Romain Rolland Part 9

CHAPTER V

KEY TO THE CHARACTERS

As a romance, _Jean Christophe_ has no prototype in literature; but the characters in the book have prototypes in real life. Rolland the historian does not hesitate to borrow some of the lineaments of his heroes from the biographies of great men. In many cases, too, the figures he portrays recall personalities in contemporary life. In a manner peculiar to himself, by a process of which he was the originator, he combines the imaginative with the historical, fusing individual qualities in a new synthesis. His delineations tend to be mosaics, rather than entirely new imaginative creations. In ultimate a.n.a.lysis, his method of literary composition invariably recalls the work of a musical composer; he paraphrases thematic reminiscences, without imitating too closely. The reader of _Jean Christophe_ often fancies that, as in a key-novel, he has recognized some public personality; but ere long he finds that the characteristics of another figure intrude.

Thus each portrait is freshly constructed out of a hundred diverse elements.

Jean Christophe seems at first to be Beethoven. Seippel has aptly described _La vie de Beethoven_ as a preface to _Jean Christophe_. In truth the opening volumes of the novel show us a Jean Christophe whose image is modeled after that of the great master. But it becomes plain in due course that we are being shown something more than one single musician, that Jean Christophe is the quintessence of all great musicians. The figures in the pantheon of musical history are presented in a composite portrait; or, to use a musical a.n.a.logy, Beethoven, the master musician, is the root of the chord. Jean Christophe grew up in the Rhineland, Beethoven's home; Jean Christophe, like Beethoven, had Flemish blood in his veins; his mother, too, was of peasant origin, his father a drunkard. Nevertheless, Jean Christophe exhibits numerous traits proper to Friedemann Bach, son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Again, the letter which young Beethoven redivivus is made to write to the grand duke is modeled on the historical doc.u.ment; the episode of his acquaintances.h.i.+p with Frau von Kerich recalls Beethoven and Frau von Breuning. But many incidents, like the scene in the castle, remind the reader of Mozart's youth; and Mozart's little love episode with Rose Cannab.i.+.c.h is transferred to the life of Jean Christophe. The older Jean Christophe grows, the less does his personality recall that of Beethoven. In external characteristics he grows rather to resemble Gluck and Handel. Of the latter, Rolland writes elsewhere that "his formidable bluntness alarmed every one." Word for word we can apply to Jean Christophe, Rolland's description of Handel: "He was independent and irritable, and could never adapt himself to the conventions of social life. He insisted on calling a spade a spade, and twenty times a day he aroused annoyance in all who had to a.s.sociate with him." The life history of Wagner had much influence upon the delineation of Jean Christophe. The rebellious flight to Paris, a flight originating, as Nietzsche phrases it, "from the depths of instinct"; the hack-work done for minor publishers; the sordid details of daily life--all these things have been transposed almost verbatim into _Jean Christophe_ from Wagner's autobiographical sketches _Ein deutscher Musiker in Paris_.

Ernst Decsey's life of Hugo Wolf was, however, decisive in its influence upon the configuration of the leading character in Rolland's book, upon the almost violent departure from the picture of Beethoven. Not merely do we find individual incidents taken from Decsey's book, such as the hatred for Brahms, the visit paid to Ha.s.sler (Wagner), the musical criticism published in "_Dionysos_" ("_Wiener Salonblatt_"), the tragi-comedy of the unsuccessful overture to _Penthesilea_, and the memorable visit to Professor Schulz (Emil Kaufmann). Furthermore, Wolf's whole character, his method of musical creation, is transplanted into the soul of Jean Christophe. His primitive force of production, the volcanic eruptions flooding the world with melody, shooting forth into eternity four songs in the s.p.a.ce of a day, with subsequent months of inactivity, the brusque transition from the joyful activity of creation to the gloomy brooding of inertia--this form of genius which was native to Hugo Wolf becomes part of the tragical equipment of Jean Christophe.

Whereas his physical characteristics remind us of Handel, Beethoven, and Gluck, his mental type is a.s.similated rather in its convulsive energy to that of the great song-writer. With this difference, that to Jean Christophe, in his more brilliant hours, there is superadded the cheerful serenity, the childlike joy, of Schubert. He has a dual nature.

Jean Christophe is the cla.s.sical type and the modern type of musician combined into a single personality, so that he contains even many of the characteristics of Gustav Mahler and Cesar Frank. He is not an individual musician, the figure of one living in a particular generation; he is the sublimation of music as a whole.

Nevertheless, in Jean Christophe's life we find incidents deriving from the adventures of those who were not musicians. From Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ comes the encounter with the French players; I have already said that the story of Tolstoi's last days was represented in Jean Christophe's flight into the forest (though in this latter case, from the figure of a benighted traveler, Nietzsche's countenance glances at us for a moment). Grazia typifies the well-beloved who never dies; Antoinette is a picture of Renan's sister Henriette; Francoise Oudon, the actress, recalls Eleanora Duse, but in certain respects she reminds us of Suzanne Depres. Emmanuel contains, in addition to traits that are purely imaginary, lineaments that are drawn respectively from Charles Louis Philippe and Charles Peguy; among the minor figures, lightly sketched, we seem to see Debussy, Verhaeren, and Moreas. When _La foire sur la place_ was published, the figures of Roussin the deputy, Levy-Coeur, the critic, Gamache the newspaper proprietor, and Hecht the music seller, hurt the feelings of not a few persons against whom no shafts had been aimed by Rolland. The portraits had been painted from studies of the commonplace, and typified the incessantly recurring mediocrities which are eternally real no less than are figures of exquisite rarity.

One portrait, however, that of Olivier, would seem to have been purely fictive. For this very reason, Olivier is felt to be the most living of all the characters, precisely because we cannot but feel that in many respects we have before us the artist's own picture, displaying not so much the circ.u.mstantial destiny as the human essence of Romain Rolland.

Like the cla.s.sical painters, he has, almost unmarked, introduced himself slightly disguised amid the historical scenario. The description is that of his own figure, slender, refined, slightly stooping; here we see his own energy, inwardly directed, and consuming itself in idealism; Rolland's enthusiasm is displayed in Olivier's lucid sense of justice, in his resignation as far as his personal lot is concerned, though he never resigns himself to the abandonment of his cause. It is true that in the novel this gentle spirit, the pupil of Tolstoi and Renan, leaves the field of action to his friend, and vanishes, the symbol of a past world. But Jean Christophe was merely a dream, the longing for energy sometimes felt by the man of gentle disposition. Olivier-Rolland limns this dream of his youth, designing upon his literary canvas the picture of his own life.

CHAPTER VI

A HEROIC SYMPHONY

An abundance of figures and events, an impressive multiplicity of contrasts, are united by a single element, music. In _Jean Christophe_, music is the form as well as the content. For the sake of simplicity we have to call the work a romance or a novel. But nowhere can it be said to attach to the epic tradition of any previous writers of romance: whether to that of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, who aimed at a.n.a.lyzing society into its chemical elements; or to that of Goethe, Gottfried Keller, and Stendhal, who sought to secure a crystallization of the soul. Rolland is neither a narrator, nor what may be termed a poetical romancer; he is a musician who weaves everything into harmony. In ultimate a.n.a.lysis, _Jean Christophe_ is a symphony born out of the spirit of music, just as in Nietzsche's view cla.s.sical tragedy was born out of that spirit; its laws are not those of the narrative, of the lecture, but those of controlled emotion. Rolland is a musician, not an epic poet.

Even qua narrator, Rolland does not possess what we term style. He does not write a cla.s.sical French; he has no stable architechtonic in his sentences, no definite rhythm, no typical hue in his wording, no diction peculiar to himself. His personality does not obtrude itself, since he does not form the matter but is formed thereby. He possesses an inspired power of adaptation to the rhythm of the events he is describing, to the mood of the situation. The writer's mind acts as a resonator. In the opening lines the tempo is set. Then the rhythm surges on through the scene, carrying with it the episodes, which often seem like individual brief poems each sustained by its own melody--songs and airs which appear and pa.s.s, rapidly giving place to new movements. Some of the preludes in _Jean Christophe_ are examples of pure song-craft, delicate arabesques and capriccios, islands of tone amid the roaring sea; then come other moods, gloomy ballads, nocturnes breathing elemental energy and sadness. When Rolland's writing is the outcome of musical inspiration, he shows himself one of the masters of language. At times, however, he speaks to us as historian, as critical student of the age. Then the splendor fades. Such historical and critical pa.s.sages are like the periods of cold recitative in musical drama, periods which are requisite in order to give continuity to the story, and which thus fulfill an intellectual need, however much our aroused feelings may make us regret their interpolation. The ancient conflict between the musician and the historian persists unreconciled in Rolland's work.

Only through the spirit of music can the architectonic of _Jean Christophe_ be understood. However plastic the elaboration of the characters, their effective force is displayed solely in so far as they are thematically interwoven into the resounding tide of life's modulations. The essential matter is always the rhythm which these characters emit, and which issues most powerfully of all from Jean Christophe, the master of music. The structure, the inner architectural conception of the work, cannot be understood by those who merely contemplate its obvious subdivision into ten volumes. This is dictated by the exigencies of book production. The essential caesuras are those between the lesser sections, each of which is written in a different key. Only a trained musician, one familiar with the great symphonies, can follow in detail the way in which the epic poem _Jean Christophe_ is constructed as a symphony, an Eroica; only a musician can realize how in this work the most comprehensive type of musical composition is transposed into the world of speech.

Let the reader recall the chorale-like undertone, the booming note of the Rhine. We seem to be listening to some primal energy, to the stream of life in its roaring progress through eternity. A little melody rises above the general roar. Jean Christophe, the child, has been born out of the great music of the universe, to fuse in turn with the endless stream of sound. The first figures make a dramatic entry; the mystical chorale gradually subsides; the mortal drama of childhood begins. By degrees the stage is filled with personalities, with melodies; voices answer the lisping syllables of Jean Christophe; until, finally, the virile tones of Jean Christophe and the gentler voice of Olivier come to dominate the theme. Meanwhile, all the forms of life and music are unfolded in concords and discords. Thus we have the tragical outbreaks of a melancholy like that of Beethoven; fugues upon the themes of art; vigorous dance scenes, as in _Le buisson ardent_; odes to the infinite and songs to nature, pure like those of Schubert. Wonderful is the interconnection of the whole, and marvelous is the way in which the tide of sound ebbs once more. The dramatic tumult subsides; the last discords are resolved into the great harmony. In the final scene, the opening melody recurs, to the accompaniment of invisible choirs; the roaring river flows out into the limitless sea.

Thus _Jean Christophe_, the Eroica, ends in a chorale to the infinite powers of life, ends in the undying ocean of music. Rolland wished to convey the notion of these eternal forces of life symbolically through the imagery of the element which for us mortals brings us into closest contact with the infinite; he wished to typify these forces in the art which is timeless, which is free, which knows nothing of national limitations, which is eternal. Thus music is at once the form and the content of the work, "simultaneously its kernel and its sh.e.l.l," as Goethe said of nature. Nature is ever the law of laws for art.

CHAPTER VII

THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK

_Jean Christophe_ took the form of a book of life rather than that of a romance of art, for Rolland does not make a specific distinction between poietic types of men and those devoid of creative genius, but inclines rather to see in the artist the most human among men. Just as for Goethe, true life was identical with activity; so for Rolland, true life is identical with production. One who shuts himself away, who has no surplus being, who fails to radiate energy that shall flow beyond the narrow limits of his individuality to become part of the vital energy of the future, is doubtless still a human being, but is not genuinely alive. There may occur a death of the soul before the death of the body, just as there is a life that outlasts one's own life. The real boundary across which we pa.s.s from life to extinction is not const.i.tuted by physical death but the cessation of effective influence. Creation alone is life. "There is only one delight, that of creation. Other joys are but shadows, alien to the world though they hover over the world. Desire is creative desire; for love, for genius, for action. One and all are born out of ardor. It matters not whether we are creating in the sphere of the body or in the sphere of the spirit. Ever, in creation, we are seeking to escape from the prison of the body, to throw ourselves into the storm of life, to be as G.o.ds. To create is to slay death."

Creation, therefore, is the meaning of life, its secret, its innermost kernel. While Rolland almost always chooses an artist for his hero, he does not make this choice in the arrogance of the romance writer who likes to contrast the melancholy genius with the dull crowd. His aim is to draw nearer to the primal problems of existence. In the work of art, transcending time and s.p.a.ce, the eternal miracle of generation out of nothing (or out of the all) is made manifest to the senses, while simultaneously its mystery is made plain to the intelligence. For Rolland, artistic creation is the problem of problems precisely because the artist is the most human of men. Everywhere Rolland threads his way through the obscure labyrinth of creative work, that he may draw near to the burning moment of spiritual receptivity, to the painful act of giving birth. He watches Michelangelo shaping pain in stone; Beethoven bursting forth in melody; Tolstoi listening to the heart-beat of doubt in his own laden breast. To each, Jacob's angel is revealed in a different form, but for all alike the ecstatic force of the divine struggle continues to burn. Throughout the years, Rolland's sole endeavor has been to discover this ultimate type of artist, this primitive element of creation, much as Goethe was in search of the archetypal plant. Rolland wishes to discover the essential creator, the essential act of creation, for he knows that in this mystery are comprised the root and the blossoms of the whole of life's enigma.

As historian he had depicted the birth of art in humanity. Now, as poet, he was approaching the same problem in a different form, and was endeavoring to depict the birth of art in one individual. In his _Histoire de l'opera avant Lully et Scarlatti_, and in his _Musiciens d'autrefois_, he had shown how music, "blossoming throughout the ages,"

begins to form its buds; and how, grafted upon different racial stems and upon different periods, it grows in new forms. But here begins the mystery of creation. Every beginning is wrapped in obscurity; and since the path of all mankind is symbolically indicated in each individual, the mystery recurs in each individual's experience. Rolland is aware that the intellect can never unravel this ultimate mystery. He does not share the views of the monists, for whom creation has become trivialized to a mechanical effect which they would explain by talking of primitive gases and by similar verbiage. He knows that nature is modest, and that in her secret hours of generation she would fain elude observation; he knows that we are unable to watch her at work in those moments when crystal is joining to crystal, and when flowers are springing out of the buds. Nothing does she hide more jealously than her inmost magic, everlasting procreation, the very secret of infinity.

Creation, therefore, the life of life, is for Rolland a mystic power, far transcending human will and human intelligence. In every soul there lives, side by side with the conscious individuality, a stranger as guest. "Man's chief endeavor since he became man has been to build up dams that shall control this inner sea by the powers of reason and religion. But when a storm comes (and those most plenteously endowed are peculiarly subject to such storms), the elemental powers are set free."

Hot waves flood the soul, streaming forth out of the unconscious; not out of the will, but against the will; out of a super-will. This "dualism of the soul and its daimon" cannot be overcome by the clear light of reason. The energy of the creative spirit surges from the depths of the blood, often from parents and remoter progenitors, not entering through the doors and windows of the normal waking consciousness, but permeating the whole being as atmospheric spirits may be conceived to do. Of a sudden the artist is seized as by intoxication, inspired by a will independent of the will, subjected to the power "of the ineffable riddle of the world and of life," as Goethe terms the daimonic. The divine breaks upon him like a hurricane; or opens before him like an abyss, "dieu abime," into which he hurls himself unreflectingly. In Rolland's sense, we must not say that the true artist has his art, but that the art has the artist. Art is the hunter, the artist is the quarry; art is the victor, whereas the artist is happy in that he is again and again and forever the vanquished. Thus before creation we must have the creator. Genius is predestined. At work in the channels of the blood, while the senses still slumber, this power from without prepares the great magic for the child. Wonderful is Rolland's description of the way in which Jean Christophe's soul was already filled with music before he had heard the first notes. The daimon is there within the youthful breast, awaiting but a sign before stirring, before making himself known to the kindred spirit within the dual soul.

When the boy, holding his grandfather's hand, enters the church and is greeted by an outburst of music from the organ, the genius within acclaims the work of the distant brother and the child is filled with joy. Again, driving in a carriage, and listening to the melodious rhythm of the horse's hoofs, his heart goes out in unconscious brotherhood to the kindred element. Then comes one of the most beautiful pa.s.sages in the book, probably the most beautiful of those treating of music. The little Jean Christophe clambers on to the music stool in front of the black chest filled with magic, and for the first time thrusts his fingers into the unending thicket of concords and discords, where each note that he strikes seems to answer yes or no to the unconscious questions of the stranger's voice within him. Soon he learns to produce the tones he desires to hear. At first the airs had sought him out, but now he can seek them out. His soul which, thirsting for music, has long been eagerly drinking in its strains, now flows forth creatively over the barriers into the world.

This inborn daimon in the artist grows with the child, ripens with the man, and ages as the man grows old. Like a vampire it is nourished by all the experiences of its host, drinking his joys and his sorrows, gradually sucking up all the life into itself, so that for the creative human being nothing more remains but the eternal thirst and the torment of creation. In Rolland's sense the artist does not will to create, but must create. For him, production is not (as Nordau and Nordau's congeners fancy in their simplicity) a morbid outgrowth, an abnormality of life, but the only true health; unproductivity is disease. Never has the torment of the lack of inspiration been more splendidly described than in _Jean Christophe_. The soul in such cases is like a parched land under a torrid sun, and its need is worse than death. No breath of wind brings coolness; everything withers; joy and energy fade; the will is utterly relaxed. Suddenly comes a storm out of the swiftly overcast heavens, the thunder of the burgeoning power, the lightning of inspiration; the stream wells up from inexhaustible springs, carrying the soul along with it in eternal desire; the artist has become the whole world, has become G.o.d, the creator of all the elements. Whatever he encounters, he sweeps along with him in his rush; "tout lui est pretexte a sa fecondite intarissable"; everything is material for his inexhaustible fertility. He transforms the whole of life into art; like Jean Christophe he transforms his death into a symphony.

In order to grasp life in its entirety, Rolland has endeavored to describe the profoundest mystery of life; to describe creation, the origin of the all, the development of art in an artist. He has furnished a vivid description of the tie between creation and life, which weaklings are so eager to avoid. Jean Christophe is simultaneously the working genius and the suffering man; he suffers through creation, and creates through suffering. For the very reason that Rolland is himself a creator, the imaginary figure of Jean Christophe, the artist, is transcendently alive.

CHAPTER VIII

JEAN CHRISTOPHE

Art has many forms, but its highest form is always that which is most intimately akin to nature in its laws and its manifestations. True genius works elementally, works naturally, is wide as the world and manifold as mankind. It creates out of its own abundance, not out of weakness. Its perennial effect, therefore, is to create more strength, to glorify nature, and to raise life above its temporal confines into infinity.

Jean Christophe is inspired with such genius. His name is symbolical.

Jean Christophe Krafft is himself energy (Kraft), the indefatigable energy that springs from peasant ancestry. It is the energy which is hurled into life like a projectile, the energy that forcibly overcomes every obstacle. Now, as long as we identify the concept of life with quiescent being, with inactive existence, with things as they are, this force of nature must be ever at war with life. For Rolland, however, life is not the quiescent, but the struggle against quiescence; it is creation, poiesis, the eternal, upward and onward impulse against the inertia of "the perpetual as-you-were." Among artists, one who is a fighter, an innovator, must necessarily be such a genius. Around him stand other artists engaged in comparatively peaceful activities, the contemplators, the sage observers of that which is, the completers of the extant, the imperturbable organizers of accomplished facts. They, the heirs of the past, have repose; he, the precursor, has storm. It is his lot to transform life into a work of art; he cannot enjoy life as a work of art; first he must create life as he would have it, create its form, its tradition, its ideal, its truth, its G.o.d. Nothing for him is ready-made; he has eternally to begin. Life does not welcome him into a warm house, where he can forthwith make himself at home. For him, life is but plastic material for a new edifice, wherein those who come after will live. Such a man, therefore, knows nothing of repose. "Work unrestingly," says his G.o.d to him; "you must fight ceaselessly."

Obedient to the injunction, from boyhood to the day of his death he follows this path, fighting without truce, the flaming sword of the will in his hand. Often he grows weary, wondering whether struggle must indeed be unending, asking himself with Job whether his days be not "like the days of an hireling." But soon, shaking off lethargy, he recognizes that "we cannot be truly alive while we continue to ask why we live; we must live life for its own sake." He knows that labor is its own reward. In an hour of illumination he sums up his destiny in the splendid phrase: "I do not seek peace; I seek life."

But struggle implies the use of force. Despite his natural kindliness of disposition, Jean Christophe is an apostle of force. We discern in him something barbaric and elemental, the power of a storm or of a torrent which, obeying not its own will but the unknown laws of nature, rushes down from the heights into the lower levels of life. His outward aspect is that of a fighter. He is tall and ma.s.sive, almost uncouth, with large hands and brawny arms. He has the sanguine temperament, and is liable to outbursts of turbulent pa.s.sion. His footfall is heavy; his gait is awkward, though he knows nothing of fatigue. These characteristics derive from the crude energy of his peasant forefathers on the maternal side; their pristine strength gives him steadfastness in the most arduous crises of existence. "Well is it with him who amid the mishaps of life is sustained by the power of a st.u.r.dy stock, so that the feet of father and grandfathers may carry forward the son when he grows weary, so that the vigorous growth of more robust forebears may relift the crushed soul." The power of resilence against the oppression of existence is given by such physical energy. Still more helpful is Jean Christophe's trust in the future, his healthy and unyielding optimism, his invincible confidence in victory. "I have centuries to look forward to," he cries exultantly in an hour of disillusionment. "Hail to life!

Hail to joy!" From the German race he inherits Siegfried's confidence in success, and for this reason he is ever a fighter. He knows, "le genie veut l'obstacle, l'obstacle fait le genie"--genius desires obstacles, for obstacles create genius.

Force, however, is always wilful Young Jean Christophe, while his energies have not yet been spiritually enlightened, have not yet been ethically tamed, can see no one but himself. He is unjust towards others, deaf and blind to remonstrance, indifferent as to whether his actions may please or displease. Like a woodcutter, ax in hand, he hastes stormfully through the forest, striking right and left, simply to secure light and s.p.a.ce for himself. He despises German art without understanding it, and scorns French art without knowing anything about it. He is endowed with "the marvelous impudence of opinionated youth"; that of the undergraduate who says, "the world did not exist till I created it." His strength has its fling in contentiousness; for only when struggling does he feel that he is himself, then only can he enjoy his pa.s.sion for life.

These struggles of Jean Christophe continue throughout the years, for his maladroitness is no less conspicuous than his strength. He does not understand his opponents. He is slow to learn the lessons of life; and it is precisely because the lessons are learned so slowly, piece by piece, each stage besprinkled with blood and watered with tears, that the novel is so impressive and so full of help. Nothing comes easily to him; no ripe fruit ever falls into his hands. He is simple like Parsifal, naive, somewhat boisterous and provincial. Instead of rubbing off his angularities upon the grindstones of social life, he bruises himself by his clumsy movements. He is an intuitive genius, not a psychologist; he foresees nothing, but must endure all things before he can know. "He had not the hawklike glance of Frenchmen and Jews, who discern the most trifling characteristics of all that they see. He silently absorbed everything he came in contact with, as a sponge absorbs. Not until days or hours had elapsed would he become fully aware of what had now become a part of himself." Nothing was real to him so long as it remained objective. To be of use, every experience must be, as it were, digested and worked up into his blood. He could not exchange ideas and concepts one for another as people exchange bank notes. After prolonged nausea, he was able to free himself from all the conventional lies and trivial notions which had been instilled into him in youth, and was then at length enabled to absorb fresh nutriment. Before he could know France, he had to strip away all her masks one after another; before he could reach Grazia, "the well-beloved who never dies," he had to make his way through less lofty adventures. Before he could discover himself and before he could discover his G.o.d, he had to live the whole of his life through. Not until he reaches the other sh.o.r.e does Christophorus recognize that his burden has been a message.

He knows that "it is good to suffer when one is strong," and he therefore loves to encounter hindrances. "Everything great is good, and the extremity of pain borders on enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The only thing that crushes irremediably, the only thing that destroys the soul, is mediocrity of pain and joy." He gradually learns to recognize his enemy, his own impetuosity; he learns to be just; he begins to understand himself and the world. The nature of pa.s.sion becomes clear to him. He realizes that the hostility he encounters is aimed, not at him personally, but at the eternal powers goading him on; he learns to love his enemies because they have helped him to find himself, and because they march towards the same goal by other roads. The years of apprentices.h.i.+p have come to an end. As Schiller admirably puts it in the above-quoted letter to Goethe: "Years of apprentices.h.i.+p are a relative concept. They imply their correlative, which is mastery. The idea of mastery is presupposed to elucidate and ground the idea of apprentices.h.i.+p." Jean Christophe, in riper years, begins to see that through all his transformations he has by degrees become more truly himself. Preconceptions have been cast aside; he has been freed from beliefs and illusions, freed from the prejudices of race and nationality. He is free and yet pious, now that he grasps the meaning of the path he has to tread. In the frank and noisy optimism of youth, he had exclaimed, "What is life? A tragedy. Hurrah!" Now, "transfigure par la foi," this optimism has been transformed into a gentle, all-embracing wisdom. His freethinker's confessions runs: "To serve G.o.d and to love G.o.d, signifies to serve life and to love life." He hears the footsteps of coming generations. Even in those who are hostile to him he salutes the undying spirit of life. He sees his fame growing like a great cathedral, and feels it be to something remote from himself. He who was an aimless stormer, is now a leader; but his own goal does not become clear to him until the sonorous waves of death encompa.s.s him, and he floats away into the vast ocean of music, into eternal peace.

What makes Jean Christophe's struggle supremely heroic is that he aspires solely towards the greatest, towards life as a whole. This striving man has to upbuild everything for himself; his art, his freedom, his faith, his G.o.d, his truth. He has to fight himself free from everything which others have taught him; from all the fellows.h.i.+ps of art, nationality, race, and creed. His ardor never wrestles for any personal end, for success or for pleasure. "Il n'y a aucun rapport entre la pa.s.sion et le plaisir." Jean Christophe's loneliness makes this struggle tragical. It is not on his own behalf that he troubles to attain to truth, for he knows that every man has his own truth. When, nevertheless, he becomes a helper of mankind, this is not by words, but by his own essential nature, which exercises a marvelously harmonizing influence in virtue of his vigorous goodness. Whoever comes into contact with him--the imaginary personalities in the book, and no less the real human beings who read the book--is the better for having known him. The power through which he conquers is that of the life which we all share.

And inasmuch as we love him, we grow enabled to cherish an ardent love for the world of mankind.

CHAPTER IX

OLIVIER

Jean Christophe is the portrait of an artist. But every form and every formula of art and the artist must necessarily be one-sided. Rolland, therefore, introduces to Christophe in mid career, "nel mezzo del cammin," a counterpart, a Frenchman as foil to the German, a hero of thought as contrast to the hero of action. Jean Christophe and Olivier are complementary figures, attracting one another in virtue of the law of polarity. "They were very different each from the other, and they loved one another on account of this difference, being of the same species"--the n.o.blest. Olivier is the essence of spiritual France, just as Jean Christophe is the offspring of the best energies of Germany; they are ideals, alike fas.h.i.+oned in the form of the highest ideal; alternating like major and minor, they transpose the theme of art and life into the most wonderful variations.

In externals the contrast between them is marked, both in respect of physical characteristics and social origins. Olivier is slightly built, pale and delicate. Whereas Jean Christophe springs from working folk, Olivier derives from an old and somewhat effete bourgeois stock, and despite all his ardor he has an aristocratic aloofness from vulgar things. His vitality does not come like that of his robust comrade from excess of bodily energy, from muscles and blood, but from nerves and brain, from will and pa.s.sion. He is receptive rather than productive.

"He was ivy, a gentle soul which must always love and be loved." Art is for him a refuge from reality, whereas Jean Christophe flings himself upon art to find in it life many times multiplied. In Schiller's sense of the terms, Olivier is the sentimental artist, whilst his German brother is the naive genius. Olivier represents the beauty of a civilization; he is symbolic of "la vaste culture et le genie psychologique de la France"; Jean Christophe is the very luxuriance of nature. The Frenchman represents contemplation; the German, action. The former reflects by many facets; the latter has the genius which s.h.i.+nes by its own light. Olivier "transfers to the sphere of thought all the energies that he has drawn from action," producing ideas where Christophe radiates vitality, and wis.h.i.+ng to improve, not the world, but himself. It suffices him to fight out within himself the eternal struggle of responsibility. He contemplates unmoved the play of secular forces, looking on with the skeptical smile of his teacher Renan, as one who knows in advance that the perpetual return of evil is inevitable, that nothing can avert the eternal victory of injustice and wrong. His love, therefore, goes out to humanity, the abstract idea, and not to actual men, the unsatisfactory realizations of that idea.