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 analysis, 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 analogy, 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 Again, the letter which young Beethoven redivivus is made to write to the grand duke is modeled on the historical document; the episode of his acquaintanceship with Frau von Kerich recalls Beethoven and Frau von Breuning.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 Cannabich 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 associate 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 Hassler (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 space 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 assimilated 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 classical 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 César 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; Françoise Oudon, the actress, recalls Eleanora Duse, but in certain respects she reminds us of Suzanne Deprès. Emmanuel contains, in addition to traits that are purely imaginary, lineaments that are drawn respectively from Charles Louis Philippe and Charles Péguy; 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, Lévy-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 circumstantial destiny as the human essence of Romain Rolland. Like the classical 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.