Only through the spirit of music can the architectonic of Jean Christophe be understood. However plastic the elaboration of the characters, their effective force is displayed solely in so far as they are thematically interwoven into the resounding tide of life's modulations. The essential matter is always the rhythm which these characters emit, and which issues most powerfully of all from Jean Christophe, the master of music. The structure, the inner architectural conception of the work, cannot be understood by those who merely contemplate its obvious subdivision into ten volumes. This is dictated by the exigencies of book production. The essential caesuras are those between the lesser sections, each of which is written in a different key. Only a trained musician, one familiar with the great symphonies, can follow in detail the way in which the epic poem Jean Christophe is constructed as a symphony, an Eroica; only a musician can realize how in this work the most comprehensive type of musical composition is transposed into the world of speech.