Romain Rolland returned to Switzerland, a land he loved, lying between the three countries to which his affection had been chiefly given. The Swiss environment had been favorable to so much of his work. Jean Christophe had been begun in Switzerland. A calm and beautiful summer enabled Rolland to recruit his energies. There was a certain relaxation of tension. Almost idly, he turned over various plans. He had already begun to collect materials for a new novel, a dramatic romance belonging to the same intellectual and cultural category as Jean Christophe.
Now of a sudden, as had happened twenty-five years earlier when the vision of Jean Christophe had come to him on the Janiculum, in the course of sleepless nights he was visited by a strange and yet familiar figure, that of a countryman from ancestral days whose expansive personality thrust all other plans aside. Shortly before, Rolland had revisited Clamecy. The old town had awakened memories of his childhood. Almost unawares, home influences were at work, and his native province had begun to insist that its son, who had described so many distant scenes, should depict the land of his birth. The Frenchman who had so vigorously and passionately transformed himself into a European, the man who had borne his testimony as European before the world, was seized with a desire to be, for a creative hour, wholly French, wholly Burgundian, wholly Nivernais. The musician accustomed to unite all voices in his symphonies, to combine in them the deepest expressions of feeling, was now longing to discover a new rhythm, and after prolonged tension to relax into a merry mood. For ten years he had been dominated by a sense of strenuous responsibility; the equipment of Jean Christophe had been, as it were, a burden which his soul had had to bear. Now it would be a pleasure to pen a scherzo, free and light, a work unconcerned with the stresses of politics, ethics, and contemporary history. It should be divinely irresponsible, an escape from the exactions of the time spirit.
During the day following the first night on which the idea came to him, he had exultantly dismissed other plans. The rippling current of his thoughts was effortless in its flow. Thus, to his own astonishment, during the summer months of 1913, Rolland was able to complete his light-hearted novel Colas Breugnon, the French intermezzo in the European symphony.
CHAPTER II
THE BURGUNDIAN BROTHER
IT seemed at first to Rolland as if a stranger, though one from his native province and of his own blood, had come cranking into his life. He felt as though, out of the clear French sky, the book had burst like a meteor upon his ken. True, the melody is new; different are the tempo, the key, the epoch. But those who have acquired a clear understanding of the author's inner life cannot fail to realize that this amusing book does not constitute an essential modification of his work. It is but a variation, in an archaic setting, upon Romain Rolland's leit-motif of faith in life. Prince Aërt and King Louis were forefathers and brothers of Olivier. In like manner Colas Breugnon, the jovial Burgundian, the lusty wood-carver, the practical joker always fond of his glass, the droll fellow, is, despite his old-world costume, a brother of Jean Christophe looking at us adown the centuries.
As ever, we find the same theme underlying the novel. The author shows us how a creative human being (those who are not creative, hardly count for Rolland) comes to terms with life, and above all with the tragedy of his own life. Colas Breugnon, like Jean Christophe, is the romance of an artist's life. But the Burgundian is an artist of a vanished type, such as could not without anachronism have been introduced into Jean Christophe. Colas Breugnon is an artist only through fidelity, diligence, and fervor. In so far as he is an artist, it is in the faithful performance of his daily task. What raises him to the higher levels of art is not inspiration, but his broad humanity, his earnestness, and his vigorous simplicity. For Rolland, he was typical of the nameless artists who carved the stone figures that adorn French cathedrals, the artist-craftsmen to whom we owe the beautiful gateways, the splendid castles, the glorious wrought ironwork of the middle ages. These artificers did not fashion their own vanity into stone, did not carve their own names upon their work; but they put something into that work which has grown rare to-day, the joy of creation. In Jean Christophe, on one occasion, Romain Rolland had indited an ode to the civic life of the old masters who were wholly immersed in the quiet artistry of their daily occupations. He had drawn attention to the life of Sebastian Bach and his congeners. In like manner, he now wished to display anew what he had depicted in so many portraits of the artists, in the studies of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Tolstoi, and Handel. Like these sublime figures, Colas Breugnon took delight in his creative work. The magnificent inspiration that animated them was lacking to the Burgundian, but Breugnon had a genius for straightforwardness and for sensual harmony. Without aspiring to bring salvation to the world, not attempting to wrestle with the problems of passion and the spiritual life, he was content to strive for that supreme simplicity of craftsmanship which has a perfection of its own and thus brings the craftsman into touch with the eternal. The primitive artist-artisan is contrasted with the comparatively artificialized artist of modern days; Hephaistos, the divine smith, is contrasted with the Pythian Apollo and with Dionysos. The simpler artist's sphere is perforce narrower, but it is enough that an artist should be competent to fill the sphere for which he is pre-ordained.
Nevertheless, Colas Breugnon would not have been the typical artist of Rolland's creation, had not struggle been a conspicuous feature of his life, and had we not been shown through him that the real man is always stronger than his destiny. Even the cheerful Colas experiences a full measure of tragedy. His house is burned down, and the work of thirty years perishes in the flames; his wife dies; war devastates the country; envy and malice prevent the success of his last artistic creations; in the end, illness elbows him out of active life. The only defenses left him against his troubles, against age, poverty, and gout, are "the souls he has made," his children, his apprentice, and one friend. Yet this man, sprung from the Burgundian peasantry, has an armor to protect him from the bludgeonings of fate, armor no less effectual than was the invincible German optimism of Jean Christophe or the inviolable faith of Olivier. Breugnon has his imperturbable cheerfulness. "Sorrows never prevent my laughing; and when I laugh, I can always weep at the same time." Epicure, gormandizer, deep drinker, ever ready to leave work for play, he is none the less a stoic when misfortune comes, an uncomplaining hero in adversity. When his house burns, he exclaims: "The less I have, the more I am." The Burgundian craftsman is a man of lesser stature than his brother of the Rhineland, but the Burgundian's feet are no less firmly planted on the beloved earth. Whereas Christophe's daimon breaks forth in storms of rage and frenzy, Colas reacts against the visitations of destiny with the serene mockery of a healthy Gallic temperament. His whimsical humor helps him to face disaster and death. Assuredly this mental quality is one of the most valuable forms of spiritual freedom.
Freedom, however, is the least important among the characteristics of Rolland's heroes. His primary aim is always to show us a typical example of a man armed against his doom and against his god, a man who will not allow himself to be defeated by the forces of life. In the work we are now considering, it amuses him to present the struggle as a comedy, instead of portraying it in a more serious dramatic vein. But the comedy is always transfigured by a deeper meaning. Despite the lighter touches, as when the forlorn old Colas is unwilling to take refuge in his daughter's house, or as when he boastfully feigns indifference after the destruction of his home (lest his soul should be vexed by having to accept the sympathy of his fellow men), still amid this tragi-comedy he is animated by the unalloyed desire to stand by his own strength.
Before everything, Colas Breugnon is a free man. That he is a Frenchman, that he is a burgher, are secondary considerations. He loves his king, but only so long as the king leaves him his liberty; he loves his wife, but follows his own bent; he is on excellent terms with the priest of a neighboring parish, but never goes to church; he idolizes his children, but his vigorous individuality makes him unwilling to live with them. He is friendly with all, but subject to none; he is freer than the king; he has that sense of humor characteristic of the free spirit to whom the whole world belongs. Among all nations and in all ages, that being alone is truly alive who is stronger than fate, who breaks through the seine of men and things as he swims freely down the great stream of life. We have seen how Christophe, the Rhinelander, exclaimed: "What is life? A tragedy! Hurrah!" From his Burgundian brother comes the response: "Struggle is hard, but struggle is a delight." Across the barriers of epoch and language, the two look on one another with sympathetic understanding. We realize that free men form a spiritual kinship independent of the limitations imposed by race and time.