January 29, 1866

Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866, to December 30, 1944), a French thinker and artist, is introduced with a sample of his writing.

Our excerpt is from his long novel (10 volumes), Jean-Christophe, which won the Nobel prize for literature in 1915. The scene is two friends, Emmanuel and the eponymous Christophe:

'On Emmanuel's table, in a clear space among the papers, a gray cat would sit and gravely look at the smokers with an air of reproach. Christophe used to say that it was their living conscience, and, by way of stifling it, he would cover it up with his hat. It was a wretched beast, of the commonest kind, that Emmanuel had picked up half-dead in the street; it had never really recovered from the brutal handling it had received, and ate very little, and hardly ever played, and never made any noise: it was very gentle, and used to follow its master about with its intelligent eyes, and be unhappy when he was absent, and quite content to sit on the table by his side, only breaking off its musing ecstatically, for hours together, to watch the cage where the inaccessible birds fluttered about, purring politely at the least mark of attention, patiently submitting to Emmanuel's capricious, and Christophe's rough, attentions, and always being very careful not to scratch or bite. It was very delicate, and one of its eyes was always weeping: it used to cough: and if it had been able to speak it would certainly not have had the effrontery, like the two men, to declare that "the smoke had nothing to do with it"; but it accepted everything at their hands, and seemed to think:

'"They are men. They know what they are doing."

'Emmanuel was fond of the beast because he saw a certain similarity between its lot and his own. Christophe used to declare that the resemblance was even extended to the expression in their eyes.

'"Why ...?" Emmanuel would say.

'Animals reflect their surroundings. Their faces grow refined or the reverse according to the people with whom they live. A fool's cat has a different expression from that of a clever man's cat. A domestic animal will become good or bad, frank or sly, sensitive or stupid, not only according to what its master teaches it, but also according to what its master is. And this is true not only of the influence of men. Places fashion animals in their own image. A clear, bright landscape will light up the eyes of animals.—Emmanuel's gray cat was in harmony with the stuffy garret and its ailing master, who lived under the Parisian sky.

'....[Emmanuel] although, as a free-thinker, he claimed to be free of all religion and used humorously to call Christophe a clerical in disguise, like every sturdy spirit, ... had his altar on which he deified the dreams to which he sacrificed himself. .... How could he without suffering see the blessed ideas, .... the ideas for which, during the last hundred years, all the finest men had suffered such bitter torment—how could he see them tramped underfoot by the oncoming generation? The whole magnificent inheritance of French idealism— the faith in Liberty, which had its saints, martyrs, heroes, the love of humanity, the religious aspiration towards the brotherhood of nations and races—all, all was with blind brutality pillaged by the younger generation! What madness is it in them that makes them sigh for the monsters we had vanquished, submit to the yoke that we had broken, call back with great shouts the reign of Force, and kindle Hatred and the insanity of war in the heart of my beloved France!

'"It is not only in France," Christophe would say laughingly, "it is throughout the entire world. From Spain to China blows the same keen wind. There is not a corner anywhere for a man to find shelter from the wind! It is becoming a joke: even in my little Switzerland, which is turning nationalist!"

'"You find that comforting?"

'"Certainly. It shows that such waves of feeling are not due to the ridiculous passions of a few men, but to a hidden God who controls the universe. And I have learned to bow before that God. If I do not understand Him, that is my fault, not His. Try to understand Him. But how many of you take the trouble to do that? You live from day to day, and see no farther than the next milestone, and you imagine that it marks the end of the road. You see the wave that bears you along, but you do not see the sea! ... The wave of to-day will plow the ground for the wave of to-morrow, which will wipe out its memory as the memory of ours is wiped out. I neither admire nor dread the naturalism of the present time. It will pass away with the present time: it is passing, it has already passed. ....

'(Christophe drummed on the table, and woke the cat, which sprang away.)...'

The passage exemplifies the Eastern world view which characterizes Romain Rolland's delicate beliefs and writing. A further biographical context is given by sections of the Nobel website:

'Romain Rolland was born ... in the district of Nièvre. He studied literature, music, and philosophy, and in 1895 he published two doctoral theses: Les Origines du théâtre lyrique moderne, an erudite and penetrating work which was awarded a prize by the French Academy, and a Latin thesis, Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit, a study of the decline of Italian painting in the sixteenth century. After several tiresome years as a schoolmaster, he was appointed to the École Normale as maître de conférences and thereafter (1903) to the Sorbonne, where until 1910 he gave a remarkable course on the history of music. In addition to his duties at the university, he devoted himself to music criticism during these years and acquired a wide reputation not only in France but all over Europe when he published his articles and reviews in book form under the titles Musiciens d'autrefois (1908) ... and Musiciens d'aujourd'hui (1908) ... They reveal him as a critic of great judgment, both fair and bold, without prejudices or allegiance to any one party, and as one always striving to reach through music the very sources of life. His biographies of Beethoven (1903) and Händel (1910), inspired as well as learned, are proof of his understanding of music. Besides these, he has written equally remarkable biographies of François Millet (1902), Michelangelo (1905-06), and Tolstoi (1911), in which he has stressed the heroic character of the lives and talents of these artists.

'Rolland made his debut in pure literature in 1897 with a play in five acts, Saint-Louis, which he published together with Aërt (1898) and Le Triomphe de la raison (1899), under the common title Les Tragédies de la foi (1909) .... In these plays he sought to set forth, under the mask of historical events, the miseries that souls faithful to their ideals meet in their struggle with the world. He also wrote Théâtre de la révolution (1909), which includes Le 14 Juillet (1902), Danton (1900), Les Loups (1898)... and a pacifist drama about the war in the Transvaal, Le Temps viendra (1903) ... The plays about the Revolution were conceived during a period when Rolland dreamed of a dramatic reform. He wanted to create a new theatre, to free the art from the domination of a selfish clique, and to entrust it to the people. He had previously outlined his ideas in an essay called Le Théâtre du peuple (1900-03) ... He tried to make his own contribution to this new popular drama by describing the principal episodes of the French Revolution and by representing in a dramatic cycle the Iliad of the French nation. These dramas, which seek moral truth at the sacrifice of anecdotal color, reveal historical intuition, and their characters are fully alive. They are very interesting to read and deserve to be staged.

'From 1904 to 1912 Rolland published his great novel Jean-Christophe, which is composed of a series of independent narratives: L'Aube, Le Matin,L'Adolescent, La Révolte, La Foire sur la place, Antoinette, Dans la maison, Les Amies, Le Buisson ardent, and La Nouvelle Journée ... In 1910 he resigned from his duties at the University; since then he has devoted himself entirely to writing, living most of the time in Rome and Switzerland. During the war, he wrote a series of articles in Swiss newspapers; these were subsequently published in a volume called Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915) .... In this, he maintains that the future of mankind is superior to the interests of nations. War for him is barbarous violence, and over the bloody struggles of nations which seek power he turns our eyes toward the cause of humanity. Rolland's recent works are a novel, Colas Breugnon (1918), a dramatic fantasy, Liluli (1919), and a study of Empedocles (1917).

'Romain Rolland's masterpiece, for which he has received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915, is Jean-Christophe.  [The Nobel Prize in Literature 1915 was announced on November 9, 1916, two years into WWI] This powerful work describes the development of a character in whom we can recognize ourselves. It shows how an artistic temperament, by raising itself step by step, emerges like a genius above the level of humanity; how a powerful nature which has the noblest and most urgent desire for truth, moral health, and artistic purity, with an exuberant love of life, is forced to overcome obstacles that rise up ceaselessly before it; how it attains victory and independence; and how this character and this intelligence are significant enough to concentrate in themselves a complete image of the world. This book does not aim solely at describing the life of the principal hero and his environment. It seeks also to describe the causes of the tragedy of a whole generation; it gives a sweeping picture of the secret labour that goes on in the hidden depths and by which nations, little by little, are enlightened; it covers all the domains of life and art; it contains everything essential that has been discussed or attempted in the intellectual world during the last decades; it achieves a new musical aesthetic; it contains sociological, political and ethnological, biological, literary, and artistic discussions and judgments, often of the highest interest. The artistic personality which is revealed in Jean-Christophe is one of rare resoluteness and strong moral structure. In this work Rolland has not simply followed a literary impulse; he does not write to please or to delight. He has been compelled to write by his thirst for truth, his need for morality, and his love of humanity. For him the purpose of the aesthetic life consists not merely in the creation of beauty; it is an act of humanism. Jean-Christophe is a profession of faith and an example; it is a combination of thought and poetry, of reality and symbol, of life and dream, which attracts us, excites us, reveals us to ourselves, and possesses a liberating power because it is the expression of a great moral force.

'In addition to the Romain Rolland who is concerned about truth and altruism there is also the artist. He is a poet of great scope. Although he has assigned the novel only to second place in his work, his mastery of the genre is superb. The character study of Jean-Christophe is an inspired creation, astonishing in spontaneity, with individuality in every trait, every movement, every thought.

'Around this central, monumental figure, we find a whole series of characters of great human interest. Rolland's observation is precise and profound. He penetrates to the depths of the beings whom he describes; he studies their characters and paints their souls with incomparable psychological art. His portraits of women, especially, are masterpieces. His characters come from all walks of life and are astonishingly true to type - the bourgeois, the politician, the artist. Sometimes the descriptions are brief but powerful sketches full of drama and pathos; sometimes they are extended to form immense tableaux of manners that are striking because of their keenness of vision and their singular penetration. His innate sincerity prevents Rolland from using rhetorical devices. He says in an exact and natural manner what he has to say - and nothing more. But when his thought is inflamed, when his heart is filled with emotion-love, anger, enthusiasm, scorn, joy, or sadness - then a wind swells the sentence and gives to the text a beauty that, before Rolland, only the greatest masters of French prose have attained.

'The works of Romain Rolland (1866-1945) written after the First World War continued to reflect all his earlier interests. During the twenties he began another «roman fleuve», L'Ame enchantée (7 vols., 1922-33) .... Music and the problem of the artist are the subject of his Beethoven: Les grandes époques créatrices (1928) .... Rolland persisted in his quest for peace and was attracted by the non-violence movement of Ghandi, about whom he wrote a book (1924). His fascination with India and Buddhism led to the study Essai sur la mystique et l'action de L'Inde vivante (1929-30) [Prophets of the New India]. His political ideas were increasingly influenced by socialism, as is evident from his many essays. Other works of his later period are Les Précurseurs (1919)..., Clerambault: histoire d'une conscience libre pendant la guerre(1920) ...Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort (1925) ..., and Péguy (1944), the study of his boyhood friend....'

December 30, 1944

After the end of World War I Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866 to December 30, 1944) published Pierre et Luce (1920) an attempt at psychological analysis in the guise of a love story. Before the war ended, Rolland, a famous pacifist, won the Nobel Prize for literature (1915) because of his ".... lofty idealism [and].... the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings"

In Pierre et Luce, five friends are distinguished by their psychological types, though the friends had this in common:

Each one, for that matter, liberal in mind, and, if not all of them republicans", all foes of intellectual or social reaction, or any backward return. 

Rolland distinguishes them according to their solutions to modern issues. 

Jacques See was the most blazingly in favor of the war. This generous young Jew had espoused all the passions the spirit of France contained. All through Europe his cousins in Israel espoused like him the causes and the ideas of their adopted countries. Moreover, according to their method, they even had a tendency toward an exaggeration of whatever they adopted. 

This fine fellow, with ardent but rather heavy voice and look, with his regular features as if marked with a stamp imposed, was more pronounced in his convictions than was needful, and violent in contradiction. According to him, all that was necessary was a crusade made by the democracies to deliver the nations and extinguish war. Four years of the philanthropic slaughterhouse had not convinced him. He was one of those who will never accept the flat contradiction of facts. He had a twofold pride, the secret pride of his race, which race he wished to rehabilitate, and his pride personal that wanted to prove itself right. He wished this all the more because he was not entirely sure of it. His sincere idealism served as a screen against exacting instincts too long suppressed and to a need for action and adventure, which was no less sincere.

The fourth friend is Rolland himself:

The fourth in the group, Claude Puget, sat by at these jousts of words with a cold and somewhat disdainful attention. Coming from the very undermost bourgeoisie, poor, uprooted from his province by a passing inspector of schools who remarked his intelligence, prematurely deprived of the intimate influence of his family, this winner of a Lycee scholarship, accustomed to depend upon himself alone, to live only with himself, merely lived by himself and for himself. An egotistic philosopher given to analysis of the soul, voluptuously immersed in his introspection like a big cat curled up in a ball, he was not moved at all by the agitation of the others. These three friends of his who never could agree among themselves he put in the same bag—with the "populars." Did not all three forfeit their social rank by wishing to partake in the aspirations of the mob? Truth to say, the mob was a different crowd for each of them. But for Puget the crowd, whatever it might be, was always wrong. The crowd was the enemy. The intellect should remain alone and follow its particular laws and found, apart from the vulgar crowd and the State, the small and closed kingdom of thought.

After the war a very famous Rolland met with Gandhi, met with Stalin, and corresponded with Freud. Rolland is said to have suggested to Freud, the "oceanic feeling" mystics mention as something to study.  Oriental philosophy in the form of Swami Vivekananda  was influential on Rolland.  Wikipedia notes that Hermann Hesse dedicated Siddhartha to Rolland.

Jean Christophe was the title of a series of novels Rolland published, the last volume in 1912. Here is an excerpt from that work:

To one whose mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the sufferings of humans. For with the latter, it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the person who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse....

We may, in the sentiments above, see the limits at that historical epoch, of a goodness which cannot imagine the dimensions of ignorance and incalcubility of the larger world of which man is a part. Of course Spinoza might have helped him keep a kind of proportion.....

January 29, 1866

Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866 to December 30, 1944) was a French writer, that rare type of person who sets a standard for purity of action.  He won the Nobel for literature in 1915, for a 10 volume novel, Jean-Christophe. He was a pacifist. He was, one reads, beginning to doubt Stalin, at a time when that great weakness of the 20th century intellectual was most virulent.  It was not his ideas that captivated men, so much as the effortlessness with which he acted on the truth.  Rolland could do, what most men only assumed they themselves could do.  Romain Rolland was a very rare type of human personality: the natural mystic. Because such people do exist, the futile dreams of most men have a greater heft, which may make it harder for the ordinary to perceive their own delusions.  According to the author info in Google Books
Rolland became a mouthpiece of the opposition to Fascism and the Nazis. During the last years of his life, Rolland lived in Vézelay and worked on the biography of Charles Péguy. On December 30, 1944 he succumbed to tuberculosis, an illness that had afflicted him since his childhood.

It was in these last years that Rolland wrote in Journey Within, (1947):

The natural impulse of my being, from my earliest recollections, was - not to observe others -but to flow into them. The passing glance of a dog, a cat, of cattle...in a field, was enough for me to descend into the depths of their cavern. Goethe knew that fascination; but he put it from him, shaking with disgust and horror. Not so I, in them I feel at home. And everything is my habitation. I do not claim the attraction is not illusory.... It is possible. But so is the contrary. What do I know about it? And what more do you know? ...What is certain is that I enjoy the illusion directly as though a hand were on my hand. That glance (man or beast) drinks me in. And the gesture of my old walnut-tree...the trembling outline of its branches lifted up toward the sky...resounds in my own limbs...

It is no wonder his books are not read today. It was not his ideas that were important, it was that one such as Romain Rolland existed, that was significant.