Chapter 32

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."

The creative fire which had been burning for months had died down. But 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.

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.