Jean-Christophe In Paris — THE MARKET-PLACE, III, part 1

III

Without any deliberate effort on his part, Christophe had gained a certain celebrity in the Parisian circles to which he had been introduced by Sylvain Kohn and Goujart.

He was seen everywhere with one or other of his friends at first nights, and at concerts, and his extraordinary face, his ugliness, the absurdity of his figure and costume, his brusque, awkward manners, the paradoxical opinions to which he gave vent from time to time, his undeveloped, but large and healthy intellect, and the romantic stories spread by Sylvain Kohn about his escapades in Germany, and his complications with the police and flight to France, had marked him out for the idle, restless curiosity of the great cosmopolitan hotel drawing-room that Paris has become.

As long as he held himself in check, observing, listening, and trying to understand before expressing any opinion, as long as nothing was known of his work or what he really thought, he was tolerated.

The French were pleased with him for having been unable to stay in Germany.

And the French musicians especially were delighted with Christophe's unjust pronouncements on German music, and took them all as homage to themselves:--(as a matter of fact, they heard only his old youthful opinions, to many of which he would no longer have subscribed: a few articles published in a German Review which had been amplified and circulated by Sylvain Kohn).

--Christophe was interesting and did not interfere with anybody: there was no danger of his supplanting anybody.

He needed only to become the great man of a coterie.

He needed only not to write anything, or as little as possible, and not to have anything performed, and to supply Goujart and his like with ideas, Goujart and the whole set of men whose motto is the famous quip--adapted a little: _"My glass is small: but I drink ...

the wine of others."

_ A strong personality sheds its rays especially on young people who are more concerned with feeling than with action.

There were plenty of young people about Christophe.

They were for the most part idle, will-less, aimless, purposeless.

Young men, living in dread of work, fearful of being left alone with themselves, who sought an armchair immortality, wandering from café to theater, from theater to café, finding all sorts of excuses for not going home, to avoid coming face to face with themselves.

They came and stayed for hours, dawdling, talking, making aimless conversation, and going away empty, aching, disgusted, satiated, and yet famishing, forced to go on with it in spite of loathing.

They surrounded Christophe, like Goethe's water-spaniel, the "lurking specters," that lie in wait and seize upon a soul and fasten upon its vitality.

A vain fool would have found pleasure in such a circle of parasites.

But Christophe had no taste for pedestals.

He was revolted by the idiotic subtlety of his admirers, who read into anything he did all sorts of absurd meanings, Renanian, Nietzschean, hermaphroditic.

He kicked them out.

He was not made for passivity.

Everything in him cried aloud for action.

He observed so as to understand: he wished to understand so as to act.

He was free of the constraint of any school, and of any prejudice, and he inquired into everything, read everything, and studied all the forms of thought and the resources of the expression of other countries and other ages in his art.

He seized on all those which seemed to him effective and true.

Unlike the French artists whom he studied, who were ingenious inventors of new forms, and wore themselves out in the unceasing effort of invention, and gave up the struggle half-way, he endeavored not so much to invent a new musical language as to speak the authentic language of music with more energy: his aim was not to be particular, but to be strong.

His, passion for strength was the very opposite of the French genius of subtlety and moderation.

He scorned style for the sake of style and art for art's sake.

The best French artists seemed to him to be no more than pleasure-mongers.

One of the most perfect poets in Paris had amused himself with drawing up a "list of the workers in contemporary French poetry, with their talents, their productions, and their earnings": and he enumerated "the crystals, the Oriental fabrics, the gold and bronze medals, the lace for dowagers, the polychromatic sculpture, the painted porcelain," which had been produced in the workshops of his various colleagues.

He pictured himself "in the corner of a vast factory of letters, mending old tapestry, or polishing up rusty halberds."

--Such a conception of the artist as a good workman, thinking only of the perfection of his craft, was not without an element of greatness.

But it did not satisfy Christophe: and while he admitted in it a certain professional dignity, he had a contempt for the poor quality of life which most often it disguised.

He could not understand writing for the sake of writing, or talking for the sake of talking.

He never said words;

he said--or wanted to say--the things themselves.

_"Ei dice cose, e voi dite parole...."

_ After a long period of rest, during which he had been entirely occupied with taking in a new world, Christophe suddenly became conscious of an imperious need for creation.

The antagonism which he felt between himself and Paris called up all his reserve of force by its challenge of his personality.

All his passions were brimming in him, and imperiously demanding expression.

They were of every kind: and they were all equally insistent.

He tried to create, to fashion music, into which to turn the love and hatred that were swelling in his heart, and the will and the renunciation, and all the daimons struggling within him, all of whom had an equal right to live.

Hardly had he assuaged one passion in music,--(sometimes he hardly had the patience to finish it)--than he hurled himself at the opposite passion.

But the contradiction was only apparent: if they were always changing, they were in truth always the same.

He beat out roads in music, roads that led to the same goal: his soul was a mountain: he tried every pathway up it; on some he wound easily, dallying in the shade: on others he mounted toilsomely with the hot sun beating up from the dry, sandy track: they all led to God enthroned on the summit.

Love, hatred, evil, renunciation, all the forces of humanity at their highest pitch, touched eternity, and were a part of it.

For every man the gateway to eternity is in himself: for the believer as for the atheist, for him who sees life everywhere as for him who everywhere denies it, and for him who doubts both life and the denial of it,--and for Christophe in whose soul there met all these opposing views of life.

All the opposites become one in eternal Force.

For Christophe the chief thing was to wake that Force within himself and in others, to fling armfuls of wood upon the fire, to feed the flames of Eternity, and make them roar and flicker.

Through the voluptuous night of Paris a great flame darted in his heart.

He thought himself free of Faith, and he was a living torch of Faith.

Nothing was more calculated to outrage the French spirit of irony.

Faith is one of the feelings which a too civilized society can least forgive: for it has lost it and hates others to possess it.

In the blind or mocking hostility of the majority of men towards the dreams of youth there is for many the bitter thought that they themselves were once even as they, and had ambitions and never realized them.

All those who have denied their souls, all those who had the seed of work within them, and have not brought it forth rather to accept the security of an easy, honorable life, think: "Since I could not do the thing I dreamed, why should they do the things they dream?

I will not have them do it."

How many Hedda Gablers are there among men!

What a relentless struggle is there to crush out strength in its new freedom, with what skill is it killed by silence, irony, wear and tear, discouragement,--and, at the crucial moment, betrayed by some treacherous seductive art!...

The type is of all nations.

Christophe knew it, for he had met it in Germany.

Against such people he was armed.

His method of defense was simple: he was the first to attack; pounced on the first move, and declared war on them: he forced these dangerous friends to become his enemies.

But if such a policy of frankness was an excellent safeguard for his personality, it was not calculated to advance his career as an artist.

Once more Christophe began his German tactics.

It was too strong for him.

Only one thing was altered: his temper: he was in fine fettle.

Lightheartedly, for the benefit of anybody who cared to listen, he expressed his unmeasured criticism of French artists: and so he made many enemies.

He did not take the precaution, as a wise man would have done, of surrounding himself with a little coterie.

He would have found no difficulty in gathering about him a number of artists who would gladly have admired him if he had admired them.

There were some who admired him in advance, investing admiration as it were.

They considered any man they praised as a debtor, of whom, at a given moment, they could demand repayment.

But it was a good investment.

--But Christophe was a very bad investment.

He never paid back.

Worse than that, he was barefaced enough to consider poor the works of men who thought his good.

Unavowedly they were rancorous, and engaged themselves on the next opportunity to pay him back in kind.

Among his other indiscretions Christophe was foolish enough to declare war on Lucien Lévy-Coeur.

He found him in the way, everywhere, and he could not conceal an extraordinary antipathy for the gentle, polite creature who was doing no apparent harm, and even seemed to be kinder than himself, and was, at any rate, far more moderate.

He provoked him into argument: and, however insignificant the subject of it might be, Christophe always brought into it a sudden heat and bitterness which surprised their hearers.

It was as though Christophe were seizing every opportunity of battering at Lucien Lévy-Coeur, head down: but he could never reach him.

His enemy had an extraordinary skill, even when he was most obviously in the wrong, in carrying it off well: he would defend himself with a courtesy which showed up Christophe's bad manners.

Christophe still spoke French very badly, interlarding it with slang, and often with very coarse expressions which he had picked up, and, like many foreigners, used wrongly, and he was incapable of outwitting the tactics of Lucien Lévy-Coeur and he raged furiously against his gentle irony.

Everybody thought him in the wrong, for they could not see what Christophe vaguely felt: the hypocrisy of that gentleness, which when it was brought up against a force which it could not hold in check, tried quietly to stifle it by silence.

He was in no hurry, for, like Christophe, he counted on time, not, as Christophe did, to build, but to destroy.

He had no difficulty in detaching Sylvain Kohn and Goujart from Christophe, just as he had gradually forced him out of the Stevens' circle.

He was isolating Christophe.

Christophe himself helped him.

He pleased nobody, for he would not join any party, but was rather against all parties.

He did not like the Jews: but he liked the anti-Semites even less.

He was revolted by the cowardice of the masses stirred up against a powerful minority, not because it was bad, but because it was powerful, and by the appeal to the basest instincts of jealousy and hatred.

The Jews came to regard him as an anti-Semite, and the anti-Semites looked on him as a Jew.

As for the artists, they felt his hostility.

Instinctively Christophe made himself more German than he was, in art.

Revolting against the voluptuous ataraxia of a certain class of Parisian music, he set up, with violence, a manly, healthy pessimism.

When joy appeared in his music, it was with a want of taste, a vulgar ardor, which were well calculated to disgust even the aristocratic patrons of popular art.

An erudite, crude form.

In his reaction he was not far from affecting an apparent carelessness in style and a disregard of external originality, which were bound to be offensive to the French musicians.

And so those of them, to whom he sent some of his work, without any careful consideration, visited on it the contempt they had for the belated Wagnerism of the contemporary German school.

Christophe did not care: he laughed inwardly, and repeated the lines of a charming musician of the French Renaissance--adapted to his own case: * * * * * _"Come, come, don't worry about those who will say: 'Christophe has not the counterpoint of A, And he has not such harmony as Monsieur B.' I have something else which they never will see."

_ But when he tried to have some of his music performed, he found the doors shut against him.

They had quite enough to do to play--or not to play--the works of young French musicians, and could not bother about those of an unknown German.

Christophe did not go on trying.

He shut himself up in his room and went on writing.

He did not much care whether the people of Paris heard him or not.

He wrote for his own pleasure and not for success.

The true artist is not concerned with the future of his work.

He is like those painters of the Renaissance who joyously painted mural decorations, knowing full well that in ten years nothing would be left of them.

So Christophe worked on in peace, quite good-humoredly resigned to waiting for better times, when help would come to him from some unexpected source.

* * * * * Christophe was then attracted by the dramatic form.

He dared not yet surrender freely to the flood of his own lyrical impulse.

He had to run it into definite channels.

And, no doubt, it is a good thing for a young man of genius, who is not yet master of himself, and does not even know exactly what he is, to set voluntary bounds upon himself, and to confine therein the soul of which he has so little hold.

They are the dikes and sluices which allow the course of thought to be directed.

Unfortunately Christophe had not a poet: he had himself to fashion his subjects out of legend and history.

Among the visions which had been floating before his mind for some months past were certain figures from the Bible.

--That Bible, which his mother had given him as a companion in his exile, had been a source of dreams to him.

Although he did not read it in any religious spirit, the moral, or, rather, vital energy of that Hebraic Iliad had been to him a spring in which, in the evenings, he washed his naked soul of the smoke and mud of Paris.

He was concerned with the sacred meaning of the book: but it was not the less a sacred book to him, for the breath of savage nature and primitive individualities that he found in its pages.

He drew in its hymns of the earth, consumed with faith, quivering mountains, exultant skies, and human lions.

One of the characters in the book for whom he had an especial tenderness was the young David.

He did not give him the ironic smile of the Florentine boy, or the tragic intensity of the sublime works of Michael Angelo and Verrochio: he knew them not.

His David was a young shepherd-poet, with a virgin soul, in which heroism slumbered, a Siegfried of the South, of a finer race, and more beautiful, and of greater harmony in mind and body.

--For his revolt against the Latin spirit was in vain: unconsciously he had been permeated by that spirit.

Not only art influences art, not only mind and thought, but everything about the artist:--people, things, gestures, movements, lines, the light of each town.

The atmosphere of Paris is very powerful: it molds even the most rebellious souls.

And the soul of a German is less capable than any other of resisting it: in vain does he gird himself in his national pride: of all Europeans the German is the most easily denationalized.

Unwittingly the soul of Christophe had already begun to assimilate from Latin art a clarity, a sobriety, an understanding of the emotions, and even, up to a point, a plastic beauty, which otherwise it never would have had.

His _David_ was the proof of it.

He had endeavored to recreate certain episodes of the youth of David: the meeting with Saul, the fight with Goliath: and he had written the first scene.

He had conceived it as a symphonic picture with two characters.

On a deserted plateau, on a moor covered with heather in bloom, the young shepherd lay dreaming in the sun.

The serene light, the hum and buzz of tiny creatures, the sweet whispering of the waving grass, the silvery tinkling of the grazing sheep, the mighty beat and rhythm of the earth sang through the dreaming boy unconscious of his divine destiny.

Drowsing, his voice and the notes of his flute joined the harmonious silence: and his song was so calmly, so limpidly joyous, that, hearing it, there could be no thought of joy or sorrow, only the feeling that it must be so and could not be otherwise.

--Suddenly over the moor reached great shadows: the air was still: life seemed to withdraw into the veins of the earth.

Only the music of the flute went on calmly.

Saul, with his crazy thoughts, passed.

The mad King, racked by his fancy, burned like a flame, devouring itself, flung this way and that by the wind.

He breathed prayers and violent abuse, hurling defiance at the void about him, the void within himself.

And when he could speak no more and fell breathless to the ground, there rang through the silence the smiling peace of the song of the young shepherd, who had never ceased.

Then, with a furious beating in his heart, came Saul in silence up to where the boy lay in the heather: in silence he gazed at him: he sat down by his side and placed his fevered hand on the cool brows of the shepherd.

Untroubled, David turned, and smiled, and looked at the King.

He laid his hand on Saul's knees, and went on singing and playing his flute.

Evening came: David went to sleep in the middle of his song, and Saul wept.

And through the starry night there rose once more the serene joyous hymn of nature refreshed, the song of thanksgiving of the soul relieved of its burden.

When he wrote the scene, Christophe had thought of nothing but his own joy: he had never given a thought to the manner of its performance: and it had certainly never occurred to him that it might be produced on the stage.

He meant it to be sung at a concert at such time as the concert-halls should be open to him.

One evening he spoke of it to Achille Roussin, and when, by request, he had tried to give him an idea of it on the piano, he was amazed to see Roussin burst into enthusiasm, and declare that it must at all costs be produced at one of the theaters, and that he would see to it.

He was even more amazed when, a few days later, he saw that Roussin was perfectly serious: and his amazement grew to stupefaction when he heard that Sylvain Kohn, Goujart, and Lucien Lévy-Coeur were taking it up.

He had to admit that their personal animosity had yielded to their love of art: and he was much surprised.

The only man who was not eager to see his work produced was himself.

It was not suited to the theater: it was nonsense, and almost hurtful to stage it.

But Roussin was so insistent, Sylvain Kohn so persuasive, and Goujart so positive, that Christophe yielded to the temptation.

He was weak.

He was so longing to hear his music!

It was quite easy for Roussin.

Manager and artist rushed to please him.

It happened that a newspaper was organizing a benefit matinee for some charity.

It was arranged that the _David_ should be produced.

A good orchestra was got together.

As for the singers, Roussin claimed that he had found the ideal representative of David.

The rehearsals were begun.

The orchestra came through the first reading fairly well, although, as usual in France, there was not much discipline about it.

Saul had a good, though rather tired, voice: and he knew his business.

The David was a handsome, tall, plump, solid lady with a sentimental vulgar voice which she used heavily, with a melodramatic tremolo and all the café-concert tricks.

Christophe scowled.

As soon as she began to sing it was obvious that she could not be allowed to play the part.

After the first pause in the rehearsal he went to the impresario, who had charge of the business side of the undertaking, and was present, with Sylvain Kohn, at the rehearsal.

The impresario beamed and said: "Well, are you satisfied?"

"Yes," said Christophe.

"I think it can be made all right There's only one thing that won't do: the singer.

She must be changed.

Tell her as gently as you can: you're used to it....

It will be quite easy for you to find me another."

The impresario looked disgruntled: he looked at Christophe as though he could not believe that he was serious; and he said: "But that's impossible!"

"Why is it impossible?"

asked Christophe.

The impresario looked cunningly at Sylvain Kohn, and replied: "But she has so much talent!"

"Not a spark," said Christophe.

"What!...

She has a fine voice!"

"Not a bit of it."

"And she is beautiful."

"I don't care a damn."

"That won't hurt the part," said Sylvain Kohn, laughing.

"I want a David, a David who can sing: I don't want Helen of Troy," said Christophe.

The impresario rubbed his nose uneasily.

"It's a pity, a great pity ..."

he said.

"She is an excellent artist....

I

give you my word for it!

Perhaps she is not at her best to-day.

You must give her another trial."

"All right," said Christophe.

"But it is a waste of time."

He went on with the rehearsal.

It was worse than ever.

He found it hard to go on to the end: it got on his nerves: his remarks to the singer, from cold and polite, became dry and cutting, in spite of the obvious pains she was taking to satisfy him, and the way she ogled him by way of winning his favor.

The impresario prudently stopped the rehearsal just when it seemed to be hopeless.

By way of softening the bad effect of Christophe's remarks, he bustled up to the singer and paid her heavy compliments.

Christophe, who was standing by, made no attempt to conceal his impatience, called the impresario, and said: "There's no room for argument.

I won't have the woman.

It's unpleasant, I know: but I did not choose her.

Do what you can to arrange the matter."

The impresario bowed frigidly, and said coldly: "I can't do anything.

You must see M. Roussin."

"What has it got to do with M. Roussin?

I don't want to bother him with this business," said Christophe.

"That won't bother him," said Sylvain Kohn ironically.

And he pointed to Roussin, who had just come in.

Christophe went up to him.

Roussin was in high good humor, and cried: "What!

Finished already?

I was hoping to hear a bit of it.

Well, maestro, what do you say?

Are you satisfied?"

"It's going quite well," said Christophe.

"I don't know how to thank you...."

"Not at all!

Not at all!"

"There is only one thing wrong."

"What is it?

We'll put it right.

I am determined to satisfy you."

"Well ...

the singer.

Between ourselves she is detestable."

The beaming smile on Roussin's face froze suddenly.

He said, with some asperity: "You surprise me, my dear fellow."

"She is useless, absolutely useless," Christophe went on.

"She has no voice, no taste, no knowledge of her work, no talent.

You're lucky not to have heard her!..."

Roussin grew more and more acid.

He cut Christophe short, and said cuttingly: "I know Mlle.

de Sainte-Ygraine.

She is a very talented artiste.

I have the greatest admiration for her.

Every man of taste in Paris shares my opinion."

And he turned his back on Christophe, who saw him offer his arm to the actress and go out with her.

He was dumfounded, and Sylvain Kohn, who had watched the scene delightedly, took his arm and laughed, and said as they went down the stairs of the theater:-- "Didn't you know that she was his mistress?"

Christophe understood.

So it was for her sake and not for his own that his piece was to be produced!

That explained Roussin's enthusiasm, the money he had laid out, and the eagerness of his sycophants.

He listened while Sylvain Kohn told him the story of the Sainte-Ygraine: a music-hall singer, who, after various successes in the little vaudeville theaters, had, like so many of her kind, been fired with the ambition to be heard on a stage more worthy of her talent.

She counted on Roussin to procure her an engagement at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique: and Roussin, who asked nothing better, had seen in the performance of _David_ an opportunity of revealing to the Parisian public at no very great risk the lyrical gifts of the new tragedienne, in a part which called for no particular dramatic acting, and gave her an excellent opportunity of displaying the elegance of her figure.

Christophe heard the story through to the end: then he shook off Sylvain Kohn and burst out laughing.

He laughed and laughed.

When he had done, he said: "You disgust me.

You all disgust me.

Art is nothing to you.

It's always women, nothing but women.

An opera is put on for a dancer, or a singer, for the mistress of M. So-and-So, or Madame Thingummy.

You think of nothing but your dirty little intrigues.

Bless you, I'm not angry with you: you are like that: very well then, be so and wallow in your mire.

But we must part company: we weren't made to live together.

Good-night."

He left him, and when he reached home, wrote to Roussin, saying that he withdrew the piece, and did not disguise his reasons for doing so.

It meant a breach with Roussin and all his gang.

The consequences were felt at once.

The newspapers had made a certain amount of talk about the forthcoming piece, and the story of the quarrel between the composer and the singer appeared in due course.

A certain conductor was adventurous enough to play the piece at a Sunday afternoon concert.

His good fortune was disastrous for Christophe.

The _David_ was played--and hissed.

All the singer's friends had passed the word to teach the insolent musician a lesson: and the outside public, who had been bored by the symphonic poem, added their voices to the verdict of the critics.

To crown his misfortunes, Christophe was ill-advised enough to accept the invitation to display his talents as a pianist at the same concert by giving a _Fantasia_ for piano and orchestra.

The unkindly disposition of the audience, which had been to a certain extent restrained during the performance of the _David_, out of consideration for the interpreters, broke loose, when they found themselves face to face with the composer,--whose playing was not all that it might have been.

Christophe was unnerved by the noise in the hall, and stopped suddenly half-way through a movement: and he looked jeeringly at the audience, who were startled into silence, and played _Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre_!

--and said insolently: "That is all you are fit for."

Then he got up and went away.

There was a terrific row.

The audience shouted that he had insulted them, and that he must come and apologize.

Next day the papers unanimously slaughtered the grotesque German to whom justice had been meted out by the good taste of Paris.

And then once more he was left in absolute isolation.

Once more Christophe found himself alone, more solitary than ever, in that great, hostile, stranger city.

He did not worry about it.

He began to think that he was fated to be so, and would be so all his life.

He did not know that a great soul is never alone, that, however Fortune may cheat him of friendship, in the end a great soul creates friends by the radiance of the love with which it is filled, and that even in that hour, when he thought himself for ever isolated, he was more rich in love than the happiest men and women in the world.