Chapter XI: Jean Christophe and His Fellow Men

Notwithstanding the intimate relationships described in the previous chapters, the path of Jean Christophe the artist is a lonely one. He walks by himself, pursuing an isolated course that leads deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of his own being. The blood of his fathers drives him along, out of an infinite of confused origins, towards that other infinite of creation. Those whom he encounters in his life's journey are no more than shadows and intimations, milestones of experience, steps of ascent and descent, episodes and adventures. But what is knowledge other than a sum of experiences; what is life beyond a sum of encounters? Other human beings are not Jean Christophe's destiny, but they are material for his creative work. They are elements of the infinite, to which he feels himself akin. Since he wishes to live life as a whole, he must accept the bitterest part of life, mankind.

All he meets are a help to him. His friends help him much; but his enemies help him still more, increasing his vitality and stimulating his energy. Thus even those who wish to hinder his work, further it; and what is the true artist other than the work upon which he is engaged? In the great symphony of his passion, his fellow beings are high and low voices inextricably interwoven into the swelling rhythm. Many an individual theme he dismisses after a while with indifference, but many another he pursues to the end. Into his childhood's days comes Gottfried, the kindly old man, deriving more or less from the spirit of Tolstoi. He appears quite incidentally, never for more than a night, shouldering his pack, the undying Ahasuerus, but cheerful and kindly, never mutinous, never complaining, bowed but splendidly unflinching, as he wends his way Godward. Only in passing does he touch Christophe's life, but this transient contact suffices to set the creative spirit in movement. Consider, again, Hassler, the composer. His face flashes upon Jean Christophe, a lightning glimpse, at the beginning of the young man's work; but, in this instant, Jean Christophe recognizes the danger that he may come to resemble Hassler through indolence, and he collects his forces. Intimations, appeals, signs--such are other men to him. Every one acts as a stimulus, some through love, some through hatred. Old Schulz, with sympathetic understanding, helps him in a moment of despair. The family pride of Frau von Kerich and the stupidity of the Gothamites drive him anew to despair, which culminates this time in flight, and thus proves his salvation. Poison and antidote have a terrible resemblance. But to his creative spirit nothing is unmeaning, for he stamps his own significance upon all, sweeping into the current of his life the very things which were imposing themselves as hindrances to the stream. Suffering is needful to him for the knowledge it brings. He draws his best forces out of sadness, out of the shocks of life. Designedly does Rolland make Jean Christophe conceive the most beautiful of his imaginative works during the times of his profoundest spiritual distresses, during the days after the death of Olivier, and during those which followed the departure of Grazia. Opposition and affliction, the foes of the ordinary man, are friends to the artist, just as much as is every experience in his career. Precisely for his profoundest creative solitude, he requires the influences which emanate from his fellows.

It is true that he takes long to learn this lesson, judging men falsely at first because he sees them temperamently, not knowledgeably. To begin with, Jean Christophe colors all human beings with his own overflowing enthusiasm, fancying them to be as upright and good-natured as he is himself, to speak no less frankly and spontaneously than he himself speaks. Then, after the first disillusionments, his views are falsified in the opposite direction by bitterness and mistrust. But gradually he learns to hold just measure between overvaluation and its opposite. Helped towards justice by Olivier, guided to gentleness by Grazia, gathering experience from life, he comes to understand, not himself alone, but his foes likewise. Almost at the end of the book we find a little scene which may seem at first sight insignificant. Jean Christophe comes across his sometime enemy, Lévy-Coeur, and spontaneously offers his hand. This reconciliation implies something more than transient sympathy. It expresses the meaning of the long pilgrimage. It leads us to his last confession, which runs as follows, with a slight alteration from his old description of true heroism: "To know men, and yet to love them."