Polonais et Prussiens. I
Jean-Christophe
Romain Rolland
IV. — THE REVOLT. — 3. DELIVERANCE (continued)
This cahier continues the third and final part of the fourth book of Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe. The pagination follows consecutively from the preceding cahier (the sixth of the eighth series), which contained the second part, The Quicksand.
In this section, Christophe has lost all his friends. Dear Gottfried, who had come to his aid in difficult hours, has died during one of his wandering peddler’s rounds. Christophe is left alone with his aging mother, surrounded by the hostile mediocrity of provincial German life. In a flash of desperation, he resolves to seek out the great musician Hassler, whose fame now shines across all of Germany and who had once, when Christophe was a child, made promises to him.
Christophe travels to the great northern city where Hassler is Kapellmeister. He finds Hassler transformed — bald, puffy, yellow-skinned, drowsy, cynical — a man softened by success, embittered by the adulation of his coterie of decadent littérateurs and painters, and sunk into a skeptical indifference born of disappointed ideals. Hassler receives Christophe with glacial boredom, barely listening, until Christophe insists on playing his compositions. Then, despite himself, Hassler is seized by the music’s power — exclaiming, rising from the divan, sitting beside Christophe at the piano, playing passages himself with his charming fine fingers. But the recognition lasts only a moment. Hassler’s irony and egoism reassert themselves; he cruelly mocks Christophe’s hopes, his faith in art, offering himself as proof that it all leads to nothing. Christophe leaves, crushed.
That same evening, Hassler, stirred by remorse, sends a letter and a ticket to the opera; but Christophe has already fled the city.
From the train, Christophe notices the name of a town — that of old Peter Schulz, the retired professor of musical aesthetics who had written him such warm, enthusiastic letters. On impulse, he telegraphs his arrival.
Schulz is seventy-five, frail, asthmatic, alone in the world since his wife’s death twenty-five years ago, tended by a domineering old servant named Salome. His life has been sustained by books and by music. When Christophe’s Lieder arrived months ago, the old man wept with joy, finding in them a kindred soul. The telegram throws him into ecstatic preparations. He misses Christophe at the station, but finally finds him lying in a meadow by singing the opening phrase of Christophe’s own Lied. They become instant friends.
Schulz introduces Christophe to his two old companions — the judge Samuel Kunz, placid and gourmand, and the dentist Oscar Pottpetschmidt, who possesses a magnificent bass voice. Together they feast, drink Rhine wines, make music, and walk through the flowering countryside. Pottpetschmidt sings Christophe’s Lieder with a power and passion that astonish the composer, though the singer understands nothing of what he performs.
That night, alone together, Christophe plays his newest works for Schulz. The old man weeps silently. They talk through the night like brothers of the same age, the old man seeking refuge in the young man’s strength and faith.
In the morning, Christophe departs. Schulz sees him off at the station. On his return home, the old man collapses with a terrible coughing fit, but repeats through his suffering: “What happiness! What happiness that it waited!”
Christophe walks through the April countryside, and the memory of Uncle Gottfried haunts him. A storm forces him to shelter in a farmhouse, where he discovers that Gottfried died on the bench before this very door — unable to speak his last words, while the blind girl Modesta talked on, not knowing he had gone. Christophe learns the story of how Gottfried had healed Modesta’s despair after she lost her sight, teaching her to find beauty in what she could still perceive. In the morning, Modesta leads Christophe to Gottfried’s grave. They kneel together, their fingers entwined in the warm earth.
Christophe continues his journey on foot, refreshed by these encounters with true affection, carrying within him the quiet force of Gottfried’s memory and the certainty that unknown friends exist in the world.
Poles and Prussians. I
Edmond Bernus
ON THE RESISTANCE OF THE POLISH PEOPLE TO THE EXACTIONS OF PRUSSIAN GERMANIZATION
This first installment of Bernus’s historical study examines the long struggle of the Polish population in the Prussian-controlled provinces against systematic Germanization. Bernus traces the history from the Teutonic Order’s medieval colonization through the partitions of Poland, the Frederician colonization campaigns that brought some 300,000 German settlers, and the evolving relationship between German and Polish populations in the borderlands.
He notes that before the partitions, there was no national antagonism as such — only religious differences created tension between the two peoples. After the first partition, Frederick II undertook colonization on a grand scale, concentrating his effort on the Netze district, attracting colonists (largely from southern Germany, particularly Swabia) with important privileges including military service exemptions and tax relief.
The second and third partitions (1793 and 1795) were not only crimes but political errors: the territories were too vast to be digested, and assimilation of the Poles became an impossible task. The Peace of Tilsit and the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw halted Germanization’s progress.
After 1815, Frederick William III sought to conciliate the Poles. Posen was constituted as a Grand Duchy with a provincial constitution; the Poles had a majority in the provincial Landtag. The King made characteristic advances: the Grand Duchy received the white eagle and the Polish colors, red and white, as its coat of arms. The choice of Prince Radziwill, husband of Princess Louise of Prussia, as governor of Posen was a further step toward conciliation. The royal rescript of 1817 on language was animated by the same liberal spirit.
West Prussia was less fortunate in this regard.