Chapter 2 Translator's Foreword

Among the ten volumes in the whole book, the two volumes included in this volume are probably the most confusing and difficult to understand.Because Christophe is on the way of youth growth, and the journey of youth growth is a history of chaos, ambiguity, contradiction and turmoil.A tenacious will, a brand-new genius, is imprisoned in a cage by a more tenacious and age-old tradition and national character.It has to struggle with society, with the past history, and more importantly, with the inherent roots of human beings.Only by victorious in this difficult battle can a person break through the difficulties of adolescence and embark on the road of adulthood.Childhood is to conquer the material world, while adolescence is to conquer the spiritual world.The most tragic thing is the conflict between the present self and the past self: the treasure that was acquired with so much painstaking effort in the past, now requires more painstaking efforts to resist and seek liberation.

This period was the period when he closed his eyes and rebelled against all the idols of his childhood.He hated himself, hated them, because he believed them with all his heart. —and this resistance is justified.There is a period in life when one should dare to reject injustice, dare to reject all things that are admired by others—whether it is truth or a lie—and dare to deny all things that have not been regarded as truth by oneself.All the education, all the knowledge, fills up a child with a mass of lies and follies mixed with the main truths of life, so that the first duty of youth, if he is to become a sane man, is to put his old Eat and vomit clean.

-------- This is the preface written by Mr. Fu Lei for the second volume of "John Christophe" in 1941. It was originally placed at the beginning of the fourth volume. It was re-included in the 1986 reprint at the request of readers. --editor It was this state of mind that drove Christophe to unscrupulously criticize the masters of his predecessors, criticize the masterpieces that had already become idols, to expose the hypocrisy and sentimentality of the German nation, to make enemies in his small town, to clash with the Grand Duke, The freedom of life lost all material support, and eventually went into exile abroad. (Regarding these, especially Christophe's attack on certain masterpieces, the original author has a brief explanation in the preface of the first edition at the bottom of Volume 4.)

As for the turmoil of strong and wild forces rushing in the chest, the anguish of the unformed artistic genius struggling to grow, is another spiritual torrent at the end of youth. Just as there are months of the year when there are showers, so there are ages in life that are especially electric...   The whole person is tense.Thunderstorms are brewing day by day.The white sky was covered with scorching clouds.There is no wind, and the condensed air is fermenting and seems to be boiling.The earth was silent and paralyzed.His head was feverish and humming; the whole world was waiting for the accumulated power to burst out, waiting for the heavy and high hammer to hit the dark clouds.Great hot shadows passed, a fiery wind blew by; nerves trembled like leaves...

There is a sense of sadness and joy while waiting like this.Although you are oppressed and sad all over, you feel that there is a raging fire burning the entire universe in your blood vessels.Intoxicated souls boil in boilers like grapes buried in wine barrels.Thousands upon thousands of seeds of birth and death are at work in the heart.What will result? …Like a pregnant woman, your heart silently looks at yourself, anxiously listening to the trembling of your internal organs, thinking: "What shall I bear?" This is not the realm of Christophe alone, but the feeling shared by all great minds throughout the ages when they were growing up.

Joy, ecstatic joy, like a sun shining on all present and future achievements, joy of creation, joy of gods!Only creation is joy.Only created beings are living beings.The rest are all shadows floating underground that have nothing to do with life... Creation, whether physical or spiritual, is always out of the cage of the body, into the whirlwind of life, and live with the gods.Creation destroys death. Look, isn't this Beethoven's art theory?Isn’t this the Bergsonian outlook on life?Modern Westerners reach the state of "Assimilation of Things and Me" through another way, which is what the translator sincerely hopes readers will understand in this book.

"Creation is joy" and "creation is the annihilation of death" are the keynotes in Romain Rolland's grand symphony; what he said about immortality, immortality, and gods are all regarded as such. What we must keep in mind is that "Christophe" must not be regarded as a biography of a musician or artist in a narrow sense.The reason why art has become the enzyme of life is because it contains incomparably full vitality.The artist is our model only because he is the most complete of the imperfect crowd.And the so-called completeness does not mean completeness, but the meaning of moving forward to a more complete and complete future.

However, the above-mentioned general concepts are not enough to summarize the spirit of the book.What the translator said in his dedication at the beginning of the first volume and in the first stanza of this preface is only that the book "Christophe" belongs to the general and ordinary aspects.In other words, so far, our perception is that of a portrait: although what we see also has special signs, the result of deduction is a general and general understanding of human beings.But this book has another, more complex face: it is nothing more than a huge historical painting—not only realistic but also symbolic, with a prophetic meaning.The author uses the intellectual history, social history, political history, national history, and art history of the entire late nineteenth century as the background for this new hero.Therefore, in addition to describing an individual and involving the eternal mission and character of human beings, this book also has the historical nature of reflecting a certain special period.

The most striking comparison, which takes up more than half of the space in volumes 4 and 5, is the comparative study of the two nationalities of Germany and France.Romain Rolland made the protagonist of the youth first make an extremely serious criticism of Germany: They expend all their energies trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.Especially after Germany's victory, they even wanted to use a set of evil tricks to find a compromise between new forces and old principles... When they were defeated, everyone said that Germany was an ideal of love.Now that others have been defeated, everyone says that Germany is the ideal of mankind.Seeing that other countries are strong, they say like Lessing: "Patriotism is just the tendency to be a hero, and you can do without it" and call themselves "citizens of the world."Now that they have raised their heads, they are very contemptuous of the so-called "French" ideals, and look down on world peace, fraternity, solidarity, human rights, and natural equality; Some nationalities can have absolute rights, while other nationalities, because they are weak, have absolutely no rights at all.It, it is the living God, it is the embodiment of ideas, and its progress is accomplished by war, violence, pressure... (Here, the reader should note that this text was written at the beginning of this century.)

After analyzing the German nation as much as possible, Christophe turned to dissecting France.The name "Jiechang" used in Volume 5 is quite revealing.When talking about the music scene in Paris at that time, the author thought that "it was just mild, pale, numb, anemic, and haggard..." He also said that what the musicians at that time "lacked was will and strength; they had all the talents. — Only one thing is missing: a strong life.” Christophe was particularly disgusted by the vulgarities of the music world because of their formalism.Only one item of form was discussed among them.Sentiment, character, life, never mention it!No one thinks that a real musician lives in the sound universe, and his years are placed on the wave of music.Music is the air he breathes, the world he lives in.His soul itself is music; what he loves, what he hates, what he suffers, what he fears, and what he hopes is nothing but music... Genius is measured by the strength of vitality, and art, an incomplete tool, is nothing but music. Just want to call life.But how many people in France think of this?To this chemist-like nation, music seems to be only the art of matching sounds.It treats the alphabet as a book...

When it comes to the literary and theatrical worlds, what the author describes is a decadent atmosphere, frivolous habits, and the stench of money.Poetry and drama, in this last dynasty of Latin culture, are only "entertainment commodities."There is only a dead breath that hangs over the intellectual class and the upper class: The luxurious surface, the hustle and bustle, and the shadow of death underneath.Writers in Paris are sick...but among these people it all boils down to meager pleasures.barren, barren.This is the root of the disease.Thoughts abused, senses abused, without fruit... Regarding the phenomenon of the "end of the century" at the end of the nineteenth century, the author can't help crying out: Poor thing!Art is not a low fodder for the lowly.Needless to say, art is a kind of enjoyment, the most charming of all enjoyments.But you can only exchange it with hard work, and you will be entitled to the crown of art when "force" triumphs... You complacently cultivate your nation's diseases, cultivate their love of leisure, love of work, love of enjoyment, love of lust, love of art Illusory humanitarianism, and all the factors that can anesthetize the will and make it sluggish.You are literally taking the nation to the opium dens... The political circles in Paris, the women's circles, and all aspects of social activities cannot escape this corrupt atmosphere.However, the author is not pessimistic because of this, and he is not satisfied with exposure. Behind the harsh criticism and destruction, he has long been lurking with the enthusiasm for construction.Just like Christophe's violent attack on the ancient masters in his early years, it was the starting point of his new path later.Destruction is only a preparation for construction.Underneath the comparison and dissection of the German and French nations lies a great plan: to relieve the stagnation of France with the power of Germany, and to relieve the docile obedience of Germany with the freedom of France. The second regeneration of Western culture should start from these two The cultural exchanges between the two major ethnic groups began.Therefore, Romain Rolland made the protagonist in the book a German, making him a strong man, a representative of strength (his surname Kraft means strength in German); He has a simple spirit and a Beethoven-style heroic will, and then goes to the other side of the Rhine to receive the baptism of delicate, refined and free French culture.Latin culture is too old, and Germanic culture is too rough, but the fusion of the two can produce an ideal new civilization.Christophe, the new man, is the representative of the new man.His final journey was to go to Raphaeldi's homeland to appreciate the clear and peaceful artistic conception.From instinct to wisdom, from rough strength to refined art, is the trend of Christophe's early life and the first stage of future culture—from Germany to France.From bloody battles to peaceful joys, from self and social awareness to cosmic awareness, from turmoil to light and tranquility, from the foggy northern Europe across the Alps to the sunny Mediterranean, Christophe has finally reached The highest spiritual realm: touching the essence of life and grasping the truth of the universe, this is the final liberation, "same life with the gods"!Italy should be the home of the soul. (The Grazia mentioned at the end of Volume 5 is the incarnation of Italy.) Nietzsche's Zarathustra is now embodied and born on earth.He brought the bloody reality.The apostle of Tolstoy's evangelism has become only a phantom of an era, disappearing like smoke, more human and worldly than "Superman", and the eternal new hero Christophe should be a more human being. A typical example of great suffering and deeper tempering to pursue. This book is neither a novel nor a poem. According to the author's confession, it is like a river.The Rhine, a giant current that traverses Europe, is the symbol at the bottom of the book.Therefore, the first sentence on the first page of the first volume is "the sound of the river is mighty..." which is full of musical meaning and contains infinite vitality. For ordinary readers, this labyrinthine work full of clues may not be easy to grasp its truth for a while, so the translator humbly writes this explanation as an introduction, hoping to provide an explanation for ordinary Baoshan explorers, even if they are not clever. At least a faithful guide.