Romain Rolland (French:[ʁɔmɛ̃ʁɔlɑ̃]; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist,art historian andmystic who was awarded theNobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings".[1]
Rolland was born inClamecy, Nièvre into a family that had both wealthy townspeople and farmers in its lineage. Writing introspectively in hisVoyage intérieur (1942), he sees himself as a representative of an "antique species". He would cast these ancestors inColas Breugnon (1919).
Accepted to theÉcole normale supérieure in 1886, he first studied philosophy, but his independence of spirit led him to abandon that so as not to submit to the dominant ideology. He received his degree in history in 1889 and spent two years in Rome, where his encounter withMalwida von Meysenbug–who had been a friend ofNietzsche and ofWagner–and his discovery of Italian masterpieces were decisive for the development of his thought. When he returned to France in 1895, he received his doctoral degree with his thesisLes origines du théâtre lyrique moderne. Histoire de l’opéra en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti (The origins of modern lyric theatre. A History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti). For the next two decades, he taught at various lycées in Paris before directing the newly established music school of the École des Hautes Études Sociales from 1902 to 1911. In 1903 he was appointed to the first chair of music history at theSorbonne, he also directed briefly in 1911 the musical section at theFrench Institute in Florence.[2]
His first book was published in 1902 when he was 36 years old. Through his advocacy for a 'people's theatre', he made a significant contribution towards thedemocratization of the theatre. As a humanist, he embraced the work of the philosophers of India ("Conversations withRabindranath Tagore" andMohandas Gandhi). Rolland was strongly influenced by theVedanta philosophy of India, primarily through the works ofSwami Vivekananda.[3]
A demanding, yet timid, young man, he did not like teaching. He was not indifferent to youth: Jean-Christophe, Olivier and their friends, the heroes of his novels, are young people. But with real-life persons, youths as well as adults, Rolland maintained only a distant relationship. He was first and foremost a writer. Assured that literature would provide him with a modest income, he resigned from the university in 1912.[citation needed] In 1920, Rolland used the phrase, "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" in a review, whichAntonio Gramsci adopted from him as a formula for intellectual perseverance during hard times.[4]
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 inAu-dessus de la mêlée [fr] (1915),Above the Battle (Chicago, 1916). In 1924, his book onGandhi contributed to the Indiannonviolent leader's reputation and the two men met in 1931. Rolland was avegetarian.[5][6]
In 1928 Rolland and Hungarian scholar, philosopher and natural living experimenterEdmund Bordeaux Szekely founded the International Biogenic Society to promote and expand on their ideas of the integration of mind, body and spirit.[citation needed]In 1932 Rolland was among the first members of theWorld Committee Against War and Fascism, organized byWilli Münzenberg. Rolland criticized the control Münzenberg assumed over the committee and was against it being based inBerlin.[8]
Rolland moved toVilleneuve, on the shores ofLake Geneva to devote himself to writing. His life was interrupted by health problems, and by travels to art exhibitions. His visit to Moscow (1935), on the invitation ofMaxim Gorky, was an opportunity to meetJoseph Stalin, whom he considered the greatest man of his time.[9] Rolland served unofficially as ambassador of French artists to theSoviet Union. Although he admired Stalin, he attempted to intervene against the persecution of his friends. He attempted to discuss his concerns with Stalin, and was involved in the campaign for the release of theLeft Opposition activist and writerVictor Serge and wrote to Stalin begging clemency forNikolai Bukharin. During Serge's imprisonment (1933–1936), Rolland had agreed to handle the publications of Serge's writings in France, despite their political disagreements.
In 1937, he came back to live inVézelay, which, in 1940, was occupied by the Germans. During the occupation, he isolated himself in complete solitude. Never stopping his work, in 1940, he finished his memoirs. He also placed the finishing touches on his musical research on the life ofLudwig van Beethoven. Shortly before his death, he wrotePéguy (1944), in which he examines religion and socialism through the context of his memories. He died on 30 December 1944 in Vézelay.
In 1921, his close friend the Austrian writerStefan Zweig published his biography (in EnglishRomain Rolland: The Man and His Works). Zweig profoundly admired Rolland, whom he once described as "the moral consciousness of Europe" during the years of turmoil and War in Europe. Zweig wrote at length about his friendship with Rolland in his own autobiography (in EnglishThe World of Yesterday), discussing, for example, their failed efforts to organize a conference of antiwar intellectuals from both warring camps in neutral Switzerland.[10]
Victor Serge was appreciative of Rolland's interventions on his behalf but ultimately thoroughly disappointed by Rolland's refusal to break publicly with Stalin and the repressive Soviet regime. The entry for 4 May 1945, a few weeks after Rolland's death, in Serge'sNotebooks: 1936-1947 notes acidly that "At age seventy the author ofJean-Christophe allowed himself to be covered with the blood spilled by a tyranny of which he was a faithful adulator."[11] However, this is completely denied by Romain Rolland's biographer Bernard Duchatelet in his French biographyRomain Rolland: Tel qu'en lui-même. Duchatelet and other Rollandians believe that Rolland remained faithful to his own well-known integrity.
Rolland's life was 'the story of a conscience', as mentioned in the title of the book on him byAlex Aronson.
Rolland's most significant contribution to the theatre lies in his advocacy for a "popular theatre" in his essayThe People's Theatre (Le Théâtre du peuple, 1902).[12] "There is only one necessary condition for the emergence of a new theatre", he wrote, "that the stage andauditorium should be open to the masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of a people".[13] The book was not published until 1913, but most of its contents had appeared in theRevue d'Art Dramatique between 1900 and 1903. Rolland attempted to put his theory into practice with hismelodramatic dramas about theFrench Revolution,Danton (1900) andThe Fourteenth of July (1902), but it was his ideas that formed a major reference point for subsequentpractitioners.[12]
"The people have been gradually conquered by thebourgeois class, penetrated by their thoughts and now want only to resemble them. If you long for a people's art, begin by creating a people!"
The essay is part of a more general movement around the turn of that century towards thedemocratization of the theatre. TheRevue had held a competition and tried to organize a "World Congress on People's Theatre", and a number of People's Theatres had opened across Europe, including theFreie Volksbühne movement ('Free People's Theatre') in Germany and Maurice Pottecher'sThéâtre du Peuple in France. Rolland was a disciple of Pottecher and dedicatedThe People's Theatre to him.
Rolland's approach is more aggressive, though, than Pottecher's poetic vision of theatre as a substitute 'social religion' bringing unity to the nation. Rolland indicts thebourgeoisie for itsappropriation of the theatre, causing it to slide intodecadence, and the deleterious effects of itsideological dominance. In proposing a suitablerepertoire for his people's theatre, Rolland rejects classical drama in the belief that it is either too difficult or too static to be of interest to the masses. Drawing on the ideas ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, he proposes instead "an epic historical theatre of 'joy, force and intelligence' which will remind the people of its revolutionary heritage and revitalize the forces working for a new society" (in the words of Bradby and McCormick, quoting Rolland).[15] Rolland believed that the people would be improved by seeing heroic images of their past. Rousseau's influence may be detected in Rolland's conception of theatre-as-festivity, an emphasis that reveals a fundamentalanti-theatrical prejudice: "Theatre supposes lives that are poor and agitated, a people searching in dreams for a refuge from thought. If we were happier and freer we should not feel hungry for theatre. [...] A people that is happy and free has need of festivities more than of theatres; it will always see in itself the finestspectacle".[16]
Programme sheet forPiscator's 1922 production of Rolland's dramaThe Time Will Come (1903), at the Central-Theater inBerlin.
Rolland's dramas have been staged by some of the most influential theatre directors of the twentieth century, includingMax Reinhardt andErwin Piscator.[17] Piscator directed the world première of Rolland's pacifist dramaThe Time Will Come (Le Temps viendra, written in 1903) atBerlin's Central-Theater, which opened on 17 November 1922 with music by K Pringsheim andscenic design by O Schmalhausen and M Meier.[18] The play addresses the connections betweenimperialism and capitalism, the treatment of enemy civilians, and the use ofconcentration camps, all of which are dramatised via an episode in theBoer War.[19] Piscator described his treatment of the play as "thoroughlynaturalistic", whereby he sought "to achieve the greatest possiblerealism in acting and decor".[20] Despite the play's overly-rhetorical style, the production was reviewed positively.[19]
Rolland's most famous novel is the 10-volumenovel sequenceJean-Christophe (1904–1912), which brings "together his interests and ideals in the story of a German musical genius who makes France his second home and becomes a vehicle for Rolland's views on music, social matters and understanding between nations".[21] His other novels areColas Breugnon (1919),Clérambault (1920),Pierre et Luce (1920) and his second roman-fleuve, the 7-volumeL'âme enchantée (1922–1933).
In 1899 Rolland started what became a voluminous correspondence with the German composerRichard Strauss (the English translation, edited by Rollo Myers, runs to 239 pages, including some diary entries).[22] At the time, Strauss was a celebrated conductor of works byWagner,Liszt,Mozart, and of his owntone poems. In 1905, Strauss completed his operaSalome, based on the verse play byOscar Wilde, originally written in French. Strauss based his version ofSalome onHedwig Lachmann's German translation which he had seen performed inBerlin in 1902. Out of respect for Wilde, Strauss wanted to create a parallel French version, to be as close as possible to Wilde's original text, and he wrote to Rolland requesting his help on this project.[23]
Rolland was initially reluctant, but a lengthy exchange ensued, occupying 50 pages of the Myers edition, and in the end Rolland made 191 suggestions for improving the Strauss/Wilde libretto.[23] The resulting French version ofSalome received its first performance inParis in 1907, two years after the German premiere.[23] Thereafter, Rolland's letters regularly discussed Strauss's operas, including the occasional criticism of Strauss's librettist,Hugo von Hoffmannsthal: "I only regret that the great writer who gives you such brilliant libretti too often lacks a sense of the theatre."[22]
Rolland was a pacifist and concurred with Strauss when the latter refused to sign theManifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in World War I. Rolland noted Strauss's response in his diary entry for October 1914: "Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works."(Myers p. 160)
1923 saw the beginning of a correspondence between psychoanalystSigmund Freud and Rolland, who found that the admiration that he showed for Freud was reciprocated in equal measures (Freud proclaiming in a letter to him: "That I have been allowed to exchange a greeting with you will remain a happy memory to the end of my days.").[24] This correspondence introduced Freud to the concept of the "oceanic feeling" that Rolland had developed through his study ofEastern mysticism. Freud opened his next bookCivilization and its Discontents (1929) with a debate on the nature of this feeling, which he mentioned had been noted to him by an anonymous "friend". This friend was Rolland. Rolland would remain a major influence on Freud's work, continuing their correspondence right up to Freud's death in 1939.[25]
Histoire de l'opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti (A History of Opera in Europe beforeLully andScarlatti)
Dissertation for his doctorate in Letters
1895
Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit
Latin-language thesis on the decline in Italian oil painting in the course of the sixteenth century
1897
Saint-Louis
1897
Aërt
Historical/philosophical drama
1898
Les Loups (The Wolves)
Historical/philosophical drama aboutthe Dreyfuss affair. Co-written withMaurice Schwartz, and translated by Barrett H. Clark, the play ran for 29 performances in New York in 1932.[26]
^Walters, Kerry S; Portmess, Lisa. (1999).Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer. State University of New York Press. pp. 135-138.ISBN0-7914-4044-3
^abDavid Bradby, "Rolland, Romain". InThe Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Ed. Martin Banham. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).ISBN0-521-43437-8. p.930.
^Romain Rolland,Le Théâtre du peuple (Paris: Albin Michel) p.121. Quoted by David Bradby and John McCormick,People's Theatre (London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).ISBN0-8476-6073-7. p.16.
^Quoted by David Bradby and John McCormick,People's Theatre (London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).ISBN0-8476-6073-7. p.32.
^David Bradby and John McCormick,People's Theatre (London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).ISBN0-8476-6073-7. p.32.
^Quoted by David Bradby and John McCormick,People's Theatre (London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).ISBN0-8476-6073-7. p.32-33.
^See John Willett,The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics in the Theatre, London: Methuen, 1978 (p.15, 35, 46–7, 179).ISBN0-413-37810-1.
^William B. Parsons,The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 23,[ISBN missing]2 Apr. 2007Archived 4 June 2011 at theWayback Machine.
^William B. Parsons,The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 19,[ISBN missing]2 Apr. 2007Archived 4 June 2011 at theWayback Machine
_(after_Anatoly_Yar-Kravchenko)_and_Scene_from_%2527Jean-Christophe%2527).jpg)
