Romain Rolland

“ It never seemed to occur to them that every real musician lives in a world of sound, as other men live in a visible world, and that his days are lived in and borne onward by a flood of music. Music is the air he breathes, the sky above him. Nature wakes answering music in his soul. His soul itself is music: music is in all that it loves, hates, suffers, fears, hopes. And when the soul of a musician loves a beautiful body, it sees music in that, too. The beloved eyes are not blue, or brown, or gray: they are music: their tenderness is like caressing, notes, like a delicious chord. ”

“ You do not trouble yourselves about that, thinkers of Germany. You bravely give your blood to save the mortal life, but do not bother about the life eternal. It is a terrible moment, I grant. Your fatherland as ours struggles for its life, and I understand and admire the ecstasy of sacrifice which impels your youth, as ours, to make of its body a rampart against death. "To be or not to be," do you say? No, that is not enough. To be the great Germany, to be the great France, worthy of their past, and respecting one another even while fighting, that is what I wish. ”

“ Do not allow yourselves to be embroiled in the struggle. You will not make an end of the war by making war on the war; your first step should be to save your own hearts from the war, by saving from the general conflagration the future which is within you. To each word of hatred uttered by the combatants, make answer by an act of kindness and love toward all the victims. Let your simple presence show a calm disavowal of errant passions; make of yourselves onlookers whose luminous and compassionate gaze compels us to blush at our own unreason. Amid war, be the living embodiment of peace. ”

“ The natural action becomes stiff when clad in musical armour, and the absurdity of trying to make the two agree is forced upon one. In the music of Rheingold one pictures the stature and gait of the giants, and one sees the lightning gleam and the rainbow reflected on the clouds. In the theatre it is like a game of marionettes; and one feels the impassable gulf between music and gesture. Music is a world apart. When music wishes to depict the drama, it is not real action which is reflected in it, it is the ideal action transfigured by the spirit, and perceptible only to the inner vision. ”

“ What would you have me do to stir your heart?"
"What a lovely friendship is ours!" sighed Otto. "Was, there ever its like in history? It is sweet and fresh as a dream. If only it does not pass away! If you were to cease to love me!"
"How stupid you are, my beloved!" replied Jean-Christophe. "Forgive me, but your weakling fear enrages me. How can you ask whether I shall cease to love you! For me to live is to love you. Death is powerless against my love. You yourself could do nothing if you wished to destroy it. ”

“ Then there remained only one solution,—marriage, monogamous love? Was that a possible dream, for an Annette?
Possible or not, it cost nothing to dream it, in advance. She did not deprive herself of it. She had arrived at the edge of the wood of adolescence, at that beautiful, final instant when, still savoring the shadow and the shelter of dreams, one sees opening before one, on the plain, long white roads in the sunlight. On which shall we imprint out steps? There is no haste to choose. The mind laughingly delays, and it chooses them all. ”

“ And if he happens to be delicate in character, tender of heart and frail as to body in the way Pierre was, he experiences a disgust and horror which he does not dare confide to others for all these brutalities, these nastinesses, all this nonsense of fruitful and devouring nature—this breeding sow that gobbles up her litter of pigs.
In every growing youth between sixteen and eighteen there is a bit of the soul of Hamlet. Don't ask him to understand the war! (All right for you men, who have had your fill!) He has all he can do to understand life and forgive its existence. ”

“ The wooden planks beneath my feet, the moving platform being rolled over the face of Nature, were quite enough. To feel that the earth is my mother, I must have my feet firmly planted on her womb, like a newborn child issuing to the light. Wealth severs the tie which binds men to the earth, and holds the sons of the earth together. And then how can you expect to be an artist? The artist is the voice of the earth. A rich man cannot be a great artist. He would need a thousand times more genius to be so under such unfavorable conditions. Even if he succeeds his art must be a hot-house fruit. ”

“ Christophe dropped like a thunderbolt into the midst of his dim crepuscular life. He was furious at the wickedness of people and Olivier's patience.
"Have you no blood in your veins?" he would say. "How can you stand such a life? You know your own superiority to these swine, and yet you let them squeeze the life out of you without a murmur!"
"What can I do?" Olivier would say. "I can't defend myself. It revolts me to fight with people I despise: I know that they can use every weapon against me: and I can't. ”

“ To the accusations drawn up against predatory Empires and their inhuman pride, in the name of violated right, of outraged humanity by the victim peoples and by the combatants, is added the cry of pain of the nobler souls of their own people whom the bad shepherds who let loose this war have led and constrained into murder and madness. To sacrifice one's body is not the worst suffering, but also to sacrifice, to deny, to kill one's own soul!—You who die at least for a just cause, and who, full of sap and loaded with faith, fall like ripe fruit, how sweet is your lot beside this torture! ”

“ Annette had more scruples. She was a woman, and she knew better what was going on in Noémi's heart. Noémi might be false and vain and she might deceive Philippe, but she loved him. No, for her it was not just a game, as he had said it was. She was bound to him as if he were a part of her own flesh, not merely by the fiery bond of sensual pleasure, but from the bottom of her heart, for good or evil. Good and evil. In love nothing counts but the strength of love, that imperious magnet that draws soul and body together, one being into another being. ”

“ The war which is now mingling the blood of France and of Germany, is leading the French and the Germans to drink from the same cup to their future union, like the barbaric heroes of the epic age. Struggle and bite as they may, their very grapple binds them together. These armies which are endeavouring to destroy one another, have become more akin in spirit than they were before they faced one another in battle. They can kill one another, but at least they now know one another, whereas ignorance is the nethermost circle of death. ”

“ The factory of the theater scattered its heavy ashes and its burning smoke upon the soil, whose flowers in old days had perfumed all Europe. If a man refused to enroll himself in the train of the brawlers, and could not, or would not, enter the factory, he was condemned to exile or a stifled existence. Genius was by no means dried up. But it was left to stagnate unprofitably and to go to ruin. Christophe had met more than one young musician in whom there lived again the soul of the melodious masters of the race and the instinct of beauty which filled the wise and simple art of the past. ”

“ When nothing hampers action, the soul has fewer reasons for action, and the closer the walls of Jean-Christophe's prison of care and banal tasks were drawn about him, the more his heart in its revolt felt its independence. In a life without obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance and to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could be free only for an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into that space of time like a river between walls of rock. It is a good discipline for art for a man to confine his efforts between unshakable bounds. ”

“ No other work of Tolstoy's presents in such abundance the soul of childhood and of youth; and each youthful spirit is a strain of music, pure as a spring, full of a touching and penetrating grace, like a melody of Mozart's. Of such are the young Nikolas Rostoff, Sonia, and poor little Petia.
Most exquisite of all is Natasha. Dear little girl!—fantastic, full of laughter, her heart full of affection, we see her grow up before us, we follow her through life, with the tenderness one would feel for a sister—who that has read of her does not feel that he has known her?... ”

“ Once more she could see the sky, the stars, the summer night: within herself she felt the dawning of a new interest in life, as yet only a poor, pale light, vague and sorrowful sympathy for others. And that night, for the first time for many months, the image of her little girl came to her in her dreams.—For the surest road to bring us near the beloved dead, the best means of seeing them again, is not to go with them into death, but to live. They live in our lives, and die with us.
She made no attempt to meet Christophe. ”

“ The terror of this intuition, striking Annette at this moment when she was holding on to life with one weak hand, was a mortal blow to her.
All day she had been devastated by the furious return of her passion. Now that her decision had been made and carried out, the irreparable deed consummated, now that she had deliberately done her duty, she no longer had the strength to resist the attack of the enemy within. And the enemy had rushed upon her like a torrent.
She was a party to it. She had opened the gates to it. When all is lost, one has at least the right to enjoy one's despair! ”

“ This filthy odour finally sobered Clerambault; with horror he tore off the skin of the beast whose prey he had been.
Ah, how thick it was,--warm, silky, and beautiful, and at the same time stinking and bloody, made of the lowest instincts, and the highest illusions. To love, give ourselves to all, be a sacrifice for all, be but one body and one soul, our Country the sole life!... What then is this Country, this living thing to which a man sacrifices his life, the life of all but his conscience and the consciences of others? ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is the good of living?"
"Christophe, dear Christophe! You are not alone. You are loved...."
"What is that to me? I love nothing now. It is nothing to me whether everything else live or die. I love nothing: I loved only her. I loved only her!"
He sobbed louder than ever with his face buried in his hands. Rosa could find nothing to say. The egoism of Christophe's passion stabbed her to the heart. Now when she thought herself most near to him, she felt more isolated and more miserable than ever. Grief instead of bringing them together thrust them only the more widely apart. ”

“ Just as it is possible to learn more of a human being in one minute of love than in months of observation, so Christophe had learned more about France in a week of intimacy with Olivier, hardly ever leaving the house, than during a whole year of blind wandering through Paris, and standing at attention at various intellectual and political gatherings. Amid the universal anarchy in which he had been floundering, a soul like that of his friend seemed to him veritably to be the "Île de France"—the island of reason and serenity in the midst of the ocean. ”

“ The most intellectual woman never completely forgets herself in what she is reading; the current within her is too strong. Annette interrupted her reading to open the flood-gate for a moment.
As she thus stopped, casting about her a rather troubled glance, her eye encountered that of Julien: it was fixed upon her. The image of Julien seemed to her a part of what was passing through her mind. Then, suddenly awakening—as when, in the morning, on her pillow, she found herself all at once in the midst of life—she rose gaily and stretched out her hand to him across the table. ”

“ She did not mind: she found him as weak as herself. Almost every evening they used to go out: and she would go in an agony of suffering and boredom from one fine house to another, and no one would ever guess the feeling that lay behind the irony of her unchanging smile. She was seeking for some one to love her and keep her back from the edge of the abyss.... In vain, in vain, in vain. There was nothing but silence in answer to her cry of despair.
She did not love Christophe: she could not bear his rough manner, his painful frankness, and, above all, his indifference. ”

“ He was perpetually in a state of jubilation, which had no need of joy: it could adapt itself to sorrow: its source overflowed with life, was, in its strength, mother of all happiness and virtue. To live, to live too much!... A man who does not feel within himself this intoxication of strength, this jubilation in living—even in the depths of misery,—is not an artist. That is the touchstone. True greatness is shown in this power of rejoicing through joy and sorrow. A Mendelssohn or a Brahms, gods of the mists of October, and of fine rain, have never known the divine power. ”

“ Christophe marked it. This it was that he saw in Olivier's eyes. Olivier had an intuitive perception of the souls of men, and a mind of a wide, subtle curiosity that was open to everything, denied nothing, hated nothing, and contemplated the world and things with generous sympathy: that freshness of outlook, which is a priceless gift, granting the power to taste with a heart that is always new the eternal renewal and re-birth. In that inward universe, wherein he knew himself to be free, vast, sovereign, he could forget his physical weakness and agony. ”

“ And the murmuring of the river and the roaring of the sea sang with him:
"Thou shalt be born again. Rest. Now all is one heart. The smile of the night and the day entwined. Harmony, the august marriage of love and hate. I will sing the God of the two mighty wings. Hosanna to life! Hosanna to death!
"Christofori faciem die quacunque tueris, Illa nempe die non morte mala morieris."
Saint Christophe has crossed the river. All night long he has marched against the stream. Like a rock his huge-limbed body stands above the water. On his shoulders is the Child, frail and heavy. ”

“ Melchior swung heavily on the chair, sniggering. Jean-Christophe stopped his ears, so as not to hear him, and trembled. What was happening within him was inexpressible. It was a terrible upheaval—terror, sorrow, as though for some one dead, some one dear and honored.
No one came; they were left alone. Night fell, and Jean-Christophe's fear grew as the minutes passed. He could not help listening, and his blood froze as he heard the voice that he did not recognize. The silence made it all the more terrifying; the limping clock beat time for the senseless babbling. ”

“ On the other side of the water stretched the royal front of the Louvre, and its windows were like weary eyes lit up with the last living rays of the setting sun. At the back of the great square of the Invalides behind its trenches and proud walls, majestic, solitary, floated the dull gold dome, like a symphony of bygone victories. And at the top of the hill there stood the Arc de Triomphe, bestriding the hill with the giant stride of the Imperial legions.
And suddenly Christophe thought of it all as of a dead giant lying prone upon the plain. ”

“ He feels, he knows, that he is not alone. A soul that loves and is loved is there, near him. He groans aloud because he cannot perceive it, and yet that shadow of bitterness falling upon his ecstasy has sweetness, too. Even sadness has its light. He thinks of his beloved masters, of the genius that is gone, though its soul lives on in the music which it had lived in its life. His heart is overflowing with love; he dreams of the superhuman happiness which must have been the lot of these glorious men, since the reflection only of their happiness is still so much aflame. ”