the greatest burden
of the sins of Europe. The victor incurs the responsibility of his
victory, a debt towards the vanquished: tacitly the victor is pledged to
march in front of them to show them the way. The conquests of Louis XIV.
gave Europe the splendor of French reason. What light has the Germany of
Sedan given to the world? The glitter of bayonets? Thought without
wings, action without generosity, brutal realism, which has not even the
excuse of being the realism of healthy men; force and interest: Mars
turned bagman. Forty years ago Europe was led astray into the night, and
the terrors of the night. The sun was hidden beneath the conqueror's
helmet. If the vanquished are too weak to raise the extinguisher, and
can claim only pity mingled with contempt, what shall be given to the
victor who has done this thing?
A little while ago, day began to peep: little shafts of light shimmered
through the cracks. Being one of the first to see the rising of the sun,
Christophe had come out of the shadow of the helmet: gladly he returned
to the country in which he had been a sojourner perforce, to
Switzerland. Like so many of the spirits of that time, spirits thirsting
for liberty, choking in the narrowing circle of the hostile nations, he
sought a corner of the earth in which he could stand above Europe and
breathe freely. Formerly, in the days of Goethe, the Rome of the free
Popes was the island upon which all the winged thought of divers nations
came to rest, like birds taking shelter from the storm. Now what refuge
is there? The island has been covered by the sea. Rome is no more. The
birds have fled from the Seven Hills.--The Alps only are left for them.
There, amid the rapacity of Europe, stands (for how long?) the little
island of twenty-four cantons. In truth it has not the poetic radiance
and glamor of the Eternal City: history has not filled its air with the
breath of gods and heroes; but a mighty music rises from the naked
Earth; there is an heroic rhythm in the lines of the mountains, and
here, more than anywhere else, a man can feel himself in contact with
elemental forces. Christophe did not go there in search of romantic
pleasure. A field, a few trees, a stream, the wide sky, were enough to
make him feel alive. The calm aspect of his native country was sweeter
and more companionable to him than the gigantic grandeur of the Alps.
But he could not forget that it was here that he had renewed his
strength: here God had appeared to him in the Burning Bush; and he never
returned thither without a thrill of gratitude and faith. He was not the
only one. How many of the combatants of life, ground beneath life's
heel, have on that soil renewed their energy to turn again to the fight,
and believe once more in its purpose!
Living in that country he had come to know it well. The majority of
those who pass through it see only its excrescences: the leprosy of the
hotels which defiles the fairest features of that sturdy piece of earth,
the stranger cities, the monstrous marts whither all the fatted people
of the world come to browse, the _table d'hôte_ meals, the masses
of food flung into the trough for the nosing beasts: the casino bands
with their silly music mingling with the noise of the little horses, the
Italian scum whose disgusting uproar makes the bored wealthy idiots
wriggle with pleasure, the fatuous display of the shops--wooden bears,
chalets, silly knick-knacks, always the same, repeated time and again,
over and over again, with no freshness or invention; the worthy
booksellers with their scandalous pamphlets,--all the moral baseness of
those places whither every year the idle, joyless millions come who are
incapable of finding amusement in the smallest degree finer than that of
the multitude, or one tithe as keen.
And they know nothing of the people in whose land they stay. They have
no notion of the reserves of moral force and civic liberty which for
centuries have been hoarded up in them, coals of the fires of Calvin and
Zwingli, still glowing beneath the ashes; they have no conception of the
vigorous democratic spirit which will always ignore the Napoleonic
Republic, of the simplicity of their institutions, or the breadth of
their social undertakings, or the example given to the world by these
United States of the three great races of the West, the model of the
Europe of the future. Even less do they know of the Daphne concealed
beneath this rugged bark, the wild, flashing dreams of Boecklin, the
raucous heroism of Hodler, the serene vision and humor of Gottfried
Keller, the living tradition of the great popular festivals, and the sap
of springtime swelling the trees,--the still young art, sometimes
rasping to the palate, like the hard fruits of wild pear-trees,
sometimes with the sweetish insipidity of myrtles black and blue, but at
least something smacking of the earth, is the work of self-taught men
not cut off from the people by an archaic culture, but, with them,
reading in the same book of life.
Christophe was in sympathy with these men who strive less to seem than
to be, and, under the recent veneer of an ultramodern industrialism,
keep clearly marked the most reposeful features of the old Europe of
peasants and townsmen. Among them he had found a few good friends,
grave, serious, and faithful, who hold isolated and immured in them
regrets for the past; they were looking on at the gradual disappearance
of the old Switzerland with a sort of religious fatalism and Calvinistic
pessimism; great gray souls. Christophe seldom saw them. His old wounds
were apparently healed: but they had been too deep wholly to be cured.
He was fearful of forming new ties with men. It was something for this
reason that he liked to dwell in a country where it was easy to live
apart, a stranger amid a throng of strangers. For the rest he rarely
stayed long in any one place; often he changed his lair: he was like an
old migratory bird which needs space, and has its country in the air ...
_"Mein Reich ist in der Luft."_
An evening in summer.
He was walking in the mountains above a village. He was striding along
with his hat in his hand, up a winding road. He came to a neck where the
road took a double turn, and passed into shadow between two slopes; on
either side were nut-trees and pines. It was like a little shut-in
world. On either hand the road seemed to come to an end, cut off at the
edge of the void. Beyond were blue distance and the gleaming air. The
peace of evening came down like a gentle rain.
They came together each at the same moment turning the bend at either
end of the neck. She was dressed in black, and stood out against the
clear sky: behind her were two children, a boy and a girl, between six
and eight, who were playing and picking flowers. They recognized each
other at a distance of a few yards. Their emotion was visible in their
eyes; but neither brought it into words; each gave only an imperceptible
movement. He was deeply moved: she ... her lips trembled a little. They
stopped. Almost in a whisper:
"Grazia!"
"You here!"
They held out their hands and stood without a word. Grazia was the first
to make an effort to break the silence. She told him where she lived,
and asked him where he was staying. Question and answer were mechanical,
and they hardly listened, heard later, when their hands had parted: they
were absorbed in gazing at each other. The children came back to her.
She introduced them. He felt hostile towards them, and looked at them
with no kindness, and said nothing: he was engrossed with her, occupied
only in studying her beautiful face that bore some marks of suffering
and age. She was embarrassed by his gaze, and said:
"Will you come, this evening?"
And she gave the name of her hotel.
He asked her where her husband was. She pointed to her black dress. He
was too much moved to say more, and left her awkwardly. But when he had
taken a few strides he came back to the children, who were picking
strawberries, and took them roughly in his arms and kissed them, and
went away.
In the evening he went to the hotel, and found her on the veranda, with
the blinds drawn. They sat apart. There were very few people about, only
two or three old people. Christophe was irritated by their presence.
Grazia looked at him, and he looked at her, and murmured her name over
and over again.
"Don't you think I have changed?" she asked.
His heart grew big.
"You have suffered," he said.
"You too," she answered pityingly, scanning the deep marks of agony and
passion in his face.
They were at a loss for words.
"Please," he said, a moment later, "let us go somewhere else. Could we
not find somewhere to be alone and talk?"
"No, my dear. Let us stay here. It is good enough here. No one is
heeding us at all."
"I cannot talk freely here."
"That is all the better."
He could not understand why. Later, when in memory he went over their
conversation, he thought she had not trusted him. But she was
instinctively afraid of emotional scenes: unconsciously she was seeking
protection from any surprise of their hearts: the very awkwardness of
their intimacy in a public room, so sheltering the modesty of her secret
emotions, was dear to her.
In whispers, with long intervals of silence, they sketched their lives
in outline. Count Berény had been killed in a duel a few months ago; and
Christophe saw that she had not been very happy with him. Also, she had
lost a child, her first-born. She made no complaint, and turned the
conversation from herself to question Christophe, and, as he told her of
his tribulations, she showed the most affectionate compassion. Bells
rang. It was Sunday evening. Life stood still.
She asked him to come again next day but one. He was hurt that she
should be so little eager to see him again. In his heart happiness and
sorrow were mingled.
Next day, on some pretext, she wrote and asked him to come. He was
delighted with her little note. This time she received him in her
private room. She was with her two children. He looked at them, still a
little uneasily, but very tenderly. He thought the little girl--the
elder of the two--very like her mother: but he did not try to match the
boy's looks. They talked about the country, the times, the books lying
open on the table:--but their eyes spoke of other things. He was hoping
to be able to talk more intimately when a hotel acquaintance came in. He
marked the pleasure and politeness with which Grazia received the
stranger: she seemed to make no difference between her two visitors. He
was hurt by it, but could not be angry with her. She proposed that they
should all go for a walk and he accepted; the presence of the other woman,
though she was young and charming, paralyzed him: his day was spoiled.
He did not see Grazia again for two days. During that time he lived but
for the hours he was to spend with her.--Once more his efforts to speak
to her were doomed to failure. While she was very gentle and kind with
him, she could not throw off her reserve. All unconsciously Christophe
added to her difficulty by his outbursts of German sentimentality, which
embarrassed her and forced her instinct into reaction.
He wrote her a letter which touched her, saying that life was so short!
Their lives were already so far gone! Perhaps they would have only a
very little time in which to see each other, and it was pitiful, almost
criminal, not to employ it in frank converse.
She replied with a few affectionate words, begging him to excuse her for
her distrust, which she could not avoid, since she had been so much hurt
by life: she could not break her habitual reserve: any excessive
display, even of a genuine feeling, hurt and terrified her. But well she
knew the worth of the friendship that had come to her once more: and she
was as glad of it as he. She asked him to dine with her that evening.
His heart was brimming with gratitude. In his room, lying on his bed, he
sobbed. It was the opening of the flood-gates of ten years of solitude:
for, since Olivier's death, he had been utterly alone. Her letter gave
the word of resurrection to his heart that was so famished for
tenderness. Tenderness!... He thought he had put it from him: he had
been forced to learn how to do without it! Now he felt how sorely he
needed it, and the great stores of love that had accumulated in him....
It was a sweet and blessed evening that they spent together.... He
could only speak to her of trivial subjects, in spite of their intention
to hide nothing from each other. But what goodly things he told her
through the piano, which with her eyes she invited him to use to tell
her what he had to say! She was struck by the humility of the man whom
she had known in his violence and pride. When he went away the silent
pressure of their hands told them that they had found each other, and
would never lose what they had regained.--It was raining, and there was
not a breath of wind. His heart was singing.
She was only able to stay a few days longer, and she did not postpone
her departure for an hour. He dared not ask her to do so, nor complain.
On their last day they went for a walk with the children; there came a
moment when he was so full of love and happiness that he tried to tell
her so: but, with a very gentle gesture, she stopped him and smiled:
"Hush! I feel everything that you could say."
They sat down at the turn of the road where they had met. Still smiling
she looked down into the valley below: but it was not the valley that
she saw. He looked at the gentle face marked with the traces of bitter
suffering: a few white tresses showed in her thick black hair. He was
filled with a pitying, passionate adoration of this beloved creature who
had travailed and been impregnated with the suffering of the soul. In
every one of the marks of time upon her the soul was visible.--And, in a
low, trembling voice, he craved, as a precious favor, which she granted
him, a white hair from her head.
* * * * *
She went away. He could not understand why she would not have him
accompany her. He had no doubt of her feeling for him, but her reserve
disconcerted him. He could not stay alone in that place, and set out in
another direction. He tried to occupy his mind with traveling and work.
He wrote to Grazia. She answered him, two or three week later, with
very brief letters, in which she showed her tranquil friendship, knowing
neither impatience nor uneasiness. They hurt him and he loved them. He
would not admit that he had any right to reproach her; their affection
was too recent, too recently renewed. He was fearful of losing it. And
yet every letter he had from her breathed a calm loyalty which should
have made him feel secure. But she was so different from him!...
They had agreed to meet in Rome, towards the end of the autumn. Without
the thought of seeing her, the journey would have had little charm for
Christophe. His long isolation had made him retiring: he had no taste
for that futile hurrying from place to place which is so dear to the
indolence of modern men and women. He was fearful of a change of habit,
which is dangerous to the regular work of the mind. Besides, Italy had
no attractions for him. He knew it only in the villainous music of the
Verists and the tenor arias to which every now and then the land of
Virgil inspires men of letters on their travels. He felt towards Italy
the hostility of an advanced artist, who has too often heard the name of
Rome invoked by the worst champions of academic routine. Finally, the
old leaven of instinctive antipathy which ever lies fermenting in the
hearts of the men of the North towards the men of the South, or at least
towards the legendary type of rhetorical braggart which, in the eyes of
the men of the North, represents the men of the South. At the mere
thought of it Christophe disdainfully curled his lip.... No, he had no
desire for the more acquaintance of the musicless people--(for, in the
music of modern Europe, what is the place of their mandolin tinkling and
melodramatic posturing declamation?).--And yet Grazia belonged to this
people. To join her again, whither and by what devious ways would
Christophe not have gone? He would win through by shutting his eyes
until he came to her.
* * * * *