Romen Rolland Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature 1915 Date of Birth: 29.01.1866 Country: France

Biography of Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland, a French novelist and essayist, was born into a prosperous bourgeois family in Clamecy, a small town in southern France, where he spent his childhood. His father, Émile, was a respected lawyer in the town, while his mother, Antoinette Marie Caron, was a devout and introverted woman who desired that the family move to Paris in 1880 to provide her son with a good education. From an early age, Romain developed a love for music, particularly the works of Beethoven, while his studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand deepened his admiration for Wagner. In 1886, he entered the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, where he studied history in preparation for becoming a university scholar, a path desired by his mother. He received his teaching diploma in 1889. From 1889 to 1891, Rolland traveled to Rome on a scholarship, studying history at the École Française, but his interest in research waned over time, and under the influence of Shakespeare's historical plays, he began writing a cycle of historical dramas based on the events and personalities of the Italian Renaissance. In Rome, the future writer met Malwida von Meysenbug, a German woman who was a friend and confidante of 19th-century luminaries such as Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Wagner. Her idealistic philosophy and interest in German romanticism greatly influenced Rolland's thinking.

Upon returning to Paris in 1891, Rolland continued writing plays and engaging in research. In October 1892, he married Clotilde Bréal, the daughter of a renowned philologist. In the same year, the young couple returned to Rome, where Rolland began working on his dissertation on the art of opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Alessandro Scarlatti. In 1893, Rolland returned to Paris, where he taught and conducted research, as well as pursued his literary career. Two years later, he defended his first dissertation in music at the Sorbonne and was appointed to a chair in musicology specially created for him. For the next 17 years, Rolland combined his literary pursuits with lecturing on music and visual arts at the Sorbonne, as well as at two other educational institutions: the School of Social Studies and the École Normale Supérieure. During this time, he became acquainted with Charles Péguy, a Catholic poet, and published his first works in Péguy's journal, "Cahiers de la Quinzaine." As Rolland was most interested in the history of culture, particularly its decisive or, as he called them, "heroic" periods, he began writing not individual works, but entire cycles, although he did not always complete them. His first such cycle of plays, dedicated to the Italian Renaissance, remained only in sketches and was not published, while the second cycle, "Tragedies of Faith," included three plays: "Saint Louis" (1897), "Aert" (1898), and "The Triumph of Reason" (1899). Rolland's subsequent cycles included not only plays but also biographies and novels. These historical plays, which were part of the "Tragedies of Faith," combined art with social criticism, and Rolland sought to instill in his compatriots faith, courage, and hope, which he believed were lacking in France at that time. However, the "Tragedies of Faith" brought about little change in the French theater, which was then dominated by bourgeois melodrama. This led Rolland to the idea of a people's theater. Like Leo Tolstoy, whom he admired and corresponded with, Rolland believed that the public should be educated through heroic examples. After reading Maurice Pottecher's article "The People's Theater," Rolland published a manifesto in 1903 in the "Cahiers de la Quinzaine," calling for a fight against pessimism and materialism of the 1880s. This manifesto was later published as a separate book titled "The Theater of the People" (1918), in which Rolland spoke about the need to create new plays based on historical events that inspire the audience.

Rolland created a cycle of 9 to 12 plays dedicated to the French Revolution, in the style of Shakespearean historical chronicles. Three of these plays were included in the cycle "Theater of the Revolution" (1909), which was completed 30 years later with the drama "Robespierre" (1939). These didactic and passionate plays on political themes went unnoticed at the time when naturalism was the dominant literary trend. Their success came later, in Germany after World War I and in France in the 1930s. Rolland also conceived a series of biographies of famous individuals whose lives and work could serve as examples to readers. His biographer, William Thomas Starr, believed that Rolland wrote the "Life of Beethoven" (1903), the first and most successful biography in the series, as a sign of gratitude for being a source of inspiration in moments of despair. Rolland's despair was likely in part due to his divorce from his wife in 1901. After completing the biography of Michelangelo in 1905, Rolland decided not to continue the biographical series, as he came to the conclusion that the truth about the difficult fate of great individuals would hardly inspire the reader. However, Rolland remained faithful to the biographical genre and later wrote biographies of Handel (1910), Tolstoy (1911), Gandhi (1924), Ramakrishna (1929), Vivekananda (1930), and Péguy (1944).

"Jean-Christophe," a ten-volume novel published from 1904 to 1912, tells the story of the life of a brilliant musician, inspired by Beethoven, as well as a panoramic view of European life in the first decade of the 20th century. Serialized in Péguy's journal, the novel gained immediate international recognition and brought Rolland worldwide acclaim, prompting him to leave his position at the Sorbonne in 1912 and dedicate himself entirely to literature. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig claimed that "Jean-Christophe" was the result of Rolland's disillusionment with the biographical genre. He turned to art because history failed him. Rolland received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1915, primarily due to the success of "Jean-Christophe." The award was given to him in 1916, partly because of the scandal caused by his publication of passionate anti-war articles titled "Above the Battle" (1915), in which he advocated for freedom, internationalism, and against the injustice and horrors of war, as well as against the former pacifists who had become fervent nationalists during the war. Due to the ongoing war, the traditional Nobel Prize ceremony did not take place, and Rolland did not deliver a Nobel lecture.

Rolland's political views remained contradictory, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, which he supported but also criticized for its mistakes. During the interwar years, he devoted more time and energy to politics and public life while continuing to write prolifically. His works during this period included musicological articles, biographies, plays, diaries, memoirs, letters, essays, and novels. In the 1920s, he became fascinated with Indian religious and political thought. In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi visited Rolland in Switzerland, and Rolland wrote his biography in 1924. The main artistic work of this period was the six-cycle series "The Enchanted Soul" (1925-1933), a seven-volume novel depicting the agonizing struggle of a woman to realize her spiritual potential. Defending the right to independent work and full civil existence, Anne Rivière, the novel's heroine, liberates herself from illusions.

In 1934, Rolland married Maria Koudacheva and returned to France from Switzerland four years later. During World War II, the writer abandoned his detached "above the battle" position and joined the ranks of those fighting against Nazi Germany. On December 30, 1944, Rolland passed away from tuberculosis, which he had suffered from since childhood. His last letter, read aloud at the Sorbonne, expressed condolences to the families of scientists and artists who perished at the hands of the Nazis. It was written three weeks before his death on December 9.

Rolland's personality and ideas perhaps had a greater impact on his contemporaries than his books. His friend Marie Dormoy wrote, "I admire Romain Rolland. I also admire 'Jean-Christophe,' but I think I like the man more than the author... He was a guide, a beacon, showing the way to all those who hesitated, who lacked the strength to walk their path alone." Some critics underestimated Rolland's literary achievements, as in his books, individual words were sometimes less important than the overall meaning and main idea. There is also the opinion that "Jean-Christophe," conceived by Rolland as a symphony, is vague and formless. Regarding Rolland's later works, English novelist and critic E.M. Forster wrote that Rolland "did not live up to the promise of his youth." The most balanced assessment of Rolland's work belongs to his biographer, Starr, who wrote that, "if we set aside 'Jean-Christophe,' Rolland will be remembered not as a writer, but as one of the most active and resolute defenders of human dignity and freedom, as a passionate fighter for a more just and humane social order." Starr also claimed that "perhaps the time has not yet come to fully assess Rolland... Only time can separate the genius from the transient and ephemeral."