Romain Rolland's books are like a whole era. His contribution to the struggle for happiness and peace of mankind is invaluable. Rolland was loved and considered a true friend by the working people of many countries, for whom he became “ national writer”.
Childhood and student life
(photo above) was born in the small town of Clamcy in the south of France in January 1866. His father was a notary, like all the men in the family. Rolland's grandfather took part in the storming of the Bastille, and his love of life became the basis for the image of one of the best heroes created by the writer, Cola Brugnon.
IN hometown Rolland graduated from college, then continued his studies in Paris, and was a teacher at the Sorbonne. In one of his philosophical treatises he wrote that the main thing for him is a life lived for the benefit of people and the search for truth. Rolland corresponded with Leo Tolstoy, and this strengthened his search for the origins of art.
Romain loved music, which his mother taught him from an early age, and graduated from the prestigious Ecole Normale school, where he studied history. After graduating, he went to Rome on a scholarship in 1889 to study history. Inspired by Shakespeare's plays, he began writing historical dramas about the events of the Italian Renaissance. Returning to Paris, he wrote plays and did research.
Cycle “French Revolution”
In 1892 he married the daughter of a famous philologist. In 1893, Rolland defended his dissertation on music at the Sorbonne, after which he taught at the music department. Romain Rolland's life for the next 17 years consisted of lectures, literary studies and his first works.
Rolland was greatly alarmed by the state of art, seeing that the bourgeoisie had reached a dead end, and he made courageous innovation his task. At that time, France was close to civil war - it was in such a conflict that the writer’s first works originated.
Literary activity began with the play "Wolves", published in 1898. A year later, the play "The Triumph of Reason" was staged. In 1900, the writer wrote the drama "Danton", which was shown to the public in the same year.
Another drama that occupies an important place in Rolland’s revolutionary cycle is “The Fourteenth of July,” written in 1901. In it, the writer showed the power and awakening of the rebellious people. The historical events that Rolland wanted to reproduce were clearly visible already in the first dramas. In them great place assigned to the people, whose power and strength the writer felt with his whole being, but the people remained a mystery to him.
People's Theater
Romain Rolland nurtured the idea of the People's Theater and, along with dramas, wrote articles on this topic. They were included in the book "People's Theater", published in 1903. His creative ideas are stifled by the bourgeois society that has fallen upon the writer.
Abandoning plans to create the People's Theater, Rolland takes up the novel "Jean-Christophe", wanting to embody in it what could not be done in theatrical endeavors. Subsequently, he will say that Jean-Christophe avenged him at this vanity fair.
At the beginning of the century there was a turn in the writer’s work. Rolland no longer turns to history, but looks for a hero. In the preface to Beethoven's Life, published in 1903, Romain Rolland writes: "Let the breath of a hero wash over us." He tries to emphasize in his appearance famous musician traits that appeal to him. That is why the biography of Beethoven received a peculiar shade in his interpretation, which does not always correspond historical truth.
Jean-Christophe
In 1904, Rolland began writing the novel Jean-Christophe, which he conceived back in the 90s. It was finished in 1912. All stages of the hero’s life, full of incessant quests, which brought him troubles and victories, pass before the reader from birth to his lonely death.
The first four books, telling about the hero’s childhood and youth, reflect Germany and Switzerland of those years. The writer tries in every possible way to show that only a real genius can emerge from the people. Irreconcilable and not accustomed to retreat, Christophe clashed with the bourgeois public. He had to leave his homeland and flee Germany. He comes to Paris and expects to find what he needs. But all his dreams crumble to dust.
Books five to ten tell about the hero's life in France. They cover the sphere of culture and art, which so excited the author of the book, and he exposed and exposed the true essence of bourgeois democracy. In the writer's diary back in 1896 there is an entry about the original plan of the novel: “This will be the poem of my life.” In a sense, this is true.
Heroic Lives
In 1906, Romain Rolland wrote "The Life of Michelangelo" and at the same time worked on Christophe's fourth book. The internal similarity of these two works is clearly visible. In the same way, there is a parallel between the ninth book and “The Life of Tolstoy,” which was published in 1911.
Kindness, heroism, spiritual loneliness, purity of heart - what attracted Rolland to the Russian writer became Christophe’s experiences. With "The Life of Tolstoy" the cycle "Heroic Lives" conceived by Romain about the lives of Garibaldi, F. Millet, T. Payne, Schiller, Mazzini stopped and remained unwritten.
Cola Brugnon
The next masterpiece was Romain Rolland's book "Cola Brugnon", published in 1914. The writer has recreated the historical past here, and the reader clearly feels his admiration for French culture, his tender and ardent love for his native land. The novel takes place in the hometown of Rolland Clumcy. The novel is a record of the life of the main character - a woodcarver, talented, witty, with a rare love of life.
Years of struggle
During the war years, the strong and weaknesses Rolland's creativity. He clearly sees the crime of war and treats both warring sides equally. Feelings of painful discord are visible in the collections of anti-war articles written by the writer from 1914 to 1919.
The writer calls the time between the two wars “years of struggle.” At this time, a bold and frank confession, “Farewell to the Past,” was written, published in 1931. Here he honestly revealed his inner quest in life and work, and sincerely admitted his mistakes. In 1919 - 1920, “The History of a Free-Thinking Man”, “Clerambault”, the stories “Pierre and Luce” and “Liluli” were published.
During these years the writer continued the series of dramas about the French Revolution. In 1924 and 1926, Romain Rolland's plays "The Game of Love and Death" and " Palm Sunday". In 1928, he wrote the drama "Leonids", according to critics, the most "unsuccessful and ahistorical".
Enchanted Soul
In 1922, the writer began the cycle “The Enchanted Soul”. Rolland took eight years to write this huge work. There are many things in common between Christophe and the heroine of this novel, which is why the work is perceived as something familiar for a long time. Annette is looking for “her place in the tragedy of humanity” and thinks that she has found it. But she is far from the goal, and the heroine cannot use the energy hidden in her for the benefit of the people. Annette is lonely. Her support is only in herself, in her spiritual purity.
As events develop in the novel, denunciation of bourgeois society takes more and more place. The conclusion that the heroine of the novel comes to is to “break, destroy” this order of death. Annetta understands that her camp has been found and social duty is worth nothing next to motherhood and love, eternal and unshakable.
Her mother’s work will be continued by her son Mark, in whom the heroine invested all the best she could give him. It occupies most of the last parts of the epic. The young man, fashioned from “good material,” becomes a participant in the anti-fascist movement and seeks a path to the people. In Mark, the author gives the image of an intellectual who is occupied with ideological quests. And before the eyes of the readers appears human personality in all its manifestations - joy and sorrow, triumph and disappointment, love and hatred.
The novel “The Enchanted Soul”, written in the 30s, does not lose its relevance today. Full of politics and philosophy, it remains a story about a man with all his passions. This is a great novel in which the author raises vital questions, and it clearly shows a call to fight for the happiness of mankind.
New world
In 1934, Rolland marries for the second time. Maria Kudasheva became his life partner. They return from Switzerland to France, and the writer joins the ranks of the fighters against Nazism. Romain stigmatizes any manifestation of fascism, and after “The Enchanted Soul,” two remarkable collections of the writer’s journalistic speeches were published in 1935: “Peace through Revolution” and “Fifteen Years of Struggle.”
They contain the biography of Romain Rolland, his political and creative development, quest, entry into the anti-fascist movement, transition “to the side of the USSR.” Just like in “Farewell to the Past,” there is a lot of self-criticism, a story about his path to the goal through obstacles - he walked, fell, deviated to the side, but stubbornly continued to walk until he reached a new world.
In these two books, the name of M. Gorky is mentioned many times, whom the writer considered his comrade in arms. They corresponded since 1920. In 1935, Rolland came to the USSR and, despite his illness, sought to learn as much as possible about the Soviet Union. Returning from the country of the Soviets, seventy-year-old Rolland told everyone that his strength had noticeably increased.
Shortly before the war, in 1939, Romain Rolland published the play Robespierre, which completed the cycle dedicated to the French Revolution. The theme of the people runs through the entire drama. The seriously ill writer spent four years of the Nazi occupation in Wesel. Rolland's last public appearance was a reception in honor of the anniversary of the revolution at the Soviet embassy in 1944. He died in December of the same year.
Reader reviews
They write about Romain Rolland that he is distinguished by an encyclopedicism rare for those years - he is well versed in music and painting, history and philosophy. He also understands human psychology quite well and realistically shows why a person acts this way, what motivates him and what’s going on in his head, where it all started.
The writer's literary heritage is extremely diverse: essays, novels, plays, memoirs, biographies of people of art. And in each work he naturally and vividly shows a person’s life: childhood, years of growing up. Feelings and experiences common to many cannot be hidden from his inquisitive mind.
It would seem difficult to portray the world of a child through the eyes of an adult, but Rolland does it incredibly vividly and talentedly. He delights with his smooth and easy style. The works are read in one breath, like a song thoroughly saturated with music, be it a description of nature or home life, a person’s feelings or his appearance. The author’s apt remarks are striking in their simplicity and at the same time depth; each of his books can literally be disassembled into quotes. Romain Rolland, through the mouth of his characters, expresses to the reader his opinion about everything: about music and religion, politics and emigration, journalism and issues of honor, about old people and children. There is life in his books.
Rolland Romain (1866-1944), French novelist and playwright. Born January 29, 1866 in Clamcy (Burgundy). Higher education received from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris; his work History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti (L"Histoire de l"opra en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti, 1895) was the first doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne on musical theme. He was a professor (history of music) at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure. The influence of Tolstoy, with whom Rolland corresponded, played an important role in the development of the humanistic and pacifist views that defined his work, while romanticism and vague mysticism were most likely due to his acquaintance with German literature.
Rolland began his career as a playwright, achieving great success on the French stage. First appeared the plays Tragedy of Faith (Tragdie de la foi): Saint Louis (Saint Louis, 1897), Aert (Art, 1898), The Triumph of Reason (Le Triomphe de la raison, 1899). They were followed by plays in the stricter sense of the word historical: Danton (Danton, 1900), July 14 (Le quatorze juillet, 1902) and Robespierre (Robespierre, 1938).
Rolland advocated the creation of a fundamentally new dramaturgy, but his book The People's Theater (Le Thtre du peuple, 1903) received a modest response. Then he began his most famous novel Jean-Christophe (tt. 1-10, 1903-1912). The main character of the book is German composer, whose life is described from birth in a small town on the banks of the Rhine to death in Italy. His music doesn't get the recognition it deserves, but he relies on loyal friendship and love to overcome challenges.
Fascinated by heroic historical figures, Rolland wrote several biographies: The Life of Beethoven (La Vie de Beethoven, 1903), Michelangelo (Michel-Ange, 1903) and the Life of Tolstoy (La Vie de Tolstoi, 1911), followed by the lives of some Indian sages - the Mahatma Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi, 1924), The Life of Ramakrishna (La Vie de Ramakrishna, 1929) and The Life of Vivekananda and the World Gospel (La Vie de Vivekananda et l "vangile universel, 1930).
When World War I broke out, Rolland decided to remain in Switzerland and made unsuccessful attempts to achieve reconciliation between French, German and Belgian intellectuals. His arguments were presented in a number of articles, later published in the collection Above the Fight (Au-dessus de la mle, 1915; Russian translation in 1919 under the title Away from the Fight) and in the novel Clrambault (1920). In recognition of Rolland's literary merits, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915. Rolland died in Vezelay (France) on December 30, 1944.
Books (1)
Life of Ramakrishna
The famous French writer Romain Rolland is considered one of the creators of the genre artistic biography. He owns the biographies of Beethoven, Tolstoy, Michelangelo. In the first decades of the 20th century, when interest in the East was just emerging among the European intelligentsia, R. Rolland turned to India, its philosophy and culture. The hero of his book was the son of a modest Brahman from a Bengal village, known throughout the world under the name of Sri Ramakrishna (1836 - 1886).
The teachings of this unusual religious thinker left an imprint on all areas of social and political life in India. Moreover, the name of Ramakrishna is firmly entrenched in the cultural heritage of all mankind. His ideas were paid tribute to by such humanists as Mahatma Gandhi and J. Nehru, Leo Tolstoy and Nicholas Roerich, Max Muller and Romain Rolland.
Reader comments
Svetlana/ 11/14/2017 This is fiction. And all their “miracles” are pure fantasy, imposed as truth. The same applies to all “sacred texts” in the world. It's like "The Life of Father Frost and the Snow Maiden." People, don't believe in gods, it's stupid!
Natalia Lang/ 04/10/2015 I reviewed several sites. I'm studying yoga now. Hindu historians refer to Romain Roland in their lectures. At the end of the study, everyone should read a report on the greatest masters of Yoga. We must pay tribute to the good translation into Russian! I am talking about Ramakrishna. On your website I found out that there is a book about Vivekananda in the series. Thank you. I'll definitely read it
Zlata/ 10.21.2014 Where does such confidence in truthfulness come from? To write about such people, you always have to add something of your own: no one has described their life hour by hour.
Yuri/ 07/20/2010 His “Jean-Christophe” is still one of my favorite works. Later I learned that he also wrote biographies of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, which were very fascinating and truthful.
Biography
ROMAIN ROLLAN (M. Tahoe-Godi. "Writers of France." Comp. E. Etkind, Prosveshchenie Publishing House, Moscow, 1964)
Long gone are the days when mighty fortress walls reliably guarded the peace of the small town of Vezelay, from which today it is a two-hour drive to Paris. The narrow streets of Vézelay still preserve the memory of medieval knights. In the bad days of the forty-second year, the forged boots of the new “crusaders” knock on them. “The wind is howling outside and war is threatening.”
THE BOY FROM CLAMCY
His life began not far from here. The son of the notary Emile Rolland was born on January 29, 1866 in one of the old houses with lattice shutters on the rue d'Hospice in the small town of Clamcy (Nievres department). His homeland is here in Nivernes - the heart of France, where among gentle hills covered with forests and vineyards , Ionna flows its calm waters above the canal connecting it with Bevron, Clumsy is located.
Since time immemorial, cheerful and hardworking people have lived here. He composed songs and fairy tales, laughed at Maslenitsa feasts and knew how to work tirelessly. Rolland's fellow countrymen were plowmen and winegrowers, they mined black marble with yellow veins in the suburbs, floated timber down the river to Paris, decorated the tower of the Church of St. Martin, planed the elastic wood, extracting from it chunky furniture with intricate curls of carving.
In those days when the echo of the guns of the Paris Commune had not yet died down, the blue-eyed little Nivernesian Romain Rolland took his first walks with his father around the outskirts of Clamcy. The father is from a family of Brevsky notaries, the Rollans and Bonyarovs, greedy for life, merry fellows. My father is associated with endless memories of the legendary great-grandfather Boniard, a participant in the French Revolution of 1789, the first “apostle of freedom” in Clamcy. A tireless traveler who walked half of France, a passionate bibliophile, astronomer, physician, geologist, archaeologist, artist, philosopher, he was the most striking embodiment of the “Gallic” love of life and free-thinking. “This great-grandfather! His portrait will confuse the respectable reader, who imagines that all the Rollands are colorless crybabies, idealists, rigoristic pessimists...”
Rolland knew that he owed his great-grandfather that “particle of Panurge,” that “zest” that gave strength in the struggle and love for life. Mother is from a family of strict and pious Jansenists Kuro. Mother is music and books. Music was as necessary as bread. She saved me from terrible thoughts creeping up in the dark.
The library windows looked into the greenish waters of the canal. The house, large, empty and deaf, seemed to Romain to be a “mousetrap” from which he passionately wanted to escape. Climbing his feet into an old chair, the boy leafed through his grandfather's well-read volumes of Shakespeare. The spirit of free and dangerous life burst into the musty peace of the bourgeois house.
The door to the world opened a little when Romain went to study at a local college. And in 1880, the father liquidated his office and moved with his family to Paris to give his son a systematic education. First the Lyceum of St. Louis, then, from 1883, the Lyceum of Louis the Great and, finally, from 1886, the Higher Normal School - three years of history classes at the pedagogical faculty. The boy from Clamcy became a high school student in Paris. Over the course of a quarter of a century that Rolland lived in Paris, the city more than once revealed its new side to him: the Paris of the “Dram of the Revolution”, the Paris of “Fairs on the Square”, the Paris of “Pierre et Luce”. The Paris of my student years was special and unique in its apparent serenity.
Second-hand bookstore counters near the Saint-Michel Bridge, spanning the gray, sluggish river. In the intense gloom of concert halls, the mastery of the Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein most fully revealed Beethoven's spirit to the young Rolland. The golden-dusty air of the Italian galleries of the Louvre - Leonardo, Giorgione, Raphael, Michelangelo. Quiet classrooms of the “monastery on Ulm street” - the Normal School. Already during the years of study, three powerful sources began to flow that fed Rolland’s “Heroic Lives” - the music of Beethoven, the art of the Italian Renaissance, and the genius of Tolstoy.
The future writer thought about the purpose of art. The emptiness of the new poetry outraged him. Even his best school friends Claudel and Suarez could not convince him of the correctness of the theories of the master of modern symbolism, Mallarmé. This Mallarmé, with his flat “strumming of the word,” dared to declare that he despises the Russians for their lack of artistry and style. “That’s what sentences him. He despises life. His art is sterile."
It was not without reason that Rolland voraciously read Gogol, Herzen, Goncharov, Turgenev and Dostoevsky during his holidays in Clamcy in September 1887. Behind them is reality, behind them is life. They became his friends and companions along with Shakespeare and Voltaire, Hugo and Spinoza. Tolstoy reigned undivided in his heart. Tolstoy is a light in the night of spiritual loneliness. For Rolland, art was a calling. He was painfully wounded by Tolstoy's sharp attacks against art. Have they really chosen the wrong goal in life? Trying to resolve his doubts, Rolland dared to write to L. Tolstoy in September 1887. “Why condemn art?” - he asked. An unknown Parisian student received an encouraging response from Yasnaya Polyana. Great writer advised his “dear brother” not to forget about the responsibilities of art in relation to working people, for only the art that belongs to the “elect” has no meaning. “The great example of Tolstoy’s life” forever remained a powerful support for Rolland in his struggle for the people of art.
The diary of a Normal School student concealed broad plans for the future. Rolland devoted his first work to the history of religious wars in France. By the age of thirty he will be the author of a great novel - otherwise life will not be worth living. During this strict period, you cannot bind yourself to anything, either in your personal life or in your public life; you need to preserve your “free soul.”
Rolland's first steps in art were made in Italy. A two-year scholarship from the École Normale (1890-1891) to continue his education at the French School of History and Archeology in Rome gave Rolland the opportunity to see Italy. Rolland spent days rummaging through the Vatican archives, selecting material for his work on papal diplomacy. He lived in a school that occupied the 16th-century Farnese Palace, built by Michelangelo. There was barely room for a piano in the narrow room under the roof. The fingers produced a clear, transparent sound - Gluck, Rameau, Mozart, Bach brought rest to Rolland. To the surprise of all his colleagues and teachers, he could play for hours with his eyes closed; he had an exceptional musical memory. He loved the musicians of yesteryear just as he loved the clean lines of the Florentine artists Botticelli and Leonardo.
The most interesting route in Rome was the road to Via della Polveriera, which Rolland knew well. Broken steps of a steep staircase. Two cheerful girls run towards them, chatting about their own things. Rolland hesitates for a moment, catching his breath, before opening the door and greeting the hostess.
Malvida Meisenbug is already over seventy years old: “a small woman, fragile, calm, silent,” but to Rolland she seems to be a living symbol of those years of happy hope when the revolutionary thunderstorm of 1848 rolled across Europe. A friend of A. Herzen, teacher of his daughter Olga, M. Meisenbug knew Garibaldi and Louis Blanc, Lenbach and Liszt, and translated articles by Herzen and “Childhood and Adolescence” by L. Tolstoy into English. Rolland eagerly listens to her stories, and before him “Wagner, Nietzsche, Herzen, and Mazzini come to life.” Malvida Meisenbug stands at the cradle of Rolland's creativity. Rolland argues with her about the Italian Renaissance and Greek philosophy; he trusts her with his dreams of creating a new, extraordinary “musical novel”, of combining Poetry and Truth, Art and Action.
NEW IDEAL
1909 A graduate of the Parisian Lyceum, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, takes the exam for the Normal School. He examines his examiner. “A long figure in black, a long thin neck, blond hair and a thin face, thin, pale to the point of transparency, a painfully outlined mouth, the hard stubble of a straw mustache... And on this face are deeply sunken radiant eyes. The voice is quiet and dull.” Leaving the classroom, proud of his excellent mark, Paul learns the name of the examiner - Romain Rolland.
Many events, many years of intense creative work, in which all sides of his powerful and diverse talent were revealed, separate Professor Romain Rolland from the young student - interlocutor Malvida Meisenbug.
Behind him is a doctoral dissertation, years of teaching at the École Normale and the Sorbonne, the fame of a specialist who created a new style of musicological research, constant collaboration in the Revue d'Ar Dramatic et Musical, works on old and new composers. Connoisseurs also take into account his opinion painting - in the Revue de Paris he publishes reviews of art exhibitions. But all this seems to Rolland a side hustle. “Everyone around me imagined that I was a musicologist,” he writes with an ironic grin to M. Meisenbug on December 23, 1895, “but between us, I don’t care about music (at least about the history of music); that’s what I’d like to do is my dramas.”
The first tragedy, “Saint Louis,” published in March 1897 in the Revue de Paris, opened a series of dramatic paintings from the history of the French people, continued in “Dramas of the Revolution” (1898-1902). The distant past is closely intertwined here with the topic of the day. Rolland set as an example to his contemporaries the nobility and purity of thoughts of the people who crushed the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Rolland passionately contrasted the idea of a realistic folk theater with “all the decadent rot” - “there is only one cure: truth... Let the artist dare to face reality in order to have the right to paint it.” In the struggle for mass heroic art, Rolland was ready to abandon even his proud individualism: “Socialist ideas take possession of me independently of me, despite my likes and dislikes, despite my egoism,” he wrote in his diary of 1893. “If there is any hope of avoiding the destruction that threatens modern Europe, its society and its art, then it lies in socialism.” And further: “I want to give all my strength to that revival of art - I see it, like Ged, in a new ideal.”
The names of the socialist leaders - Guesde and Jaurès - are increasingly found on the pages of his diaries: on June 23, 1897, in the Chamber of Deputies, Rolland listened to Jaurès; in 1900 he participated in the Socialist Congress in Paris, sat with the left - supporters of Jaurès; in 1902 I read “History of the Revolution” by Jaurès. “I am fatally drawn to the socialist camp, and more and more every day,” wrote Rolland M. Meisenbug on January 17, 1901. “It is this part of France that has the greatest sympathy for me. We see that we are pursuing common goals: they are in politics, I am in art.”
On Rolland’s desk there was a photograph, the same as in the editorial office of the magazine “Cahier de la Quenzen”, published by C. Peguy: an image of two distant comrades - Tolstoy and Gorky in the Yasnaya Polyana garden. Under their friendly glances, the ideas for the works that Rolland worked on in the first decade of the new, 20th century matured.
Rolland could devote only rare hours to creativity, free from everyday teaching work. Only outwardly his life was quiet and secluded, like that deserted garden into which the windows of his apartment on Montparnasse Boulevard looked out. Constant creative tension possessed Rolland: “Oh! I would be sorry to die before I fully unfold, before I allow all the shoots of life that I feel within me to blossom.” The images of the heroes of future books were part of his being. Jean Christophe lived in his thoughts even during the period of the creation of “Drames of the Revolution”, and Jean Christophe, in turn, was supplanted by Cola Brugnon. But Jean Christophe was in a hurry more than anyone else. And he appeared at the meeting at the same time as Beethoven. The cycle of “Heroic Lives” and “Jean Christophe” answered one task - to refresh the stuffy atmosphere of old Europe with the “breath of heroes”, to glorify the greatness of the heart and the titanism of the spirit. Simultaneously with “The Life of Beethoven”, “The Life of Michelangelo”, “The Life of Tolstoy”, a ten-volume novel “Jean Christophe” was created over the course of ten years (1902-1912).
“THROUGH SUFFERING TO JOY”
Rolland more than once referred to the fact that, under the influence of Tolstoy, he gave the new work an “epic character.” This epic character is reflected in the style of the novel, which is not distinguished by minute artistic decoration, but is fully consistent with the powerful scope of the heroic life described in it. “Some creations are created in such a way that it is better to look at them from a distance, since they have a certain passionate rhythm that drives the whole and subordinates the details to the overall effect. This is Tolstoy. Such is Beethoven... Until now, none of my French critics. . . “I didn’t notice that I also have my own style,” Rolland quite rightly reproached critics in one of his letters in 1911. Rolland's language has its own special rhythm. His phrase sometimes floats in the clouds of Hugo’s rhetoric, sometimes like Tolstoy’s, ponderous, but convincing.
The hero of the novel, Jean Christoph Kraft, is the son of a poor German musician, the Beethoven of our time. The heroic symphony of his entire life unfolds before us, consonant with the theme of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: “Through suffering to joy.”
A little boy listens to the sounds of his native land: the murmur of the old Rhine, the chime of distant bells, the simple songs of the poor peddler Uncle Gottfried. A rebellious young man rebels against routine in music, rebels against lies and falsehood in art. The cook's son Christophe dares to openly despise the philistines who indulge themselves with music during the break between the first and second courses. Unable to hypocritically hide his feelings, Christophe turns against himself the whole city. The townsfolk and patrons from the magazine "Dionysus", his fellow orchestra members and the ducal court - everyone is poisoning him.
The young composer accidentally ends up in Paris - a city of clever politicians, businessmen and cocottes, a mad thirst for pleasure and pitiful, degenerating art. Here, at this huge and colorful “fair on the square”, everything is bought and sold - a place in the Chamber of Deputies, beliefs, talent. Christophe is disgusted by the Paris of the “Lilliputians”, who spiritually crushed people such as Levi-Coeur, Roussin, Goujar. In dire need, surviving on miserable lessons and meager earnings from the publisher Hecht, Christophe continues his innovative quest. It is not self-interest that drives Christophe to success. He compares himself with the artists of the Renaissance and with the old German shoemaker poet Hans Sachs - with those who enjoyed creativity.
Christophe absolutely loves music. “Everything is music for the musical soul. Everything that vibrates, and moves, and trembles, and breathes - sunny summer days and the whistle of the night wind, flowing light and twinkling stars, thunderstorms, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, the rustling of leaves, loved or hated voices, all the familiar household sounds, creaking doors, the ringing of blood in the ears in the silence of the night - everything that exists is music: you just need to hear it.” The young composer strives to convey this music of living existence in his symphonies. And, like music, the images of women dear to Christophe are beautiful - his mother Louise, Antoinette, Grace, the images of people from the people to which Christophe himself belongs are beautiful.
Making his way through the crowd of the “fair on the square,” Christophe does not heed the assurances of the fashion journalist Sylvain Cohn: “France is us...” He suspects that there is another, real France, which is thoroughly hidden. Dreaming of a courageous, healthy and heroic art, Christophe turns to the past - to the harsh truth of Rembrandt’s paintings, warmed by a deep inner fire, to the philosophical highs of the second part of Faust, to the wise laughter of Rabelais, to the mighty scope of Beethoven’s genius. But then the Frenchman Olivier Jeannin appears, who introduces Christophe to the real France, to its freedom-loving people. And from this moment on, in the epic song “Jean Christophe,” as Rolland himself called the work, the motif of the old French epic seems to come to life: “Olivier is wise, and Count Roland is brave...” Two friends walk hand in hand: strong and passionate, active and fearless Christophe, Olivier's reserved and thoughtful poet-philosopher.
A brave rebel in the field of art, Christophe is alien to the ideas of revolution and class struggle, he prefers not to join any parties. That is why Rolland, in many ways in solidarity with his hero, did not carry out the previously planned volume that was supposed to precede The Burning Bush - the story of Christophe’s emigration to London and his rapprochement with revolutionary figures “like Mazzini or Lenin.” After the defeat of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the author himself did not see any real ways of struggle, and this led to a crisis for his hero. Olivier tragically dies during a political demonstration, and Grazia, who embodies the harmony and “heroic clarity” of Italian art, dies. Christophe retreats from the fight. He ends his days alone on the eve of World War II. But his last minutes are warmed by a joyful anticipation of great changes, the “coming day” on the threshold of which the modern world stands.
The humanistic meaning of the novel is enormous, dedicated to “the free souls of all nations who suffer, fight and will win.” With this call for the unity of people of different nationalities on the eve of the imperialist massacre, Rolland gained friends in all countries of the world.
Christophe could not find a way out and ended his journey by softening and reconciling the contradictions. But the path of the creator of “Jean Christophe” continued. “Christophe is finally dead. Rather, another human shell, a freer one, into which I could incarnate! Cola was the first one that came to my attention.”
“THE SMOKING ROOM IS ALIVE!”
Cola Breugnon was largely completed over the course of several summer months in 1913, spent in Switzerland and Nivernes in a mood of extraordinary creative exuberance. The story about one year in the life of a craftsman and artist from Clamcy at the beginning of the 17th century was based on family memories, as well as personal impressions, a thorough study of the traditions and folklore of his native land - Nivernet. It is interesting that Rolland considered Col to be a broader “human shell” compared to Christophe, a strong and brilliant nature. The artist from the Cola people, Brugnon, seemed to Rolland more versatile, capable of containing all the joys and sorrows inherent in to the common man. Cola is an exponent of the national character of the French people, whom Marx spoke of as having a special, “Gallic” spirit of fun and satire, whose laughter can be heard in the books of Rabelais, Voltaire and Beaumarchais, Beranger and A. France. Cola is the personification of the creative energy of the French people of the Renaissance, who, having thrown off the shackles of the medieval hierarchy and church dogmatism, created amazing monuments of art.
Wood carver Cola Brugnon has a passion for art. Om greedily absorbs the forms and colors, rhythms and smells of the surrounding world: “I am like a sponge sucking the Ocean.” Everything he sees through his eyes takes on the glow of poetry: “Like folded fabric, days fall into the velvet chest of nights.” Cola is observant. It was he who spied how “the sun dipped its golden hair into the water,” how the sky lifted “its eyelids - clouds” to look at him with “pale blue eyes.” It is for him that the stream purrs, the geese chatter in the meadows, the merry drinking companions laugh at the table, the hammers dance on the anvils, the voices of the night garden merge into a powerful chorus. The tart smell of fragrant herbs of the Nivernaise fields emanates from the fresh, multi-colored language of the book, lyrical and playful, peppered with proverbs and jokes. Fairy tales and songs, thoughts and music of the native land filled the “Gallic tale” to the brim.
Kola is a cheerful and generous person; he despises the greedy feudal lords who are “ready to swallow up half of all the land, but they themselves don’t know how to plant cabbages on it.” The Klamsi carpenter loves peace and tranquility, but, if necessary, he will raise the whole city to revolt. He is unyielding in a dispute with a difficult fate. He doesn’t believe in God or the devil, even the plague doesn’t bother him. His house burns down - he begins to live and build again.
“The smoking room is alive!” - this is the subtitle the author gave to his novel. The book about the historical past expressed the writer’s faith in the future of his people, in their unfading vigor. That is why before the imperialist war it sounded like a call to life, a call to peace and work for the good of the people. “What wonderful book you did it, dear friend! - the great master of words Maxim Gorky wrote to Rolland after reading “Cola of Breugnon”. “This is truly the creation of a Gallic genius, resurrecting the best traditions of your literature!”
Because of the war, the book was able to see the light only in 1919. She was welcomed by all the leading writers of France - A. Barbusse, P. Vaillant-Couturier, J. R. Bloch. Since then, its victorious march around the world began in the languages of many peoples of the world, in their graphics and music. The USSR became the second home of Cola Breugnon. The novel was masterfully translated into Russian by M. Lozinsky, illustrated by E. Kibrik. D. Kabalevsky’s opera “The Master from Clumsy” was written based on its plot.
THE PATH TO “FAREWELL TO THE PAST”
Ten packages with wax seals were opened on the deadline set by the author - January 1, 1955. They contain 29 typewritten notebooks, a true chronicle of the era - one of the copies of the “Diary of the War Years (1914-1919)”, transferred by Rolland for storage and ownership of the State Library named after V. I. Lenin in Moscow. Quiet in the small reading room of the manuscript department. The translators bent over the Diary. Rolland will be the first to tell them about the restless destinies of Europe, deafened by the roar of the world war.
The war found Rolland in Switzerland in the summer of 1914, when he was finishing Cola Breugnon. On July 31, on a sunny Parisian day, the fiery tribune of the world, Jean Jaurès, was treacherously shot dead in the Croissant cafe. “In the morning we learned about the murder of Zhores... Great mind, noble heart,” Rolland wrote on August 1 in his Diary, bitterly recalling the promises of the nationalists on the day of the declaration of war to deal with Zhores. Events rushed with dizzying speed.
On August 2, the 16th Infantry Division of the Eighth Corps of the German Army, crossing the river. Saarland, entered the territory of the Duchy of Luxembourg. On the morning of August 4, German troops violated the Belgian border and shelled the forts of Liege. Then, on August 4, the author of “Jean Christophe” noted with a shudder: “This European war is the greatest catastrophe of all experienced over several centuries of history, it is the collapse of our most sacred faith in human brotherhood.” On August 22-23, fighting flared up in the Ardennes - the war came to France.
The entries in Rolland's diary of these days are an indictment of nationalism, which has poisoned the consciousness of peoples. While the ideologists of the warring countries accused their enemies of vandalism and barbarism, the most valuable historical monuments perished in the smoke of the fighting. A pile of ashes remains from the ancient Belgian city of museums of Louvain; a miracle of art of medieval French masters - Reims Cathedral served as a sight for German artillery. For Rolland, who had dreamed all his life about the universal unity of peoples, the world war was a cruel blow. On September 23, 1914, in the article “Above the Fight” (Journal de Geneve), Rolland called on artists, writers, thinkers of all countries to come forward to save achievements human spirit, the future of world brotherhood, rise above the injustice and hatred of nations. Rolland's thoughts during the war years were full of contradictions. He sincerely wanted people to abolish the war, and did not understand that the “bourgeois fatherlands” could not be reconciled. He participated in the work of all kinds of pacifist organizations and did not realize what Lenin said so clearly in July 1915: “War on war” is a vulgar phrase without a revolution against one’s government.” He wanted to be “above the fray,” but the course of events soon drew him into the fray. Rolland became the conscience of Europe, its honest and pure voice. He denounced the falsity and lies of modern society, which started the war. He saw the guilt of not only German but also French imperialism. He began to realize that war was a pan-European crime. The spectacle of the agony of the “murdered peoples” convinced him of the need for social renewal, the path to which he did not yet know. His pacifism was a condemnation of the present.
That is why the leading intelligentsia of the whole world sympathized with his struggle: physicist A. Einstein, sculptor O. Rodin, artist F. Mazereel, actress E. Duse, critic G. Brandes, writers B. Shaw, S. Zweig, G. Wells, R. Martin du Gard, J.R. Bloch and many others. With his activities to unite all progressive forces in the fight against war, Rolland prepared the ground for that broad democratic movement in defense of peace, which resisted the threat of fascism in the 30s.
Rolland gradually discovered the truth that war is going on not only between states, but also within them. Evidence of this was the April uprising of 1916 in the capital of Ireland, Dublin, suppressed by the British with the help of cannons; February revolution of 1917 in Russia; the heroic struggle of the German “Spartacists” in January 1919. In the crucible of the imperialist war, Rolland already heard the iron rhythm of the revolution. “The curtain rises. The revolution has begun,” Rolland wrote in his diary, reading “ Farewell letter to the Swiss workers" Lenin dated April 17, 1917.
Since April 1917, the focus of the “War Years Diary” has been on the fate of the Russian revolution and the personality of its leader V.I. Lenin, whom Rolland characterizes as “the brain of the entire revolutionary movement.” The historical meaning of the October Revolution was not immediately revealed to him, but Rolland took its side as soon as Russia found itself in the fire of intervention. Defending the new world was a matter of honor for the humanist writer. He condemned the blockade of the Soviet Republic by the French and other imperialists. On August 23, 1918, Rolland wrote to P. Seppel that he saw in the Bolsheviks the only heirs of the ideas of the French Revolution. “...Not only do I not condemn Bolshevism, but I condemn in the strongest terms all foreign military intervention against the Soviet Revolution. I will never come to an agreement with Piet and Coburg. Let every nation be master in its own home.” In support of the young Soviet Russia Rolland spoke on the pages of the socialist newspapers L'Humanité and Populaire.
Various journalistic articles of the war years were published in two well-known collections - “Above the Fight” (1915) and “Forerunners” (1919). The war years made Rolland a passionate publicist. Even his literary works of these years are filled with facts and thoughts from the Diary, especially the novel Clerambault (1916-1920), which is tragic in its atmosphere.
A young man is killed in war. This forces his father, the bourgeois intellectual Clerambault, who until recently cherished the ideals of “defense of the fatherland,” to become a pacifist. Clerambault perishes not only because he is hostile to official policy, but also because he has distrust of the masses - he is “one against all.” Rolland sympathizes with his hero, although he feels the failure of his individualism.
The sad story of two lovers who die during the bombing of Paris (“Pierre and Luce”, 1918). The sharp satire on the imperialist war - “Lilyuli” (1919) - “a farce in the spirit of Aristophanes” is full of laughter and caustic irony. Peoples do not at all want to reward each other with blows, Rolland asserts here. But they are pushed into the abyss by bankers and cannon kings, diplomats and journalists, the goddess Public Opinion, the deceptive illusion of Lilyuli and God himself - a roguish-looking lord who holds the bound Truth in custody.
All of these works by Rolland, varying in theme and execution, were directed against war and sang the value of life in that cruel time when, for many in the West, Tomorrow had died. But in contrast to the author of “Fire” A. Barbusse, Rolland did not yet know the right path to this Tomorrow.
“Ten peaceful years, born of war, born of war,” is how Rolland characterized the decade of the 20s in a poetic dedication to “The Enchanted Soul.” The war opened Rolland's eyes to the need for social change, but his non-resistance illusions and his individualism prevented him from accepting the revolution, armed action, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This gave rise to a “war with oneself” and complex ideological quests. Speaking against revolutionary violence, Rolland disagreed with A. Barbusse and his international group “Clarte”. He became fascinated by the experience of social teachings of India, the theories of Gandhi and dreamed of a bloodless revolution. A personal meeting with Gandhi in 1931 showed Rolland the weakness of his theory. The threat of fascism that was brewing in Europe demanded action, boldly and decisively resisting reaction. The eternal order of things, based on exploitation and oppression, was collapsing. On its ruins in one sixth of the world was built new world. There, in the USSR, the long-standing dreams of Jean Christophe and Col - dreams of folk art came true. But the path to this art lay through revolution. And it was necessary to recognize it, it was necessary to abandon naive attempts to combine Lenin and Gandhi, revolution and non-resistance. Rolland made a courageous choice. From defending “non-violence” in his 1921 polemic with Barbusse, he came to understand that the path to peace lay through revolution.
In “Farewell to the Past,” a famous confession of 1931, Rolland compared himself to a man who early began a long journey along untrodden roads. Their legs are getting weaker, but they won’t have an hour of rest soon. The traveler is irresistibly drawn forward, to where new endless horizons open up. Even if the road was steep and rocky, there was something to make my feet bleed. “My confession is the confession of an entire era,” says Rolland. He does not spare himself, critically reviewing his previous ideals. The experience of the “heroic revolutionaries of the USSR” inspires him. Confession is full of optimistic faith in the future. In defense of the new world, Rolland made many journalistic articles, which were mainly collected in 1935 in two books - “Fifteen Years of Struggle” and “Through the Revolution - to Peace.”
"VIRGIL OF THE EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE"
The small Swiss town of Villeneuve, where Rolland settled in 1922, became a place of pilgrimage for the leading people of Europe and Asia. The white house, lost in dense greenery, was visited more than once by Maurice Thorez. Konstantin Fedin came here in the summer of 1932. The image of Rolland, a poet and warrior exchanging the lyre for a sword, was forever imprinted in his memory: “Of Western Europeans, he is the only one so close to the Russian tradition of writers, teachers, preachers, and revolutionaries.” This “Virgil of the European intelligentsia” became the guide of those who, following his example, broke with capitalist hell.
He was one of the first in the West to openly declare his sympathy for the October Revolution and tirelessly exposed all kinds of imperialist pacts and conspiracies directed against the USSR. He brought to the attention of the world community the facts of the terrible atrocities of colonialism. He denounced the false, dangerous “robbery under the flag of peace”, which was hidden behind the treacherous policy of the League of Nations. Rolland passionately fought for the release from prison of figures of the international labor movement: Ernst Toller, Sacco and Vanzetti, Dimitrov and Thälmann, Antonio Gramsci. In 1925, he participated in the MOPR protest against white terror in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.
In 1926, together with Barbusse, Rolland founded the International Committee against Fascism, which organized the first grandiose anti-fascist rally on February 23, 1927 in Paris in the Bulle Hall. “Christophe and Cola Brugnon could not remain aloof from the sacred battle in defense of freedom and the essential rights of mankind. And I found myself in their ranks.” He was one of the inspirers of the Amsterdam Anti-War Congress of 1932.
Rolland, the “eye of Europe,” as S. Zweig called him, clearly saw the essence of fascism under any of its masks - the criminal plans of the Italian Blackshirts and the racist theories of German National Socialism: “Every literate person cannot have any doubts about what an abyss separates my thought and action from fascism, in whatever guises it may appear, and especially in the guise of Hitlerism.”
In 1933, the German Nazi K. Grosshaus tried to present the author of “Jean Christophe” as an exponent of the “German spirit.” Rolland gave him a fitting rebuke in an open letter in the Kölnische Zeitung newspaper. Rolland confirmed his love for the homeland of great thinkers and musicians, but his Germany had nothing in common with fascist Germany: “A choice must be made: you cannot be for Lessing-Goethe and Goebbels-Rosenberg at the same time. One destroys the other."
Rolland rejected the Goethe medal offered to him by the government of the Third Reich. In response, the Nazis exhibited his “Jean Christophe” next to volumes of Marxist literature in the Oranienbaum concentration camp in the “museum of damned books” that were to be burned.
Rolland continued to sound the alarm. He was on the side of the Parisian workers who fought back against the French fascists in February 1934; he was with the Popular Front. “I am happy to fight in your ranks for the great cause of the international proletariat and in defense of world peace,” he wrote to M. Thorez on July 12, 1936.
Rollan anxiously and imperiously called on humanity to help Republican Spain, to help the women and children of Madrid, to help the miners of Asturias. With civic pathos worthy of Hugo, he awakened the indifferent with excited words: speak, shout and act!
Rolland's fortitude in his struggle was supported by his friendship with the Soviet Union. 1935 was a significant year in Rolland’s life - he came to the USSR at the invitation of Gorky. The friend’s eyes studied the country of Lenin’s dream realized with greedy curiosity. At Gorky's dacha in Gorki, he eagerly peered into the faces of Soviet writers. After all, they had to accomplish a great deed: to capture in their books the transformation of Russia - the hope of all mankind.
Rolland studied the language using a homemade alphabet with the help of his wife Maria Pavlovna. He dreamed of going to the Volga with Gorky, if his health allowed. He wrote articles for Pravda and readily responded to streams of letters - to the pioneers of Igarka, students of Moscow State University, workers of the Noginsk Elektrostal plant, and collective farmers of the Azov-Black Sea region. Rolland felt strong and happy again in this young country.
“IT IS NECESSARY TO JUDGE AND ENFORCE THE VERDICT”
During the years of creation of “The Enchanted Soul” (1921 -1933), Gorky’s ideas were especially close to Rolland. “This was for me an impressive example of a great artist who, without hesitation, joined the ranks of the army of the revolutionary proletariat,” Rolland wrote about Gorky. “The Enchanted Soul” stands on a par with such works as “Mother” by Gorky, like “Ditte - a human child” by M. A. Nexo. The story of a woman’s life, her path from a sleepy existence in pre-war rentier France to combat participation in the Popular Front movement against fascism is inscribed in the broad epic canvas of European events at the turn of the century.
The novel consists of four books: “Questionnaire and Sylvia” (1922), “Summer” (1924), “Mother and Son” (1926), “Herald” (1933). Between the first three books and the last there lies an important line of “farewell to the past.” This sharp turn by Rolland towards revolutionary action affected the entire course of the novel. The beginning of the work is in the spirit of a traditional social and everyday novel of critical realism. The last book“The Prophet” is a vivid example of the influence of the ideas of socialist realism on the literature of the West.
The images of the novel have enormous generalizing power and reach the meaning of a symbol. Annette's life itself, likened to the flow of a river, gives a feeling of the eternal movement of humanity, the change of generations. With this epic stream merges another - journalistic. The author boldly intervenes in the course of events, meets with his heroes, talks with them, and evaluates their actions.
The heroine of the novel is the legal heir of Christophe and Kol. The life of Annette, a girl from a bourgeois family, at first resembles a quiet forest pond. But it cannot be contained in the mud-covered banks. It is not for nothing that the woman bears the name Riviere - the river of her life strives to merge with the waves of the great army of fighters against oppression. Like Christophe, she boldly rebels against the hypocritical conventions of bourgeois society and mercilessly sheds the veil of all illusions. She openly breaks with her class, goes over to the camp of the working people and, like Cola, proclaims the only morality - the new morality of Labor. Together with her son Mark, she makes her way through the thickets of the capitalist jungle for a painfully long time and faces a choice. The choice that her friend Germain spoke to Annette while dying: “It’s good to be fair. But true justice does not lie in sitting in front of the scales, watching the scales swing. We must judge and carry out the sentence. . . We must act!”
Only having understood the need for revolutionary action, Annette, Mark and his Russian wife, Asya, take their places in the ranks of the fighters against the forces of reaction, on the side of the new world, the majestic image of which appears on the pages of the novel. The Italian Blackshirts brutally kill Mark. The persistent mother finds the strength to replace him: “Mark is in me. World laws have been broken. I gave birth to him. Now he, in turn, gives birth to me.” Like Gorky's Nilovna, Annetta continues the struggle of her son and many other sons, his comrades-in-arms - a struggle without compromise.
A JOURNEY INTO YOURSELF
Rolland spent the dark years of the occupation of France during the Second World War in his homeland, in Vézelay. Here, “so close to the limit of his life,” he worked to complete a long-planned work - a large musicological work on Beethoven. He collected his memories in the book “Journey Deep into Yourself” and wrote about a friend from distant years - Charles Peguy. Despite strict government supervision, he managed to maintain some ties with embattled France. While twenty-year-old communist Elie Valack, a worker and poet executed by the Nazis in 1942, was alive, Rolland corresponded with him. The great humanist was happy that his work gave warmth and light to young members of the Resistance.
The war had not yet ended, and Rolland, firmly believing in victory, wrote to J.R. Blok in 1944: “Greet on my behalf all our friends in the USSR and especially the Soviet youth, who are so dear to me.” On November 29, 1944, Rolland welcomed M. Thorez's return to Paris. A month later, Thorez stood in mournful silence at the tomb of his friend, who did not live to see the complete defeat of Hitlerism. Rolland died on December 30, 1944. He bequeathed to be buried next to his Jacobin great-grandfather.
Not far from Vezelay, in the town of Braves, there is an old cemetery. It is difficult to make out the half-erased epitaph to Jean Baptiste Bonnard. Nearby, on a modest granite slab, where a world-famous name is carved, fresh flowers never fade.
Conversation between Comrade Stalin and Romain Rolland. (28.VI. With. At exactly 16 o'clock, accompanied by his wife and Comrade Aroseva, Romain Rolland was received by Comrade Stalin. Secret. Not for printing. http://www.greatstalin.ru/articles.aspx?xdoc=ART%2fijZmc37fzZW7p%2bEJmA%3d%3d)
We greeted each other in a friendly manner. Comrade Stalin invited those present to sit down. Romain Rolland thanked Comrade Stalin for giving him the opportunity to speak with him, and in particular expressed gratitude for his hospitality.
STALIN. I'm glad to talk with the world's greatest writer.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. I very much regret that my health prevented me earlier from visiting this great new world, which is the pride of us all and in which we pin our hopes. If you allow me, I will speak to you in my dual role as an old friend and companion of the USSR and a witness from the West, an observer and confidant of the youth and sympathizers in France.
You must know what the USSR is in the eyes of thousands of Westerners. They have a very vague idea about him, but they see in him the embodiment of their hopes, their ideals, often different, sometimes contradictory. In the current severe economic and moral crisis, they are waiting for leadership, a slogan, and clarification of their doubts from the USSR.
Of course, it is difficult to satisfy them. The USSR has its own gigantic task, its own work of construction and defense, and to this it must devote itself entirely: the best slogan it can give is its example. He shows the way and, walking this path, confirms it.
But still, the USSR cannot reject the great responsibility that the situation of the modern world places on it, in some way the “supreme” responsibility - to take care of these masses from other countries who have believed in it. It is not enough to repeat Beethoven’s famous words: “O man, help yourself!”, You need to help them and give them advice.
But in order to do this usefully, one must take into account the special temperament and ideology of each country - here I will talk only about France. Ignorance of this natural ideology can and does cause serious misunderstandings.
1 Spelling of the name Rolland according to the original source. - Ed.
One cannot expect from the French public, even a sympathetic one, that dialectic of thinking that became second nature in the USSR. The French temperament is accustomed to abstract logical thinking, rational and straightforward, less experimental than deductive. You need to know this logic well to overcome it. These are the people, this is public opinion, which are accustomed to resonate. They always need to give reasons for action.
In my opinion, the policy of the USSR does not care enough to give its foreign friends the motives for some of its actions. Meanwhile, he has enough of these motives, fair and convincing. But he seems to be little interested in this; and this, in my opinion, is a serious mistake: for it can and does cause false and deliberately distorted interpretations of certain facts, causing anxiety among thousands of sympathizers. Since I observed in lately This is a concern among many of the honest people of France, I must signal this to you.
You will tell us that our role as intellectuals and companions is to explain. We are unable to cope with this task, primarily because we ourselves are poorly informed: we are not supplied necessary materials, to make clear and clarify.
It seems to me that in the West there should be an institution for intellectual communication, something like VOKS, but of a more political nature. But since there is no such institution, misunderstandings accumulate and no official institution of the USSR is engaged in clarifying them. Apparently, it is believed that it is enough to let them evaporate over time. They don't evaporate, they condense. You need to act from the very beginning and dispel them as they arise.
Here are some examples:
The government of the USSR makes decisions, which are its supreme right, either in the form of judicial decisions and sentences, or in the form of laws changing the usual punitive measures. In some cases the issues or persons concerned are of or acquire general interest and importance; and for one reason or another foreign public opinion becomes agitated. It would be easy to avoid misunderstandings. Why don't they do this?
You were right in energetically suppressing the accomplices of the conspiracy of which Kirov was a victim. But, having punished the conspirators, inform the European public and the world about the murderous guilt of the convicted. You exiled Victor Serge for 3 years to Orenburg; and this was a much less serious matter, but why was it allowed to be so inflated for two years in the public opinion of Europe. This is a writer who writes in French, whom I do not personally know; but I am a friend of some of his friends. They bombard me with questions about his exile in Orenburg and how he is being treated. I am convinced that you acted with serious motives. But why not announce them from the very beginning in front of the French public, who insist on his innocence? In general, in the country of the Dreyfus-Kalas case, it is very dangerous to allow a convicted person to become the center of a general movement 3 .
Another case of a completely different nature: a law was recently published on the punishment of juvenile offenders over 12 years of age4. The text of this law is not well known; and even if known, it raises serious doubts. It seems like the death penalty is hanging over these children. I well understand the motives that make it necessary to instill fear in the irresponsible and in those who want to exploit that irresponsibility. But the public doesn't understand. It seems to her that this threat is being carried out or that the judges, at their discretion, can carry it out. This could be the source of a very large protest movement. This must be prevented immediately.
Comrades, forgive me, perhaps I have spoken for too long and perhaps I am raising questions that I should not have raised.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. Finally, I come to a very large current misunderstanding caused by the question of war and attitudes towards it. This issue has long been discussed in France. Several years ago I discussed with Barbusse and with my Communist friends the danger of an unconditional campaign against war. It seems to me necessary to study the various cases of war that may present themselves, and to work out the various provisions that can be adopted in relation to each case. If I understand correctly, the USSR needs peace, it wants peace, but its position does not coincide with integral pacifism. The latter, in certain cases, can be a renunciation in favor of fascism, which, in turn, can cause war. In this regard, I am not entirely satisfied with some of the resolutions of the Amsterdam Congress against War and Fascism in 1932,5 since its resolutions inspire some doubt on the issue of tactics against war.
At the moment, the views of not only pacifists, but also many friends of the USSR on this issue are disoriented: the socialist and communist consciousness is confused by the military alliance of the USSR with the government of imperialist French democracy6 - this sows anxiety in the minds. There are many serious questions of revolutionary dialectics here that require clarification. This should be done with the greatest possible sincerity and publicity.
That, it seems to me, is all I wanted to say7.
STALIN. If I must answer, then allow me to answer on all points.
First of all, about the war. Under what conditions was our mutual assistance agreement concluded with France? Under conditions when two systems of states arose in Europe, throughout the capitalist world: a system of fascist states, in which all living things are suppressed by mechanical means, where the working class and its thought are strangled by mechanical means, where the working class is not allowed to breathe, and another system of states, preserved from old times is the system of bourgeois-democratic states. These latter states would also be ready to strangle the labor movement, but they act by other means; they still have a parliament, some free press, legal parties, etc. There is a difference here. True, restrictions exist here, but still a certain freedom remains and it is more or less possible to breathe. There is a struggle between these two systems of states on an international scale. Moreover, this struggle, as we see, becomes more and more intense over time. The question is: under such circumstances, should the government of a workers' state remain neutral and not interfere? No, it should not, because remaining neutral means making it easier for the fascists to win, and the victory of the fascists is a threat to the cause of peace, a threat to the USSR, and therefore a threat to the world working class.
But if the government of the USSR must intervene in this struggle, then on whose side should it intervene? Naturally, on the side of the bourgeois-democratic governments, who, moreover, do not seek to disrupt the peace. The USSR is therefore interested in France being well armed against possible attacks by fascist states, against aggressors. By interfering in this way, we seem to throw an additional weight on the scale of the struggle between fascism and anti-fascism, between aggression and non-aggression, which tips the scale in favor of anti-fascism and non-aggression. This is what our agreement with France is based on.
I say this from the point of view of the USSR as a state. But should the Communist Party in France take the same position on the question of war? I don't think so. It is not in power there; capitalists and imperialists are in power in France, and the French Communist Party represents a small opposition group. Is there a guarantee that the French bourgeoisie will not use the army against the French working class? Of course not. The USSR has an agreement with France on mutual assistance against the aggressor, against external attack. But he does not and cannot have an agreement that France will not use its army against the working class of France. As you can see, the position of the Communist Party in the USSR is not the same as the position of the Communist Party in France. It is clear that the position of the Communist Party in France will also not coincide with the position of the USSR, where the Communist Party is in power. Therefore, I fully understand the French comrades who say that the position of the French Communist Party should fundamentally remain what it was before the agreement between the USSR and France. It does not follow from this, however, that if war, despite the efforts of the communists, is nevertheless imposed, then the communists should supposedly boycott the war, sabotage work in factories, etc. We Bolsheviks, although we were against the war and for defeat tsarist government 8 never gave up weapons. We have never been supporters of sabotaging work in factories or boycotting war; on the contrary, when war became inevitable, we joined the army, learned to shoot, operate weapons, and then directed our weapons against our class enemies.
As for the admissibility of the USSR to conclude political agreements with some bourgeois states against other bourgeois states, this issue was resolved in a positive sense even under Lenin and on his initiative. Trotsky was a great supporter of such a solution to the issue, but he has now apparently forgotten about it...1
You said that we must lead our friends in Western Europe. I must say that we are afraid to set ourselves such a task. We do not undertake to lead them, because it is difficult to give direction to people living in a completely different environment, in a completely different environment. Each country has its own specific situation, its own specific conditions, and it would be too bold on our part to lead these people from Moscow. We therefore limit ourselves to the most general advice. Otherwise, we would take on responsibilities that we could not handle. We experienced firsthand what it means to be led by foreigners, and from afar. Before the war, or rather in the early nineties, German Social Democracy was the core of the Social Democratic International9, and we Russians were their students. She tried to guide us then. And if we had given her the opportunity to guide us, then for sure we would not have had either the Bolshevik Party or the revolution of 1905, and therefore we would not have had the revolution of 1917. It is necessary that the working class of each country have its own communist leaders. Without this, leadership is impossible.
Of course, if our friends in the West are little informed about the motives of the actions of the Soviet government and are often baffled by our enemies, then this does not only mean that our friends do not know how to arm themselves as well as our enemies. This also shows that we are not sufficiently informing and equipping our friends. We will try to fill this gap.
You say that on Soviet people The enemies are erecting a lot of slander and fables that we do little to refute them. That's true. There is no such fantasy and such slander that the enemies would not invent about the USSR. It is sometimes even awkward to refute them, since they are too fantastic and obviously absurd. They write, for example, that I went with the army against Voroshilov, killed him, and 6 months later, having forgotten about what was said, in the same newspaper they write that Voroshilov went with the army against me and killed me, obviously after his own death, and then they add to all this that Voroshilov and I agreed, etc. What is there to refute?
ROMAIN ROLLAN. But it is precisely the lack of refutations and explanations that breeds slander.
STALIN. May be. It's possible that you're right. Of course, it would be possible to react more energetically to these ridiculous rumors.
Now let me respond to your comments regarding the law on penalties for children from 12 years of age. This decree has purely pedagogical significance. We wanted to use it to intimidate not so much the hooligan children as the organizers of hooliganism among children. It must be borne in mind that in our schools separate groups of 10 - 15 people have been found to be hooligan boys and girls, who set as their goal to kill or corrupt the best students and students, shock men and women. There were cases when such hooligan groups lured girls to adults, where they got drunk and then turned them into prostitutes. There were cases when boys who did well in school and were shock workers were drowned in a well by such a group of hooligans, inflicted wounds on them and terrorized them in every possible way. At the same time, it was discovered that such hooligan gangs of children are organized and directed by gangster elements from adults. It is clear that the Soviet government could not ignore such outrages. The decree was issued in order to intimidate and disorganize adult bandits and protect our children from hooligans.
I draw your attention to the fact that simultaneously with this decree, along with it, we issued a decree that it is prohibited to sell and buy and to have Finnish knives and daggers.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. But why don’t you publish these very facts? Then it would be clear why this decree was issued.
STALIN. It's not such a simple matter. In the USSR there are still many unsettled former people, gendarmes, police officers, tsarist officials, their children, their relatives. These people are not used to work, they are embittered and provide ready soil for crimes. We fear that the publication of hooliganism and crimes of this type may have an infectious effect on such unsettled elements - it may be contagious and may push them to commit crimes.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. That's right, that's right.
STALIN. Could we give an explanation in the sense that we issued this decree for pedagogical purposes, to prevent crimes, to intimidate criminal elements? Of course, they could not, since in this case the law would lose all force in the eyes of criminals.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. No, of course they couldn't.
STALIN. For your information, I must say that so far there has not been a single case of application of the most acute articles of this decree to child criminals and we hope there will not be.
You ask why we don't hold public trials of terrorist criminals. Take, for example, the Kirov murder case. Maybe we were really guided here by the feeling of hatred that flared up in us towards terrorist-criminals. Kirov was a wonderful person. The killers of Kirov committed the greatest crime. This circumstance could not but affect us. The hundred people we shot did not, from a legal point of view, have a direct connection with Kirov’s murderers. But they were sent from Poland, Germany, Finland by our enemies, they were all armed and they were given the task of committing terrorist acts against the leaders of the USSR, including against Comrade Kirov. These hundred people - White Guards - did not even think of denying their terrorist intentions in a military court. “Yes,” many of them said, “we wanted and want to destroy the Soviet leaders, and you don’t need to talk to us, shoot us if you don’t want us to destroy you.” It seemed to us that it would be too much of an honor for these gentlemen to have their criminal cases dealt with in an open court with the participation of defense lawyers. We knew that after the villainous murder of Kirov, the terrorist criminals intended to carry out their villainous plans against other leaders. To prevent this atrocity, we took upon ourselves the unpleasant duty of shooting these gentlemen. This is the logic of power. The authorities in such conditions must be strong, strong and fearless. Otherwise, it is not power and cannot be recognized as power. The French communards apparently did not understand this; they were too soft and indecisive, for which Karl Marx condemned them. That's why they lost, and the French bourgeois did not spare them. This is a lesson for us.
Having applied capital punishment in connection with the murder of Comrade Kirov, we would like to not apply such a measure to criminals in the future, but, unfortunately, not everything here depends on us. It should, in addition, be borne in mind that we have friends not only in Western Europe, but also in the USSR, and while friends in Western Europe recommend us maximum gentleness towards our enemies, our friends in the USSR demand firmness, demand , for example, the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev, the masterminds of the murder of Comrade Kirov. This also cannot be ignored.
I would like you to pay attention to the following circumstance. Workers in the West work 8, 10 and 12 hours a day. They have a family, wives, children, taking care of them. They don’t have time to read books and draw from them for themselves guidelines. Yes, they don’t really trust books, since they know that bourgeois scribblers often deceive them in their writings. Therefore, they believe only in facts, only in facts that they see for themselves and can touch with their fingers. And these same workers see that a new workers’ and peasants’ state has emerged in the east of Europe, where capitalists and landowners no longer have a place, where labor reigns and where working people enjoy unprecedented honor. Hence the workers conclude: this means that it is possible to live without exploiters, which means that the victory of socialism is quite possible. This fact, the fact of the existence of the USSR, is of the greatest importance in the revolutionization of workers in all countries of the world. The bourgeoisie of all countries know this and hate the USSR with animal hatred. That is why the bourgeoisie in the West would like us, the Soviet leaders, to die as soon as possible. This is the basis for the fact that they organize terrorists and send them to the USSR through Germany, Poland, Finland, sparing neither money nor other means. For example, we recently discovered terrorist elements in the Kremlin. We have a government library and there are women librarians who go to the apartments of our responsible comrades in the Kremlin to keep their libraries in order. It turns out that some of these librarians were recruited by our enemies to commit terror. It must be said that these librarians for the most part represent the remnants of the once dominant, now defeated classes - the bourgeoisie and landowners. So what? We discovered that these women were walking around with poison, with the intention of poisoning some of our responsible comrades. Of course, we arrested them, we are not going to shoot them, we are isolating them. But here is another fact that speaks of the brutality of our enemies and the need for the Soviet people to be vigilant.
As you can see, the bourgeoisie fights quite brutally against the Soviets, and then in their press they themselves shout about the cruelty of the Soviet people. With one hand he sends us terrorists, murderers, hooligans, poisoners, and with the other hand he writes articles about the inhumanity of the Bolsheviks.
As for Victor Serge, I don’t know him and I don’t have the opportunity to give you information now.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. I don’t know him personally either11, I personally heard that he is being persecuted for Trotskyism.
STALIN. Yes, I remembered. This is not just a Trotskyist, but a deceiver. This is a dishonest man, he built tunnels under Soviet power. He tried to deceive the Soviet government, but it did not work out. The Trotskyists raised the issue about it at the Congress for the Defense of Culture in Paris12. The poet Tikhonov and the writer Ilya Erenburg answered them. Victor Serge now lives free in Orenburg and, it seems, works there. Of course, he was not subjected to any torment, torture, etc. This is all nonsense. We don’t need him, and we can release him to Europe at any time.
ROMAIN ROLLAN (smiling). I was told that Orenburg is some kind of desert.
STALIN. Not a desert, but a good city. I actually lived in deserted exile in the Turukhansk region for 4 years, the frost there was 50 - 60 degrees. And nothing, he lived 13.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. I also want to talk about a topic that is especially significant for us, the intelligentsia of Western Europe, and for me personally: about the new humanism, the herald of which you, Comrade Stalin, are when you declared in your excellent recent speech that “the most valuable and The most decisive capital of all existing values in the world is people."14 New man and new culture emanating from him. There is nothing more capable of attracting the whole world to the goals of the revolution than this proposal of new great paths of proletarian humanism, this synthesis of the forces of the human spirit. The legacy of Marx and Engels, the intellectual party, the enrichment of the spirit of discovery and creation, is probably the least known area in the West. And yet it is destined to have the greatest impact on peoples of high culture like ours. I am happy to state that recently our young intelligentsia is truly beginning to acquire Marxism. Until recently, professors and historians tried to keep the doctrines of Marx and Engels in the shadows or tried to discredit them. But now a new trend is emerging even in the highest university spheres. An extremely interesting collection of speeches and reports appeared under the title “In the Light of Marxism,” edited by Prof. Vallon of the Sorbonne: The main theme of this book is the role of Marxism in scientific thought today. If this movement develops, as I hope, and if we are able to disseminate and popularize the ideas of Marx and Engels in this way, this will evoke the deepest responses in the ideology of our intelligentsia15.
STALIN. Our ultimate goal, the goal of Marxists, is to free people from exploitation and oppression and thereby make individuality free. Capitalism, which entangles man in exploitation, deprives the individual of this freedom. Under capitalism, only certain, richest individuals can become more or less free. Most people under capitalism cannot enjoy personal freedom.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. True, true.
STALIN. Once we remove the shackles of exploitation, we thereby free the individual. This is well stated in Engels' book Anti-Dühring.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. It does not appear to have been translated into French.
STALIN. Can't be. Engels has a wonderful expression there. It says that communists, having broken the chains of exploitation, must make a leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom16.
Our task is to liberate individuality, develop its abilities and develop in it love and respect for work. Now we have a completely new situation, a completely new type of person is emerging, a type of person who respects and loves work. In our country, lazy people and idle people are hated; in factories they are wrapped in matting and taken out that way. Respect for work, hard work, creative work, shock is the predominant tone of our life. Drummers and drummers
these are those who are loved and respected, these are those around whom our new life, our new culture is now concentrated.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. That's right, very good.
I am very ashamed that I kept you with my presence for so long and took up a lot of your time.
STALIN. What are you, what are you!
ROMAIN ROLLAN. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk with you.
STALIN. Your gratitude confuses me somewhat. They usually thank those from whom they do not expect anything good. Did you really think that I was not capable of meeting you well enough?
ROMAIN ROLLAN (rising from his chair). I’ll tell you the truth that this is completely unusual for me. I have never been as well received anywhere as I am here.
STALIN. Do you plan to be at Gorky's tomorrow - June 29?
ROMAIN ROLLAN. Tomorrow it has been agreed that Gorky will come to Moscow17. He and I will go to his dacha, and later, perhaps, I would take up your offer to stay at your dacha too.
STALIN (smiling). I don't have any dacha. We, Soviet leaders, do not have our own dachas at all. This is simply one of many reserve dachas that are the property of the state. It is not me who is offering you a dacha, but the Soviet government is offering it, it is being offered to you: Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, me.
You would be very calm there, there are no trams or railways. You could have a good rest there. This dacha is always at your disposal. And if you wish, you can use the dacha without fear that you will embarrass anyone. Will you be at the physical education parade on 30.VI?
ROMAIN ROLLAN. Yes, yes, I would really like to. I would like to ask you to give me this opportunity.
Perhaps you will allow me to hope that when I am at Gorky’s dacha or at the dacha that you kindly offered me, maybe I will see you there again and be able to talk with you.
STALIN. Please, whenever. I am at your complete disposal and will be happy to come to your dacha. And you will be given the opportunity to attend the parade when you turn 18.
T. A. Arosev translated the conversation.
NOTES:
1 Document title. The words “Secret. Not for publication” and “(Final text)” were written by I.V. Stalin's red pencil.
2 According to the log of registration of persons received by I.V. Stalin, the conversation lasted 2 hours. The next day, a message was published in the Pravda newspaper: “On June 28, in the afternoon, a conversation between Comrade Stalin and Romain Rolland took place in Comrade Stalin’s office. The conversation lasted 1 hour 40 minutes and was of an exclusively friendly nature.” The words typed in italics are written in the hand of I.V. Stalin. R. Rolland wrote in his diary on June 28, 1935: “The conversation begins at ten minutes to five and ends at ten minutes to six.”
3 The case of Calas, unjustly sentenced to death in 1762, which caused public protests by F. Voltaire, and the case of Dreyfus, illegally sentenced to life imprisonment in 1894, which stirred up the progressive intelligentsia of France led by E. Zola and A. France, are given R. Rolland as examples of the effectiveness of public opinion.
4 This refers to the resolution of the USSR Central Executive Committee adopted in April 1935 on the extension of criminal penalties for adults to children over 12 years of age.
The 5th International Anti-War Congress in Amsterdam took place on August 27 - 29, 1932. The Soviet delegation (A. M. Gorky, E. D. Stasova, N. M. Shvernik - head of the delegation, etc.) did not attend the congress due to that some delegates were denied entry visas to Holland.
6 In November 1932, the Soviet-French non-aggression pact was concluded; In May 1935, an agreement was signed between France and the Soviet Union in Paris on mutual assistance and obligations to consult in the event of a threat of attack by a third state on one of the parties.
7 Below is the original version of this part of the recording of the conversation: STALIN. I'm glad to talk with the world's greatest writer.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. My health did not allow me earlier to fulfill my long-standing dream of visiting your country, in which a truly large, completely new world is being created. What you are doing here is of tremendous importance for all humanity and is already influencing the minds of peoples and intelligentsia. For us, for intellectual workers, you set an example of how life should be created, but your construction and everything you do imposes great responsibility and obligations on you, especially to young people.
You, the USSR, our intelligentsia, especially our youth, know very little and have a vague idea of what is happening here. Meanwhile, our best people place their hopes and hopes in your country, and it seems to me that it is the duty of the USSR to make itself understood more clearly, more fully, to give advice to the friends of the Soviet Union in Europe and to lead them.
This is, firstly, and at the same time it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of Western European psychology. I will take the psychology of our French intellectuals, which is best known to me, and our French youth.
Their thinking is predominantly abstract-logical and overly rationalistic. Therefore, many steps in the policy of the USSR remain incomprehensible to them. Even your embassies and ambassadors never come forward with explanations for certain steps of the Soviet government. I will take a few examples where I believe that the Soviet government had the right and every reason to act as it did, but its actions remained poorly understood in Western Europe.
For example, there is such a fact as the conviction and expulsion of some very prominent people, which was not carried out publicly enough and the motives for the punishment of which were not widely publicized. This type of facts also includes the fact of issuing a decree on the punishment of minors, starting from the age of 12. This law is completely incomprehensible. Moreover, his text was not published anywhere in the foreign press in full, but was only stated, and even then very briefly, and there was such a tendency to discredit it. Regarding this decree, I received a lot of letters and requests from all sides.
In the series of these facts, I can also name a fact of lesser importance, a secondary fact, for example, about the expulsion of Victor Serge. This is a fairly famous writer, there are many acquaintances between me and him, and they all ask me why he was sent to Orenburg, what he is doing there, what his situation is, etc. and so on. I am absolutely sure that he was worthy of this punishment and am firmly convinced that in this case you acted absolutely correctly, but it was necessary to provide an explanation for this fact for the mass of friends of the USSR.
Now let me move on to a more significant question, namely, the position that the Soviet government took on the question of war, especially by concluding an alliance with France. This brought great confusion into the minds of the USSR's best friends in France and other European countries. The position of the Communist Party in particular became somewhat ambiguous, and since all this happened very quickly, even the best friends of the USSR found themselves disoriented. I personally am quite sure that this had to be done and that the step of the Soviet government was absolutely correct, but I will say again that not enough explanations were given here either. Even the most sincere friends of the USSR and people close to it, for example, I myself do not have any information on this issue, and yet I receive a lot of letters and bewildered appeals to me.
I believe that the government of the USSR should have created some kind of group of comrades or an institution around itself that would be specifically engaged in providing explanations and interpretations of the policies of the Soviet government in a wide variety of areas. Such an institution could be, for example, VOKS, if it were given greater political emphasis.
AROSEV. Not at all, not at all. I will now ask Romain Rolland to confirm.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. No, that's really what I think.
Excuse me, perhaps I have spoken for too long and perhaps I am raising questions that I should not have raised.
STALIN. No, no, please. I am very glad to listen to you, I am entirely at your disposal.
ROMAIN ROLLAN. An alliance with France, I understand, is absolutely necessary under current conditions, but I think that such steps by the Soviet government require a broad explanatory campaign.
I must say that 3-4 years ago, in a conversation with Henri Barbusse, I said that we, who sympathize with the USSR, should not unconditionally object to the war. We should not and cannot be supporters of integral pacifism. There may be conditions when we will have to be in favor of war. In this regard, I am not entirely satisfied with the decisions that were made at the anti-fascist congress in Amsterdam, because the resolution is too general outline and speaks too vaguely about the war. This gives the impression of precisely this kind of integral pacifism.
The lack of a sufficiently broad explanatory campaign makes it possible to invent all kinds of fairy tales and gossip against the USSR. In France, for example, they do not understand at all why neither the Soviet government nor its embassies come out with refutations of all sorts of false rumors raised against the USSR. I think that every false rumor needs to be immediately rebutted."
(Ibid. L. 1 - 4).
8 In October 1914, V.I. Lenin published the manifesto “War and Russian Social Democracy,” which put forward slogans for turning the imperialist war into a civil war and the defeat of the tsarist government in the imperialist war.
9 This refers to the Second International, founded in Paris by socialist parties in 1889. It collapsed after the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.
10 Here and below the words written by Stalin into the original text of the conversation are underlined.
11 The following text in the original version reads: “M. P. Rolland. This is a French writer, the grandson of Kibalchich, a Trotskyist.”
(Ibid. L. 13)
The 12th International Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture, organized by A. Barbusse and I. G. Ehrenburg, took place in Paris on June 21 - 25.
13 Stalin was in Turukhansk exile from July 1913 to March 1917.
14 A quote is given from Stalin’s speech, delivered on May 4, 1935 in the Grand Kremlin Palace to graduates of the military academies of the Red Army: “Of all the valuable capital available in the world, the most valuable and most decisive capital is people, personnel.” In this speech, the “leader” put forward the slogan: “Cadres decide everything.”
15 In the original version of the conversation, the last paragraph looked like this: “ROMAIN ROLLAN (obviously deeply affected by what he just heard).
I also wanted to say about one circumstance that is especially important for us, for the intelligentsia of Western Europe, and especially for me personally, this is precisely the beginning of that humanism, a new humanism, the first herald of which is you, Comrade Stalin. In your recent speech about attitude towards people, you just said the very word that was so necessary for the Western European intelligentsia, for all those who sympathize with you. It must be said, unfortunately, that our intelligentsia devotes very little space in its ideological work to the perception of the ideas of Marx and Engels. Meanwhile, the ideas of Marx and Engels contain the concept of precisely the humanism you are talking about. I am very happy to state that it is now only our young intelligentsia that is beginning to become acquainted with Marxism. The learned people of Western Europe deliberately kept the teachings of Marx and Engels in the shadows, deliberately erased this teaching, erased it in every possible way and even discredited it. Currently, in Paris, for example, a collection of reports on scientific thinking and Marxism is appearing. This collection is published under the guidance of prof. Vallon and is called "In the Light of Marxism". The main topic of these reports is precisely the role of Marxism in scientific thinking. If things go on like this and if we are able to disseminate and popularize the ideas of Marx and Engels, then this will have a very profound impact on the ideology of our intelligentsia.”
(Ibid. L. 13-14).
16 For F. Engels’s reasoning about “the leap of humanity from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom,” see: K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. T. 20. P. 284 - 285.
17 A. M. Gorky was in Moscow at that time; He met R. Rolland on June 29, and the next day they moved to Gorki. On July 3, Gorki visited I.V. Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov, other Soviet leaders.
18 Together with A. M. Gorky, R. Rolland was present at the All-Union Physical Culture Parade on Red Square.
Name index:
Arosev A. Ya. (1890 - 1938) - writer, since 1934 chairman of the board of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) - French writer and public figure.
Beethoven Ludwig van (1770-1827) - German composer, pianist and conductor.
Vallon Henri (1879-1962) - French scientist and public figure, professor at the Sorbonne.
Voroshilov K. E. (1881 - 1969) - People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Gorky (Peshkov) A. M. (1868-1936) - writer.
Dreyfus Alfred (1859-1935) - French officer, a Jew, sentenced in 1894 to life imprisonment on false charges of espionage. In 1899 he was pardoned, in 1906 he was rehabilitated.
Zinoviev (Radomyslsky) G. E. (1883-1936) - party and statesman, in January 1935 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, in August 1936 - to death.
Kaganovich L. M. (1893-1991) - People's Commissar of Railways of the USSR, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Calas Jean (1698-1762) - merchant from Toulouse, Protestant; falsely accused of murdering his son, allegedly to prevent his conversion to Catholicism, and executed by verdict of the Paris Parliament. Voltaire's three-year struggle for his posthumous rehabilitation was crowned with success.
Kamenev (Rosenfeld) L. B. (1883-1936) - party and statesman, in January 1935 sentenced to 5 years in prison, in July - to 10 years, in August 1936 - to death.
Kirov (Kostrikov) S. M. (1886-1934) - since 1926, first secretary of the Leningrad Gubernia Committee (regional committee) of the party, at the same time since 1930, member of the Politburo, in 1934 secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Lenin (Ulyanov) V.I. (1870-1924) - founder of the Bolshevik Party, since 1917 Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.
Marx Karl (1818-1883) - founder of communist ideology.
Molotov (Scriabin) V. M. (1890-1986) - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Rolland (Kudasheva) M.P. (1895-1985) - poetess, translator, wife of R. Rolland.
Rolland Romain (1866-1944) - French writer.
Serge (Kibalchich) V.L. (1890-1947) - French writer, employee of the Comintern, was close to G. E. Zinoviev and L. D. Trotsky. Arrested in 1933. After R. Rolland's appeal to Stalin, he was released in 1936 and deported abroad.
Stalin (Dzhugashvili) I.V. (1878-1953) - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Tikhonov N.S. (1896-1979) - poet and writer.
Trotsky (Bronstein) L. D. (1879-1940) - party and statesman, in 1932 deprived of Soviet citizenship.
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) - one of the founders of communist ideology.
Erenburg I.G. (1891-1967) - writer and public figure.
Biography
French novelist and playwright. Born in Clamcy (Burgundy), in the south of France, in the family of a lawyer. In 1880, Rolland's parents moved to Paris to give their son good education. In 1886 he graduated from the Lyceum of Louis the Great and continued his higher education at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, receiving a diploma in history.
In his youth, Rolland's passion was classical music. He went to Rome, where he continued to study history, after which he developed an interest in creating plays about the events and heroes of the Italian Renaissance. He was also interested in the views and works of F. Nietzsche and the music of R. Wagner. For three years he studied the history of music, after which he wrote the work “The History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti,” which became the first doctoral dissertation on a musical topic at the Sorbonne.
He was a professor (history of music) at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure.
Rolland began his career as a playwright, achieving great success on the French stage.
First there were the plays “Saint Louis”, “Aert”, “Triumph of Reason”. They were followed by plays in the stricter sense of the word historical: Danton, 14 July and Robespierre. It was then that he began his most famous novel, Jean-Christophe. The book's protagonist is a German composer whose life is described from birth in a small town on the banks of the Rhine to death in Italy. His music doesn't get the recognition it deserves, but he relies on loyal friendship and love to overcome challenges. Fascinated by heroic historical figures, Rolland wrote several biographies: "The Life of Beethoven", "Michelangelo" and "The Life of Tolstoy", with whom he corresponded.
Then there were biographies of some Indian sages - “Mahatma Gandhi”, “The Life of Ramakrishna” and “The Life of Vivekananda and the World Gospel”. When World War I broke out, Rolland decided to remain in Switzerland and made unsuccessful attempts to achieve reconciliation between French, German and Belgian intellectuals. His arguments were presented in a number of articles, later published in the collection “Above the Fight” and in the novel “Clerambault”.
In 1915, Rolland was awarded the title of Nobel Prize in Literature “for the high idealism of literary works, for sympathy and love of truth.” In 1925-1933. Rolland published a seven-volume novel, The Enchanted Soul, dedicated to the problem of women's emancipation.
Visited the USSR at the invitation of A.M. Gorky. I met with many writers, musicians, and artists.
Biography (en.wikipedia.org)
Born into the family of a notary. In 1881, the Rollands moved to Paris, where the future writer, having graduated from the Lyceum of Louis the Great, entered the Ecole Normale High School in 1886. After graduation, Rolland lived in Italy for two years, studying fine arts, as well as the life and work of outstanding Italian composers. Playing the piano from early childhood and never ceasing to study music seriously during his student years, Rolland decided to choose music history as his specialty.
Returning to France, Rolland defended his dissertation at the Sorbonne “The Origin of the Modern Opera Theater. History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti" (1895) and, having received the title of professor of music history, lectured first at the Ecole Normale and then at the Sorbonne. Together with Pierre Aubry, he founded the magazine "La Revue d'histoire et de critique musicales" in 1901. His most outstanding musicological works of this period include the monographs “Musicians of the Past” (1908), “Musicians of Our Day” (1908), “Handel” (1910).
Rolland’s first work of fiction to appear in print was the tragedy “Saint Louis” - the initial link in the dramatic cycle “Tragedies of Faith”, to which “Aert” and “The Time Will Come” also belong.
During the First World War, Rolland was an active participant in European pacifist organizations, publishing many anti-war articles, which were published in the collections “Above the Fight” and “Forerunners”.
In 1915 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Rolland actively corresponded with Leo Tolstoy, greeted February revolution and was approving of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Already from the 1920s, he communicated with Maxim Gorky, came by invitation to Moscow, where he had conversations with Stalin (1935).
His other correspondents included Einstein, Schweitzer, and Freud.
During the war he lived in occupied Vezelay, continuing his literary activities, where he died of tuberculosis.
Creation
Romain Rolland received recognition at turn of the 19th century and XX centuries, after the publication and production of a series of his plays dedicated to the events of the Great French Revolution: “Wolves”, “The Triumph of Reason”, “Danton”, “The Fourteenth of July”.
The most famous work is the novel “Jean-Christophe”, consisting of 10 books. This novel brought the author worldwide fame and was translated into dozens of languages. The cycle tells about the crisis of the German musical genius Jean-Christophe Kraft, whose prototype was Beethoven and Rolland himself. The emerging friendship of the young hero with the Frenchman symbolizes the “harmony of opposites”, and more globally, peace between states.
Among his other works, one should highlight a series of books about great artists: “The Life of Beethoven” (1903), “The Life of Michelangelo” (1907), “The Life of Tolstoy” (1911). Later, in the last years of his life, he returned to the theme of Beethoven, completing the multi-volume work “Beethoven. Great creative eras."
In the posthumously published memoirs (Memoires, 1956), the author’s unity of views in love for humanity is clearly visible.
Works
* Cycle of plays “Tragedies of Faith”:
* “Saint Louis”, 1897
* "Aert", 1898
* “The Time Will Come,” 1903
* "Wolves", 1898
* “The Triumph of Reason”, 1899
* "Danton", 1899
* “The Fourteenth of July”, 1902
* Book “People's Theater”, 1903
* "Heroic Lives":
* "Life of Beethoven", 1903
* "Life of Michelangelo", 1907
* “The Life of Tolstoy”, 1911
* “Musicians of the Past”, 1908
* “Musicians of Our Days”, 1908
* "Handel", 1910
* Epic novel “Jean-Christophe”, 1904-1912
* Collection of anti-war articles “Above the Fight”, 1914-1915
* Collection of anti-war articles “Forerunners”, 1916-1919
* Collection of anti-war articles
* "Declaration of the Independence of the Spirit", 1919
* "Cola Brugnon", 1914-1918
* “Lilyuli”, 1919
* “Pierre and Luce”, 1920
* "Clerambault", 1920
* Epic novel “The Enchanted Soul”, 1925-1933
* "Mahatma Gandhi", 1924
* “Asia's answer to Tolstoy”, 1928
* “The Life of Ramakrishna”, 1929
* "The Life of Vivekananda", 1930
* "The Universal Gospel of Vivekananda", 1930
* Cycle of plays “Theater of Revolution”:
* “The Game of Love and Death”, 1924
* “Palm Sunday”, 1926
* “Leonids”, 1928
* "Robespierre", 1939
* "Beethoven", 1927
* “Beethoven and Goethe”, 1932
* "Pegs", 1944
Family
He is married to Maria Pavlovna Cuvillier, who in her first marriage was to Prince Sergei Alexandrovich Kudashev.
Notes
1. Was elected on the initiative of A.V. Lunacharsky.
2. Noble families of the Russian Empire.- T.3.- M., 1996.- P.169.
Literature
Motyleva T. The work of Romain Rolland. M.: Goslitizdat, 1959.
Romain Rolland: the purpose of writing the novel “Jean Christophe” (Romain Rolland, Afterword to the Russian edition of 1931 / Collected works in 14 volumes, Volume 6, M., “State Publishing House of Fiction,” 1956, p. 373-375.)
“I want to express here some of the thoughts that prompted me to begin and complete, amid the indifferent or ironic silence that surrounded me in Paris, this extensive poem in prose, for the sake of which, regardless of any material obstacles, I decisively broke with all the conventions established in French literature. Success interested me little. It wasn't about success. The point was to obey the inner command. Halfway through my long journey, in notes for “Jean-Christophe,” I find the following lines, dating back to December 1908:
“I am not writing a literary work. I am writing a creed."
When you believe, you act without caring about the results. Victory or defeat - does it matter? “Do what you have to do!..”
The commitment I took on in Jean-Christophe was to awaken the spiritual fire that lay dormant under the ashes in a period of moral and social decay in France. And for this, first of all, it was necessary to sweep away the accumulated ashes and debris. Oppose the fairs in the square, depriving us of air and light, with a small legion of brave souls, ready to make all sacrifices and free from any compromises. I wanted to gather them to the cry of some hero who would become their leader. And in order for this hero to exist, I had to create him.
I had the following two basic requirements for such a leader:
1. He must look at everything with free, clear and sincere eyes, like those of those children of nature - those “villagers” whom Voltaire and the encyclopedists transported to Paris in order to ridicule, through their naive perception, everything funny and criminal in modern society. I needed such an observatory: two open eyes to see and judge the Europe of our days.
2. But seeing and judging is only the first step. You have to dare and be yourself - dare to say what you think and put it into action. Even the “simpleton” of the 18th century can make fun of him. But it is not enough for the current harsh battle. I needed a hero.
I gave my definition of "hero" in the preface to my book "The Life of Beethoven", contemporary with the first steps of "Jean-Christophe". I call heroes “not those who conquered with thought or strength. I call only the one who had a great heart a hero.” Let's expand this concept! The “heart” is not only a container of feelings; I mean by it the great kingdom of the inner life. A hero who owns it and relies on these elemental forces is able to withstand a whole world of enemies.
When I began to imagine a hero, the image of Beethoven quite naturally arose before me. For in modern world and among the peoples of the West, Beethoven is one of the exceptional artists, combining in himself, together with the creative genius - the ruler of the vast spiritual kingdom - the genius of the heart, akin to everything human.
But let them beware of seeing in Jean-Christophe a portrait of Beethoven! Christophe is not Beethoven. He is a kind of new Beethoven, a hero of the Beethoven type, but original and thrown into another world, into the world in which we live. Historical analogies with the Bonn musician come down to some features of Christophe's family environment in the first volume - "Dawn". If I strove for these analogies at the beginning of the work, it was only in order to show the Beethovenian pedigree of my hero and lead his roots to the past of the Rhine West; I enveloped the days of his early childhood in the atmosphere old Germany- old Europe. But as soon as the shoot came out of the ground, it is already surrounded by today, and he himself, entirely, is one of us - a heroic representative of a new generation, moving from one war to another: from 1870 to 1914. If the world in which he grew up has been torn apart and destroyed by the terrible events that have unfolded since then, I have every reason to think that the oak of Jean-Christophe has survived; the storm might have torn off several branches from the tree, but the trunk did not shake. This is talked about every day by birds who, seeking refuge on it, flock to it from all over the world. Particularly striking is the fact, which surpassed all my hopes at the time of the creation of my work, that Jean-Christophe is no longer a stranger in any country on the globe. From the most distant countries, from the most various peoples- from China, Japan, India, both Americas, from all European nations people flocked to me, saying: “Jean-Christophe is ours. He is mine. He is my brother. He is myself...”
And this proves to me that my faith is correct and the goal of my efforts has been achieved. For at the beginning of my work (in October 1893) I jotted down these lines:
“Always show the Unity of humanity, in whatever diverse forms it may appear. This should be the first task of art as well as of science. This is the task of "Jean-Christophe".
Biography
French novelist and playwright. Born January 29, 1866 in Clamcy (Burgundy). He received his higher education at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris; his work History of Opera in Europe before Lulli and Scarlatti (L"Histoire de l"opra en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti, 1895) was the first doctoral dissertation on a musical topic at the Sorbonne. He was a professor (history of music) at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure. The influence of Tolstoy, with whom Rolland corresponded, played an important role in the development of the humanistic and pacifist views that defined his work, while romanticism and vague mysticism were most likely due to his acquaintance with German literature.
Rolland began his career as a playwright, achieving great success on the French stage. First appeared the plays Tragedy of Faith (Tragdie de la foi): Saint Louis (Saint Louis, 1897), Aert (Art, 1898), The Triumph of Reason (Le Triomphe de la raison, 1899). They were followed by plays in the stricter sense of the word historical: Danton (Danton, 1900), July 14 (Le quatorze juillet, 1902) and Robespierre (Robespierre, 1938). Rolland advocated the creation of a fundamentally new dramaturgy, but his book The People's Theater (Le Thtre du peuple, 1903) received a modest response. It was then that he began his most famous novel, Jean-Christophe (tt. 1–10, 1903–1912). The main character of the book is a German composer whose life is described from birth in a small town on the banks of the Rhine to death in Italy. His music doesn't get the recognition it deserves, but he relies on loyal friendship and love to overcome challenges.
Fascinated by heroic historical figures, Rolland wrote several biographies: The Life of Beethoven (La Vie de Beethoven, 1903), Michelangelo (Michel-Ange, 1903) and the Life of Tolstoy (La Vie de Tolstoi, 1911), followed by the lives of some Indian sages - the Mahatma Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi, 1924), The Life of Ramakrishna (La Vie de Ramakrishna, 1929) and The Life of Vivekananda and the World Gospel (La Vie de Vivekananda et l "vangile universel, 1930).
When World War I broke out, Rolland decided to remain in Switzerland and made unsuccessful attempts to achieve reconciliation between French, German and Belgian intellectuals. His arguments were presented in a number of articles, later published in the collection Above the Fight (Au-dessus de la mle, 1915; Russian translation in 1919 under the title Away from the Fight) and in the novel Clrambault (1920). In recognition of Rolland's literary merits, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915.
Biography (T. L. Motyleva.)
Rolland Romain (29.1.1866, Clamcy, - 30.12.1944, Vézelay), French writer, public figure, musicologist. Born into the family of a notary. He received a humanities education at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
In 1895 he defended his dissertation at the Sorbonne "The Origin of the Modern Opera House. The History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti." Since 1897, professor (course of music history) at the Normal School, in 1902-12 - at the Sorbonne, on whose instructions he organized and headed the music section of the School of Higher Education social sciences. Together with J. Combarier, P. Aubry and others, he founded the magazine "Revue d'histoire et critique musicale", 1901. Author of studies on the history of music, monographs, articles. Already in the early dramas “Saint Louis” (1897) and “Aert” (1898), the originality of the R. artist was reflected: the severity of moral issues, the attraction to active heroic characters. His ideological and aesthetic position is substantiated in the book “People's Theater” (1903). At the end of the 90s. R. began work on a series of dramas about the Great French Revolution: “Wolves”, “The Triumph of Reason”, “Danton”, “The Fourteenth of July” (1898-1902).
R.'s essay about L. Beethoven (1903) opened a series of biographies of great people - creators of art. “The Life of Michelangelo” appeared in 1907, and “The Life of Tolstoy” in 1911. R., while still a student, wrote to L.N. Tolstoy and received a response from him; The Russian writer, according to R. himself, had a serious influence on him. The search for a broad epic form in the spirit of "War and Peace", echoes of Tolstoy's thoughts about artistic creativity as an ascetic activity for the benefit of people - all this was reflected in R.'s 10-volume epic novel, which brought him world fame - "Jean-Christophe" ( 1904-12). The image of the German musician - an innovator and a rebel - reflected Beethoven's personality traits. R. embodied here his dream of a creative genius, formed in the fight against the despotism of the authorities, the corrupt world of the bourgeoisie and its painfully refined art. The work is full of passionate journalism. The epic reveals the spiritual biography of the hero, traced with a great wealth of psychological analysis, insight into the secrets of the creative process; The background is a panorama of Europe. Predicting an imminent world war, R. contrasts it with the idea of \u200b\u200bthe brotherhood of peoples.
The problems that occupied R. keenly were the fate of culture and art in a historically critical era, the relationship between “thought and action”, creative personality and the people - are placed again and on new way in the story “Cola Brugnon” (finished in 1914, published 1918), written in the manner of folklore stylization in colorful and lively rhythmic prose. The action takes place in Burgundy at the beginning of the 17th century. The hero, the rebellious and mocking Cola Brugnon, is the living embodiment of the people's spirit.
World War I of 1914-18 found R. in Switzerland. From August 1914, he began to systematically appear in print as an anti-war publicist. His articles are collected in the collections “Above the Fight” (1915) and “Forerunners” (1919). R. appealed to the reason and conscience of the “murdered peoples”, denounced the capitalist magnates as the perpetrators of the worldwide massacre, without, however, calling for revolutionary action. R.'s anti-war views were refracted differently in the dramatic satire "Lilul" (1919) and in the lyrical story "Pierre and Luce" (1920). The novel "Clerambault" (1920) reflected the quest of the Western European intelligentsia, outraged by imperialist barbarity and tragically cut off from the people.
R. welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia. He perceived the Great October Socialist Revolution as an event of enormous international significance, but for a long time he rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary methods of fighting the exploiters. R. adhered to this position in the 20s. His dramas about the French Revolution - "The Game of Love and Death" (1925), "Palm Sunday" (1926), "Leonids" (1927), while affirming the greatness of the revolution, highlighted human tragedies and sacrifices. In search of nonviolent forms of social action, R. turned to the experience of the people and their religious and moral teachings (books about Mahatma Gandhi, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda). At the same time, he continued to closely monitor the development of the USSR, corresponded with M. Gorky in a friendly manner, and opposed anti-Soviet campaigns and military preparations of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Gradually, not without difficulties and hesitations, a change in R.’s views took place, expressed in his articles “Farewell to the Past” (1931), “Lenin. Art and Action” (1934), and collections of journalistic articles “Fifteen Years of Struggle” and “Peace through revolution" (both 1935). Together with A. Barbusse, R. participated in the preparation of congresses against war and fascism, and became one of the ideological inspirers of the international anti-fascist front. In 1935, R. visited the USSR at the invitation of M. Gorky.
R.'s main literary work after World War I was the novel The Enchanted Soul (1922-33). The history of the ideological development of the heroine of the novel, Annette Riviere, and her son Mark reflects the typical processes of the spiritual life of the advanced European intelligentsia, the path from individualistic rebellion or individual acts of humanity to participation in the organized struggle of the masses against the forces of the old world. The novel warns humanity about the danger of fascism. The death of Mark, who died in a street fight with an Italian fascist, causes a sharp mental change in Annette and brings her into the ranks of fighters. The heroes of the novel more than once turn in their disputes and thoughts to the experience of the Soviet Union. In 1939, R. completed the monumental tragedy "Robespierre", so. having completed work on a series of dramas about the French Revolution.
The pictures of the death of Robespierre and his associates are illuminated by the idea of greatness, the indestructible force of the liberation movement of mankind.
R. spent the years of the 2nd World War 1939-45 in Vezelay, in the occupation zone, sick, separated from friends. Autobiographical memoirs completed at this time sometimes bear the imprint of severe depression. However, R. worked hard, examining his literary work as a form of resistance to the occupiers. During the war, he completed a multi-volume work on Beethoven (a series of books under the general title “Beethoven. Great Creative Epochs,” published 1928-45), then a biography of S. Peguy (published after his release in December 1944).
R. left a significant mark on the history of French and world literature. Early realizing the historical uniqueness of the era, he based his work on the principle of heroic deeds. R.'s searches and doubts reflected the objective contradictions in the development of a significant part of the Western intelligentsia during the era of transition from capitalism to socialism. Taking the side of the October Revolution, R. gave an instructive example to Western European cultural figures, helping them find their place in public life and struggle. R.'s innovation as an artist is closely related to the ideological nature of his work. The original features of R.'s artistic style helped him pose the acute problems of the era and convey the dramatic nature of humanity's movement towards the future. Nobel Prize (1915).
Cit.: Cahiers Romain Rolland, v. 1-23, ., (1948-75); Romain Rolland. Journal des annees de guerre, ., 1952; Textes politiques, sociaux et philosophiques choisis. ., 1970; in Russian lane - Collection cit., vol. 1-20. L., (1930)-1936; Collection soch., vol. 1-14, M., 1954-58; Soch., vol. 1-9, M., 1974; Memoirs, M., 1966.
Lit.: Gorky M., (Article), Collection. op. in thirty volumes, vol. 24, M., 1953; Lunacharsky A.V., (Articles), Collection. soch., vol. 4-5, M., 1964-65; Balakhonov V. E., R. Rolland in 1914-1924, L., 1958; his, R. Rolland and his time (“Jean-Christophe”), L., 1968; him, R. Rolland and his time. Early years, L., 1972; Motyleva T., Creativity of R. Rolland, M., 1959; hers, R. Rolland, M., 1969; Duchesne I., “Jean-Christophe” by R. Rolland, M., 1966; "Europe", 1926, No. 38; 1955, No. 109-110; 1965, No. 439-40; Cheval R., R. Rolland, l "Allemagne et la guerre, ., 1963; Barrere J.-., R. Rolland par luimeme, (., 1968); erus J., R. Rolland et M. Gorki, . , 1968.
Biography
Rolland received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the high idealism of his literary works, for the sympathy and love of truth with which he describes various human types."
Romain Rolland, a French novelist and publicist, was born into a wealthy bourgeois family in Clamcy, a small town in the south of France, where he spent his childhood. His father, Emile, was a lawyer, a respected man in the city, and his mother, born Antoinette Marie Coureau, was a pious, reserved woman, at whose request the family moved to Paris in 1880 so that her son could receive a good education.
From an early age, when his mother taught him to play the piano, Romain fell in love with music, especially the works of Beethoven. Later, as a student at the Lyceum of Louis the Great, he fell just as deeply in love with the works of Wagner. In 1886, the young man entered the very prestigious Ecole Normale Superior, where he studied history, preparing to become a university scientist, which his mother so wanted, and in 1889 he received a teaching diploma.
From 1889 to 1891, P. travels on a scholarship to Rome, where he studies history at the Ecole Française, but over time he loses interest in research work and, under the impression of Shakespeare's historical plays, begins to write a series of historical dramas based on the events and personalities of the Italian Renaissance . In Rome, the future writer met Malvida von Meisenbug, a German woman who was a friend and confidant of such 19th-century celebrities as Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. Her idealistic philosophy and interest in German romanticism significantly influenced R.'s way of thinking.
Returning to Paris in 1891, R. continued to write plays and engage in research work. In October 1892, he married Clotilde Breal, the daughter of a famous philologist. In the same year, the newlyweds return to Rome, where R. begins work on a dissertation on the art of opera before Jean Baptiste Lully and Alessandro Scarlatti. In 1893, R. again came to Paris, was engaged in teaching and scientific work, as well as literature. Two years later, in a solemn ceremony, he defended his first dissertation in the field of music at the Sorbonne, after which he received the department of musicology, especially established for him.
Over the next 17 years, R. combines literature with lecturing on music and fine arts at the Sorbonne, as well as at two other educational institutions: the School of Social Research and Ecole Normale Superior. At the same time, he met Charles Peguy, a Catholic poet, in whose magazine “Two-week Notebooks” (“Cahiers de la Quinzaine”) P. published his first works.
Since R. was most interested in the history of culture, especially its decisive or, as he called them, “heroic” periods, he began to write not individual works, but entire cycles, the work of which he did not always complete. The first such cycle of plays, dedicated to the Italian Renaissance, remained only in sketches and was not published, and the second - "Tragedies of Faith" ("Les Tragedies de la foi") - included three plays: "Saint Louis" , 1897), “Aert” (“Aert”, 1898) and “The Triumph of Reason” (“Le Triomphe de la raison”, 1899). The writer's subsequent cycles included not only plays, but biographies and novels.
The three historical plays included in Tragedies of Faith combined art and social criticism, with them R. sought to instill in his fellow citizens faith, courage and hope, which, according to the writer, were so lacking in France at that time. Nevertheless, "Tragedies of Faith" changed little in the French theater, where at that time bourgeois melodrama flourished. This gave R. the idea of a folk theater; like Leo Tolstoy, whom he admired and corresponded with, R. believed that the public should be educated on heroic examples. Interested in Maurice Pottesche’s article “The People’s Theatre,” R. in 1903 published a manifesto in the “Fortnightly Notebooks” calling for counteraction to the pessimism and materialism of the 80s. XIX century and subsequently released a separate book– “The People's Theater” (“Le Theater du peuple”, 1918), where the writer talks about the need to create new Plays, which would be based on historical events that inspire the public.
R. created a cycle of 9...12 plays dedicated to the French Revolution, in the spirit of Shakespeare's historical chronicles. Three such plays were included in the cycle "Theater of the Revolution" ("Theatre de la Revolution", 1909), which ended 30 years later with the drama "Robespierre" ("Robespierre", 1939). These didactic, full of pathos plays on political themes at a time when naturalism was the dominant literary trend went unnoticed; success came to them later - in Germany after the First World War, and in France - in the 30s.
R. also conceived a series of biographies of famous people, whose lives and activities could become an example for the reader. His biographer, William Thomas Starr, believes that R. wrote “The Life of Beethoven” (“Vie de Beethoven”, 1903), the first and most successful biography of the series, “as a token of gratitude for the source of inspiration in moments of despair and hopelessness.” Despair was probably largely caused by the writer’s divorce from his wife in 1901. Having completed the biography of Michelangelo in 1905, R. refuses to continue the biographical series, as he comes to the conclusion that the truth about the difficult fate of great people is unlikely to affect the reader inspiring. However, R. remained faithful to the biographical genre later, when he wrote a biography of Handel (1910). Tolstoy (1911), Gandhi (1924), Ramakrishna (1929), Vivekananda (1930), Pegi (1944).
Jean-Christophe, a ten-volume novel published from 1904 to 1912, is the life story of the brilliant musician inspired by Beethoven, as well as a broad panorama of European life in the first decade of the 20th century. In separate parts the novel was published in Peguy’s “Fortnightly Notebooks” and immediately gained worldwide fame and brought R. international recognition, after which the writer left the Sorbonne (1912) and devoted himself entirely to literature. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig argued that “Jean-Christophe” is the result of R.’s disappointment in the biographical genre: “Since history refused him the image of a “comforter,” he turned to art...”
R. received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1915 mainly thanks to “Jean-Christophe.” As such, the prize was awarded to the writer only in 1916 - partly due to the scandal caused by the fact that P., who settled in Switzerland shortly before the First World War, published passionate anti-war articles in 1915 entitled "Above the Fight" (" Audessus de la melee"), where he fought for freedom and internationalism, against the injustice and horrors of war, as well as against former pacifists who became ardent nationalists during the war. R. received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the high idealism of literary works, for the sympathy and love of truth with which he describes various human types.” Because of the war, the traditional award ceremony was not held, and R. did not give a Nobel lecture.
R.'s political views continue to be controversial, especially in relation to the Soviet Union, which he supported in every possible way, although he criticized for mistakes. In general, in the years between the world wars, the writer devoted more and more time and energy to politics and social life and at the same time still wrote a lot: these are musicological articles, biographies, plays, diaries, memoirs, letters, essays, novels. In the 20s he is interested in Indian religious and political thought; in 1931, Gandhi came to see him in Switzerland, whose biography R. wrote in 1924. The main work of art of this period was the sixth cycle of the writer “The Enchanted Soul” (“L”Ame enchantee”, 1925...1933), a seven-volume novel , which describes a woman’s painful struggle to realize her spiritual potential, defending the right to independent work and a full civil existence, Annette Riviere, the heroine of the novel, is freed from illusions.
In 1934, R. married Maria Kudasheva, and four years later he returned from Switzerland to France. During the Second World War, the writer left his position “above the fray” and took a place in the ranks of the fighters against Nazism. On December 30, 1944, R. died of tuberculosis, which he had suffered from since childhood. His letter, read aloud at the Sorbonne, in which the writer expresses condolences to the families of scientists and artists who died at the hands of the Nazis, was written three weeks before his death, on December 9.
P.'s personality and his ideas may have influenced his contemporaries more than his books. His friend Marie Dormoy wrote: “I admire Romain Rolland. I also admire “Jean-Christophe,” but I probably like the man more than the author... He was a guide, a beacon showing the way to all those who hesitated, who did not have enough strength to walk their path alone.” . Some critics underestimated P.'s literary achievements, in whose books individual words sometimes turned out to be much less important than the general meaning, the main idea; there is also an opinion that “Jean-Christophe,” conceived by R. as a symphony, is vague and formless. Regarding R.'s later books, the English novelist and critic E.M. Forster wrote that R. “did not live up to the hopes that he showed in his youth.” The most balanced assessment of R.’s work belongs to his biographer Starr, who wrote that “apart from “Jean-Christophe,” R. will be remembered not as a writer, but as one of the most active and decisive defenders of human dignity and freedom, as a passionate fighter for a more just and humane social system." Starr also argued that “perhaps the hour has not yet come to appreciate R. at his true worth... Only time can separate the brilliant from the transitory, short-lived.”
In 1915, "as a tribute to the high idealism of his literary work and the sympathy and love of truth with which he described the various types of human beings."
He is also noted for his correspondence with and influence on Sigmund Freud.
biography
His first book was published in 1902, when he was 36 years old. Through his advocacy for the "people's theatre", he made a significant contribution to the democratization of theatre. As a humanist, he embraced the work of Indian philosophers (Conversations with Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi). Rolland was heavily influenced by the Vedanta philosophy of India, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda.
A demanding but timid young man, he does not like to study. He was not indifferent to young people: Jean-Christophe, Olivier and their friends, the heroes of his novels, young people. But with real life individuals, youth as well as adults, Rolland maintains only a distant relationship. He was first and foremost a writer. Guaranteed that literature would provide him with a modest income, he left the university in 1912.
Romain Rolland was a lifelong pacifist. He was one of the few major French writers to retain his pacifist internationalist values; he moved to Switzerland. He protested against the First World War as Au-Dessus - de la - MELEE (1915), above the fray(Chicago, 1916). In 1924, his book on Gandhi contributed to India's nonviolent leader's reputation and the two men met in 1931.
In May 1922, he took part in the International Congress of Progressive Artists and signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists".
In 1928, Rolland and the Hungarian scientist, philosopher and natural living experimenter Edmund Bordo Szekely founded the International Biogenic Society to promote and expand their ideas of the integration of mind, body and spirit. In 1932, Rolland was one of the first members of the World Committee against War and Fascism, organized by Münzenberg. Rolland criticized Münzenberg's supposed control over the committee and was against it based in Berlin.
The essay is part of a more general movement at the turn of this century towards the democratization of theatre. Revue was held by a competition and tried to organize a "World Congress of People's Theater", and was opened a whole series folk theaters throughout Europe, including the Freie Volksbühn movement ("Free Folk Theatre") in Germany and Maurice Pottecher at the Théâtre du Peuple in France. Rolland was a student of Pottecher and dedicated People's Theater to him.
Rolland's approach is more aggressive, though, than Pottecher's poetic vision of theater as a substitute for "social religion" bringing unity to the nation. Rolland blames the bourgeoisie for its appropriation of the theater, causing it to slide into decline, and the disastrous consequences of its ideological dominance. While offering a suitable repertoire for the theater of his people, Rolland rejected classical drama in the belief that it was either too complex or too static to be of interest to the masses. Drawing on the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he proposes instead "an epic historical theater of 'joy, strength and intelligence' that will remind people of its revolutionary legacy and the reinvigoration of the forces working for a new society" (in the words of Bradby and McCormick, quoting Rolland) . Rolland believed that people would be improved by seeing the heroic images of the past. Rousseau's influence can be detected in Rolland's concept of theater-as-conviviality, an emphasis that reveals a fundamental anti-theatrical prejudice: "The theater presupposes lives that are poor and troubled, people seeking refuge in dreams from the thought of If we were." happier and freer, we should not feel hungry for the theater [...] a people who are free and happy needs celebrations more than theaters. , he will always see the best spectacles in himself.”
Rolland's dramas were produced by some of the most influential directors of the 20th century, including Max Reinhardt and Piscator. Piscator sent world premiere Rolland's pacifist drama The time will come (Le Temps Viendra, written in 1903) at the Berlin Central Theater", which opened on 17 November 1922 with music by K Pringsheim and set design by O Schmalhausen and M Meier. The play addresses the connection between imperialism and capitalism, the treatment of enemy civilians, and the use of concentration camps camps, all of which were dramatized through an episode in the Boer War. Piscator described his interpretation of the play as "thoroughly naturalistic", as a result of which he sought "to achieve the greatest possible realism in the acting and decor". Despite the plays' overly rhetorical style, the production was reviewed favorably.
novels
Rolland's most famous novel is a 10-volume novel sequence Jean-Christophe(1904-1912), which brings "together his interests and ideals into the story of a German musical genius who makes France his second home and becomes the vehicle for Rolland's views on music, social issues and understanding between nations." His other novels Colas Brugnon (1919), Clerambault (1920), Pierre and Luce(1920) and his second multi-volume chronicle novel, 7 volumes L'âme Enchantee (1922-1933).
Academic career
Print from the USSR, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Romain Rolland in 1966.
He became a history teacher at the Lycée Henry IV and later at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and a member of the École française de Rome, then professor of music history at the Sorbonne, and professor of history at the École Normale Supérieure.
Correspondence with Freud
1923 saw the beginning of correspondence between the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Rolland, who discovered that the admiration that he showed was for Freud equally reciprocated (Freud proclaiming in a letter to him: "That I have been allowed to exchange greetings with you will remain in happy memory until the end of my days."). This correspondence introduced Freud to the concept of the "oceanic feeling" that Rolland developed in his study of Eastern mysticism. Freud opened the next book. Civilization and its discontents(1929) with a discussion about the nature of this feeling, which he mentioned was noted to him by an anonymous "friend". This friend was Rolland. Rolland would remain a major influence on Freud's work, continuing correspondence until Freud's death in 1939.
List of used literature
Romain Rolland in 1914, on the balcony of his house
| Year | Job | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1888 | Amour d'Enfants | |
| 1891 | Les Baglioni | |
| 1891 |
Empedocles (Empedocles) |
Unpublished during his lifetime. |
| 1891 | Orsino(game) | Unpublished during his lifetime. |
| 1892 |
Le Dernier Procès de Louis Berquin (The Last Trial Louis Berquin) |
|
| 1895 |
Les Origines du théâtre Lyrique Moderne (Origins of modern lyric theater) |
An academic treatise that won a prize from the French Academy |
| 1895 |
Histoire de l'Opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti (The history of opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti) |
Doctoral dissertation in Letters |
| 1895 | Cur APC picturae Apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit | Latin-language thesis on decline Italian painting oil during the sixteenth century |
| 1897 | St. Louis | |
| 1897 | Arta | |
| 1898 |
Les Loups (wolves) |
Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1899 |
Le Triomphe de la Raison (Triumph of Reason) |
Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1899 | Danton | Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1900 | Le poisoning idealiste | |
| 1901 |
Les Fêtes de Beethoven à Mainz (Beethoven celebrations in Mainz) |
|
| 1902 |
Le Quatorze Juillet (July 14th - Bastille Day) |
Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1902 | Francois Millet | |
| 1903 |
Vie de Beethoven (Beethoven's life) |
Novella |
| 1903 |
Le Temps Viendra (The Time Will Come) |
drama |
| 1903 |
Le Théâtre du Peuple (People's Theater) |
A seminal essay in the democratization of theater. |
| 1904 | La Montespan | Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1904-1912 | Jean-Christophe | The cycle of ten volumes is divided into three Series- Jean-Christophe , Jean-Christophe of Paris and l Fin it swimming, published Caois de l'Quinzaine |
| 1904 | L'Aube | First volume of the series Jean-Christophe |
| 1904 |
Le Matin (morning) |
Second volume of the series Jean-Christophe |
| 1904 |
L"Teenagers (Teenager) |
Third volume of the series Jean-Christophe |
| 1905 |
La REVOLTe (Insurrection) |
The fourth volume of the series Jean-Christophe |
| 1907 |
Vie de Michel-Ange (Life of Michelangelo) |
biography |
| 1908 |
Musiciens d'aujourd'hui (Modern musicians) |
|
| 1908 |
Musiciens d'Autrefois (Musicians of the past) |
Collection of articles and essays about music |
| 1908 | La Foire-sur-la-place | First volume of the series Jean-Christophe à Paris |
| 1908 | Antoinette | Second volume of the series Jean-Christophe à Paris |
| 1908 |
Dans La Maison (Houses) |
Third volume of the series Jean-Christophe à Paris |
| 1910 |
Handel (Handel) |
|
| 1910 |
Les Amies (Friends) |
First volume of the series la fin du voyage |
| 1911 |
La Vie de Tolstoy (Life of Tolstoy) |
biography |
| 1911 | Le Buisson fiery | Second volume of the series la fin du voyage |
| 1912 | La Nouvelle Journey | Third volume of the series la fin du voyage |
| 1911 | Jean-Christophe: Dawn. Morning. Youth. insurrection | In English, the first four volumes are published in one. Henry Holt and Company. Translation by Gilbert Cannan |
| 1911 | Jean-Christophe in Paris: at the market. Antoinette. House | In English, the second three volumes are published in one. Henry Holt and Company. Translation by Gilbert Cannan |
| 1915 | Jean-Christophe: End of the Trip: Love and Friendship. Burning bush. New Dawn | In English, the last three volumes are published in one. Henry Holt and Company. Translation by Gilbert Cannan |
| 1912 |
L"Humble Vie heroïque (The Humble Life of a Hero) |
|
| 1915 |
Au-Dessus - de la Melee (above the fray) |
Pacifist manifesto |
| 1915 | - | Received the Nobel Prize in Literature |
| 1917 |
Salut à la russe Revolution (salute to the Russian revolution) |
|
| 1918 |
Pour l"Internationale de l"Esprit (for the International Spirit) |
|
| 1918 |
L "AGE - de la - Hayne (The Age of Hate) |
|
| 1919 | Colas Brugnon | Burgundian history and basis for Colas Brugnon, operas by Dmitry Kabalevsky |
| 1919 | Liluli | Play |
| 1919 |
Les Précurseurs (Predecessors) |
|
| 1920 | Clerambault | |
| 1920 | Pierre and Luce | |
| 1921 |
choisies pages (Selected Pages) |
|
| 1921 |
L REVOLTe de machines (riot of machines) |
|
| 1922 | Annette et Sylvie | First volume l"Âme Enchantee |
| 1922 | Les Vaincus | |
| 1922-1933 |
L'Âme Enchantee (Enchanted Soul) |
Seven volumes |
| 1923 | - | Based review Europe |
| 1924 |
L'été (summer) |
Second volume l"Âme Enchantee |
| 1924 | Mahatma Gandhi | |
| 1925 |
Le Jeu de l'Amour et de la Morte (Game of love and death) |
Reason for HRA about Laske Smriti, operas by Jan Kikker |
| 1926 | Pâques Fleuries | |
| 1927 |
Mère et al fils (mother and child) |
Third volume l"Âme Enchantee |
| 1928 | Leonids | |
| 1928 |
De l"Héroïque à l"Appassionata (From Heroic to Passionate) |
|
| 1929 |
Essai sur la mystery de l'action (Exploring Mystique Actions) |
|
| 1929 |
L"Inde Vivante (Living India) |
Essay |
| 1929 |
Vie de Ramakrishna (Life of Ramakrishna) |
Essay |
| 1930 |
Vi de Vivekananda (Life of Vivekananda) |
Essay |
| 1930 | L"Évangile Universel | Essay |
| 1930 |
Goethe and Beethoven (Goethe and Beethoven) |
Composition |
| 1933 | L"Annonciatrice | Fourth volume l"Âme Enchantee |
| 1935 | Quinze ans in hostilities | |
| 1936 | Compagnons de route | |
| 1937 |
Le Chant de la RESURRECTION (Song of Resurrection) |
|
| 1938 |
Les Page dried flowers de Rousseau (Immortal pages of Rousseau) |
|
| 1939 | Robespierre | Historical/philosophical drama |
| 1942 |
Le Voyage interior (Voyage interior) |
|
| 1943 |
La Cathedrale interrompue (interrupted cathedral) |
Volumes I and II |
| 1945 |
fr. Romain Rolland
French writer, public figure, musicologist
Brief biography
A famous French prose writer, novelist, publicist, he was born in Southern France, in the small town of Clamcy, in 1866. His father was a respected lawyer in the city. In 1880, on the initiative of the mother of the future writer, their family moved to Paris so that Romain could receive a decent education. Romain’s love for music was also instilled in his mother’s early childhood. The woman taught her son to play the piano, and he especially liked Beethoven’s music; Subsequently, Wagner was ranked among the favorite composers.
After graduating from the Lyceum Louis the Great in 1886, Romain was a student of the prestigious educational institution Ecole Normale, where, fulfilling the will of his mother, he prepared for a career as a university scientist and researcher. Having received a diploma in history in 1889, Rolland went until 1991 on a scholarship to the Italian capital and studied history there, as well as fine arts, the life path and creative heritage of famous Italian composers.
Gradually he is less and less interested in research work. Seriously impressed by Shakespeare's historical plays, he begins to write his own dramas, dedicated to events and the people of the Italian Renaissance. Without losing love for classical music, Rolland chooses music history as a specialty. Upon his return to France he still leads research papers, writes plays, and in October of the following year he marries Clotilde Breal and leaves with her for Rome. There he began work on his dissertation, which he returned to France and defended in 1895 at the Sorbonne. This was the first dissertation of its kind, and thanks to it, Rolland receives the department of musicology, established specifically for him.
As a professor of music history, Rolland lectured at the Sorbonne and two other educational institutions and at the same time studied literature. This period of biography, when Rolland paid approximately equal attention to teaching and literature, lasted 17 years. His first works were published in the journal of a Catholic poet he knew, “Two-Week Notebooks.” It was the tragedy "Saint Louis", part of the cycle "Tragedies of Faith". He gained fame after his plays, written in the spirit of Shakespeare's historical chronicles and covering the events of the French Revolution, were published and staged. True, their success turned out to be a little belated.
World fame came to Romain Rolland after the publication of the 10-volume epic novel “Jean Christophe,” which was published during 1904-1912. It has been translated into dozens of languages around the world. The prototype of this work was Beethoven and, to some extent, the author; in addition, it contains a large-scale canvas of European life in the first ten years of the twentieth century.
In 1912, Rolland parted with his chair at the Sorbonne and devoted himself entirely to literary creativity. Shortly before the First World War, he moved to Switzerland, and in 1915 he published a number of anti-war articles that defended internationalism and exposed all the horrors of war. Because of these articles, a scandal erupted, due to which the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded only in 1916, although he became a laureate in 1915.
The period between the two world wars was filled with active activity for Rolland creative activity; From his pen came novels, diary entries, biographies, essays, memoirs, articles on musicology, but at the same time, the writer devoted more and more energy and time to the life of society and politics. Romain Rolland's political views were distinguished by their inconsistency, which was especially noticeable in relation to the USSR: on the one hand, he criticized the state for mistakes, on the other, he warmly supported it, was in contact with Maxim Gorky, and visited Moscow, where he met with I. Stalin. In the 20s Indian political and religious thought was of particular interest to him; Gandhi himself visited him in 1931.
During 1925-1933. Rolland publishes a 7-volume novel dedicated to women's emancipation - “The Enchanted Soul”. In 1938, the writer moved to his homeland. When World War II began, he joined the fight against Nazism with all the passion of his nature. The cause of his death on December 30, 1944 was tuberculosis; this illness tormented him since childhood.
Biography from Wikipedia
Born into the family of a notary. In 1881, the Rollands moved to Paris, where the future writer, having graduated from the Lyceum of Louis the Great, entered the Ecole Normale High School in 1886. After graduation, Rolland lived in Italy for two years, studying fine arts, as well as the life and work of outstanding Italian composers. Playing the piano from early childhood and never ceasing to study music seriously during his student years, Rolland decided to choose music history as his specialty.
Returning to France, Rolland defended his dissertation at the Sorbonne “The Origin of the Modern Opera Theater. History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti" (1895) and, having received the title of professor of music history, lectured first at the Ecole Normale and then at the Sorbonne. Together with Pierre Aubry, he founded the magazine "La Revue d'histoire et de critique musicales" in 1901. His most outstanding musicological works of this period include the monographs “Musicians of the Past” (1908), “Musicians of Our Day” (1908), “Handel” (1910).
Rolland’s first work of fiction to appear in print was the tragedy “Saint Louis” - the initial link in the dramatic cycle “Tragedies of Faith”, to which “Aert” and “The Time Will Come” also belong.
During the First World War, Rolland was an active participant in European pacifist organizations, publishing many anti-war articles, which were published in the collections “Above the Fight” and “Forerunners”.
In 1915 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Rolland actively corresponded with Leo Tolstoy, welcomed the February Revolution and approved of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, but at the same time feared its methods and the idea of “the end justifies the means.” He was more impressed by M. Gandhi's ideas of non-resistance to evil through violence.
Since 1921, he moved to Villeneuve, Switzerland, where he actively worked and corresponded with many writers, traveling to London, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague and Germany.
Already from the 1920s, he communicated with Maxim Gorky, came by invitation to Moscow, where he had conversations with Stalin (1935).
In 1937, Rolland wrote to Stalin, trying to stand up for the repressed (N.I. Bukharin, Aroseva), but received no response.
His other correspondents included Einstein, Schweitzer, and Freud.
Upon returning to France in 1938, he began to receive news of brutal repressions in the Soviet Union, but his letters, which he wrote to the leaders of the country he knew, received no answers.
During the war he lived in occupied Vezelay, continuing his literary activities, where he died of tuberculosis.
Creation
Start literary activity Rolland refers to the period after the defense of theses, namely after 1895.
His first play “Orsino”, the idea of which appeared during his stay in Italy, takes the reader to the Renaissance, where the main character, Orsino, expresses all the wonderful features of this era.
In addition to this play from this period of the writer’s work, there are several more plays dedicated to ancient and Italian themes, including Empedocles (1890), Baglioni (1891), Niobe (1892), Caligula (1893) and The Siege Mantua" (1894). But all these plays did not bring success to the author and were not published or staged.
The tragedy “Saint Louis” (1897), one of the plays in the cycle “Tragedies of Faith”, which also included the dramas “Aert” (1898) and “The Time Will Come” (1903), became the first play that Rolland managed to publish. This is a philosophical play in which there is a conflict between faith and unbelief, where faith is represented by Saint Louis, who led the crusade, and unbelief by the Lords Salisbury and Manfred, who despise other people. In this cycle of plays, Rolland combines the social and philosophical ideas of the dramas of Ibsen and romantic traits Schiller and Hugo. At the same time, the author tries to prove the need to renew the life of society and art itself.
A collection of articles by the author, published in the book “People's Theater” (1903), also calls for a renewal of art. The author tries to convince that art, in particular theatrical art, should not be just for the sake of art, but should be understandable to the people and encourage them to action.
Another attempt at theater reform was the cycle of plays “Theater of the Revolution”, which included 4 plays, including “Wolves” (1898), “The Triumph of Reason” (1899), “Danton” (1900), “The Fourteenth of July” (1902) . This cycle is dedicated to the French Revolution, but at the same time the author tries to solve the problems of modernity and the role of common people in history. The revolution simultaneously attracts the author and frightens him. Moreover, in these dramas the author tries to resolve philosophical and moral problems.
For example, in the play "Wolves", there is a conflict between the importance of the life of one innocent person and the interest of the revolution and society as a whole.
In the play “The Fourteenth of July” there is an attempt to include the viewer in the action, and the main character of this drama becomes an entire people.
Romain Rolland received recognition at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, after the publication and production of a series of his plays dedicated to the events of the Great French Revolution: “Wolves”, “The Triumph of Reason”, “Danton”, “The Fourteenth of July”.
Later, the author turns to the genre of biography, while imitating Plutarch. But at the same time, he also acts as an innovator of this genre, including in his works the features of a psychological essay, literary portrait and music research.
The most famous work is the novel “Jean-Christophe” (1904-1912), consisting of 10 books. This novel brought the author worldwide fame and was translated into dozens of languages. The cycle tells about the crisis of the German musical genius Jean-Christophe Kraft, whose prototype was Beethoven and Rolland himself. The emerging friendship of the young hero with the Frenchman symbolizes the “harmony of opposites”, and more globally, peace between states. The author's attempt to convey the development of the main character's feelings led to the emergence of a completely new form of the novel, which is defined as a “river novel.” Each of the three parts of this novel has a complete character, as well as its own tonality and rhythm, like in music, and lyrical digressions give the novel greater emotionality. Jean-Christophe is a modern rebel hero, a new musical genius of his time. Together with Christophe's emigration, the writer recreates life European people and again tries to talk about the need for reform in art, which has become an object of commerce. At the end of the novel, Christophe ceases to be a rebel, but at the same time remains true to his art.
Another attempt to combine dream and action was the story “Cola Breugnon” (1918). In this story, he again turns to the Renaissance, and the setting will be Burgundy, the writer’s small homeland. Kola is the main character of the story, a cheerful and talented woodcarver. Labor and creativity, as synthesis and as life itself, become the main themes of the writer’s work. Unlike the intellectual novel “Jean-Christophe,” this story is distinguished by its simplicity.
Among his other works, one should highlight a series of books about great figures: “The Life of Beethoven” (1903), “The Life of Michelangelo” (1907), “The Life of Tolstoy” (1911). Remaining true to the idea of combining dream and action, in “The Life of Michelangelo” the author describes the conflict between the personality of a genius and a weak person rolled into one. Thus, he is unable to complete his works and simply abandons art.
After the First World War, there was an evolution in the work of the writer, who viewed war not as a consequence of contradictions, but as a way for individuals to make money.
Thus, in 1915, a collection of anti-war articles “Above the Battle” was published, and in 1919 the book “Forerunners” was published. In 1916, the author was awarded the Nobel Prize: “For the sublime idealism of his literary works, as well as for the genuine sympathy and love with which the writer creates various human types.”
The writer continues to profess anti-war views in the pamphlet “Lilyuli” (1919), the tragedy “Pierre and Luce” (1920) and the novel “Clerambault” (1920), where peaceful life and human feelings are opposed to the destructive power of war.
Unable to reconcile revolutionary thoughts for transforming society with aversion to war, he turned to the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, which resulted in the books “Mahatma Gandhi” (1923), “Life of Ramakrishna” (1929), “Life of Vivekananda” (1930).
Despite the post-revolutionary terror in the Soviet Union, Rolland continued his connection and support of this state. Thus, his articles “On the Death of Lenin” (1924), “Letter to Liberter about repressions in Russia” (1927), “Response to K. Balmont and I. Bunin” (1928) appeared. Rolland continued to believe that even despite the repression, the revolution in Russia was the greatest achievement of mankind.
After the First World War, the author's most significant work was the novel The Enchanted Soul (1922-1923), in which Rolland moves on to social themes. The heroine of this novel is a woman fighting for her rights, defeating all the adversities of life. Having lost her son, who was killed by an Italian fascist, she joins the active struggle. Thus, this novel became the author's first anti-fascist novel.
In 1936, Rolland published a collection of essays and articles entitled "Companions", in which he wrote about thinkers and artists who influenced his work, including Shakespeare, Goethe, L.N. Tolstoy, Hugo and Lenin.
In 1939, Rolland's play Robespierre was published, with which he completed the theme of revolution. Thus, it became the result of the author’s work in this direction. The author discusses terror in post-revolutionary society, coming to the conclusion that it is inappropriate.
Finding himself under occupation after the outbreak of World War II, Rolland continued to work on autobiographical works “The Inner Journey” (1942), “Circumnavigation” (1946) and a grandiose study of Beethoven’s work entitled “Beethoven. Great creative eras" (1928-1949).
In 1944, he wrote his last book, entitled Pegi, in which he described his friend the poet and polemicist, as well as the editor of the Fortnightly Notebooks, and his era. Later, in the last years of his life, he returned to the theme of Beethoven, completing the multi-volume work “Beethoven. Great creative eras."
In posthumously published memoirs ( Memoires, 1956) clearly shows the unity of the author’s views in love for humanity.