now he can seek them out. His soul which, thirsting for music, has long been eagerly drinking in its strains, now flows forth creatively over the barriers into the world. This inborn daimon in the artist grows with the child, ripens with the man, and ages as the man grows old. Like a vampire it is nourished by all the experiences of its host, drinking his joys and his sorrows, gradually sucking up all the life into itself, so that for the creative human being nothing more remains but the eternal thirst and the torment of creation. In Rolland's sense the artist does not will to create, but must create. For him, production is not (as Nordau and Nordau's congeners fancy in their simplicity) a morbid outgrowth, an abnormality of life, but the only true health; unproductivity is disease. Never has the torment of the lack of inspiration been more splendidly described than in _Jean Christophe_. The soul in such cases is like a parched land under a torrid sun, and its need is worse than death. No breath of wind brings coolness; everything withers; joy and energy fade; the will is utterly relaxed. Suddenly comes a storm out of the swiftly overcast heavens, the thunder of the burgeoning power, the lightning of inspiration; the stream wells up from inexhaustible springs, carrying the soul along with it in eternal desire; the artist has become the whole world, has become God, the creator of all the elements. Whatever he encounters, he sweeps along with him in his rush; "tout lui est prétexte à sa fécondité intarissable"; everything is material for his inexhaustible fertility. He transforms the whole of life into art; like Jean Christophe he transforms his death into a symphony. In order to grasp life in its entirety, Rolland has endeavored to describe the profoundest mystery of life; to describe creation, the origin of the all, the development of art in an artist. He has furnished a vivid description of the tie between creation and life, which weaklings are so eager to avoid. Jean Christophe is simultaneously the working genius and the suffering man; he suffers through creation, and creates through suffering. For the very reason that Rolland is himself a creator, the imaginary figure of Jean Christophe, the artist, is transcendently alive. CHAPTER VIII JEAN CHRISTOPHE Art has many forms, but its highest form is always that which is most intimately akin to nature in its laws and its manifestations. True genius works elementally, works naturally, is wide as the world and manifold as mankind. It creates out of its own abundance, not out of weakness. Its perennial effect, therefore, is to create more strength, to glorify nature, and to raise life above its temporal confines into infinity.