Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House
Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House
Translated by Gilbert Cannan
A German musician arrives in Paris with nothing but his talent and stubbornness, ready to conquer a city he has idealized from afar. What he finds is something far more complicated: a labyrinth of artistic compromise, linguistic isolation, and the brutal economics of survival. Christophe Krafft navigates the Parisian music world with his characteristic ferocity, clashing against the polished surfaces of French culture while nursing wounds that cut deeper than mere homesickness. The novel pulses with the particular anguish of the artist abroad, someone who sees everything with excruciating clarity yet cannot make himself understood. Through encounters with the market-place merchants, the mysterious Antoinette, and the intimacies of domestic life, Rolland crafts a portrait of artistic alienation that feels startlingly modern. This is not a romantic tribute to Paris but a clear-eyed reckoning with what it costs to remake yourself in a foreign land. For anyone who has ever felt the particular loneliness of being a stranger in a city that promises everything.
Editions
X-Ray
“با چشمان پر از اشک زمین وطن را که میبایست بدرود گوید میدید که در میان مه محو میشد…مگر نه او خود در آرزوی ترک آن بود؟ - بله؛ ولی اینک که آن را بهراستی ترک میگفت، احساس دلهره میکرد. تنها قلب دام و دد میتواند بدون احساس تاثر از سرزمین مادری جدا شود. خوشبخت یا بدبخت، با هم زندگی کردهاند؛ شخص در میان او، روی او خوابیدهاست، سراپایش بدان آغشته است؛ وطن گنجینهی رویاهای ما، زندگی گذشتهی ما، و خاکستر مقدس کسانیست که دوست داشتهایم در سینهی خود حفظ میکند.””
— Romain Rolland
“His loyal and eager nature, brought for the first time to the test of love, gave itself utterly, and demanded a gift as utter without the reservation of one particle of the heart. He admitted no sharing in friendship. Being ready to sacrifice all for his friend, he thought it right and even necessary that his friend should wholly sacrifice himself and everything for him. But he was beginning to feel that the world was not built on the model of his own inflexible character, and that he was asking things which others could not give.””
— Romain Rolland
“[Jean-Christophe’s father] was not a bad man, but a half-good man, which is perhaps worse”
— Romain Rolland
