sc-

SxJ^ibris
University
Internationa!
PROFESSOR J.S.WILL
Booksellers Li
ROMAIN HOLLAND
Remain Holland after a drawing by Granie (1909)
 ROMAIN ROLLAND
THE MAN AND HIS WORK

BY

STEFAN ZWEIG
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
BY

EDEN and CEDAR PAUL

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
 PQ

Copyright, 1921, by
THOMAS SELTZER, INC.

A.II rightg reserved

$05463

PMNTID IN V. 8. A.
 Brfciratum
Not merely do I describe the work of a great
European. Above all do I pay tribute to a person-
ality, that of one who for me and for many others
has loomed as the most impressive moral phenom-
enon of our age. Modelled upon his own biogra-
phies of classical figures, endeavouring to portray
the greatness of an artist while never losing sight
of the man or forgetting his influence upon the
world of moral endeavour, conceived in this spirit,
my book is likewise inspired with a sense of per-
sonal gratitude, in that, amid these days forlorn, it
has been vouchsafed to me to know the miracle of
so radiant an existence.
IN COMMEMORATION

of this uniqueness, I dedicate the book to those

few who, in the hour of fiery trial, remained faith*
ful to
ROMAIN HOLLAND

AND TO OUR BELOVED HOME OF

EUROPE
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION PAGX
PART ONE: BIOGRAPHICAL
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. EARLY CHILDHOOD 3
III. SCHOOL DAYS 8

IV. THE NORMAL SCHOOL ' .... 12

V. A MESSAGE FROM AFAR 18
VI. SAINT Louis, 1894 80
VII. THE CONSECRATION 29
VIII. YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP 32
IX. YEARS OF STRUGGLE 37
X. A DECADE OF SECLUSION 43
XI. A PORTRAIT 45
XII. RENOWN 48
XIII. RoLLAND AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE EUROPEAN SPIRIT . 52

PART TWO: EARLY WORK AS A DRAMATIST

I. THE WORK AND THE EPOCH 57
II. THE WILL TO GREATNESS 63
III. THE CREATIVE CYCLES 67
IV. THE UNKNOWN DRAMATIC CYCLE 71
V. THE TRAGEDIES OF FAITH. SAINT Louis, AERT, 1895-1898 . 76
VI. SAINT Louis. 1894 80
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAOK
VII. AERT, 1898 83
VUL ATTEMPT TO REGENERATE THE FRENCH STAGE .... 86
IX. AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 90
X. THE PROGRAM 94
XL THE CREATIVE ARTIST 98
XII. THE DRAMA OF THE REVOLUTION, 1898-1902 .... 100
XIII. THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY, 1902 103
XTV. DANTON, 1900 106
XV. THE TRIUMPH OF REASON, 1899 . 110
XVI. THE WOLVES, 1898 113
XVn. THE CALL LOST IN THE VOID 117
XVHL A DAY WILL COME, 1902 119
XLX. THE PLAYWRIGHT 123

PART THREE: THE HEROIC BIOGRAPHIES

L DE PROFUNDIS 133
IL THE HEROES OF SUFFERING 137
III. BEETHOVEN 140
IV. MICHELANGELO 144
V. TOLSTOI 147
VI. THE UNWRITTEN BIOGRAPHIES 150

PART FOUR: JEAN CHRISTOPHE

L SANCTUS CHRISTOPHORUS 157
II. RESURRECTION 160
III. THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK 162
IV. THE WORK WITHOUT A FORMULA 166
 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
PACK

V. KEY TO THE CHARACTERS 172

VI. A HEROIC SYMPHONY 177
VII. THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK 181
VIII. JEAN CHRISTOPHE 188
IX. OLIVIER 195
X. GRAZIA 200
XL JEAN CHRISTOPHE AND HIS FELLOW MEN 203
XII. JEAN CHRISTOPHE AND THE NATIONS 207
XIII. THE PICTURE OF FRANCE 211
XIV. THE PICTURE OF GERMANY 217
XV. THE PICTURE OF ITALY 221
XVI. THE JEWS 224
XVII. THE GENERATIONS 229
XVIII. DEPARTURE 235

PART FIVE: INTERMEZZO SCHERZO (COLAS BREUGNON)

I. TAKEN UNAWARES 241
II. THE BURCUNDIAN BROTHER 244
III. GAULOISERIES 249
IV. A FRUSTRATE MESSAGE 252

PART SIX: THE CONSCIENCE OF EUROPE

I. THE WARDEN OF THE INHERITANCE 257
II. FOREARMED 260
III. THE PLACE OF REFUGE 264
IV. THE SERVICE OF MAN 268
V. THE TRIBUNAL OF THE SPIRIT 271
VI. THE CONTROVERSY WITH GERHARDT HAUPTMANN . 277
x TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAOK
VII. THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH VERHAEREN 281
VIIL THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE ... 285
IX. THE MANIFESTOES 289
X. ABOVE THE BATTLE 293
XI. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED 297
XII. OPPONENTS 304
XIII. FRIENDS 311
XIV. THE LETTERS 317
XV. THE COUNSELOR 320
XVI. THE SOLITARY 324
XVII. THE DIARY 327

XVTII. THE FORERUNNERS AND EMPEDOCLES 329

XIX. L;iLULi 335
XX. CLERAMBAULT 339
XXI. THE LAST APPEAL 348
XXII. DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND . . 351
XXIII. ENVOY 355
BIBLIOGRAPHY 357
INDEX . . 371
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Romain Holland after a drawing by Granie (1909)

Frontispiece
FACING

Romain Rolland at the Normal School 12

PAQB

Leo Tolstoi's Letter 20

Rolland's Transcript of Francesco Provenzale's Aria from

Lo Schiavo di sua Moglie 34

Rolland's Transcript of a Melody by Paul Dupin, UOncle

Gottfried 35

Romain Rolland at the Time of Writing Beethoven . . 142

Romain Rol'land at the Time of Writing Jean Christophe 162

Romain Rolland at the Time of Writing Above the Battle 294

Rolland's Mother 324

Original Manuscript of The Declaration of the Independ-
ence ofthe Mind 352
 PART ONE
BIOGRAPHICAL

The surge of the Heart's energies

would not break in a mist of foam,
nor be subtilized into Spirit, did not
the rock of Fate, from die beginning
of days, stand ever silent in the way.
HOLDERLIN.
ROMAIN HOLLAND
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

THE first fifty years ofpicuou Remain Rolland's life

were passed in incons s and almost soli-
tary labors. Thenceforward, his name was to
become a storm center of European discussion. Until
shortly before the apocalyptic year, hardly an artist of
our days worked in such complete retirement, or re-
ceived solittle recognition.
Since that year, no artist has been the subject of so
much controversy. His fundamental ideas were not
destined to make themselves generally known until there
was a world in arms bent upon destroying them.
Envious fate works ever thus, interweaving the lives
of the great with tragical threads. She tries her powers
to the uttermost upon the strong, sending events to run
counter to their plans, permeating their lives with strange
allegories, imposing obstacles in their path — that they
may be guided more unmistakably in the right course.
Fate plays with them, plays a game with a sublime issue,
2 ROMAIN HOLLAND
for all experience is precious. Think of the greatest
among our contemporaries; think of Wagner, Nietzsche,
Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Strindberg; in the case of each of
them, destiny has superadded to the creations of the
artist's mind, the drama of personal experience.
Notably do these considerations apply to the life of
Remain Rolland. The significance of his life's work
becomes plain only when it is contemplated as a whole.
It was slowly produced, for it had to encounter great
dangers; it was a gradual revelation, tardily consum-
mated. The foundations of this splendid structure were
deeply dug in the firm ground of knowledge, and were
laid upon the hidden masonry of years spent in isola-
tion. Thus tempered by the ordeal of a furnace seven
times heated, his work has the essential imprint of hu-
manity. Precisely owing to the strength of its founda-
tions, to the solidity of its moral energy, was Rolland's
thought able to stand unshaken throughout the war storms
that have been ravaging Europe. While other monu-
ments to which we had looked up with veneration, crack-
ing and crumbling, have been leveled with the quaking
earth, the monument he had builded stands firm "above
the battle," above the medley of opinions, a pillar of
strength towards which all free spirits can turn for con-
solation amid the tumult of the world.
 CHAPTER II
EARLY CHILDHOOD

ROMAIN HOLLAND was born on January 29,

1866, a year of strife, the year when Sadowa
was fought. His native town was Clamecy,
where another imaginative writer, Claude Tillier, au-
thor of Man Oncle Benjamin, was likewise born. An
ancient city, within the confines of old-time Burgundy,
Clamecy is a quiet place, where life is easy and unevent-
ful. The Hollands belong to a highly respected middle-
class family. His father, who was a lawyer, was one
of the notables of the town. His mother, a pious and
serious-minded woman, devoted all her energies to the
upbringing of her two children; Remain, a delicate boy,
and his sister Madeleine, younger than he. As far as
the environment of daily life was concerned, the atmos-
phere was calm and untroubled ; but in the blood of the
parent existed contrasts deriving from earlier days of
s
French history, contrasts not yet fully reconciled. On
the father's side, Holland's ancestors were champions of
the Convention, ardent partisans of the Revolution, and
some of them sealed their faith with their blood. From
his mother's family he inherited the Jansenist spirit, the
investigator's temperament of Port-Royal. He was thus
4 ROMAIN HOLLAND
endowed by both parents with tendencies to fervent faith,
but tendencies to faith in contradictory ideals. In
France this cleavage between love for religion and pas-
sion for freedom, between faith and revolution, dates
from centuries back. Its seeds were destined to blos-
som in the artist.
His first years of childhood were passed in the shadow
of the defeat of 1870. In Antoinette, Holland sketches
the tranquil life of just such a provincial town as Cla-
mecy. His home was an old house on the bank of a
canal. Not from this narrow world were to spring the
first delights of the boy who, despite his physical frailty,
was so passionately sensitive to enjoyment. A mighty
impulse from afar, from the unfathomable past, came
to stir his pulses. Early did he discover music, the lan-
guage of languages, the first great message of the soul.
His mother taught him the piano. From its tones he
learned to build for himself the infinite world of feel-
ing, thus transcending the limits imposed by nationality.
For while the pupil eagerly assimilated the easily under-
stood music of French classical composers, German
music at the same time enthralled his youthful soul.
He has given an admirable description of the way in
which this revelation came to him: "We had a num-
ber of old German music books. German? Did I know
the meaning of the word? In our part of the world I
believe no one had ever seen a German ... I turned
the leaves of the old books, spelling out the notes on the
piano, . . . and these runnels, these streamlets of mel-
 EARLY CHILDHOOD 5
ody, which watered my heart, sank into the thirsty
ground as the rain soaks into the earth. The bliss and
the pain, the desires and the dreams, of Mozart and
Beethoven, have become flesh of my flesh and bone of
my bone. I am them, and they are me . . . How much
do I owe them. When I was ill as a child, and death
seemed near, a melody of Mozart would watch over my
pillow like a lover . . . Later, in crises of doubt and
depression, the music of Beethoven would revive in me
the sparks of eternal life . . . Whenever my spirit is
weary, whenever I am sick at heart, I turn to my piano
and bathe in music."
Thus early did the child enter into communion with
the wordless speech of humanity; thus early had the all-
embracing sympathy of the life of feeling enabled him
to pass beyond the narrows of town and of province, of
nation and of era. Music was his first prayer to the
elemental forces of life; a prayer daily repeated in
countless forms; so that now, half a century later, a
week and even a day rarely elapses without his hold-
ing converse with Beethoven. The other saint of his
childhood's days, Shakespeare, likewise belonged to a
foreign land. With his first loves, all unaware, the lad
had already overstridden the confines of nationality.
Amid the dusty lumber in a loft he discovered an edition
of Shakespeare, which his grandfather (a student in Paris
when Victor Hugo was a young man and Shakespeare
mania was rife) had bought and forgotten. His child-
ish interest was first awakened by a volume of faded en-
6 ROMAIN HOLLAND

gravings entitled Galerie des femmes de Shakespeare.

His fancy was thrilled by the charming faces, by the
magical names Perdita, Imogen, and Miranda. But
soon, reading the plays, he became immersed in the maze
of happenings and personalities. He would remain in
the loft hour after hour, disturbed by nothing beyond the
occasional trampling of the horses in the stable below or
by the rattling of a chain on a passing barge. Forget-
ting everything and forgotten by all he sat in a great arm-
chair with the beloved book, which like that of Prospero
made all the spirits of the universe his servants. He was
encircled by a throng of unseen auditors, by imaginary
figures which formed a rampart between himself and the
world of realities.
As ever happens, we see a great life opening with
great dreams. His first enthusiasms were most power-
fully aroused by Shakespeare and Beethoven. The
youth inherited from the child, the man from the youth,
this passionate admiration for greatness. One who has
hearkened to such a call, cannot easily confine his ener-
gies within a narrow circle. The school in the petty
provincial town had nothing more to teach this aspiring
boy. The parents could not bring themselves to send
their darling alone to the metropolis, so with heroic self-
denial they decided to sacrifice their own peaceful exist-
ence. The father resigned his lucrative and independent
position as notary, which made him a leading figure in
Clamecy society, in order to become one of the num-
berless employees of a Parisian bank. The familiar
home, the patriarchal life, were thrown aside that the
 EARLY CHILDHOOD 7

Hollands might watch over their boy's schooling and

upgrowing in the great city. The whole family looked
to Romain's interest, thus teaching him early what others
do not usually learn until full manhood — responsibility.
 CHAPTER III
SCHOOL DAYS

THE boy was still too young to feel the magic of

Paris. To his dreamy nature, the clamorous
and brutal materialism of the city seemed
strange and almost hostile. Far on into life he was to
retain from these hours a hidden dread, a hidden shrink-
ing from the fatuity and soullessness of great towns, an
inexplicable feeling that there was a lack of truth and
genuineness in the life of the capital. His parents sent
him to the Lyceum of Louis the Great, a celebrated high
school in the heart of Paris. Many of the ablest and
most distinguished sons of France, have been among the
boys who, humming like a swarm of bees, emerge daily
at noon from the great hive of knowledge. He was intro-
duced to the items of French classical education, that he
might become "un bon perroquet Cornelien." His vital
experiences, however, lay outside the domain of this
logical poesy or poetical logic; his enthusiasms drew
him, as heretofore, towards a poesy that was really alive,
and towards music. Nevertheless, it was at school that
he found his first companion.
By the caprice of chance, for this friend likewise fame
was to come only after twenty years of silence. Remain
 SCHOOL DAYS 9

Holland and his intimate Paul Claudel (author of An-

nonce faite a Marie), the two greatest imaginative writ-
ters in contemporary France, who crossed the threshold
of school together, were almost simultaneously, twenty
years later, to secure a European reputation. During
the last quarter of a century, the two have followed very
different paths in faith and spirit, have cultivated widely
divergent ideals. Claudel's steps have been directed
towards the mystic cathedral of the Catholic past; Hol-
land has moved through France and beyond, towards the
ideal of a free Europe. At that time, however, in their
daily walks to and from school, they enjoyed endless
conversations, exchanging thoughts upon the books they
had read, and mutually inflaming one another's youthful
ardors. The bright particular star of their heaven was
Richard Wagner, who at that date was casting a marvel-
ous spell over the mind of French youth. In Holland's
case it was not simply Wagner the artist who exercised
this influence, but Wagner the universal poietic person-
ality.
School days passed quickly and somewhat joylessly.
Too sudden had been the transition from the romanticist
home to the harshly realist Pari,s. To the sensitive lad,
the city could only show its teeth, display its indifference,
manifest the fierceness of its rhythm. These qualities,
this Maelstrom aspect, aroused in his mind something ap-
proaching toalarm. He yearned for sympathy, cordial-
ity, soaring aspirations; now as before, art was his
savior, "glorious art, in so many gray hours." His chief
joys were the rare afternoons spent at popular Sunday
10 ROMAIN HOLLAND
concerts, when the pulse of music came to thrill his heart
— how charmingly is not this described in Antoinette!
Nor had Shakespeare lost power in any degree, now that
his figures, seen on the stage, were able to arouse min-
gled dread and ecstasy. The boy gave his whole soul
to the dramatist. "He took possession of me like a
conqueror; I threw myself to him like a flower. At the
same time, the spirit of music flowed over me as water
floods a plain; Beethoven and Berlioz even more than
Wagner. I had to pay for these joys. I was, as it were,
intoxicated for a year or two, much as the earth becomes
supersaturated in time of flood. In the entrance ex-
amination tothe Normal School I failed twice, thanks to
my preoccupation with Shakespeare and with music."
Subsequently, he discovered a third master, a liberator
of his faith. This was Spinoza, whose acquaintance he
made during an evening spent alone at school, and whose
gentle intellectual light was henceforward to illumine
Holland's soul throughout life. The greatest of mankind
have ever been his examples and companions.
When the time came for him to leave school, a conflict
arose between inclination and duty. Holland's most
ardent wish was to become an artist after the manner of
Wagner, to be at once musician and poet, to write heroic
musical dramas. Already there were floating through
his mind certain musical conceptions which, as a national
contrast to those of Wagner, were to deal with the French
cycle of legends. One of these, that of St. Louis, he
was in later years indeed to transfigure, not in music,
but in winged words. His parents, however, considered
 SCHOOL DAYS 11
such wishes premature. They demanded more practical
endeavors, and recommended the Polytechnic School.
Ultimately a happy compromise was found between duty
and inclination. A decision was made in favor of the
study of the mental and moral sciences. In 1886, at a
third trial, Holland brilliantly passed the entrance ex-
amination to the Normal School. This institution, with
its peculiar characteristics and the special historic form
of its social life, was to stamp a decisive imprint upon
his thought and his destiny.
 CHAPTER IV
THE NORMAL SCHOOL

ROLLAN D'S childhood was passed amid the

rural landscapes of Burgundy. His school
life was spent in the roar of Paris. His stu-
dent years involved a still closer confinement in airless
spaces, when he became a boarder at the Normal School.
To avoid all distraction, the pupils of this institution are
shut away from the world, kept remote from real life,
that they may understand historical life the better.
Renan, in Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, has given
a powerful description of the isolation of budding theo-
logians inthe seminary. Embryo army officers are seg-
regated atSt. Cyr. In like manner at the Normal School
a general staff for the intellectual world is trained in
cloistral seclusion. The "normaliens" are to be the
teachers of the coming generation. The spirit of tradi-
tion unites with stereotyped method, the two breeding in-
and-in with fruitful results; the ablest among the scholars
will become in turn teachers in the same institution.
The training is severe, demanding indefatigable dili-
gence, for its goal is to discipline the intellect. But
since it aspires towards universality of culture, the Nor-
mal School permits considerab le freedom of organiza-
12
Remain Holland at the Normal School
 THE NORMAL SCHOOL 13

tion, and avoids the dangerous over-specialization char-

acteristic ofGermany. Not by chance did the most
universal spirits of France emanate from the Normal
School. We think of such men as Renan, Jaures,
Michelet, Monod, and Rolland.
Although during these years Rolland's chief interest
was directed towards philosophy, although he was a dili-
gent student of the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient
Greece, of the Cartesians, and of Spinoza, nevertheless,
during the second year of his course, he chose, or was
intelligently guided to choose, history and geography
as his principal subjects. The choice was a fortunate
one, and was decisive for the development of his artistic
life. Here he first came to look upon universal history
as an eternal ebb and flow of epochs, wherein yesterday,
to-day, and to-morrow comprise but a single living entity.
He learned to take broad views. He acquired his pre-
eminent capacity for vitalizing history. On the other
hand, he owes to this same strenuous school of youth his
power for contemplating the present from the detachment
of a higher cultural sphere. No other imaginative
writer of our time possesses anything like so solid a
foundation in the form of real and methodical knowl-
edge in all domains. It may well be, moreover, that his
incomparable capacity for work was acquired during
these years of seclusion.
Here in the Prytaneum (Rolland's life is full of such
mystical word plays) the young man found a friend.
He also was in the future to be one of the leading spirits
of France, one who, like Claudel and Rolland himself,
 14 ROMAIN ROLLAND

was not to attain widespread celebrity until the lapse of

a quarter of a century. We should err were we to con-
sider itthe outcome of pure chance that the three greatest
representatives of idealism, of the new poetic faith in
France, Paul Claudel, Andre Suares, and Charles Peguy,
should in their formative years have been intimate
friends of Romain Rolland, and that after long years of
obscurity they should almost at the same hour have ac-
quired extensive influence over the French nation. In
their mutual converse, in their mysterious and ardent
faith, were created the elements of a world which was
not immediately to become visible through the formless
vapors of time. Though not one of these friends had as
yet a clear vision of his goal, and though their respective
energies were to lead them along widely divergent paths,
their mutual reactions strengthened the primary forces
of passion and of steadfast earnestness to become a sense
of all-embracing world community. They were inspired
with an identical mission to devote their lives, renouncing
success and pecuniary reward, that by work and appeal
they might help to restore to their nation its lost faith.
Each one of these four comrades, Rolland, Suares,
Claudel, and Peguy, has from a different intellectual
standpoint brought this revival to his nation.
As in the case of Claudel at the Lyceum, so now with
Suares at the Normal School, Rolland was drawn to his
friend through the love which they shared for music, and
especially for the music of Wagner. A further bond of
union was the passion both had for Shakespeare. "This
passion," Rolland has written, "was the first link in the
 THE NORMAL SCHOOL 15

long chain of our friendship. Suares was then, what he

has again become to-day after traversing the numerous
phases of a rich and manifold nature, a man of the
Renaissance. He had the very soul, the stormy tempera-
ment, of that epoch. With his long black hair, his pale
face, and his burning eyes, he looked like an Italian
painted by Carpaccio or Ghirlandajo. As a school exer-
cise he penned an ode to Cesare Borgia. Shakespeare
was his god, as Shakespeare was mine; and we often
fought side by side for Shakespeare against our profes-
sors." But soon came a new passion which partially
replaced that for the great English dramatist. There
ensued the "Scythian invasion," an enthusiastic affection
for Tolstoi, which was likewise to be lifelong. These
young idealists were repelled by the trite naturalism of
Zola and Maupassant. They were enthusiasts who
looked for life to be sustained at a level of heroic ten-
sion. They, like Flaubert and Anatole France, could
not rest content with a literature of self gratification and
amusement. Now, above these trivialities, was revealed
the figure of a messenger of God, of one prepared to de-
vote his life to the ideal. "Our sympathies went out to
him. Our love for Tolstoi was able to reconcile all our
contradictions. Doubtless each one of us loved him
from different motives, for each one of us found him-
self in the master. But for all of us alike he opened a
gate into an infinite universe; for all he was a revelation
of life." As always since earliest childhood, Rolland
was wholly occupied in the search for ultimate values,
for the hero, for the universal artist.
 16 ROMAIN HOLLAND

During these years of hard work at the Normal School,

Holland devoured book after book, writing after writing.
His teachers, Brunetiere, and above all Gabriel Monod,
already recognized his peculiar gift for historical descrip-
tion. Holland was especially enthralled by the branch
of knowledge which Jakob Burckhardt had in a sense
invented not long before, and to which he had given the
name of "history of civilization" — the spiritual picture
of an entire era. As regards special epochs, Holland's
interest was notably aroused by the wars of religion,
wherein the spiritual elements of faith were permeated
with the heroism of personal sacrifice. Thus early do
the motifs of all his creative work shape themselves!
He drafted a whole series of studies, and simultaneously
planned a more ambitious work, a history of the heroic
epoch of Catherine de Medici. In the scientific field,
too, our student was boldly attacking ultimate problems,
drinking in ideas thirstily from all the streamlets and
rivers of philosophy, natural science, logic, music, and
the history of art. But the burden of these acquirements
was no more able to crush the poet in him than the weight
of a tree is able to crush its roots. During stolen hours
he made essays in poetry and music, which, however, he
has always kept hidden from the world. In the year
1888, before leaving the Normal School to face the ex-
periences of actual life, he wrote Credo quia verum.
This is a remarkable document, a spiritual testament, a
moral and philosophical confession. It remains unpub-
lished, but a friend of Holland's youth assures us that
it contains the essential elements of his untrammeled
 THE NORMAL SCHOOL 17

outlook on the world. Conceived in the Spinozist spirit,

based not upon "Cogito ergo sum" but upon "Cogito ergo
est," it builds up the world, and thereon establishes its
god. For himself accountable to himself alone, he is
to be freed in future from the need for metaphysical
speculation. As if it were a sacred oath, duly sworn, he
henceforward bears this confession with him into the
struggle; if he but remain true to himself, he will be true
to his vow. The foundations have been deeply dug and
firmly laid. It is time now to begin the superstructure.
Such were his activities during these years of study.
But through them there already looms a dream, the
dream of a romance, the history of a single-hearted artist
who bruises himself against the rocks of life. Here we
have the larval stage of Jean Christophe, the first twilit
sketch of the work to come. But much weaving of des-
tiny, many encounters, and an abundance of ordeals will
be requisite, ere the multicolored and impressive imago
will emerge from the obscurity of these first intimations.
 CHAPTER V
A MESSAGE FROM AFAR

SCHOOL days were over. The old problem con-

cerning the choice of profession came up anew
for discussion. Although science had proved en-
riching, although it had aroused enthusiasm, it had by
no means fulfilled the young artist's cherished dream.
More than ever his longings turned towards imaginative
literature and towards music. His most ardent ambition
was still to join the ranks of those whose words and melo-
dies unlock men's souls ; he aspired to become a creator,
a consoler. But life seemed to demand orderly forms,
discipline instead of freedom, an occupation instead of a
mission. The young man, now two-and-twenty years of
age, stood undecided at the parting of the ways.
Then came a message from afar, a message from the
beloved hand of Leo Tolstoi. The whole generation
honored the Russian as a leader, looked up to him as the
embodied symbol of truth. In this year was published
Tolstoi's booklet What is to be Done?, containing a fierce
indictment of art. Contemptuously he shattered all that
was dearest to Rolland. Beethoven, to whom the young
Frenchman daily addressed a fervent prayer, was termed
a seducer to sensuality. Shakespeare was a poet of the
18
 A MESSAGE FROM AFAR 19
fourth rank, a wastrel. The whole of modern art was
swept away like chaff from the threshing-floor; the heart's
holy of holies was cast into outer darkness. This tract,
which rang through Europe, could be dismissed with
a smile by those of an older generation; but for the
young men who revered Tolstoi as their one hope in a
lying and cowardly age, it stormed through their con-
sciences like a hurricane. The bitter necessity was forced
upon them of choosing between Beethoven and the holy
one of their hearts. Writing of this hour, Rolland says:
"The goodness, the sincerity, the absolute straightfor-
wardness ofthis man made of him for me an infallible
guide in the prevailing moral anarchy. But at the same
time, from childhood's days, I had passionately loved art.
Music, in especial, was my daily food ; I do not exagger-
ate in saying that to me music was as much a necessary
of life as bread." Yet this very music was stigmatized
by Tolstoi, the beloved teacher, the most human of men;
was decried as "an enjoyment that leads men to neglect
duty." Tolstoi contemned the Ariel of the soul as a
seducer to sensuality. What was to be done? The
young man's heart was racked. Was he to follow the
sage of Yasnaya Polyana, to cut away from his life all
will to art; or was he to follow the innermost call which
would lead him to transfuse the whole of his life with
music and poesy? He must perforce be unfaithful,
either to the most venerated among artists, or to art itself;
either to the most beloved among men or to the most
beloved among ideas.
In this state of mental cleavage, the student now
20 ROMAIN HOLLAND
formed an amazing resolve. Sitting down one day in
his little attic, he wrote a letter to be sent into the re-
mote distances of Russia, a letter describing to Tolstoi
the doubts that perplexed his conscience. He wrote as
those who despair pray to God, with no hope for a
miracle, no expectation of an answer, but merely to
satisfy the burning need for confession. Weeks elapsed,
and Rolland had long since forgotten his hour of impulse.
But one evening, returning to his room, he found upon
the table a small packet. It was Tolstoi's answer to the
unknown correspondent, thirty-eight pages written in
French, an entire treatise. This letter of October 14,
1887, subsequently published by Peguy as No. 4 of the
third series of "Cahiers de la quinzaine," began with
the affectionate words, "Cher Frere." First was an-
nounced the profound impression produced upon the
great man, to whose heart this cry for help had struck.
"I have received your first letter. It has touched me to
the heart. I have read it with tears in my eyes." Tol-
stoi went on to expound his ideas upon art. That alone
is of value, he said, which binds men together; the only
artist who counts is the artist who makes a sacrifice for
his convictions. The precondition of every true calling
must be, not love for art, but love for mankind. Those
only who are filled with such a love can hope that they
will ever be able, as artists, to do anything worth doing.
These words exercised a decisive influence upon the
future of Remain Rolland. But the doctrine summa-
rized above has been expounded by Tolstoi often enough,
Leo Tolstoi's Letter
 A MESSAGE FROM AFAR 21
and expounded more clearly. What especially affected
our novice was the proof of the sage's readiness to give
human help. Far more than by the words was Rolland
moved by the kindly deed of Tolstoi. This man of
world-wide fame, responding to the appeal of a nameless
and unknown youth, a student in a back street of Paris,
had promptly laid aside his own labors, had devoted a
whole day, or perhaps two days, to the task of answering
and consoling his unknown brother. For Rolland this
was a vital experience, a deep and creative experience.
The remembrance of his own need, the remembrance of
the help then received from a foreign thinker, taught him
to regard every crisis of conscience as something sacred,
and to look upon the rendering of aid as the artist's pri-
mary moral duty. From the day he opened Tolstoi's
letter, he himself became the great helper, the brotherly
adviser. His whole work, his human authority, found
its beginnings here. Never since then, however pressing
the demands upon his time, has he failed to bear in
mind the help he received. Never has he refused to
render help to any unknown person appealing out of a
genuinely troubled conscience. From Tolstoi's letter
sprang countless Rollands, bringing aid and counsel
throughout the years. Henceforward, poesy was to him
a sacred trust, one which he has fulfilled in the name of
his master. Rarely has history borne more splendid
witness to the fact that in the moral sphere no less than
in the physical, force never runs to waste. The hour
when Tolstoi wrote to his unknown correspondent has
22 ROMAIN HOLLAND
been revived in a thousand letters from Holland to a
thousand unknowns. An infinite quantity of seed is
to-day wafted through the world, seed that has sprung
from this single grain of kindness.
 CHAPTER VI

ROME

FROM every quarter, voices were calling: the

French homeland, German music, Tolstoi's ex-
hortation, Shakespeare's ardent appeal, the will
to art, the need for earning a livelihood. While Rolland
was still hesitating, his decision had again to be post-
poned through the intervention of chance, the eternal
friend of artists.
Every year the Normal School provides traveling
scholarships for some of its best pupils. The term is
two years. Archeologists are sent to Greece, historians
to Rome. Rolland had no strong desire for such a mis-
sion; he was too eager to face the realities of life. But
fate is apt to stretch forth her hand to those who are coy.
Two of his fellow students had refused the Roman
scholarship, and Rolland was chosen to fill the vacancy
almost against his will. To his inexperience, Rome still
seemed nothing more than dead past, a history in shreds
and patches, a dull record which he would have to piece
together from inscriptions and parchments. It was a
school task; an imposition, not life. Scanty were his ex-
pectations when he set forth on pilgrimage to the eternal
city.
23
 24 ROMAIN HOLLAND

The duty imposed on him was to arrange documents in

the gloomy Famese Pallace, to cull history from regis-
ters and books. For a brief space he paid due tribute
to this service, and in the archives of the Vatican he com-
piled a memoir upon the nuncio Salviati and the sack of
Rome. But ere long his attention was concentrated up-
on the living alone. His mind was flooded by the
wonderfully clear light of the Campagna, which reduces
all things to a self-evident harmony, making life appear
simple and giving it the aspect of pure sensation. For
many, the gentle grace of the artist's promised land ex-
ercises an irresistible charm. The memorials of the Re-
naissance issue to the wanderer a summons to greatness.
In Italy, more strongly than elsewhere, does it seem that
art is the meaning of human life, and that art must be
man's heroic aim. Throwing aside his theses, the
young man of twenty, intoxicated with the adventure of
love and of life, wandered for months in blissful free-
dom through the lesser cities of Italy and Sicily. Even
Tolstoi was forgotten, for in this region of sensuous pre-
sentation, inthe dazzling south, the voice from the Rus-
sian steppes, demanding renunciation, fell upon deaf
ears. Of a sudden, however, Shakespeare, friend and
guide of Rolland's childhood, resumed his sway. A
cycle of the Shakespearean dramas, presented by Er-
nesto Rossi, displayed to him the splendor of elemental
passion, and aroused an irresistible longing to trans-
figure, like Shakespeare, history in poetic form. He
was moving day by day among the stone witnesses to the
greatness of past centuries. He would recall those cen-
 ROME 25

turies to life. The poet in him awakened. In cheerful

faithlessness to his mission, he penned a series of
dramas, catching them on the wing with that burning
ecstacy which inspiration, coming unawares, invariably
arouses in the artist. Just as England is presented in
Shakespeare's historical plays, so was the whole Re-
naissance epoch to be reflected in his own writings.
Light of heart, in the intoxication of composition he pen-
ned one play after another, without concerning himself
as to the earthly possibilities for staging them. Not one
of these romanticist dramas has, in fact, ever been per-
formed. Not one of them is to-day accessible to the
public. The maturer critical sense of the artist has
made him hide them from the world. He has a fondness
for the faded manuscripts simply as memorials of the
ardors of youth.
The most momentous experience of these years spent
in Italy was the formation of a new friendship. Rolland
never sought people out. In essence he is a solitary,
one who loves -best to live among his books. Yet from
the mystical and symbolical outlook it is characteristic
of his biography that each epoch of his youth brought him
into contact with one or other of the leading personalities
of the day. In accordance with the mysterious laws of
attraction, he has been drawn ever and again into the
heroic sphere, has associated with the mighty ones of
the earth. Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven were
the stars of his childhood. During school life, Suares
and Claudel became his intimates. As a student, in an
hour when he was needing the help of sages, he followed
Renan; Spinoza freed his mind in matters of religion;
26 ROMAIN HOLLAND
from afar came the brotherly greeting of Tolstoi. In
Rome, through a letter of introduction from Monod, he
made the acquaintance of Malwida von Meysenbug,
whose whole life had been a contemplation of the heroic
past. Wagner, Nietzsche, Mazzini, Herzen, and Kossuth
were her perennial intimates. For this free spirit, the
barriers of nationality and language did not exist. No
revolution in art or politics could affright her. "A
human magnet," she exercised an irresistible appeal upon
great natures. When Rolland met her she was already
an old woman, a lucid intelligence, untroubled by disil-
lusionment, still an idealist as in youth. From the
height of her seventy years, she looked down over the
past, serene and wise. A wealth of knowledge and ex-
perience streamed from her mind to that of the learner.
Rolland found in her the same gentle illumination, the
same sublime repose after passion, which had endeared
the Italian landscape -to his mind. Just as from the
monuments and pictures of Italy he could reconstruct the
figures of the Renaissance heroes, so from Malwida's
confidential talk could he reconstruct the tragedy in the
lives of the artists she had known. In Rome he learned
a just and loving appreciation for the genius of the
present. His new friend taught him what in truth he had
long ere this learned unawares from within, that there is
a lofty level of thought and sensation where nations and
languages become as one in the universal tongue of art.
During a walk on the Janiculum, a vision came to him
of the work of European scope he was one day to write,
the vision of Jean Christophe.
 ROME 27

Wonderful was the friendship between the old German

woman and the Frenchman of twenty-three. Soon it be-
came difficult for either of them to say which was more
indebted to the other. Romain owed so much to Mai-
wida, in that she had enabled him to form juster views
of some of her great contemporaries; while Mai wida
valued Romain, because in this enthusiastic young artist
she discerned new possibilities of greatness. The same
idealism animated both, tried and chastened in the many-
wintered woman, fiery and impetuous in the youth.
Every day Rolland came to visit his venerable friend in
the Via della Polveriera, playing to her on the piano the
works of his favorite masters. She, in turn, introduced
him to Roman society. Gently guiding his restless na-
ture, she led him towards spiritual freedom. In his
essay To the Undying Antigone, Rolland tells us that to
two women, his mother, a sincere Christian, and Malwida
von Meysenbug, a pure idealist, he owes his awakening
to the full significance of art and of life. Malwida,
writing in Der Lebens Abend einer Idealistin a quarter of
a century before Rolland had attained celebrity, ex-
pressed her confident belief in his coming fame. We
cannot fail to be moved when we read to-day the descrip-
tion of Rolland in youth: "My friendship with this
young man was a great pleasure to me in other respects
besides that of music. For those advanced in years,
there can be no loftier gratification than to rediscover in
the young the same impulse towards idealism, the same
striving towards the highest aims, the same contempt for
all that is vulgar or trivial, the same courage in the strug-
28 ROMAIN HOLLAND
gle for freedom of individuality . . . For two years I
enjoyed the intellectual companionship of young Hol-
land . . . Let me repeat, it was not from his musical
talent alone that my pleasure was derived, though here
he was able to fill what had long been a gap in my life.
In other intellectual fields I found him likewise con-
genial. He aspired to the fullest possible development
of his faculties; whilst I myself, in his stimulating pres-
ence, was able to revive youthfulness of thought, to re-
discoter an intense interest in the whole world of imagi-
native beauty. As far as poesy is concerned, I gradu-
ally became aware of the greatness of my young friend's
endowments, to be finally convinced of the fact by the
reading of one of his dramatic poems." Speaking of
this early work, she prophetically declared that the writ-
er's moral energy might well be expected to bring about
a regeneration of French imaginative literature. In a
poem, finely conceived but a trifle sentimental, she ex-
pressed her thankfulness for the experience of these two
years. Malwida had recognized Remain as her Euro-
pean brother, just as Tolstoi had recognized a disciple.
Twenty years before the world had heard of Rolland, his
life was moving on heroic paths. Greatness cannot be
hid. When any one is born to greatness, the past and
the present send him images and figures to serve as
exhortation and example. From every country and
from every race of Europe, voices rise to greet the man
who is one day to speak for them all.
 CHAPTER VII

THE CONSECRATION

THE two years in Italy, a time of free receptivity

and creative enjoyment, were over. A summons
now came from Paris ; the Normal School, which
Holland had left as pupil, required his services as
teacher. The parting was a wrench, and Malwida von
Meysenbug's farewell was designed to convey a sym-
bolical meaning. She invited her young friend to ac-
company her to Bayreuth, the chief sphere of the activi-
ties of the man who, with Tolstoi, had been the leading
inspiration of Holland during early youth, the man whose
image had been endowed with more vigorous life by
Malwida's memories of his personality. Holland wan-
dered on foot across Umbria, to meet his friend in
Venice. Together they visited the palace in which Wag-
ner had died, and thence journeyed northward to the
scene of his life's work. "My aim," writes Malwida in
her characteristic style, which seldom attains strong emo-
tional force, but is none the less moving, "was that Ro-
main should have these sublime impressions to close
his years in Italy and the fecund 29 epoch of youth. I
likewise wished the experience to be a consecration upon
the threshold of manhood, with its prospective labors
and its inevitable struggles and disillusionments."
 30 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Olivier had entered the country of Jean Christophe!
On the first morning of their arrival, before introducing
her friend at Wahnfried, Malwida took him into the gar-
den to see the master's grave. Holland uncovered as if
in church, and the two stood for a while in silence medi-
tating on the hero, to one of them a friend, to the other
a leader. In the evening they went to hear Wagner's
posthumous work Parsifal. This composition, which,
like the visit to Bayreuth, is strangely interconnected with
the genesis of Jean Christophe, is as it were a consecra-
tional prelude to Holland's future. For life was now to
call him from these great dreams. Malwida gives a
moving description of their good-by. "My friends had
kindly placed their box at my disposal. Once more I
went to hear Parsifal with Holland, who was about to
return to France in order to play an active part in the
work of life. It was a matter of deep regret to me that
this gifted friend was not free to lift himself to 'higher
spheres,' that he could not ripen from youth to manhood
while wholly devoted to the unfolding of his artistic im-
pulses. But I knew that none the less he would work at
the roaring loom of time, weaving the living garment of
divinity. The tears with which his eyes were filled at the
close of the opera made me feel once more that my faith
in him would be justified. Thus I bade him farewell
with heartfelt thanks for the time filled with poesy which
his talents had bestowed on me. I dismissed him with
the blessing that age gives to youth entering upon life."
Although an epoch that had been rich for both was now
closed, their friendship was by no means over. For
 THE CONSECRATION 31
years to come, down to the end of her life, Holland wrote
to Malwida once a week. These letters, which were re-
turned tohim after her death, contain a biography of his
early manhood perhaps fuller than that which is avail-
able in the case of any other notable personality. Ines-
timable was the value of what he had learned from this
encounter. He had now acquired an extensive knowl-
edge of reality and an unlimited sense of human con-
tinuity. Whereas he had gone to Rome to study the
art of the dead past, he had found the living Germany,
and could enjoy the companionship of her undying
heroes. The triad of poesy, music, and science, har-
monizes unconsciously with that other triad, France,
Germany, and Italy. Once and for all, Rolland had ac-
quired the European spirit. Before he had written a
line of Jean Christophe, that great epic was already liv-
ing in his blood.
 CHAPTER VIII
YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP

THEsubstan form of Holland's career, no less than the

ce of his inner life, was decisively fash-
ioned bythese two years in Italy. As happened
in Goethe's case, so in that with which we are now con-
cerned, the conflict of the will was harmonized amid the
sublime clarity of the southern landscape. Holland had
gone to Rome with his mind still undecided. By genius,
he was a musician; by inclination, a poet; by necessity,
a historian. Little by little, a magical union had been
effected between music and poesy. In his first dramas,
the phrasing is permeated with lyrical melody. Simul-
aneously, behind the winged words, his historic sense had
built up a mighty scene out of the rich hues of the past.
After the success of his thesis Les origines du theatre
lyrique moderns (Histoire de Vopera en Europe avant
Lully et Scarlatti), he became professor of the hi&tory of
music, first at the Normal School, and from 1903 on-
wards at the Sorbonne. The aim he set before himself
was to display "I'eternelle floraison" the sempiternal
blossoming, of music as an endless series through the
ages, while each age none the less puts forth its own
characteristic shoots. Discovering for the first time what
32
 YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP 33

was to be henceforward his favorite theme, he showed

how, in this apparently abstract sphere, the nations culti-
vate their individual characteristics, while never ceasing
to develop unawares the higher unity wherein time and
national differences are unknown. A great power for
understanding others, in association with the faculty for
writing so as to be readily understood, constitutes the es-
sence of his activities. Here, moreover, in the element
with which he was most familiar, his emotional force was
singularly effective. More than any teacher before him
did he make the science he had to convey, a living thing.
Dealing with the invisible entity of music, he showed that
the greatness of mankind is never concentrated in a sin-
gle age, nor exclusively allotted to a single nation, but is
transmitted from age to age and from nation to nation.
Thus like a torch does it pass from one master to another,
a torch that will never be extinguished while human be-
ings continue to draw the breath of inspiration. There
are no contradictions, there is no cleavage, in art. "His-
tory must take for its object the living unity of the human
spirit. Consequently, history is compelled to maintain
the tie between all the thoughts of the human spirit."
Many of those who heard Rolland's lectures at the
School of Social Science and at the Sorbonne, still speak
of them to-day with undiminished gratitude. Only in a
formal sense was history the topic of these discourses,
and science was merely their foundation. It is true that
Rolland, side by side with his universal reputation, has a
reputation among specialists in musical research for hav-
ing discovered the manuscript of Luigi Rossi's Orfeo,
 34 ROMAIN HOLLAND

and for having been the first to do justice to the forgotten

Francesco Provenzale (the teacher of Alessandro Scar-
latti who founded the Neapolitan school). But their
broad humanist scope, their encyclopedic outlook, makes
his lectures on The Beginnings of Opera frescoes of
whilom civilizations. In interludes of speaking, he
would give music voice, playing on the piano long-lost
airs, so that in the very Paris where they first blossomed
three hundred years before, their silvery tones were now
reawakened from dust and parchment. At this date,
while Holland was still quite young, he began to exercise
upon his fellows that clarifying, guiding, inspiring, and
formative influence, which since then, increasingly rein-
forced by the power of his imaginative writings and
spread by these into ever widening circles, has become
immeasurable in its extent. Nevertheless, throughout
its expansion, this force has remained true to its primary
aim. From first to last, Holland's leading thought has
been to display, amid all the forms of man's past and
man's present, the things that are really great in human
personality, and the unity of all single-hearted endeavor.
It is obvious that Remain Rolland's passion for music
could not be restricted within the confines of history.
He could never become a specialist. The limitations in-
volved in the career of such experts are utterly uncon-
genial tohis synthetic temperament. For him the past
s but a preparation for the present; what has been merely
provides the possibility for increasing comprehension of
the future. Thus side by side with his learned theses
and with his volumes Musiciens d'autrefois, Haendel,
 I

\
.

»3
\

\1-
 YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP 35

Histoire de VOpera, etc., we have his Musiciens d'aujour-

d'hui, a collection of essays which were first published in
the "Revue de Paris" and the "Revue de Van dra-
matique" essays penned by Rolland as champion of the
modern and the unknown. This collection contains the
first portrait of Hugo Wolf ever published in France,
together with striking presentations of Richard Strauss
and Debussy. He was never weary of looking for new
creative forces in European music; he went to the Stras-
burg musical festival to hear Gustav Mahler, and visited
Bonn to attend the Beethoven festival. Nothing seemed
alien to his eager pursuit of knowledge; his sense of
justice was all-embracing. From Catalonia to Scan-
dinavia he listened for every new wave in the ocean of
music. He was no less at home with the spirit of the
present than with the spirit of the past.
During these years of activity as teacher, he learned
much from life. New circles were opened to him in the
Paris which hitherto he had known little of except from
the window of his lonely study. His position at the uni-
versity and his marriage brought the man who had
hitherto associated only with a few intimates and with
distant heroes, into contact with intellectual and social
life. In the house of his father-in-law, the distinguished
philologist Michel Breal, he became acquainted with the
leading lights of the Sorbonne. Elsewhere, in the draw-
ing-rooms, hemoved among financiers, bourgeois, offi-
cials, persons drawn from all strata of city life, includ-
ing the cosmopolitans who are always to be found in
Paris. Involuntarily, during these years, Rolland the
36 ROMAIN HOLLAND
romanticist became an observer. His idealism, without
forfeiting intensity, gained critical strength. The ex-
periences garnered (it might be better to say, the disil-
lusionments sustained) in these contacts, all this medley
of commonplace life, were to form the basis of his subse-
quent descriptions of the Parisian world in La foire sur
la place and Dans la maison. Occasional journeys to
Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and his beloved Italy,
gave him opportunities for comparison, and provided
fresh knowledge. More and more, the growing horizon
of modern culture came to occupy his thoughts, thus dis-
placing the science of history. The wanderer returned
from Europe had discovered his home, had discovered
Paris; the historian had found the most important epoch
for living men and women — the present.
 CHAPTER IX
YEARS OF STRUGGLE

ROLLAND was now a man of thirty, with his ener-

gies at their prime. He was inspired with a
restrained passion for activity. In all times
and scenes, alike in the past and in the present, his in-
spiration discerned greatness. The impulse now grew
strong within him to give his imaginings life.
But this will to greatness encountered a season of petty
things. At the date when Holland began his life work,
the mighty figures of French literature had already
passed from the stage: Victor Hugo, with his indefatig-
able summons to idealism; Flaubert, the heroic worker;
Renan, the sage. The stars of the neighboring heaven,
Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche, had set or be-
come obscured. Extant art, even the serious art of a
Zola or a Maupassant, was devoted to the commonplace;
it created only in the image of a corrupt and enfeebled
generation. Political life had become paltry and supine.
Philosophy was stereotyped and abstract. There was no
longer any common bond to unite the elements of the
nation, for its faith had been shattered for decades to
come by the defeat of 1870. Rolland aspired to bold
ventures, but his world would 37 have none of them. He
38 ROMAIN HOLLAND

was a fighter, but his world desired an easy life. He

wanted fellowship, but all that his world wanted was
enjoyment.
Suddenly a storm burst over the country. France was
stirred to the depths. The entire nation became en-
grossed inan intellectual and moral problem. Holland,
a bold swimmer, was one of the first to leap into the
turbulent flood. Betwixt night and morning, the Dreyfus
affair rent France in twain. There were no abstention-
ists; there was no calm contemplation. The finest among
Frenchmen were the hottest partisans. For two years
the country was severed as by a knife blade into two
camps, that of those whose verdict was "guilty," and that
of those whose verdict was "not guilty." In Jean Chris-
tophe and in Peguy's reminiscences, we learn how the
section cut pitilessly athwart families, dividing brother
from brother, father from son, friend from friend. To-
day we find it difficult to understand how this accusation
of espionage brought against an artillery captain could
involve all France in a crisis. The passions aroused
transcended the immediate cause to invade the whole
sphere of mental life. Every Frenchman was faced by
a problem of conscience, was compelled to make a deci-
sion between fatherland and justice. Thus with explo-
sive energy the moral forces were, for all right-thinking
minds, dragged into the vortex. Holland was among the
few who from the very outset insisted that Dreyfus was
innocent. The apparent hopelessness of these early en-
deavors to secure justice were for Holland a spur to
conscience. Whereas Peguy was enthralled by the mys-
 YEARS OF STRUGGLE 39

tical power of the problem, which would he hoped bring

about a moral purification of his country, and while in
conjunction with Bernard Lazare he wrote propagandist
pamphlets calculated to add fuel to the flames, Rol-
land's energies were devoted to the consideration of the
immanent problem of justice. Under the pseudonym
Saint-Just he published a dramatic parable, Les loups,
wherein he lifted the problem from the realm of time into
the realm of the eternal. This was played to an en-
thusiastic audience, among which were Zola, Scheurer-
Kestner, and Picquart. The more definitely political the
trial became, the more evident was it that the freemasons,
the anti-clericalists, and the socialists were using the af-
fair to secure their own ends; and the more the question
of material success replaced the question of the ideal, the
more did Rolland withdraw from active participation.
His enthusiasm is devoted only to spiritual matters, to
problems, to lost causes. In the Dreyfus affair, just as
later, it was his glory to have been one of the first to take
up arms, and to have been a solitary champion in a his-
toric moment.
Simultaneously, Rolland was working shoulder to
shoulder with Peguy, and with Suares the friend of his
adolescence, in a new campaign. This differed from
the championship of Dreyfus in that it was not stormy
and clamorous, but involved a tranquil heroism which
made it resemble rather the way of the cross. The
friends were painfully aware of the corruption and
triviality of the literature then dominant in Paris. To
attempt a direct attack would have been fruitless, for
40 ROMAIN HOLLAND
this hydra had the whole periodical press at its service.
Nowhere was it possible to inflict a mortal blow upon
the many-headed and thousand-armed entity. They re-
solved, therefore, to work against it, not with its own
means, not by imitating its own noisy activities, but by
the force of moral example, by quiet sacrifice and in-
vincible patience. For fifteen years they wrote and
edited the "Cahiers de la quinzaine" Not a centime
was spent on advertising it, and it was rarely to be found
on sale at any of the usual agents. It was read by stu-
dents and by a few men of letters, by a small circle grow-
ing imperceptibly. Throughout an entire decade, all
Holland's works appeared in its pages, the whole of Jean
Christophe, Beethoven, Michel-Ange, and the plays.
Though during this epoch the author's financial position
was far from easy, he received nothing for any of these
writings — the case is perhaps unexampled in modern
literature. To fortify their idealism, to set an example
to others, these heroic figures renounced the chance of
publicity, circulation, and remuneration for their writ-
ings; they renounced the holy trinity of the literary faith.
And when at length, through Holland's, Peguy's, and
Suares' tardily achieved fame, the "Cahiers" had come
into its own, its publication was discontinued. But it
remains an imperishable monument of French idealism
and artistic comradeship.
A third time Holland's intellectual ardor led him to
try his mettle in the field of action. A third time, for a
space, did he enter into a comradeship that he might
fashion life out of life. A group of young men had
 YEARS OF STRUGGLE 41

come to recognize the futility and harmfulness of the

French boulevard drama, whose central topic is the eter-
nal recurrence of adultery issuing from the tedium of
bourgeois existence. They determined upon an attempt
to restore the drama to the people, to the proletariat, and
thus to furnish it with new energies. Impetuously Rol-
land threw himself into the scheme, writing essays, mani-
festoes, an entire book. Above all, he contributed a
series of plays conceived in the spirit of the French revo-
lution and composed for its glorification. Jaures de-
livered a speech introducing Danton to the French work-
ers. The other plays were likewise staged. But the
daily press, obviously scenting a hostile force, did its
utmost to chill the enthusiasm. The other participators
soon lost their zeal, so that ere long the fine impetus of
the young group was spent. Rolland was left alone,
richer in experience and disillusionment, but not poorer
in faith.
Although by sentiment Rolland is attached to all
great movements, the inner man has ever remained free
from ties. He gives his energies to help others' efforts,
but never follows blindly in others' footsteps. Whatever
creative work he has attempted in common with others
has been a disappointment; the fellowship has been
clouded by the universality of human frailty. The
Dreyfus case was subordinated to political scheming; the
People's Theater was wrecked by jealousies; Rolland's
plays, written for the workers, were staged but for a
night; his wedded life came to a sudden and disastrous
end — but nothing could shatter his idealism. When
42 ROMAIN HOLLAND
contemporary existence could not be controlled by the
forces of the spirit, he still retained his faith in the
spirit. In hours of disillusionment he called up the
images of the great ones of the earth, who conquered
mourning by action, who conquered life by art. He left
the theater, he renounced the professorial chair, he re-
tired from the world. Since life repudiated his single-
hearted endeavors he would transfigure life in gracious
pictures. His disillusionments had but been further
experience. During the ensuing ten years of solitude he
wrote Jean Christophe, a work which in the ethical sense
is more truly real than reality itself, a work which em-
bodies the living faith of his generation.
 CHAPTER X

A DECADE OF SECLUSION

FOR a brief season the Parisian public was fa-

miliar with Remain Rolland's name as that of
a musical expert and a promising dramatist.
Thereafter for years he disappeared from view, for the
capital of France excels all others in its faculty for mer-
ciless forgetfulness. He was never spoken of even in
literary circles, although poets and other men of letters
might be expected to be the best judges of the values in
which they deal. If the curious reader should care to
turn over the reviews and anthologies of the period, to
examine the histories of literature, he will find not a
word of the man who had already written a dozen plays,
had composed wonderful biographies, and had published
six volumes of Jean Christophe. The "Cahiers de la
quinzaine" were at once the birthplace and the tomb of
his writings. He was a stranger in the city at the very
time when he was describing its mental life with a pic-
turesqueness and comprehensiveness which has never
been equaled. At forty years of age, he had won
neither fame nor pecuniary reward; he seemed to pos-
sess no influence; he was not a living force. At the
43
opening of the twentieth century, like Charles Louis
44 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Philippe, like Verhaeren, like Claudel, and like Suares,

in truth the strongest writers of the time, Holland re-
mained unrecognized when he was at the zenith of his
creative powers. In his own person he experienced the
fate which he has depicted in such moving terms, the
tragedy of French idealism.
A period of seclusion is, however, needful as a pre-
liminary tolabors of such concentration. Force must
develop in solitude before it can capture the world.
Only a man prepared to ignore the public, only a man
animated with heroic indifference to success, could ven-
ture upon the forlorn hope of planning a romance in ten
volumes; a French romance which, in an epoch of
exacerbated nationalism, was to have a German for its
hero. In such detachment alone could this universality
of knowledge shape itself into a literary creation. No-
where but aimd tranquillity undisturbed by the noise of
the crowd could a work of such vast scope be brought to
fruition.
For a decade Holland seemed to have vanished from
the French literary world. Mystery enveloped him, the
mystery of toil. Through all these long years his
cloistered labors represented the hidden stage of the
chrysalis, from which the imago is to issue in winged
glory. It was a period of much suffering, a period of
silence, a period characterized by knowledge of the
world — the knowledge of a man whom the world did not
yet know.
 CHAPTER XI

A PORTRAIT

TWO tiny little rooms, attic rooms in the heart of

Paris, on the fifth story, reached by a winding
wooden stair. From below comes the muffled
roar, as of a distant storm, rising from the Boulevard
Montparnasse. Often a glass shakes on the table as a
heavy motor omnibus thunders by. The windows com-
mand a view across less lofty houses into an old convent
garden. In springtime the perfume of flowers is wafted
through the open window. No neighbors on this story;
no service. Nothing beyond the help of the concierge,
an old woman who protects the hermit from untimely
visitors.
The workroom is full of books. They climb up the
walls, and are piled in heaps on the floor; they spread
like creepers over the window seat, over the chairs and
the table. Interspersed are manuscripts. The walls are
adorned with a few engravings. We see photographs of
friends, and a bust of Beethoven. The deal table stands
near the window; two chairs, a small stove. Nothing
costly in the narrow cell; nothing which could tempt to
repose; nothing to encourage sociability. A student's
den ; a little prison of labor. 45
 46 ROMAIN ROLLAND
Amid the books sits the gentle monk of this cell,
soberly clad like a clergyman. He is slim, tall, deli-
cate looking; his complexion is sallow, like that of one
who is rarely in the open. His face is lined, suggesting
that here is a worker who spends few hours in sleep.
His whole aspect is somewhat fragile — the sharply-cut
profile which no photograph seems to reproduce per-
fectly; the small hands, his hair silvering already behind
the lofty brow; his moustache falling softly like a
shadow over the thin lips. Everything about him
is gentle: his voice in its rare utterances; his figure
which, even in repose, shows the traces of his sedentary
life; his gestures, which are always restrained; his slow
gait. His whole personality radiates gentleness. The
casual observer might derive the impression that the
man is debilitated or extremely fatigued, were it not
for the way in which the eyes flash ever and again from
beneath the slightly reddened eyelids, to relapse always
into their customary expression of kindliness. The eyes
have a blue tint as of deep waters of exceptional purity.
That is why no photograph can convey a just impres-
sion of one in whose eyes the whole force of his soul
seems to be concentrated. The face is inspired with
life by the glance, just as the small and frail body
radiates the mysterious energy of work.
This work, the unceasing labor of a spirit imprisoned
in a body, imprisoned within narrow walls during all
these years, who can measure it? The written books
are but a fraction of it. The ardor of our recluse is
all-embracing, reaching forth to include the cultures of
 A PORTRAIT 47

every tongue, the history, philosophy, poesy, and music

of every nation. He is in touch with all endeavors.
He receives sketches, letters, and reviews concerning
everything. He is one who thinks as he writes, speak-
ing to himself and to others while his pen moves over
the paper. With his small, upright handwriting in
which all the letters are clearly and powerfully formed,
he permanently fixes the thoughts that pass through his
mind, whether spontaneously arising or coming from
without; he records the airs of past and recent times,
noting them down in manuscript books; he makes ex-
tracts from newspapers, drafts plans for future work;
his thriftily collected hoard of these autographic intel-
lectual goods is enormous. The flame of his labor
burns unceasingly. Rarely does he take more than five
hours' sleep; seldom does he go for a stroll in the ad-
joining Luxembourg; infrequently does a friend climb
the five flights of winding stair for an hour's quiet talk;
even such journeys as he undertakes are mostly for pur-
poses of research. Repose signifies for him a change
of occupation; to write letters instead of books, to read
philosophy instead of poetry. His solitude is an ac-
tive communing with the world. His free hours are his
only holiday, stolen from the long days when he sits
in the twilight at the piano, holding converse with the
great masters of music, drawing melodies from other
worlds into this confined space which is itself a world
of the creative spirit.
 CHAPTER XII
RENOWN

WE are in the year 1910. A motor is tearing

along the Champs Elysees, outrunning the
belated warnings of its own hooter. There
is a cry, and a man who was incautiously crossing the
street lies beneath the wheels. He is borne away
wound ed and with broken limbs, to be nursed back to
life.
Nothing can better exemplify the slenderness, as yet,
of Remain Rolland's fame, than the reflection how
little his death at this juncture would have signified to
the literary world. There would have been a paragraph
or two in the newspapers informing the public that the
sometime professor of musical history at the Sorbonne
had succumbed after being run over by a motor. A
few, perhaps, would have remembered that fifteen years
earlier this man Rolland had written promising dramas,
and books on musical topics. Among the innumerable
inhabitants of Paris, scarce a handful would have known
anything of the deceased author. Thus ignored was Ro-
main Rolland two years before he obtained a European
reputation; thus nameless was he when he had finished
most of the works which were to make him a leader of
48
 RENOWN 49

our generation — the dozen or so dramas, the biographies

of the heroes, and the first eight volumes of Jean
Christophe.
A wonderful thing is fame, wonderful its eternal
multiplicity. Every reputation has peculiar character-
istics, independent of the man to whom it attaches, and
yet appertaining to him as his destiny. Fame may be
wise and it may be foolish; it may be deserved and it
may be undeserved. On the one hand it may be easily
attained and brief, flashing transiently like a meteor; on
the other hand it may be tardy, slow in blossoming, fol-
lowing reluctantly in the footsteps of the works. Some-
times fame is malicious, ghoulish, arriving too late, and
battening upon corpses.
Strange is the relationship between Holland and fame.
From early youth he was allured by its magic; but
charmed by the thought of the only reputation that
counts, the reputation that is based upon moral strength
and ethical authority, he proudly and steadfastly re-
nounced the ordinary amenities of cliquism and con-
ventional intercourse. He knew the dangers and tempta-
tions of power; he knew that fussy activity could grasp
nothing but a cold shadow, and was impotent to seize the
radiant light. Never, therefore, did he take any de-
liberate step towards fame, never did he reach out his
hand to fame, near to him as fame had been more than
once in his life. Indeed, he deliberately repelled the
oncoming footsteps by the publication of his scathing
La foire sur la place, through which he permanently for-
feited the favor of the Parisian press. What he writes
50 ROMAIN ROLLAND

of Jean Christophe applies perfectly to himself: "Le

succes n'etait pas son but; son but etait la foi." [Not
success, but faith was his goal.]
Fame loved Rolland, who loved fame from afar, un-
obtrusively. "Itwere pity," fame seemed to say, "to
disturb this man's work. The seeds must lie for a while
in the darkness, enduring patiently, until the time comes
for germination." Reputation and the work were grow-
ing in two different worlds, awaiting contact. A small
community of admirers had formed after the publication
of Beethoven. They followed Jean Christophe in his
pilgrimage. The faithful of the "Cahiers de la quin-
zaine" won new friends. Without any help from the
press, through the unseen influence of responsive sym-
pathies, the circulation of his works grew. Transla-
tions were published. Paul Seippel, the distinguished
Swiss author, penned a comprehensive biography,
newspapers had begun to print his name. The crown-
Rolland had found many devoted admirers before the
ing of his completed work by the Academy was nothing
more than the sound of a trumpet summoning the armies
of his admirers to a review. All at once accounts of
Rolland broke upon the world like a flood, shortly be-
fore he had attained his fiftieth year. In 1912 he was
still unknown ; in 1914 he had a wide reputation. With
a cry of astonishment, a generation recognized its leader,
and Europe became aware of the first product of the new
universal European spirit.
There is a mystical significance in Romain Rolland's
rise to fame, just as in every event of his life. Fame
 RENOWN 51

came late to this man whom fame had passed by during

the bitter years of mental distress and material need.
Nevertheless it came at the rig1:! hour, since it came
before the war. Holland's renown put a sword into his
hand. At the decisive morr. ?nt he had power and a
voice to speak for Europe. He stood on a pedestal, so
that he was visible above the medley. In truth fame
was granted at a fitting time, when through suffering
and knowledge Holland had grown ripe for his highest
function, to assume his European responsibility. Repu-
tation, and the power that reputation gives, came at a
moment when the world of the courageous needed a
man who should proclaim against the world itself the
world's eternal message of brotherhood.
 CHAPTER XIII
HOLLAND AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE EUROPEAN SPIRIT

THUS does Holland 's life pass from obscurity into

the light of day. Progress is slow, but the
impulsion conies from powerful energies. The
movement towards the goal is not always obvious,
and yet his life is associated as is none other with the
disastrously impending destiny of Europe. Regarded
from the outlook of fulfillment, we discern that all the
ostensibly counteracting influences, the years of incon-
spicuous and apparently vain struggle, have been neces-
sary; we see that every incident has been symbolic.
The career develops like a work of art, building itself
up in a wise ordination of will and chance. We should
take too mean a view of destiny, were we to think it
the outcome of pure sport that this man hitherto unknown
should become a moral force in the world during the
very years when, as never before, there was need for
one who would champion the things of the spirit.
The year 1914 marks the close of Remain Rolland's
private life. Henceforth his career belongs to the
world; his biography becomes part of history; his per-
sonal experiences can no longer be detached from his
public activities. The solitary has been forced out of
52
 HOLLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SPIRIT 53

his workroom to accomplish his task in the world. The

man whose existence has been so retired, must now live
with doors and windows open. His every essay, his
every letter, is a manifesto. His life from now onward
shapes itself like a heroic drama. From the hour when
his most cherished ideal, the unity of Europe, seemed
bent on its own destruction, he emerged from his re-
tirement tobecome a vital element of his time, an im-
personal force, a chapter in the history of the European
spirit. Just as little as Tolstoi's life can be detached
from his propagandist activities, just so little is there
justification in this case for an attempt to distinguish be-
tween the man and his influence. Since 1914, Remain
Rolland has been one with his ideal and one with the
struggle for its realization. No longer is he author,
poet, or artist; no longer does he belong to himself. He
is the voice of Europe in the season of its most poignant
agony. He has become the conscience of the world.
 PART TWO

EARLY WORK AS A DRAMATIST

Son but n'etait pas le succes; son

but etait la foi.
JEAN CHRISTOPHE, "La Revoke"
 CHAPTER I
THE WORK AND THE EPOCH

ROMAIN stoodHOLL AND'S work cannot be under-

without an understanding of the epoch in
which that work came into being. For here
we have a passion that springs from the weariness of
an entire country, a faith that springs from the disil-
lusionment ofa humiliated nation. The shadow of 1870
was cast across the youth of the French author. The
significance and greatness of his work taken as a whole
depend upon the way in which it constitutes a spiritual
bridge between one great war and the next. It arises
from a blood-stained earth and a storm-tossed horizon
on one side, reaching across on the other to the new
struggle and the new spirit.
It originates in gloom. A land defeated in war is
like a man who has lost his god. Divine ecstasy is sud-
denly replaced by dull exhaustion; a fire that blazed
in millions is extinguished, so that nothing but ash and
cinder remain. There is a sudden collapse of all values.
Enthusiasm has become meaningless; death is purpose-
less; the deeds, which but yesterday were deemed heroic,
are now looked upon as follies; faith is a fraud; belief
in oneself, a pitiful illusion. The impulse to fellowship
fades; every one fights for his own hand, evades respon-
57
 58 ROMAIN HOLLAND

sibility that he may throw it upon his neighbor, thinks

only of profit, utility, and personal advantage. Lofty
aspirations are killed by an infinite weariness. Nothing
is so utterly destructive to the moral energy of the masses
as a defeat; nothing else degrades and weakens to the
same extent the whole spiritual poise of a nation.
Such was the condition of France after 1870; the
country was mentally tired; it had become a land with-
out a leader. The best among its imaginative writers
could give no help. They staggered for a while, as if
stunned by the bludgeoning of the disaster. Then, as
the first effects passed off, they reentered their old paths
which led them into a purely literary field, remote and
ever remoter from the destinies of their nation. It is
not within the power of men already mature to make
headway against a national catastrophe. Zola, Flau-
bert, Anatole France, and Maupassant, needed all their
strength to keep themselves erect on their own feet.
They could give no support to their nation. Their ex-
periences had made them skeptical; they no longer pos-
sessed sufficient faith to give a new faith to the French
people. But the younger writers, those who had no
personal memories of the disaster, those who had not
witnessed the actual struggle and had merely grown up
amid the spiritual corpses left upon the battlefield, those
who looked upon the ravaged and tormented soul of
France, could not succumb to the influences of this weari-
ness. The young cannot live without faith, cannot
breathe in the moral stagnation of a materialistic world.
For them, life and creation mean the lighting up of
 THE WORK AND THE EPOCH 59

faith, that mystically burning faith which glows un-

quenchably in every new generation, glows even among
the tombs of the generation which has passed away. To
the newcomers, the defeat is no more than one of the
primary factors of their experience, the most urgent of
the problems their art must take into account. They
feel that they are naught unless they prove able to re-
store this France, torn and bleeding after the struggle.
It is their mission to provide a new faith for this skep-
tically resigned people. Such is the task for their ro-
bust energies, such the goal of their aspiration. Not
by chance do we find that among the best in defeated
nations a new idealism invariably springs to life; that
the poets of such peoples have but one aim, to bring
solace to their nation that the sense of defeat may be
assuaged.
How can a vanquished nation be solaced? How can
the sting of defeat be soothed? The writer must be
competent to divert his readers' thoughts from the pres-
ent; he must fashion a dialectic of defeat which shall
replace despair by hope. These young authors en-
deavored tobring help in two different ways. Some
pointed towards the future, saying: "Cherish hatred;
last time we were beaten, next time we shall conquer."
This was the argument of the nationalists, and there is
significance in the fact that it was predominantly voiced
by the sometime companions of Holland, by Maurice
Barres, Paul Claudel, and Peguy. For thirty years,
with the hammers of verse and prose, they fashioned the
wounded pride of the French nation that it might become
 60 ROMAIN ROLLAND

a weapon to strike the hated foe to the heart. For thirty

years they talked of nothing but yesterday's defeat and
to-morrow's triumph. Ever afresh did they tear open
the old wound. Again and again, when the young were
inclining towards reconciliation, did these writers in-
flame their minds anew with exhortations in the heroic
vein. From hand to hand they passed the unquench-
able torch of revenge, ready and eager to fling it into
Europe's powder barrel.
The other type of idealism, that of Rolland, less cla-
mant and long ignored, looked in a very different direc-
tion for solace, turning its gaze not towards the im-
mediate future but towards eternity. It did not prom-
ise a new victory, but showed that false values had been
used in estimating defeat. For writers of this school,
for the pupils of Tolstoi, force is no argument for the
spirit, the externals of success provide no criterion of
value for the soul. In their view, the individual does
not conquer when the generals of his nation march to
victory through a hundred provinces; the individual is
not vanquished when the army loses a thousand pieces
of artillery. The individual gains the victory, only
when he is free from illusion, and when he has no part
in any wrong committed by his nation. In their isola-
tion, those who hold such views have continually en-
deavored toinduce France, not indeed to forget her de-
feat, but to make of that defeat a source of moral great-
ness, to recognize the worth of the spiritual seed which
has germinated on the blood-drenched battlefields. Of
jsuch a character, in Jean Christophe, are the words of
 THE WORK AND THE EPOCH 61

Olivier, the spokesman of all young Frenchmen of this

way of thinking. Speaking to his German friend, he
says: "Fortunate the defeat, blessed the disaster!
Not for us to disavow it, for we are its children. ... It
is you, my dear Christopher, who have refashioned us.
. . . The defeat, little as you may have wished it, has
done us more good than evil. You have rekindled the
torch of our idealism, have given a fresh impetus to our
science, and have reanimated our faith. . . . We owe to
you the reawakening of our racial conscience. . . . Pic-
ture the young Frenchmen who were born in houses of
mourning under the shadow of defeat; who were nour-
ished on gloomy thoughts; who were trained to be the
instruments of a bloody, inevitable, and perhaps use-
less revenge. Such was the lesson impressed upon their
minds from their earliest years: they were taught that
there is no justice in this world ; that might crushes right.
A revelation of this character will either degrade a
child's soul for ever, or will permanently uplift it."
And Holland continues: "Defeat refashions the elite
of a nation, segregating the single-minded and the strong,
and making them more single-minded and stronger than
before; but the others are hastened by defeat down the
path leading to destruction. Thus are the masses of the
people . . . separated from the elite, leaving these free
to continue their forward march."
For Holland this elite, reconciling France with the
world, will in days to come fulfil the mission of his
nation. In ultimate analysis, his thirty years' work may
be regarded as one continuous attempt to prevent a new
62 ROMAIN HOLLAND

war — to hinder the revival of the horrible cleavage be-

tween victory and defeat. His aim has been, not to
teach a new national pride, but to inculcate a new
heroism of self -conquest, a new faith in justice.
Thus from the same source, from the darkness of de-
feat, there have flowed two different streams of idealism.
In speech and writing, an invisible struggle has been
waged for the soul of the new generation. The facts
of history turned the scale in favor of Maurice Barres.
The year 1914 marked the defeat of the ideas of Romain
Rolland. Thus defeat was not merely an experience
imposed on him in youth, for defeat has likewise been
the tragic substance of his years of mature manhood.
But it has always been his peculiar talent to create out of
defeat the strongest of his works, to draw from resig-
nation new ardors, to derive from disillusionment a pas-
sionate faith. He has ever been the poet of the van-
quished, the consoler of the despairing, the dauntless
guide towards that world where suffering is transmuted
into positive values and where misfortune becomes a
source of strength. That which was born out of a trag-
ical time, the experience of a nation under the heel of
destiny, Rolland has made available for all times and
all nations.
 CHAPTER II

THE WILL TO GREATNESS ,

ROLLAND realized his mission early in his

career. The hero of one of his first writings,
the Girond ist Hugot in Le triomphe de la
raison, discloses the author's own ardent faith when he
declares: "Our first duty is to be great, and to defend
greatness on earth."
This will to greatness lies hidden at the heart of all
personal greatness. What distinguishes Romain Rol-
land from others, what distinguishes the beginner of
those days and the fighter of the thirty years that have
since elapsed, is that in art he never creates anything
isolated, anything with a purely literary or casual scope.
Invariably his efforts are directed towards the loftiest
moral aims; he aspires towards eternal forms; strives
to fashion the monumental. His goal is to produce a
fresco, to paint a comprehensive picture, to achieve an
epic completeness. He does not choose his literary col-
leagues as models, but takes as examples the heroes of
the ages. He tears his gaze away from Paris, from the
movement of contemporary life, which he regards as
trivial. Tolstoi, the only modern who seems to him
poietic, as the great men of 63an earlier day were poietic,
 64 ROMAIN HOLLAND
is his teacher and master. Despite his humility,
he cannot but feel that his own creative impulse makes
him more closely akin to Shakespeare's historical plays,
to Tolstoi's War and Peace, to Goethe's universality, to
Balzac's wealth of imagination, to Wagner's promethean
art, than he is akin to the activities of his contemporaries,
whose energies are concentrated upon material success.
He studies his exemplars' lives, to draw courage from
their courage; he examines their works, in order that,
using their measure, he may lift his own achievements
above the commonplace and the relative. His zeal for
the absolute is almost a religion. Without venturing to
compare himself with them, he thinks always of the in-
comparably great, of the meteors that have fallen out of
eternity into our own day. He dreams of creating a
Sistine of symphonies, dramas like Shakespeare's his-
tories, an epic like War and Peace; not of writing a new
Madame Bovary or tales like those of Maupassant. The
timeless is his true world; it is the star towards which
his creative will modestly and yet passionately aspires.
Among latter-day Frenchmen none but Victor Hugo and
Balzac have had this glorious fervor for the monu-
mental; among the Germans none has had it since Rich-
ard Wagner; among contemporary Englishmen, none
perhaps but Thomas Hardy. •
Neither talent nor diligence suffices unaided to inspire
such an urge towards the transcendent. A moral force
must be the lever to shake a spiritual world to its foun-
dations. The moral force which Rolland possesses is a
courage unexampled in the history of modern litera-
 THE WILL TO GREATNESS 65

ture. The quality that first made his attitude on the war
manifest to the world, the heroism which led him to
take his stand alone against the sentiments of an entire
epoch, had, to the discerning, already been made appar-
ent in the writings of the inconspicuous beginner a
quarter of a century earlier. A man of an easy-going
and conciliatory nature is not suddenly transformed
into a hero. Courage, like every other power of the
soul, must be steeled and tempered by many trials.
Among all those of his generation, Holland had long
been signalized as the boldest by his preoccupation with
mighty designs. Not merely did he dream, like ambi-
tious schoolboys, of Iliads and pentalogies; he actually
created them in the fevered world of to-day, working in
isolation, with the dauntless spirit of past centuries.
Not one of his plays had been staged, not a publisher
had accepted any of his books, when he began a dra-
matic cycle as comprehensive as Shakespeare's histories.
He had as yet no public, no name, when he began his
colossal romance, Jean Christophe. He embroiled him-
self with the theaters, when in his manifesto Le theatre
du peuple he censured the triteness and commercialism
of the contemporary drama. He likewise embroiled
himself with the critics, when, in La foire sur la place,
he pilloried the cheapjackery of Parisian journalism and
French dilettantism with a severity which had been un-
known westward of the Rhine since the publication of
Balzac's Les illusions perdues. This young man whose
financial position was precarious, who had no powerful
associates, who had found no favor with newspaper edi-
66 ROMAIN HOLLAND

tors, publishers, or theatrical managers, proposed to re-

mold the spirit of his generation, simply by his own will
and the power of his own deeds. Instead of aiming at a
neighboring goal, he always worked for a distant future,
worked with that religious faith in greatness which was
displayed by the medieval architects — men who planned
cathedrals for the honor of God, recking little whether
they themselves would survive to see the completion of
their designs. This courage, which draws its strength
from the religious elements of his nature, is his sole
helper. The watchword of his life may be said to have
been the phrase of William the Silent, prefixed by Hol-
land as motto to Aert: "I have no need of approval to
give me hope; nor of success, to brace me to persever-

ance."
 CHAPTER III
THE CREATIVE CYCLES

THE will to greatness involuntarily finds expres-

sion in characteristic forms. Rarely does Rol-
land attempt to deal with any isolated topic, and
he never concerns himself about a mere episode in feel-
ing or in history. His creative imagination is attracted
solely by elemental phenomena, by the great "courants
de foi," whereby with mystical energy a single idea is
suddenly carried into the minds of millions of individ-
uals; whereby a country, an epoch, a generation, will
become kindled like a firebrand, and will shed light over
the environing darkness. He lights his own poetic flame
at the great beacons of mankind, be they individuals of
genius or inspired epochs, Beethoven or the Renaissance,
Tolstoi or the Revolution, Michelangelo or the Crusades.
Yet for the artistic control of such phenomena, widely
ranging, deeply rooted in the cosmos, overshadowing en-
tire eras, more is requisite than the raw ambition and
fitful enthusiasm of an adolescent. If a mental state
of this nature is to fashion anything that shall endure,
it must do so in boldly conceived forms. The cultural
history of inspired and heroic periods, cannot be limned
in fugitive sketches; careful 67grounding is indispensable.
68 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Above all does this apply to monumental architecture.
Here we must have a spacious site for the display of the
structures, and terraces from which a general view can
be secured.
That is why, in all his works, Holland needs so much
room. He desires to be just to every epoch as to every
individual. He never wishes to display a chance sec-
tion, but would fain exhibit the entire cycle of happen-
ings. He would fain depict, not episodes of the French
revolution, but the Revolution as a whole; not the his-
tory of Jean Christophe Krafft, the individual modern
musician, but the history of contemporary Europe. He
aims at presenting, not only the central force of an era,
but likewise the manifold counterf orces ; not the action
alone, but the reaction as well. For Rolland, breadth of
scope is a moral necessity rather than an artistic. Since
he would be just in his enthusiasm, since in the parlia-
ment of his work he would give every idea its spokes-
man, he is compelled to write many-voiced choruses.
That he may exhibit the Revolution in all its aspects, its
rise, its troubles, its political activities, its decline, and
its fall, he plans a cycle of ten dramas. The Renais-
sance needs a treatment hardly less extensive. Jean
Christophe must have three thousand pages. To Rol-
land, the intermediate form, the variety, seems no less
important than the generic type. He is aware of the
danger of dealing exclusively with types. What would
Jean Christophe be worth to us, if with the figure of the
hero there were merely contrasted that of Olivier as a
typical Frenchman ; if we did not find subsidiary figures,
 THE CREATIVE CYCLES 69

good and evil, grouped in numberless variations around

the symbolic dominants. If we are to secure a gen-
uinely objective view, many witnesses must be sum-
moned; ifwe are to form a just judgment, the whole
wealth of facts must be taken into consideration. It
is this ethical demand for justice to the small no less
than to the great which makes spacious forms essential
to Holland. This is why his creative artistry demands
an all-embracing outlook, a cyclic method of presenta-
tion. Each individual work in these cycles, however
circumscribed it may appear at the first glance, is no
more than a segment, whose full significance becomes ap-
parent only when we grasp its relationship to the focal
thought, to justice as the moral center of gravity, as a
point whence all ideas, words, and actions appear equi-
distant from the center of universal humanity. The
circle, the cycle, which unrestingly environs all its
wealth of content, wherein discords are harmoniously re-
solved— to Holland, ever the musician, this symbol of
sensory justice is the favorite and wellnigh exclusive
form.
The work of Remain Rolland during the last thirty
years comprises five such creative cycles. Too extended
in their scope, they have not all been completed. The
first, a dramatic cycle, which in the spirit of Shakespeare
was to represent the Renaissance as an integral unit
much as Gobineau desired to represent it, remained a
fragment. Even the individual dramas have been cast
aside by Rolland as inadequate. The Tragedies de la
foi form the second cycle; the Theatre de la revolution
70 ROMAIN ROLLAND

forms the third. Both are unfinished, but the frag-

ments are of imperishable value. The fourth cycle, the
Vie des hommes illustres, a cycle of biographies planned
to form as it were a frieze round the temple of the in-
visible God, is likewise incomplete. The ten volumes of
Jean Christophe alone succeed in rounding off the full
circle of a generation, uniting grandeur and justice in
the foreshadowed concord.
Above these five creative cycles there looms another
and later cycle, recognizable as yet only in its begin-
ning and its end, its origination and its recurrence. It
will express the harmonious connection of a manifold
existence with a lofty and universal life-cycle in Goethe's
sense, a cycle wherein life and poesy, word and writing,
character and action, themselves become works of art.
But this cycle still glows in the process of fashioning.
We feel its vital heat radiating into our mortal world.
 CHAPTER IV
THE UNKNOWN DRAMATIC CYCLE. 1890-1895

THE young man of twenty-two, just liberated from

the walls of the Parisian seminary, fired with
the genius of music and with that of Shake-
speare's enthralling plays, had in Italy his first expe-
rience of the world as a sphere of freedom. He had
learned history from documents and syllabuses. Now
history looked at him with living eyes out of statues
and figures; the Italian cities, the centuries, seemed to
move as if on a stage under his impassioned gaze. Give
them but speech, these sublime memories, and history
would become poesy, the past would grow into a peopled
tragedy. During his first hours in the south he was
in a sublime intoxication. Not as historian but as poet
did he first see Rome and Florence.
"Here," he said to himself in youthful fervor, "here
is the greatness for which I have yearned. Here, at
least, it used to be, in the days of the Renaissance, when
these cathedrals grew heavenward amid the storms of
battle, and when Michelangelo and Raphael were adorn-
ing the walls of the Vatican, what time the popes were
no less mighty in spirit than the masters of art — for in
that epoch, after centuries of interment with the antique
72 ROMAIN HOLLAND
statues, the heroic spirit of ancient Greece had been re-
vived in a new Europe." His imagination conjured up
the superhuman figures of that earlier day; and of a
sudden, Shakespeare, the friend of his first youth, filled
his mind once more. Simultaneously, as I have already
recounted, witnessing a number of performances by Er-
nesto Rossi, he came to realize his own dramatic talent.
Not now, as of old, in the Clamecy loft, was he chiefly al-
lured bythe gentle feminine figures. The strongest ap-
peal, to his early manhood, was exercised by the fierce-
ness of the more powerful characters, by the penetrating
truth of a knowledge of mankind, by the stormy tumult
of the soul. In France, Shakespeare is hardly known at
all by stage presentation, and but very little in prose
translation. Rolland, however, now attained as intimate
an acquaintanceship with Shakespeare as had been pos-
sessed ahundred years earlier, almost at the same age,
by Goethe when he conceived his Oration on Shake-
speare. This new inspiration showed itself in a vig-
orous creative impulse. Rolland penned a series of
dramas dealing with the great figures of the past, work-
ing with the fervor of the beginner, and with that sense
of newly acquired mastery which was felt by the Ger-
mans of the Sturm und Drang era.
These plays remained unpublished, at first owing to
the disfavor of circumstances, but subsequently because
the author's ripening critical faculty made him with-
hold them from the world. The first, entitled Orsino,
was written at Rome in 1890. Next, in the halcyon
clime of Sicily, he composed Empedocles, uninfluenced
 THE UNKNOWN DRAMATIC CYCLE 73
1890-1895

by Holderlin's ambitious draft, of which Holland heard

first from Malwida von Meysenbug. In the same year,
1891, he wrote Gli Baglioni. His return to Paris did
not interrupt this outpouring, for in 1892 he wrote two
plays, Caligula, and Niobe. From his wedding jour-
ney to the beloved Italy in 1893 he returned with a new
Renaissance drama, Le siege de Mantoue. This is the
only one of the early plays which the author acknow-
ledges to-day, though by an unfortunate mischance the
manuscript has been lost. At length turning his atten-
tion to French history, he wrote Saint Louis (1893), the
first of his Tragedies de la foi. Next came Jeanne de
Piennes (1894), which remains unpublished. . . . Aert
(1895), the second of the Tragedies de la foi, was the
first of Rolland's plays to be staged. There now (1896-
1902) followed the four dramas of the Theatre de la
revolution. In 1900 he wrote La Montespan and Les
trois amoureuses.
Thus before the era of the more important works there
were composed no less than twelve dramas, equaling in
bulk the entire dramatic output of Schiller, Kleist, or
Hebbel. The first eight of these were never either
printed or staged. Except for the appreciation by his
confidant Malwida von Meysenbug in Der Lebens Abend
einer Idealistin (a connoisseur's tribute to their artistic
merits), not a word has ever been said about them.
With a single exception. One of the plays was read
on a classical occasion by one of the greatest French
actors of the day, but the reminiscence is a painful one.
74 ROMAIN ROLLAND

Gabriel Monod, who from being Rolland's teacher had

become his friend, noting Malwida von Meysenbug's en-
thusiasm, gave three of Rolland's pieces to Mounet-Sully,
who was delighted with them. The actor submitted them
to the Comedie Franchise, and in the reading committee
he fought desperately on behalf of the unknown, whose
dramatic talent was more obvious to him, the comedian,
than it was to the men of letters. Orsino and Gli Bag-
lioni were ruthlessly rejected, but Niobe was read to the
committee. This was a momentous incident in Rol-
land's life ; for the first time, fame seemed close at hand.
Mounet-Sully read the play. Rolland was present.
The reading took two hours, and for a further two min-
utes the young author's fate hung in the balance. Not
yet, however, was celebrity to come. The drama was
refused, to relapse into oblivion. It was not even ac-
corded the lesser grace of print; and of the dozen or
so dramatic works which the dauntless author penned
during the next decade, not one found its way on to the
boards of the national theater.
We know no more than the names of these early
works, and are unable to judge their worth. But when
we study the later plays we may deduce the conclusion
that in the earlier ones a premature flame, raging too
hotly, burned itself out. If the dramas which first ap-
peared in the press charm us by their maturity and con-
centration, they depend for these qualities upon the fate
which left their predecessors unknown. Their calm is
built upon the passion of those which were sacrificed
unborn; they owe their orderly structure to the heroic
 THE UNKNOWN DRAMATIC CYCLE 75
1890-1895

zeal of their martyred brethren. All true creation grows

out of the dark humus of rejected creations. Of none is
it more true than of Romain Rolland that his work blos-
soms upon the soil of renunciation.
 CHAPTER V
THE TRAGEDIES OF FAITH

Saint Louis. Aert. 1895-1898

r"" • ^WENTY years j r

after their first composition, re-
publishing the forgotten dramas of his youth
M under the title Les tragedies de la foi (1913),
Holland alluded in the preface to the tragical melan-
choly of the epoch in which they were composed. "At
that time," he writes, "we were much further from our
goal, and far more isolated." The elder brothers of
Jean Christophe and Olivier, "less robust though not less
fervent in the faith," had found it harder to defend their
beliefs, to maintain their idealism at its lofty level, than
did the youth of the new day, living in a stronger France,
a freer Europe. Twenty years earlier, the shadow of
defeat still lay athwart the land. These heroes of the
French spirit had been compelled, even within them-
selves, tofight the evil genius of the race, to combat
doubts as to the high destinies of their nation, to strug-
gle against the lassitude of the vanquished. Then was
to be heard the cry of a petty era lamenting its van-
ished greatness; it aroused no echo from the stage or
from the people; it wasted itself in the unresponsive

76
 THE TRAGEDIES OF FAITH 77

skies — and yet it was the expression of an undying faith

in life.
Closely akin to this ardor is the faith voiced by Hol-
land's dramatic cycle, though the plays deal with such
different epochs, and are so diverse in the range of their
ideas. He wishes to depict the "courants de foi," the
mysterious streams of faith, at a time when a flame of
spiritual enthusiasm is spreading through an entire na-
tion, when an idea is flashing from mind to mind, in-
volving unnumbered thousands in the storm of an illu-
sion; when the calm of the soul is suddenly ruffled
by heroic tumult; when the word, the faith, the ideal,
though ever invisible and unattainable, transfuses the
inert world and lifts it towards the stars. It matters
nothing in ultimate analysis what idea fires the souls
of men, whether the idea be that of Saint Louis for the
holy sepulcher and Christ's realm, or that of Aert for the
fatherland, or that of the Girondists for freedom. The
ostensible goal is a minor matter; the essence of such
movements is the wonder-working faith; it is this which
assembles a people for crusades into the east, which
summons thousands to death for the nation, which makes
leaders throw themselves willingly under the guillo-
tine. "Toute la vie est dans 1'essor," the reality of life
is found in its impetus, as Verhaeren says; that alone is
beautiful which is created in the enthusiasm of faith.
We are not to infer that these early heroes, born out of
due time, must have succumbed to discouragement since
they failed to reach their goal; one and all they had to
bow their souls to the influences of a petty time. That
 78 ROMAIN HOLLAND

is why Saint Louis died without seeing Jerusalem; why

Aert, fleeing from bondage, found only the eternal free-
dom of death; why the Girondists were trampled be-
neath the heels of the mob. These men had the true
faith, that faith which does not demand realization in
this world. In widely separated centuries, and against
different storms of time, they were the banner bearers of
the same ideal, whether they carried the cross or held
the sword, whether they wore the cap of liberty or the
visored helm. They were animated with the same en-
thusiasm for the unseen; they had the same enemy, call
it cowardice, call it poverty of spirit, call it the supine-
ness of a weary age. When destiny refused them the
externals of greatness, they created greatness in their
own souls. Amid unheroic environments they displayed
the perennial heroism of the undaunted will ; the triumph
of the spirit which, when animated with faith, can prove
victorious over time.
The significance, the lofty aim, of these early plays,
was their intention to recall to the minds of contempora-
ries the memory of forgotten brothers in the faith, to
arouse for the service of the spirit and not for the ends
of brute force that idealism which ever burgeons from
the imperishable seed of youth. Already we discern
the entire moral purport of Holland's later work, the
endeavor to change the world by the force of inspira-
tion. "Tout est bien qui exalte la vie." Everything
which exalts life is good, This is Holland's confession
of faith, as it is that of his own Olivier. Ardor alone
can create vital realities. There is no defeat over which
 THE TRAGEDIES OF FAITH 79

the will cannot triumph; there is no sorrow above which

a free spirit cannot soar. Who wills the unattainable,
is stronger than destiny; even his destruction in this mor-
tal world is none the less a mastery of fate. The tragedy
of his heroism kindles fresh enthusiasm, which seizes the
standard as it slips from his grasp, to raise it anew and
bear it onward through the ages.
 CHAPTER VI

SAINT LOUIS

1894

THIS epic of King Louis IX is a drama of religious

exaltation, born of the spirit of music, an adap-
tation of the Wagnerian idea of elucidating an-
cestral sagas in works of art. It was originally de-
signed as an opera. Holland actually composed an over-
ture to the work; but this, like his other musical compo-
sitions, remains unpublished. Subsequently he was
satisfied with lyrical treatment in place of music. We
find no touch of Shakespearean passion in these gentle
pictures. It is a heroic legend of the saints, in dramatic
form. The scenes remind us of a phrase of Flaubert's
in La legende de Saint Julien I'Hospitalier, in that they
are "written as they appear in the stained-glass windows
of our churches." The tints are delicate, like those of
the frescoes in the Pantheon, where Puvis de Chavannes
depicts another French saint, Sainte Genevieve watching
over Paris. The soft moonlight playing on the saint's
figure in the frescoes is identical with the light which in
Holland's drama shines like a halo of goodness round
the head of the pious king 80of France.
 SAINT LOUIS 81

The music of Parsifal seems to sound faintly through

the work. We trace the lineaments of Parsifal himself
in this monarch, to whom knowledge comes not through
sympathy but through goodness, and who finds the aptest
phrase to explain his own title to fame, saying: "Pour
comprendre les autres, il ne faut qu'aimer" — To under-
stand others, we need only love. His leading quality
is gentleness, but he has so much of it that the strong
grow weak before him; he has nothing but his faith, but
this faith builds mountains of action. He neither can
nor will lead his people to victory; but he makes his sub-
jects transcend themselves, transcend their own inertia
and the apparently futile venture of the crusade, to at-
tain faith. Thereby he gives the whole nation the great-
ness which ever springs from self-sacrifice. In Saint
Louis, Holland for the first time presents his favorite
type, that of the vanquished victor. The king never
reaches his goal, but "plus qu'il est ecrase par les choses
plus il semble les dominer davantage" — the more he
seems to be crushed by things, the more does he dominate
them. When, like Moses, he is forbidden to set eyes on
the promised land, when it proves to be his destiny "de
mourir vaincu," to die conquered, as he draws his last
breath on the mountain slope his soldiers at the summit,
catching sight of the city which is the goal of their aspira-
tions, raise an exultant shout. Louis knows that to one
who strives for the unattainable the world can never give
victory, but "il est beau lutter pour I'impossible quand
I'impossible est Dieu" — it is glorious to fight for the
unattainable when the unattainable is God. For the van-
82 ROMAIN HOLLAND

quished in such a struggle, the highest triumph is re-

served. He has stirred up the weak in soul to do a deed
whose rapture is denied to himself; from his own faith
he has created faith in others; from his own spirit has
issued the eternal spirit.
Holland's first published work exhales the atmosphere
of Christianity. Humility conquers force, faith con-
quers the world, love conquers hatred; these eternal
truths which have been incorporated in countless sayings
and writings from those of the primitive Christians down
to those of Tolstoi, are repeated once again by Holland
in the form of a legend of the saints. In his later works,
however, with a freer touch, he shows that the power of
faith is not tied to any particular creed. The symboli-
cal world, which is here used as a romanticist vehicle
in which to enwrap his own idealism, is replaced by the
environment of modern days. Thus we are taught that
from Saint Louis and the crusades it is but a step to our
own soul, if it desire "to be great and to defend great-
ness on earth."
 CHAPTER VII
AERT

1898

AERT was written a year later than Saint Louis;

more explicitly than the pious epic does it aim
at restoring faith and idealism to the disheart-
ened nation. Saint Louis is a heroic legend, a tender
reminiscence of former greatness; A ert is the tragedy of
the vanquished, and a passionate appeal to them to
awaken. The stage directions express this aim clearly:
"The scene is cast in an imaginary Holland of the seven-
teenth century. We see a people broken by defeat and,
which is much worse, debased thereby. The future pre-
sents itself as a period of slow decadence, whose antici-
pation definitively annuls the already exhausted energies.
. . . The moral and political humiliations of recent
years are the foundation of the troubles still in store."
Such is the environment in which Holland places Ae'rt,
the young prince, heir to vanished greatness. This Hol-
land is, of course, symbolical of the Third Republic.
Fruitless attempts are made, by the temptations of loose
living, by various artifices, by the instilling of doubt, to
break the captive's faith in83greatness, to undermine the
84 ROMAIN HOLLAND

one power that still sustains the debile body and the
suffering soul. The hypocrites of his entourage do their
utmost, with luxury, frivolity, and lies, to wean him from
what he considers his high calling, which is to prove him-
self worthy heir of a glorious past. He remains un-
shaken. His tutor, Maitre Trojanus (a forerunner of
Anatole France), all of whose qualities, kindliness, skep-
ticism, energy, and wisdom, are but lukewarm, would
like to make a Marcus Aurelius of his ardent pupil, one
who thinks and renounces rather than one who acts. The
lad proudly answers: "I pay due reverence to ideas,
but I recognize something higher than they, moral gran-
deur." Ina laodicean age, he yearns for action.
But action is force, struggle is blood. His gentle
spirit desires peace; his moral will craves for the right.
The youth has within him both a Hamlet and a Saint-
Just, both a vacillator and a zealot. He is a wraithlike
double of Olivier, already able to reckon up all val-
ues. The goal of Aert's youthful passion is still inde-
terminate; this passion is nothing but a flame which
wastes itself in words and aspirations. He does not
make the deed come at his beckoning; but the deed takes
possession of him, dragging the weakling down with it
into the depths whence there is no other issue than by
death. From degradation he finds a last rescue, a path
to moral greatness, his own deed, done for the sake of
all. Surrounded by the scornful victors, calling to him
"Too late," he answers proudly, "Not too late to be free,"
and plunges headlong out of life.
This romanticist play is a piece of tragical symbolism.
 AERT 85

It reminds us a little of another youthful composition,

the work of a poet who has now attained fame. I refer
to Fritz von Unruh's Die Offiziere, in which the torment
of enforced inactivity and repressed heroic will gives rise
to warlike impulses as a means of spiritual enfranchise-
ment. Like Unruh's hero, Ae'rt in his outcry proclaims
the torpor of his companions, voices his oppression amid
the sultry and stagnant atmosphere of a time devoid of
faith. Encompassed by a gray materialism, during the
years when Zola and Mirbeau were at the zenith of their
fame, the lonely Holland was hoisting the flag of the ideal
over a humiliated land.
 CHAPTER VIII
ATTEMPT TO REGENERATE THE FRENCH STAGE

WITHutterewhole -souled faith the young poet

d his first dramatic appeals in the
heroic form, being mindful of Schiller's
saying that fortunate epochs could devote themselves to
the service of beauty, whereas in times of weakness it
was necessary to lean upon the examples of past heroism.
Holland had issued to his nation a summons to greatness.
There was no answer. His conviction that a new im-
petus was indispensable remaining unshaken, Holland
looked for the cause of this lack of response. He rightly
discerned it, not in his own work, but in the refractori-
ness of the age. Tolstoi, in his books and in the won-
derful letter to Holland, had been the first to make the
young man realize the sterility of bourgeois art. Above
all in the drama, its most sensual form of expression, that
art had lost touch with the moral and emotional forces of
life. A clique of busy playwrights had monopolized the
Parisian stage. Their eternal theme was adultery, in
its manifold variations. They depicted petty erotic con-
flicts, but never dealt with a universally human ethical
problem. The audiences, badly counseled by the press,
86
which deliberately fostered the public's intellectual
 THE FRENCH STAGE 87
lethargy, did not ask to be morally awakened, but merely
to be amused and pleased. The theater was anything in
the world other than "the moral institution" demanded
by Schiller and championed by d'Alembert. No breath
of passion found its way from such dramatic art as this
into the heart of the nation; there was nothing but spin-
drift scattered over the surface by the breeze. A great
gulf was fixed between this witty and sensuous amuse-
ment, and the genuinely creative and receptive energies
of France.
Holland, led by Tolstoi and accompanied by enthusi-
astic friends, realized the moral dangers of the situation.
He perceived that dramatic art is worthless and destruc-
tive when it lives a life remote from the people. Uncon-
sciously inAert he had heralded what he now formu-
lated as a definite principle, that the people will be the
first to understand genuinely heroic problems. The
simple craftsman Claes in that play is the only member
of the captive prince's circle who revolts against tepid
submission, who burns at the disgrace inflicted on his
fatherland. In other artistic forms than the drama, the
titanic forces surging up from the depths of the people
had already been recognized. Zola and the naturalists
had depicted the tragical beauty of the proletariat; Millet
and Meunier had given pictorial and sculptural repre-
sentations ofproletarians; socialism had unleashed the
religious might of the collective consciousness. The
theater alone, vehicle for the most direct working of art
upon the common people, had been captured by the bour-
geoisie, its tremendous possibilities for promoting a
88 ROMAIN HOLLAND

moral renascence being thereby cut off. Unceasingly

did the drama practice the in-and-in breeding of sexual
problems. In its pursuit of erotic trifles, it had over-
looked the new social ideas, the most fundamental of
modern times. It was in danger of decay because it no
longer thrust its roots into the permanent subsoil of the
nation. The anaemia of dramatic art, as Holland recog-
nized, could be cured only by intimate association with
the life of the people. The eff eminateness of the French
drama must be replaced by virility through vital contact
with the masses. "Seul la seve populaire peut lui
rendre la vie et la sante." If the theater aspires to be
national, it must not merely minister to the luxury of the
upper ten thousand. It must become the moral nutri-
ment of the common people, and must draw fertility from
the folk-soul.
Holland's work during the next few years was an en-
deavor to provide such a theater for the people. A few
young men without influence or authority, strong only in
the ardor and sincerity of their youthfulness, tried to
bring this lofty idea to fruition, despite the utter indif-
ference of the metropolis, and in defiance of the veiled
hostility of the press. In their "Revue dramatique"
they published manifestoes. They sought for actors,
stages, and helpers. They wrote plays, formed commit-
tees, sent dispatches to ministers of state. In their en-
deavor tobridge the chasm between the bourgeois theater
and the nation, they wrought with the fanatical zeal of
the leaders of forlorn hopes. Holland was their chief.
His manifesto, Le theatre du peuple, and his Theatre de
 THE FRENCH STAGE 89

la revolution, are enduring monuments of an attempt

which temporarily ended in defeat, but which, like all
his defeats, has been transmuted, humanly and artisti-
cally, into a moral triumph.
 CHAPTER IX
AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE

' 'FTHIHE old era is finished; the new era is begin-

ning." Rolland, writing in the "Revue dra-
M matique" in 1900, opened his appeal with
these words by Schiller. The summons was two-fold,
to the writers and to the people, that they should consti-
tute a new unity, should form a people's theater. The
stage and the plays were to belong to the people. Since
the forces of the people are eternal and unalterable, art
must accommodate itself to the people, not the people to
art. This union must be perfected in the creative depths.
It must not be a casual intimacy, but a permeation, a
genetic wedding of souls. The people requires its own
art, its own drama. As Tolstoi phrased it, the people
must be the ultimate touchstone of all values. Its pow-
erful, mystical, eternally religious energy of inspiration,
must become more affirmative and stronger, so that art,
which in its bourgeois associations has grown morbid and
wan, can draw new vigor from the vigor of the people.
To this end it is essential that the people should no
longer be a chance audience, transiently patronized by
friendly managers and actors. The popular perform-
ances of the great theaters, 90such as have been customary
 AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 91

in Paris since the issue of Napoleon's decree on the sub-

ject, do not suffice. Valueless also, in Holland's view,
are the attempts made from time to time by the Comedie
Frangaise to present to the workers the plays of such court
poets as Corneille and Racine. The people do not want
caviare, but wholesome fare. For the nourishment of
their indestructible idealism they need an art of their
own, a theater of their own, and, above all, works
adapted to their sensibilities and to their intellectual
tastes. When they come to the theater, they must not be
made to feel that they are tolerated guests in a world of
unfamiliar ideas. In the art that is presented to them
they must be able to recognize the mainspring of their
own energies.
More appropriate, in Holland's opinion, are the at-
tempts which have been made by isolated individuals like
Maurice Pottecher in Bussang (Vosges) to provide a
"theatre du peuple," presenting to restricted audiences
pieces easily understood. But such endeavors touch
small circles only. The chasm in the gigantic metropolis
between the stage and the real population remains un-
bridged. With the best will in the world, the twenty or
thirty special representations are witnessed by no more
than an infinitesimal proportion of the population.
They do not signify a spiritual union, or promote a new
moral impetus. Dramatic art has no permanent influ-
ence on the masses; and the masses, in their turn, have
no influence on dramatic art. Though, in another liter-
ary sphere, Zola, Charles Louis Philippe, and Maupas-
sant, began long ago to draw fertile inspiration from
 92 ROMAIN HOLLAND
proletarian idealism, the drama has remained sterile and
antipopular.
The people, therefore, must have its own theater.
When this has been achieved, what shall we offer to the
popular audiences? Holland makes a brief survey of
world literature. The result is appalling. What can
the workers care for the classical pieces of the French
drama? Corneille and Racine, with their decorous emo-
tion, are alien to him; the subtleties of Moliere are
barely comprehensible. The tragedies of classical an-
tiquity, the writings of the Greek dramatists, would bore
the workers; Hugo's romanticism would repel, despite
the author's healthy instinct for reality. Shakespeare,
the universally human, is more akin to the folk-mind, but
his plays must be adapted to fit them for popular presen-
tation, and thereby they are falsified. Schiller, with Die
Rduber and Wilhelm Tell, might be expected to arouse
enthusiasm; but Schiller, like Kleist with Der Prinz von
Homburg, is, for -nationalist reasons, somewhat uncon-
genial to the Parisians. Tolstoi's The Dominion of
Darkness and Hauptmann's Die Weber would be compre-
hensible enough, but their matter would prove somewhat
depressing. While well calculated to stir the consciences
of the guilty, among the people they would arouse feel-
ings of despair rather than of hope. Anzengruber, a
genuine folk-poet, is too distinctively Viennese in his
topics. Wagner, whose Die Meistersinger Rolland re-
gards as the climax of universally comprehensible and
elevating art, cannot be presented without the aid of
music.
 AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 93

However far he looks back into the past, Holland can

find no answer to his question. But he is not easily dis-
couraged. Tohim disappointment is but a spur to fresh
effort. If there are as yet no plays for the people's
theater, it is the sacred duty of the new generation to
provide what is lacking. The manifesto ends with a
jubilant appeal: "Tout est a dire! Tout est a faire!
A 1'oeuvre!" In the beginning was the deed.
 CHAPTER X
THE PROGRAM

"W" "W "THAT kind of plays do the people want?

% /\ I It wants "good" plays, in the sense in which
y y the word "good" is used by Tolstoi when he
speaks of "good books." It wants plays which are easy
to understand without being commonplace; those which
stimulate faith without leading the spirit astray; those
which appeal, not to sensuality, not to the love of sight-
seeing, but to the powerful idealistic instincts of the
masses. These plays must not treat of minor conflicts;
but, in the spirit of the antique tragedies, they must dis-
play man in the struggle with elemental forces, man as
subject to heroic destiny. "Let us away with compli-
cated psychologies, with subtle innuendoes, with obscure
symbolisms, with the art of drawing-rooms and alcoves."
Art for the people must be monumental. Though the
people desires truth, it must not be delivered over to
naturalism, for art which makes the masses aware of their
own misery will never kindle the sacred flame of enthusi-
asm, but only the insensate passion of anger. If, next
day, the workers are to resume their daily tasks with a
heightened and more cheerful confidence, they need a
tonic. Thus the evening must have been a source of
94
 THE PROGRAM 95

energy, but must at the same time have sharpened the

intelligence. Undoubtedly the drama should display
the people to the people, not however in the proletarian
dullness of narrow dwellings, but on the pinnacles of the
past. Rolland therefore opines, following to a large
extent in Schiller's footsteps, that the people's theater
must be historical in scope. The populace must not
merely make its own acquaintance on the stage, but must
be brought to admire its own past. Here we see the
motif to which Rolland continually returns, the need for
arousing a passionate aspiration towards greatness. In
its suffering, the people must learn to regain delight in
its own self.
With marvelous vividness does the imaginative his-
torian display the epic significance of history. The
forces of the past are sacred by reason of the spiritual
energy which is part of every great movement. Reason-
ing persons can hardly fail to be revolted when they ob-
serve the unwarranted amount of space allotted to anec-
dotes, accessories, the trifles of history, at the expense
of its living soul. The power of the past must be awak-
ened; the will to action must be steeled. Those who live
to-day must learn greatness from their fathers and fore-
fathers. "History can teach people to get outside them-
selves, to read in the souls of others. We discern our-
selves in the past, in a mingling of like characters and
differing lineaments, with errors and vices which we can
avoid. But precisely because history depicts the muta-
ble, does it give us a better knowledge of the unchang-

ing."
96 ROMAIN HOLLAND
What, he goes on to ask, have French dramatists hith-
erto brought the people out of the past? The burlesque
figure of Cyrano; the gracefully sentimental personality
of the duke of Reichstadt; the artificial conception of
Madame Sans-Gene! "Tout est a faire! Tout est a
dire!" The land of dramatic art still lies fallow. "For
France, national epopee is quite a new thing. Our play-
wrights have neglected the drama of the French people,
although that people has been perhaps, since the days of
Rome, the most heroic in the world. Europe's heart was
beating in the kings, the thinkers, the revolutionists of
France. And great as this nation has been in all do-
mains ofthe spirit, its greatness has been shown above all
in the field of action. Herein lay its most sublime crea-
tion; here was its poem, its drama, its epos. France did
what others dreamed of doing. France wrote no Iliads,
but lived a dozen. The heroes of France wrought more
splendidly than the poets. No Shakespeare sang their
deeds; but Danton on the scaffold was the spirit of
Shakespeare personified. The life of France has
touched the loftiest summits of joy; it has plumbed the
deepest abysses of sorrow. It has been a wonderful
'comedie humaine,' a series of dramas ; each of its epochs
a new poem." This past must be recalled to life;
French historical drama must restore it to the French
people. "The spirit which soars above the centuries,
will thus soar for centuries to come. If we would en-
gender strong souls, we must nourish them with the ener-
gies of the world." Rolland now expands the French
ode into a European ode. "The world must be our
 THE PROGRAM 97

theme, for a nation is too small." One hundred and

twenty years earlier, Schiller had said: "I write as a
citizen of the world. Early did I exchange my father-
land for mankind." Rolland is fired by Goethe's words:
"National literature now means very little ; the epoch of
world literature is at hand." He utters the following
appeal: "Let us make Goethe's prophesy a living real-
ity! Itis our task to teach the French to look upon their
national history as a wellspring of popular art; but on no
account should we exclude the sagas of other nations.
Though it is doubtless our first duty to make the most of
the treasures we have ourselves inherited, we must none
the less find room on our stage for the great deeds of all
races. Just as Anacharsis Cloots and Thomas Paine
were chosen members of the Convention ; just as Schiller,
Klopstock, Washington, Priestley, Bentham, Pestalozzi,
and Kosciuszko, are the heroes of our world ; so should
we inaugurate in Paris the epopee of the European

people!"
Thus did Rolland's manifesto, passing far beyond the
limits of the stage, become at its close his first appeal to
Europe. Uttered by a solitary voice, it remained for the
time unheeded and void of effect. Nevertheless the con-
fession offaith had been spoken; it was indestructible;
it could never pass away. Jean Christophe had pro-
claimed his message to the world.
 CHAPTER XI
THE CREATIVE ARTIST

THE task is set. Who shall accomplish it? Ro-

main Rolland answers by putting his hand to
the work. The hero in him shrinks from no de-
feat; the youth in him dreads no difficulty. An epic of
the French people is to be written. He does not hesitate
to lay the foundations, though environed by the silence
and indifference of the metropolis. As always, the
impetus that drives him is moral rather than artistic.
He has a sense of personal responsibility for an entire
nation. By such productive, by such heroic idealism,
alone, and not by a purely theoretical idealism, can ideal-
ism be engendered.
The theme is easy to find. Rolland turns to the great-
est moment of French history, to the Revolution. He
responds to the appeal of his revolutionary forefathers.
On the 27th of Floreal, 1794, the Committee of Public
Safety issued an invocation to authors "to glorify the
chief happenings of the French revolution; to compose
republican dramas; to hand down to posterity the great
epochs of the French renascence; to inspire history with
the firmness of character appropriate to the annals of a
great nation defending its freedom against the onslaught

98
 THE CREATIVE ARTIST 99

of all the tyrants of Europe." On the llth of Messidor,

the Committee asked young authors "boldly to recognize
the whole magnitude of the undertaking, and to avoid
the easy and well-trodden paths of mediocrity." The
signatories of these decrees, Danton, Robespierre, Car-
not, and Couthon, have now become national figures,
legendary heroes, monuments in public places. Where
restrictions were imposed on poetic inspiration by undue
proximity to the subject, there is now room for the
imagination to expand, seeing that this history of the
period is remote enough to give free play to the tragic
muse. The documents just quoted issue a summons to
the poet and the historian in Rolland ; but the same chal-
lenge rings from within as a personal heritage. Boni-
ard, one of his great-grandfathers on the paternal side,
took part in the revolutionary struggle as "an apostle of
liberty," and described in his diary the storming of the
Bastille. More than half a century later, another rela-
tive was fatally stabbed in Clamecy during a rising
against the coup d'etat. The blood of revolutionary
zealots runs in Rolland's veins, no less than the blood of
religious devotees. A century after 1792, in the fervor
of commemoration, he reconstructed the great figures of
that glorious past. The theater in which the "French
Iliads" were to be staged did not yet exist; no one had
hitherto recognized Rolland as a literary force; actors
and audience were alike lacking. Of all the requisites
for the new creation, there existed solely his own faith
and his own will. Building upon faith alone, he began
to write Le theatre de la revolution.
 CHAPTER XII
THE DRAMA OF THE REVOLUTION

1898-1902

PLANNING this "Iliad of the French People" for

the people's theater, Holland designed it as a
decalogy, as a time sequence of ten dramas
somewhat after the manner of Shakespeare's histories.
"I wished," he writes in the 1909 preface to Le theatre
de la revolution, "in the totality of this work to exhibit
as it were the drama of a convulsion of nature, to depict a
social storm from the moment when the first waves began
to rise above the surface of the ocean down to the mo-
ment when calm spread once more over the face of the
waters." No by-play, no anecdotal trifling, was to miti-
gate the mighty rhythm of the primitive forces. "My
leading aim was to purify the course of events, as far as
might be, from all romanticist intrigue, which would
serve only to encumber and belittle the movement.
Above all I desired to throw light upon the great politi-
cal and social interests on behalf of which mankind has
been fighting for a hundred years." It is obvious that
the work of Schiller is closely akin to the idealistic style
100 ing Holland's technique
of this people's theater. Compar
 THE DRAMA OF THE REVOLUTION 101

with Schiller's, we may say that Rolland was thinking of

a Don Carlos without the Eboli episodes, of a Wallen-
stein without the Thekla sentimentalities. He wished to
show the people the sublimities of history, not to enter-
tain the audience with anecdotes of popular heroes.
Thus conceived as a dramatic cycle, it was simultane-
ously, from the musician's outlook, to be a symphony,
an "Eroica." A prelude was to introduce the whole, a
pastoral in the style of the "fetes galantes." We are at
the Trianon, watching the lighthearted unconcern of the
ancien regime; we are shown powdered and patched
ladies, amorous cavaliers, dallying and chattering. The
storm is approaching, but no one heeds it. Once again
the age of gallantry smiles ; the setting sun of the Grand
Monarque seems to shine once more on the fading tints
in the garden of Versailles.
Le 14 Juillet is the flourish of trumpets; it marks the
opening of the storm. Danton is the critical climax; in
the hour of victory comes the beginning of moral defeat,
the fratricidal struggle. A Robespierre was to introduce
the declining phase. Le triomphe de la raison shows the
disintegration of the Revolution in the provinces; Les
loups depicts a like decomposition in the army. Be-
tween two of the heroic plays, the author proposed to
insert a love drama, describing the fate of Louvet, the
Girondist. Wishing to visit his beloved in Paris, he
leaves his hiding-place in Gascony, and is the only one
to escape the death that overtakes his friends, who are
all guillotined or torn to pieces by the wolves as they
flee. The figures of Marat, Saint- Just, and Adam Lux,
102 ROMAIN ROLLAND

which are merely touched on in the extant plays, were

to receive detailed treatment in the dramas that remain
unwritten. Doubtless, too, the figure of Napoleon would
have towered above the dying Revolution.
Opening with a musical and lyrical prelude, this
symphonic composition was to end with a postlude.
After the great storm, castaways from the shipwreck were
to foregather in Switzerland, near Soleure. Royalists
and regicides, Girondists and Montagnards, were to ex-
change reminiscences; a love episode between two of
their children was to lend an idyllic touch to the after-
math of the European storm. Fragments only of this
great design have been carried to completion, comprising
the four dramas, Le 14 Juillet, Danton, Les loups, and
Le triomphe de la raison. When these plays had been
written, Rolland abandoned the scheme, to which the
people, like the literary world and the stage, had given no
encouragement. For more than a decade these tragedies
have been forgotten. To-day, perchance, the awakening
impulses of an age becoming aware of its own lineaments
in the prophetic image of a world convulsion, may arouse
in the author an impulse to complete what was so magnifi-
cently begun.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY

1902

OF the four completed revolutionary dramas, Le

14 Juillet stands first in point of historic time.
Here we see the Revolution as one of the ele-
ments of nature. No conscious thought has formed it;
no leader has guided it. Like thunder from a clear sky
comes the aimless discharge of the tensions that have ac-
cumulated among the people. The thunderbolt strikes
the Bastille; the lightning flash illumines the soul of the
entire nation. This piece has no heroes, for the hero
of the play is the multitude. "Individuals are merged
in the ocean of the people," writes Rolland in the preface.
"He who limns a storm at sea, need not paint the details
of every wave ; he must show the unchained forces of the
ocean. Meticulous precision is a minor matter com-
pared with the impassioned truth of the whole." In
actual fact, this drama is all tumultuous movement; in-
dividuals rush across the stage like figures on the cine-
matographic screen; the storming of the Bastille is not
the outcome of a reasoned purpose, but of an overwhelm-
ing, an ecstatic impulse.
103
104 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Le 14 Juillet, therefore, is not properly speaking a

drama, and does not really seek to be anything of the
kind. Consciously or unconsciously, Holland aimed at
creating one of those "fetes populaires" which the Con-
vention had encouraged, a people's festival with music
and dancing, an epinikion, a triumphal ode. His work,
therefore, is not suitable for the artificial environment of
the boards, and should rather be played under the free
heaven. Opening symphonically, it closes in exultant
choruses for which the author gives definite directions to
the composer. "The music must be, as it were, the back-
ground of a fresco. It must make manifest the heroical
significance of the festival; it must fill in pauses as they
can never be adequately filled in by a crowd of super-
numeraries, for these, however much noise they make,
fail to sustain the illusion of real life. This music
should be inspired by that of Beethoven, which more
powerfully than any other reflects the enthusiasms of the
Revolution. Above all, it must breathe an ardent faith.
No composer will effect anything great in this vein unless
he be personally inspired by the soul of the people,
unless he himself feel the burning passion that is here

portrayed."
Rolland wishes to create an atmosphere of ecstatic
rapture. Not by dramatic excitement, but by its oppo-
site. The theater is to be forgotten ; the multitude in the
audience is to become spiritually at one with its image on
the stage. In the last scene, when the phrases are
directly addressed to the audience, when the stormers of
the Bastille appeal to their hearers on behalf of the im-
 THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY 105

perishable victory which leads men to break the yoke of

oppression and to win brotherhood, this idea must not be
a mere echo from the members of the audience, but must
surge up spontaneously in their own hearts. The cry
"tous freres" must be a double chorus of actors and
spectators, for the latter, part of the "courant de foi,"
must share the intoxication of joy. The spark from their
own past must rekindle in the hearts of to-day. It is
manifest that words alone will not suffice to produce this
effect. Hence Holland wishes to superadd the higher
spell of music, the undying goddess of pure ecstasy.
The audience of which he dreamed was not forthcom-
ing; nor until twenty years had elapsed was he to find
Doyen, the musician who was almost competent to fulfill
his demands. The representation in the Gemier Theater
on March 21, 1902, wasted itself in the void. His mes-
sage never reached the people to whose ear it had been so
vehemently addressed. Without an echo, almost piti-
fully, was this ode of joy drowned in the roar of the
great city, which had forgotten the deeds of the past, and
which failed to understand its own kinship to Holland,
the man who was recalling those deeds to memory.
 CHAPTER XIV
DANTON

1900

DANTON deals with a decisive moment of the

Revolution, the waterparting between the ascent
and the decline. What the masses had created
as elemental forces, were now being turned to personal
advantage by individuals, by ambitious leaders. Every
spiritual movement, and above all every revolution or
reformation, knows this tragical instant of victory, when
power passes into the hands of the few; when moral unity
is broken in sunder by the conflict between political aims;
when the masses, who in an impetuous onrush have
secured freedom, blindly follow demagogues inspired
solely by self-interest. It seems to be an inevitable
sequel of success in such cases, that the nobler should
stand aside in disillusionment, that the idealists should
hold aloof while the self-seeking triumph. At that very
time, in the Dreyfus affair, Rolland had witnessed simi-
lar happenings. He realized that the genuine strength
of an idea subsists only during its non-fulfilment. Its
true power is in the hands of those who are not victori-
ous ;those to whom the ideal hing, success noth-
100 is everyt
 DANTON 107

ing. Victory brings power, and power is just to itself

alone.
The play, therefore, is no longer a drama of the
Revolution; it is the drama of the great revolutionist.
Mystical power crystallizes in the form of human charac-
ters. Resoluteness becomes contentiousness. In the
very intoxication of victory, in the queasy atmosphere of
the blood-stained field, begins the new struggle among the
pretorians for the empire they have conquered. There
is struggle between ideas; struggle between personalities;
struggle between temperaments; struggle between persons
of different social origin. Now that they are no longer
united as comrades by the compulsion of imminent dan-
ger, they recognize their mutual incompatibilities. The
revolutionary crisis conies in the hour of triumph. The
hostile armies have been defeated; the royalists and the
Girondists have been crushed and scattered. Now there
arises in the Convention a battle of all against all. The
characters are admirably delineated. Danton is the
good giant, sanguine, warm, and human, a hurricane in
his passions but with no love of fighting for fighting's
sake. He has dreamed of the Revolution as bringing
joy to mankind, and now sees that it has culminated in a
new tyranny. He is sickened by bloodshed, and he
detests the butcher's work of the guillotine, just as Christ
would have loathed the Inquisition claiming to represent
the spirit of his teaching. He is filled with horror at his
fellows. "Je suis soule des hommes. Je les vomis." —
I am surfeited with men. I spue them out of my mouth.
— He longs for a frank naturalness, for an unsophisti-
108 ROMAIN HOLLAND

cated natural life. Now that the danger to the republic

is over, his passion has cooled; his love goes out to
woman, to the people, to happiness; he wishes others to
love him. His revolutionary fervor has been the out-
come of an impulse towards freedom and justice; hence
he is beloved by the masses, who recognize in him the
instinct which led them to storm the Bastille, the same
scorn of consequence, the same marrow as their own.
Robespierre is uncongenial to them. He is too frigid, he
is too much the lawyer, to enlist their sympathies. But
his doctrinaire fanaticism, his far from ignoble ambition,
give him a terrible power which makes him forge his
way onwards when Danton with his cheerful love of life
has ceased to strive. Whilst Danton becomes every day
more and more nauseated by politics, the concentrated
energy of Robespierre's frigid temperament strikes ever
closer towards the centralized control of power. Like
his friend Saint- Just — the zealot of virtue, the blood-
thirsty apostle of justice, the stubborn papist or calvinist
— Robespierre can no longer see human beings, who for
him are now hidden behind the theories, the laws, and the
dogmas of the new religion. Not for him, as for Dan-
ton, the goal of a happy and free humanity. What he
desires is that men shall be virtuous as the slaves of pre-
scribed formulas. The collision between Danton and
Robespierre upon the topmost summit of victory is in
ultimate analysis the collision between freedom and law,
between the elasticity of life and the rigidity of concepts.
Danton is overthrown. He is too indolent, too heedless,
too human in his defense. But even as he falls it is plain
 DANTON 109

that he will drag his opponent after him adown the

precipice.
In the composition of this tragedy Holland shows him-
self to be wholly the dramatist. Lyricism has disap-
peared; emotion has vanished amid the rush of events;
the conflict arises from the liberation of human energy,
from the clash of feelings and of personalities. In Le
14 Juillet the masses had played the principal part, but
in this new phase of the Revolution they have become
mere spectators once more. Their will, which had been
concentrated during a brief hour of enthusiasm, has been
broken into fragments, so that they are blown before
every breath of oratory. The ardors of the Revolution
are dissipated in intrigues. It is not the heroic instinct
of the people which now dominates the situation, but
the authoritarian and yet indecisive spirit of the intel-
lectuals. Whilst in Le 14 Juillet Rolland exhibits to
his nation the greatness of its powers; in Danton he
depicts the danger of its all too prompt relapse into
passivity, the peril that ever follows hard upon the heels
of victory. From this outlook, therefore, Danton like-
wise is a call to action, an energizing elixir. Thus did
Jaures characterize it, Jaures who himself resembled
Danton in his power of oratory, introducing the work
when it was staged at the Theatre Civique on December
20, 1900 — a performance forgotten in twenty-four
hours, like all Rolland's early efforts.
 CHAPTER XV
THE TRIUMPH OF REASON

1899

LE triomphe de la raison is no more than a frag-

ment of the great fresco. But it is inspired
with the central thought round which Holland's
ideas turn. In it for the first time there is a complete
exposition of the dialectic of defeat — the passionate
advocacy of the vanquished, the transformation of actual
overthrow into spiritual triumph. This thought, first
conceived in his childhood and reinforced by all his ex-
perience, forms the kernel of the author's moral sensi-
bility. The Girondists have been defeated, and are de-
fending themselves in a fortress against the sansculottes.
The royalists, aided by the English, wish to rescue them.
Their ideal, the freedom of the spirit and the freedom
of the fatherland, has been destroyed by the Revolution ;
their foes are Frenchmen. But the royalists who would
help them are likewise their enemies; the English are
their country's foes. Hence arises a conflict of con-
science which is powerfully portrayed. Are they to be
faithless to their ideal, or to betray their country? Are
they to be citizens of the 110 spirit or citizens of France?
 THE TRIUMPH OF REASON 111

Are they to be true to themselves or true to the nation?

Such is the fateful decision with which they are con-
fronted. They choose death, for they know that their
ideal is immortal, that the freedom of a nation is but the
reflection of an inner freedom which no foe can destroy.
For the first time, in this play, Rolland proclaims his
hostility to victory. Faber proudly declares: "We
have saved our faith from a victory which would have
disgraced us, from one wherein the conqueror is the first
victim. In our unsullied defeat, that faith looms more
richly and gloriously than before." Lux, the German
revolutionist, proclaims the gospel of inner freedom in
the words: "All victory is evil, whereas all defeat is
good in so far as it is the outcome of free choice."
Hugot says : "I have outstripped victory, and that is my
victory." These men of noble mind who perish, know
that they die alone; they do not look towards a future
success; they put no trust in the masses, for they are
aware that in the higher sense of the term freedom it is a
thing which the multitude can never understand, that the
people always misconceives the best. "The people al-
ways dreads those who form an elite, for these bear
torches. Would that the fire might scorch the people!"
In the end, the only home of these Girondists is the ideal;
their domain is an ideal freedom; their world is the fu-
ture. They have saved their country from the despots;
now they had to defend it once again against the mob lust-
ing for dominion and revenge, against those who care
no more for freedom than the despots cared. Design-
edly, the rigid nationalists, those who demand that a
 112 ROMAIN HOLLAND

man shall sacrifice everything for his country, shall sacri-

fice his convictions, liberty, reason itself, designedly I
say are these monomaniacs of patriotism typified in the
plebeian figure of Haubourdin. This sansculotte knows
only two kinds of men, "traitors" and "patriots," thus
rending the world in twain in his bigotry. It is true that
the vigor of his brutal partisanship brings victory. But
the very force that makes it possible to save a people
against a world in arms, is at the same time a force which
destroys that people's most gracious blossoms.
The drama is the opening of an ode to the free man,
to the hero of the spirit, the only hero whose heroism
Holland acknowledges. The conception, which had
been merely outlined in Aert, begins here to take more
definite shape. Adam Lux, a member of the Mainz
revolutionary club, who, animated by the fire of enthusi-
asm, has made his way to France that he may live for
freedom (and that he may be led in pursuit of freedom
to the guillotine), this first martyr to idealism, is the
first messenger from the land of Jean Christophe. The
struggle of the free man for the undying fatherland which
is above and beyond the land of his birth, has begun.
This is the struggle wherein the vanquished is ever the
victor, and wherein he is the strongest who fights alone.
 CHAPTER XVI
THE WOLVES

1898

IN Le triomphe de la raison, men to whom consci-

ence is supreme were confronted with a vital deci-
sion. They had to choose between their country
and freedom, between the intrests of the nation and
those of the supranational spirit. Les loups embodies a
variation of the same theme. Here the choice has to be
made between the fatherland and justice.
The subject has already been mooted in Danton.
Robespierre and his henchmen decide upon the execution
of Danton. They demand his immediate arrest and
condemnation. Saint-Just, passionately opposed to
Danton, makes no objection to the prosecution, but in-
sists that all must be done in due form of law. Robes-
pierre, aware that delay will give the victory to Danton,
wishes the law to be infringed. His country is worth
more to him than the law. "Vaincre a tout prix" —
conquer at any cost — calls one. "When the country is
in danger, it matters nothing that one man should be
illegally condemned," cries113 another. Saint-Just bows
 114 ROMAIN HOLLAND

before the argument, sacrificing honor to expediency,

the law to his fatherland.
In Les loups, we have the obverse of the same tragedy.
Here is depicted a man who would rather sacrifice him-
self than the law. One who holds with Faber in Le
triomphe de la raison that a single injustice makes the
whole world unjust; one to whom, as to Hugot, the other
hero in the same play, it seems indifferent whether jus-
tice be victorious or be defeated, so long as justice does
not give up the struggle. Teulier, the man of learning,
knows that his enemy d'Oyron has been unjustly accused
of treachery. Though he realizes that the case is hope-
less and that he is wasting his pains, he undertakes to de-
fend d'Oyron against the patriotic savagery of the revo-
lutionary soldiers, to whom victory is the only argument.
Adopting as his motto the old saying, "fiat justitia, pereat
mundus," facing open-eyed all the dangers this involves,
he would rather repudiate life than the leadings of the
spirit. "A soul which has seen truth and seeks to deny
truth, destroys itself." But the others are of tougher
fiber, and think only of success in arms. "Let my name
be besmirched, provided only my country is saved," is
Quesnel's answer to Teulier. Patriotism, the faith of
the masses, triumphs over the heroism of faith in the in-
visible justice.
This tragedy of a conflict recurring throughout the
ages, one which every individual has forced upon him in
wartime through the need for choosing between his re-
sponsibilities as a free moral agent and as an obedient
 THE WOLVES 115

citizen of the state, was the reflection of the actual hap-

penings during the days when it was written. In Les
loups, the Dreyfus affair is emblematically presented in
masterly fashion. Dreyfus the Jew is typified by an
aristocrat, the member of a suspect and detested social
stratum. Picquart, the defender of Dreyfus, is Teulier.
The aristocrat's enemies represent the French general
headquarters staif, who would rather perpetuate an in-
justice once committed than allow the honor of the
army to be tarnished or confidence in the army to be
undermined. Upon a narrow stage, and yet with ef-
fective pictorial force, in this tragedy of army life was
compressed the whole of the history which was agitating
France from the presidential palace down to the hum-
blest working-class dwelling. The performance at the
Theatre de FOeuvre on May 18, 1898, was from first to
last a political demonstration. Zola, Scheurer-Kestner,
Peguy, and Picquart, the defenders of the innocent man,
all the chief figures in the world-famous trial, were for
two hours spectators of the dramatic symbolization of
their own deeds. Holland had grasped and extracted the
moral essence of the Dreyfus affair, which had in fact
become a purifying process for the whole French nation.
Leaving history, the author had made his first venture
into the field of contemporary actuality. But he had
done this only, in accordance with the method he has
followed ever since, that he might disclose the eternal
elements in the temporal, and defend freedom of opinion
against mob infatuation. He was on this occasion what
116 ROMAIN HOLLAND

he has always remained, the advocate of that heroism

which knows one authority only, neither fatherland nor
victory, neither success nor expediency, nothing but the
supreme authority of conscience.
 CHAPTER XVII
THE CALL LOST IN THE VOID

ofd the e were

peoplbeen deaf. NotHolla nd's
THEworkears seeme to have fruitless. one of
the dramas was played for more than a few
nights. Most of them were buried after a single per-
formance, slain by the hostility of the critics and the in-
id f erence ofthe crowd. Futile, too, had been the strug-
gles of Holland and his friends on behalf of the people's
theater. The government to which they had addressed
an appeal for the founding of a popular theater in Paris,
paid little attention. M. Adrien Bernheim was dis-
patched to Berlin to make inquiries. He reported.
Further reports were made. The matter was discussed
for a while, but was ultimately shelved. Rostand and
Bernstein continued to triumph in the boulevards; the
great call to idealism had remained unheard.
Where could the author look for help in the comple-
tion of his splendid program? To what nation could he
turn when his own made no response, Le theatre de la
revolution remained a fragment. A Robespierre, which
was to be the spiritual counterpart of Danton, already
sketched in broad outline, was left unfinished. The
other segments of the great dramatic cycle have never
117
118 ROMAIN HOLLAND

been touched. Bundles of studies, newspaper cuttings,

loose leaves, manuscript books, waste paper, are the
vestiges of an edifice which was planned as a pantheon
for the French people, a theater which was to reflect the
heroic achievements of the French spirit. Holland may
well have shared the feelings of Goethe who, mournfully
recalling his earlier dramatic dreams, said on one occa-
sion to Eckermann: "Formerly I fancied it would be
possible to create a German theater. I cherished the
illusion that I could myself contribute to the foundations
of such a building . . . But there was no stir in response
to my efforts, and everything remains as of old. Had
I been able to exert an influence, had I secured ap-
proval,should
I have written a dozen plays like Iphigenia
and Tasso. There was no scarcity of material. But, as
I have told you, we lack actors to play such pieces with
spirit, and we lack a public to form an appreciative
audience."
The call was lost in the void. "There was no stir in
response to my efforts, and everything remains as of
old." But Holland, likewise, remains as of old, inspired
with the same faith, whether he has succeeded or whether
he has failed. He is ever willing to begin work over
again, marching stoutly across the land of lost endeavor
towards a new and more distant goal. We may apply
to him Rilke's fine phrase, and say that, if he needs must
be vanquished, he aspires "to be vanquished always in a
greater and yet greater cause."
 CHAPTER XVIII

A DAY WILL COME

1902

ONCE only has Holland been tempted to resume

dramatic composition. (Parenthetically I
may mention a minor play of the same per-
iod, La Montespan, which does not belong to the series
of his greater works.) As in the case of the Dreyfus
affair, he endeavored to extract the moral essence from
political occurrences, to show how a spiritual conflict
was typified in one of the great happenings of the time.
The Boer War is no more than a vehicle; just as, for the
plays we have been studying, the Revolution was merely
a stage. The new drama deals in actual fact with the
only auhority Rolland rcognizes, conscience. The con-
science of the individual and the conscience of the
world.
Le temps viendra is the third, the most impressive
variation upon the earlier theme, depicting the cleavage
between conviction and duty, citizenship and humanity,
the national man and the free man. A war drama of
the conscience staged amid a war in the material world.
In Le triomphe de la raison, the problem was one of free-
dom versus the fatherland; in Les loups it was one of
119
120 ROMAIN HOLLAND

justice versus the fatherland. Here we have a yet loftier

variation of the theme; the conflict of conscience, of
eternal truth, versus the fatherland. The chief figure,
though not spiritually the hero of the piece, is Clifford,
leader of the invading army. He is waging an unjust
war — and what war is just? But he wages it with a
strategist's hrain; his heart is not in the work. He knows
"how much rottenness there is in war"; he knows that
war cannot be effectively waged without hatred for the
enemy; but he is too cultured to hate. He knows that
it is impossible to carry on war without falsehood; im-
possible tokill without infringing the principles of hu-
manity; impossible to create military justice, since the
whole aim of war is unjust. He knows this with one
part of his being, which is the real Clifford; but he has
to repudiate the knowledge with the other part of his
being, the professional soldier. He is confined within
an iron ring of contradictions. "Obeir a ma patrie?
Obeir a ma conscience?" It is impossible to gain the
victory without doing wrong, yet who can command an
army if he lack the will to conquer? Clifford must serve
that will, even while he despises the force which his duty
compels him to use. He cannot be a man unless he
thinks, and yet he cannot remain a soldier while pre-
serving his humanity. Vainly does he seek to mitigate
the brutalities of his task; fruitlessly does he endeavor
to do good amid the bloodshed which issues from his
orders. He is aware that "there are gradations in crime,
but every one of these gradations remains a crime."
 A DAY WILL COME 121
Other notable figures in the play are: the cynic, whose
only aim is the profit of his own country; the army
sportsman; those who blindly obey; the sentimentalist,
who shuts his eyes to all that is painful, contemplating
as a puppet-show what is tragedy to those who have to
endure it. The background to these figures is the lying
spirit of contemporary civilization, with its neat phrases
to justify every outrage, and its factories built upon
tombs. To our civilization applies the charge inscribed
upon the opening page, raising the drama into the sphere
of universal humanity: "This play has not been writ-
ten to condemn a single nation, but to condemn Eu-

rope."
The true hero of the piece is not General Clifford,
the conqueror of South Africa, but the free spirit, as
typified in the Italian volunteer, a citizen of the world
who threw himself into the fray that he might defend
freedom, and in the Scottish peasant who lays aside his
rifle with the words, "I will kill no longer." These men
have no other fatherland than conscience, no other home
than their own humanity. The only fate they acknowl-
edge is that which the free man creates for himself.
Holland is with them, the vanquished, as he is ever with
those who voluntarily accept defeat. It is from his soul
that rises'the cry of the Italian volunteer, "Ma patrie est
partout ou la liberte est menacee." Aert, Saint Louis,
Hugot, the Girondists, Teulier, the martyrs in Les loups,
are the author's spiritual brethren, the children of his
belief that the individual's will is stronger than his secu-
122 ROMAIN ROLLAND

lar environment. This faith grows ever greater, takes

on an ever wider oscillation, as the years pass. In his
first plays he was still speaking to France. His last
work written for the stage addresses a wider audience;
it is his confession of world citizenship.
 CHAPTER XIX

THE PLAYWRIGHT

"W1 IT TTE 'have seen that Holland's plays form a

% /%/ whole, which for comprehensiveness may
V V be compared with the work of Shakespeare,
Schiller, or Hebbel. Recent stage performances in Ger-
many have shown that in places, at least, they possess
great dramatic force. The historical fact that work of
such magnitude and power should remain »for twenty
years practically unknown, must have some deeper cause
than chance. The effect of a literary composition is
always in large part dependent upon the atmosphere of
the time. Sometimes this atmosphere may so operate
as to make it seem that a spark has fallen into a powder-
barrel heaped full of accumulated sensibilities. Some-
times the influence of the atmosphere may be repressive
in manifold ways. A work, therefore, taken alone, can
never reflect an epoch. Such reflection can only be
secured when the work is harmonious to the epoch in
which it originates.
We infer that the innermost essence of Rolland's plays
must in one way or another have conflicted with the age
in which they were written. In actual fact, these dramas
were penned in deliberate opposition to the dominant
123
 124 ROMAIN HOLLAND

literary mode. Naturalism, the representation of real-

ity, simultaneously mastered and oppressed the time,
leading back with intent into the narrows, the trivialities,
of everyday life. Holland, on the other hand, aspired
towards greatness, wishing to raise the dynamic of un-
dying ideals high above the transiencies of fact; he
aimed at a soaring flight, at a winged freedom of senti-
ment, at exuberant energy; he was a romanticist and an
idealist. Not for him to describe the forces of life, its
distresses, its powers, and its passions; his purpose was
ever to depict the spirit that overcomes these things;
the idea through which to-day is merged into eternity.
Whilst other writers were endeavoring to portray every-
day occurrences with the utmost fidelity, his aim was to
represent the rare, the sublime, the heroic, the seeds of
eternity that fall from heaven to germinate on earth. He
was not allured by life as it is, but by life freely inter-
penetrated with spirit and with will.
All his dramas, therefore, are problem plays, wherein
the characters are but the expression of theses and anti-
theses in dialectical struggle. The idea, not the living
figure, is the primary thing. When the persons of the
drama are in conflict, above them, like the gods in the
Iliad, hover unseen the ideas that lead the human pro-
tagonists, the ideas between which the struggle is really
waged. Holland's heroes are not impelled to action by
the force of circumstances, but are lured to action by
the fascination of their own thoughts; the circumstances
are merely the friction-surfaces upon which their ardor
is struck into flame. When to the eye of the realist
 THE PLAYWRIGHT 125

they are vanquished, when Ae'rt plunges into death, when

Saint Louis is consumed by fever, when the heroes of
the Revolution stride to the guillotine, when Clifford and
Owen fall victims to violence, the tragedy of their mor-
tal lives is transfigured by the heroism of their martyr-
dom, by the unity and purity of realized ideals.
Rolland has openly proclaimed the name of the intel-
lectual father of his tragedies. Shakespeare was no
more than the burning bush, the first herald, the stimulus,
the inimitable model. To Shakespeare, Rolland owes
his impetus, his ardor, and in part his dialectical power.
But as far as spiritual form is concerned, he has picked
up the mantle of another master, one whose work as
dramatist still remains almost unknown. I refer to
Ernest Renan, and to the Drames philosophiques, among
which Uabbesse de Jouarre and Le pretre de Nemi exer-
cised adecisive influence upon the younger playwright.
The art of discussing spiritual problems in actual drama
instead of in essays or in such dialogues as those of
Plato, was a legacy from Renan, who gave kindly help
and instruction to the aspiring student. From Renan,
too, came the inner calm of justice, together with the
clarity which never failed to lift the writer above the con-
flicts he was describing. But whereas the sage of Tre-
guier, in his serene aloofness, regarded all human activi-
ties as a perpetually renewed illusion, so that his works
voiced a somewhat ironical and even malicious skepti-
cism, in Rolland we find a new element, the flame of an
idealism that is still undimmed to-day. Strange indeed
is the paradox, that one who of all modern writers is the
126 ROMAIN HOLLAND
most fervent in his faith, should borrow the artistic forms
he employs from the master of cautious doubt. Hence
what in Renan had a retarding and cooling influence,
becomes in Rolland a cause of vigorous and enthusiastic
action. Whilst Renan stripped all the legends, even the
most sacred of legends, bare, in his search for a wise but
tepid truth, Rolland is led by his revolutionary tempera-
ment to create a new legend, a new heroism, a new emo-
tional spur to action.
This ideological scaffolding is unmistakable in every
one of Rolland's dramas. The scenic variations, the
motley changes in the cultural environments, cannot pre-
vent our realizing that the problems revealed to our eyes
emanate, not from feelings and not from personalities,
but from intelligences and from ideas. Even the his-
torical figures, those of Robespierre, Danton, Saint- Just,
and Desmoulins, are schemata rather than portraits.
Nevertheless, the prolonged estrangement between his
dramas and the age in which they were written, was not
so much due to the playwright's method of treatment as
to the nature of the problems with which he chose to
deal. Ibsen, who at that time dominated the drama, like-
wise wrote plays with a purpose. Ibsen, far more even
than Rolland, had definite ends in view. Like Strind-
berg, Ibsen did not merely wish to present comparisons
between elemental forces, but in addition to present their
formulation. These northern writers intellectualized
much more than Rolland, inasmuch as they were propa-
gandists, whereas Rolland merely endeavored to show
ideas in the act of unfolding their own contradictions.
 THE PLAYWRIGHT 127

Ibsen and Strindberg desired to make converts; Holland's

aim was to display the inner energy that animates every
idea. Whilst the northerners hoped to produce a spe-
cific effect, Holland was in search of a general effect, the
arousing of enthusiasm. For Ibsen, as for the contem-
porary French dramatists, the conflict between man and
woman living in the bourgeois environment always oc-
cupies the center of the stage. Strindberg' s work is ani-
mated by the myth of sexual polarity. The lie against
which both these writers are campaigning is a conven-
tional, a social, lie. The dramatic interest remains the
same. The spiritual arena is still that of bourgeois life.
This applies even to the mathematical sobriety of Ibsen
and to the remorseless analysis of Strindberg. Despite
the vituperation of the critics, the world of Ibsen and
Strindberg was still the critics' world.
On the other hand, the problems with which Holland's
plays were concerned could never awaken the interest of
a bourgeois public, for they were political, ideal, heroic,
revolutionary problems. The surge of his more compre-
hensive feelings engulfed the lesser tensions of sex.
Holland's dramas leave the erotic problem untouched,
and this damns them for a modern audience. He pre-
sents a new type, political drama in the sense phrased by
Napoleon, conversing with Goethe at Erfurt. "La
politique, voila la fatalite moderne." The tragic drama-
tist always displays human beings in conflict with forces.
Man becomes great through his resistance to these forces.
In Greek tragedy the powers of fate assumed mythical
forms : the wrath of the gods, the disfavor of evil spirits,
128 ROMAIN HOLLAND

disastrous oracles. We see this in the figures of Oedi-

pus, Prometheus, and Philoctetes. For us moderns, it
is the overwhelming power of the state, organized politi-
cal force, massed destiny, against which as individuals
we stand weaponless ; it is the great spiritual storms, "les
courants de foi," which inexorably sweep us away like
straws before the wind. No less incalculably than did
the fabled gods of antiquity, no less overwhelmingly and
pitilessly, does the world-destiny make us its sport. War
is the most powerful of these mass influences, and, for
this reason, nearly all Holland's plays take war as their
theme. Their moral force consists in the way wherein
again and again they show how the individual, a Prome-
theus in conflict with the gods, is able in the spiritual
sphere to break the unseen yoke; how the individual
idea remains stronger than the mass idea, the idea of the
fatherland — though the latter can still destroy a hardy
rebel with the thunderbolts of Jupiter.
The Greeks first knew the gods when the gods were
angry. Our gloomy divinity, the fatherland, blood-
thirsty as the gods of old, first becomes fully known to
us in time of war. Unless fate lowers, man rarely thinks
of these hostile forces; he despises them or forgets them,
while they lurk in the darkness, awaiting the advent of
their day. A peaceful, a laodicean era had no interest
in tragedies foreshadowing the opposition of the forces
which were twenty years later to engage in deadly strug-
gle in the bloodstained European arena. What should
those care who strayed into the theater from the Parisian
boulevards, members of an audience skilled in the geom-
 THE PLAYWRIGHT 129

etry of adultery, what should they care about such prob-

lems as those in Holland's plays: whether it is better to
serve the fatherland or to serve justice; whether in war
time soldiers must obey orders or follow the call of
conscience? The questions seemed at best but idle
trifling, remote from reality, charades, the untimely
musings of a cloistered moralist; problems in the fourth
dimension. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
— though in truth it would have been well to heed Cas-
sandra's warning. The tragedy and the greatness of
Holland's plays lies in this, that they came a generation
before their day. They seem to have been written for
the time we have just had to live through. They seem
to foretell in lofty symbols the spiritual content of to-
day's political happenings. The outburst of a revolu-
tion, the concentration of its energies into individual
personalities, the decline of passion into brutality and
into suicidal chaos, as typified in the figures of Kerensky,
Lenin, Liebknecht, is the anticipatory theme of Hol-
land's plays. The anguish of Aert, the struggles of the
Girondists who had likewise to defend themselves upon
two fronts, against the brutality of war and against the
brutality of the Revolution — have we not all of late
realized these things with the vividness of personal expe-
rience? Since 1914, what question has been more press-
ing than that of the conflict between the free-spirited
internationalist and the mass frenzy of his fellow coun-
trymen? Where, during recent decades, has there been
produced any other drama which can present these soul-
feearching problems so vividly and with so much human
130 ROMAIN HOLLAND

understanding as do the tragedies which lay for years

in obscurity, and were then overshadowed by the fame
of their late-born brother, Jean Christophe? These
dramas, parerga as it seemed, were aimed, in an hour
when peace still ruled the world, at the center of our
contemporary consciousness, which was then still un-
woven bythe looms of time. The stone which the build-
ers of the stage contemptuously rejected, will perhaps
become the foundation of a new theater, grandly con-
ceived, contemporary and yet heroical, the theater of the
free European brotherhood, for whose sake it was fash-
ioned in solitude decades ago by the lonely creator.
 PART THREE

THE HEROIC BIOGRAPHIES

I prepare myself by the study of

history and the practice of writing.
So doing, I welcome always in my
soul the memory of the best and most
renowned of men. For whenever the
enforced associations of daily life
arouse worthless, evil, or ignoble
feelings, I am able to repel these
feelings and to keep them at a dis-
tance, bydispassionately turning my
thoughts to contemplate the brightest
examples.
PLUTARCH, Preamble to the Life
of Timoleon.
 CHAPTER I
DE PROFUNDIS

AT twenty years of age, and again at thirty years

of age, in his early works, Holland had wished
to depict enthusiasm as the highest power of
the indivi dual and as the creative soul of an entire peo-
ple. For him, that man alone is truly alive whose
spirit is consumed with longing for the ideal, that nation
alone is inspired which collects its forces in an ardent
faith. The dream of his youth was to arouse a weary
and vanquished generation, infirm of will; to stimulate
its faith; to bring salvation to the world through en-
thusiasm.
Vain had been the attempt. Ten years, fifteen years
— how easily the phrase is spoken, but how long the
time may seem to a sad heart — had been spent in fruit-
less endeavor. Disillusionment had followed upon dis-
il usionment. Letheatre du peuple had come to noth-
ing; the Dreyfus affair had been merged in political in-
trigue; the dramas were waste paper. There had been
no stir in response to his efforts. His friends were scat-
tered. Whilst the companions of his youth had al-
ready attained to fame, Holland was still the beginner.
It almost seemed as if the more he did, the more his
work was ignored. None of his aims had been fulfilled.
133
134 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Public life was lukewarm and torpid as of old. The

world was in search of profit instead of faith and spirit-
ual force.
His private life likewise lay in ruins. His marriage,
entered into with high hopes, was one more disappoint-
ment. During these years Holland had individual expe-
rience of a tragedy whose cruelty his work leaves un-
noticed, for his writings never touch upon the narrower
troubles of his own life. Wounded to the heart, ship-
wrecked inall his undertakings, he withdrew into soli-
tude. His workroom, small and simple as a monastic
cell, became his world; work his consolation. He had
now to fight the hardest fight on behalf of the faith of
his youth, that he might not lose it in the darkness of
despair.
In his solitude he read the literature of the day. And
since in all voices man hears the echo of his own, Hol-
land found everywhere pain and loneliness. He studied
the lives of the artists, and having done so he wrote:
"The further we penetrate into the existence of great
creators, the more strongly are we impressed by the
magnitude of the unhappiness by which their lives were
enveloped. I do not merely mean that, being subject
to the ordinary trials and disappointments of mankind,
their higher emotional susceptibility rendered these
smarts exceptionally keen. I mean that their genius,
placing them in advance of their contemporaries by
twenty, thirty, fifty, nay often a hundred years, and
thus making of them wanderers in the desert, condemned
them to the most desperate exertions if they were but to
 DE PROFUNDIS 135

live, to say nothing of winning to victory." Thus these

great ones among mankind, those towards whom posterity
looks back with veneration, those who will for all time
bring consolation to the lonely in spirit, were themselves
"pauvres vaincus, les vainqueurs du monde" — the con-
querors ofthe world, but themselves beaten in the fray.
An endless chain of perpetually repeated and unmeaning
torments binds their successive destinies into a tragical
unity. "Never," as Tolstoi pointed out in the oft-men-
tioned letter, "do true artists share the common man's
power of contented enjoyment." The greater their na-
tures, the greater their suffering. And conversely, the
greater their suffering the fuller the development of
their own greatness.
Holland thus recognizes that there is another great-
ness, a profounder greatness, than that of action, the
greatness of suffering. Unthinkable would be a Holland
who did not draw fresh faith from all experience, how-
ever painful; unthinkable one who failed, in his own
suffering, to be mindful of the sufferings of others. As
a sufferer, he extends a greeting to all sufferers on
earth. Instead of a fellowship of enthusiasm, he now
looks for a brotherhood of the lonely ones of the world,
as he shows them the meaning and the grandeur of all
sorrow. In this new circle, the nethermost of fate, he
turns to noble examples. "Life is hard. It is a con-
tinuous struggle for all those who cannot come to terms
with mediocrity. For the most part it is a painful strug-
gle, lacking sublimity, lacking happiness, fought in
solitude and silence. Oppressed by poverty, by domes-
136 ROMAIN HOLLAND

tic cares, by crushing and gloomy tasks demanding an

aimless expenditure of energy, joyless and hopeless,
most people work in isolation, without even the comfort
of being able to stretch forth a hand to their brothers in
misfortune." To build these bridges between man and
man, between suffering and suffering, is now Holland's
task. To the nameless sufferers, he wishes to show those
in whom personal sorrow was transmuted to become gain
for millions yet to come. He would, as Carlyle phrased
it, "make manifest . . . the divine relation . . . which
at all times unites a Great Man to other men." The
million solitaries have a fellowship; it is that of the
great martyrs of suffering, those who, though stretched
on the rack of destiny, never foreswore their faith in
life, those whose very sufferings helped to make life
richer for others. "Let them not complain too piteously,
the unhappy ones, for the best of men share their lot. It
is for us to grow strong with their strength. If we feel
our weakness, let us rest on their knees. They will give
solace. From their spirits radiate energy and good-
ness. Even if we did not study their works, even if we
did not hearken to their voices, from the light of their
countenances, from the fact that they have lived, we
should know that life is never greater, never more fruit-
ful— never happier — than in suffering."
It was in this spirit, for his own good, and for the
consolation of his unknown brothers in sorrow, that Hol-
land undertook the composition of the heroic biographies.
 CHAPTER II
THE HEROES OF SUFFERING

LIKE the revolutionary dramas, the new creative

cycle was preluded by a manifesto, a new call
to greatness. The preface to Beethoven pro-
claims: "The air is fetid. Old Europe is suffocating
in a sultry and unclean atmosphere. Our thoughts are
weighed down by a petty materialism. . . . The world
sickens in a cunning and cowardly egoism. We are
stifling. Throw the windows wide; let in the free air
of heaven. We must breathe the souls of the heroes."
What does Holland mean by a hero? He does not
think of those who lead the masses, wage victorious
wars, kindle revolutions; he does not refer to men of
action, or to those whose thoughts engender action.
The nullity of united action has become plain to him.
Unconsciously in his dramas he has depicted the tragedy
of the idea as something which cannot be divided among
men like bread, as something which in each individual's
brain and blood undergoes prompt transformation into
a new form, often into its very opposite. True great-
ness isfor him to be found only in solitude, in struggle
waged by the individual 137 against the unseen. "I do
not give the name of heroes to those who have triumphed,
138 ROMAIN HOLLAND
whether by ideas or by physical force. By heroes I
mean those who were great through the power of the
heart. As one of the greatest (Tolstoi) has said, 'I
recognize no other sign of superiority than goodness.
Where the character is not great, there is neither a great
artist nor a great man of action; there is nothing but
one of the idols of the crowd ; time will shatter them to-
gether. .. . What matters, is to be great, not to seem

A hero" does not fight for the petty achievements of

great.'
life, for success, for an idea in which all can partici-
pate; he fights for the whole, for life itself. Whoever
turns his back on the struggle because he dreads to be
alone, is a weakling who shrinks from suffering; he is
one who with a mask of artificial beauty would conceal
from himself the tragedy of mortal life; he is a liar.
True heroism is that which faces realities. Holland
fiercely exclaims: "I loathe the cowardly idealism of
those who refuse to see the tragedies of life and the
weaknesses of the soul. To a nation that is prone to
the deceitful illusions of resounding words, to such a
nation above all, is it necessary to say that the heroic
falsehood is a form of cowardice. There is but one
heroism on earth — to know life and yet to love it."
Suffering is not the great man's goal. But it is his
ordeal; the needful filter to effect purification; "the
swiftest beast of burden bearing us towards perfection,"
as Meister Eckhart said. "In suffering alone do we
rightly understand art; through sorrow alone do we
learn those things which outlast the centuries, and are
 THE HEROES OF SUFFERING 139

stronger than death." Thus for the great man, the

painful experiences of life are transmuted into knowl-
edge, and this knowledge is further transmuted into the
power of love. Suffering does not suffice by itself to
produce greatness; we need to have achieved a triumph
over suffering. He who is broken by the distresses of
life, and still more he who shirks the troubles of life, is
stamped with the imprint of defeat, and even his noblest
work will bear the marks of this overthrow. None but
he who rises from the depths, can bring a message to the
heights of the spirit; paradise must be reached by a path
that leads through purgatory. Each must discover this
path for himself; but the one who strides along it with
head erect is a leader, and can lift others into his own
world. "Great souls are like mountain peaks. Storms
lash them; clouds envelop them; but on the peaks we
breathe more freely than elsewhere. In that pure at-
mosphere, the wounds of the heart are cleansed; and
when the cloudbanks part, we gain a view of all man-
kind."
To such lofty outlooks Rolland wishes to lead the
sufferers who are still in the darkness of torment. He
desires to show them the heights where suffering grows
one with nature and where struggle becomes heroic.
"Sursum corda," he sings, chanting a song of praise as
he reveals the sublime pictures of creative sorrow.
 CHAPTER III
BEETHOVEN

BEETHOVEN, the master of masters, is the first

figure sculptured on the heroic frieze of the in-
visible temple. From Holland's earliest years,
since his beloved mother had initiated him into the magic
world of music, Beethoven had been his teacher, had
been at once his monitor and consoler. Though fickle
to other childish loves, to this love he had ever re-
mained faithful. "During the crises of doubt and de-
pression which I experienced in youth, one of Beetho-
ven's melodies, one which still runs in my head, would
reawaken in me the spark of eternal life." By degrees
the admiring pupil came to feel a desire for closer ac-
quaintance with the earthly existence of the object of
his veneration. Journeying to Vienna, he saw there the
room in the House of the Black Spaniard, since demol-
ished, where the great musician passed away during a
storm At Mainz, in 1901, he attended the Beethoven
.
festival. In Bonn he saw the garret in which the mes-
siah of the language without words was born. It was a
shock to him to find in what narrow straits this universal
genius had passed his days. He perused letters and
140
other documents conveying the cruel history of Bee-
 BEETHOVEN 141

thoven's daily life, the life from which the musician,

stricken with deafness, took refuge in the music of the
inner, the imperishable universe. Shudderingly Hol-
land came to realize the greatness of this "tragic Diony-
sus," cribbed in our somber and unfeeling world.
After the visit to Bonn, Holland wrote an article for
the "Revue de Paris," entitled Les fetes de Beethoven.
His muse, however, desired to sing without restraint,
freed from the trammels imposed by critical contempla-
tion. Holland wished, not once again to expound the
musician to musicians, but to reveal the hero to hu-
manity atlarge ; not to recount the pleasure experienced
on hearing Beethoven's music, but to give utterance to
the poignancy of his own feelings. He desired to show
forth Beethoven the hero, as the man who, after infinite
suffering, composed the greatest hymn of mankind, the
divine exultation of the Ninth Symphony.
"Beloved Beethoven," thus the enthusiast opens.
"Enough . . . many have extolled his greatness as an
artist, but he is far more than the first of all musicians.
He is the heroic energy of modern art, the greatest and
best friend of all who suffer and struggle. When we
mourn over the sorrows of the world, he comes to our
solace. It is as if he seated himself at the piano in
the room of a bereaved mother, comforting her with the
wordless song of resignation. When we are wearied by
the unending and fruitless struggle against mediocrity in
vice and in virtue, what an unspeakable delight is it to
plunge once more into this ocean of will and faith. He
radiates the contagion of courage, the joy of combat,
 142 ROMAIN HOLLAND
the intoxication of spirit which God himself feels. ...
What victory is comparable to this? What conquest of
Napoleon's? What sun of Austerlitz can compare in
refulgence with this superhuman effort, this triumph of
the spirit, achieved by a poor and unhappy man, by a
lonely invalid, by one who, though he was sorrow in-
carnate, though life denied him joy, was able to create
joy that he might bestow it on the world. As he himself
proudly phrases it, he forges joy out of his own misfor-
tunes. . . . The device of every heroic soul must be:
Out of suffering cometh joy."
Thus does Holland apostrophize the unknown.
Finally he lets the master speak from his own life. He
opens the Heiligenstadt "Testament," in which the re-
tiring man confided to posterity the profound grief which
he concealed from his contemporaries. He recounts the
confession of faith of the sublime pagan. He quotes
letters showing the kindliness which the great musician
vainly endeavored to hide behind an assumed acerbity.
Never before had the universal humanity in Beethoven
been brought so near to the sight of our generation,
never before had the heroism of this lonely life been
so magnificently displayed for the encouragement of
countless observers, as in this little book, with its ap-
peal to enthusiasm, the greatest and most neglected of
human qualities.
The brethren of sorrow to whom the message was ad-
dressed, scattered here and there throughout the world,
gave ear to the call. The book was not a literary tri-
umph; the newspapers were silent; the critics ignored
Romain Holland at the time of writing Beethoven
 BEETHOVEN 143

it. But unknown strangers won happiness from its

pages; they passed it from hand to hand; a mystical
sense of gratitude for the first time formed a bond of
union among persons reverencing the name of Holland.
The unhappy have an ear delicately attuned to the notes
of consolation. While they would have been repelled
by a superficial optimism, they were receptive to the
passionate sympathy which they found in the pages of
Holland's Beethoven. The book did not bring its author
success; but it brought something better, a public which
henceforward paid close attention to his work, and ac-
companied Jean Christophe in the first steps toward cel-
ebrity. Simultaneously, there was an improvement in
the fortunes of "Les cahiers de la quinzaine" The ob-
scure periodical began to circulate more freely. For
the first time, a second edition was called for. Charles
Peguy describes in moving terms how the reissue of this
number solaced the last hours of Bernard Lazare. At
length Romain Holland's idealism was beginning to
come into its own.
Holland is no longer lonely. Unseen brothers touch
his hand in the dark, eagerly await the sound of his
voice. Only those who suffer, wish to hear of suffering
— but sufferers are many. To them he now wishes to
make known other figures, the figures of those who suf-
fered no less keenly, and were no less great in their con-
quest of suffering. From the distance of the centuries,
the mighty contemplate him. Reverently he draws near
to them and enters into their lives.
 CHAPTER IV
MICHELANGELO

BEETHOVEN is for Holland the most typical of

the controllers of sorrow. Born to enjoy the
fullness of life, it seemed to be his mission to
reveal its beauties. Then destiny, ruining the sense-
organ of music, incarcerated him in the prison of deaf-
ness. But his spirit discovered a new language; in the
darkness he made a great light, composing the Ode to
Joy whose strains he was unable to hear. Bodily af-
fliction, however, is but one of the many forms of suffer-
ering which the heroism of the will can conquer. "Suf-
fering is infinite, and displays itself in myriad ways.
Sometimes it arises from the blind things of tyranny,
coming as poverty, sickness, the injustice of fate, or the
wickedness of men; sometimes its deepest cause lies in
the sufferer's own nature. This is no less lamentable,
no less disastrous; for we do not choose our own dispo-
sitions, we have not asked for life as it is given us, we
have not wished to become what we are."
Such was the tragedy of Michelangelo. His trouble
was not a sudden stroke of misfortune in the flower of his
days. The affliction was inborn. From the first -dawn-
ing of his consciousness, the
144 worm of discontent was
 MICHELANGELO 145

gnawing at his heart, the worm which grew with his

growth throughout the eighty years of his life. All his
feeling was tinged with melancholy. Never do we hear
from him, as we so often hear from Beethoven, the
golden call of joy. But his greatness lay in this, that
he bore his sorrows like a cross, a second Christ carry-
ing the burden of his destiny to the Golgotha of his
daily work, eternally weary of existence, and yet not
weary of activity. Or we may compare him with Sisy-
phus; but whereas Sisyphus for ever rolled the stone, it
was Michelangelo's fate, chiseling in rage and bitterness,
to fashion the patient stone into works of art. For
Holland, Michelangelo was the genius of a great and
vanished age ; he was the Christian, unhappy but patient,
whereas Beethoven was the pagan, the great god Pan
in the forest of music. Michelangelo shares the blame
for his own suffering, the blame that attaches to weak-
ness, the blame of those damned souls in Dante's first
circle "who voluntarily gave themselves up to sadness."
We must show him compassion as a man, but as we show
compassion to one mentally diseased, for he is the para-
dox of "a heroic genius with an unheroic will." Bee-
thoven isthe hero as artist, and still more the hero as
man; Michelangelo is only the hero as artist. As man,
Michelangelo is the vanquished, unloved because he does
not give himself up to love, unsatisfied because he has
no longing for joy. He is the saturnine man, born un-
der a gloomy star, one who does not struggle against
melancholy, but rather cherishes it, toying with his own
.depression. "La mia allegrezza e la malincolia" — mel-
 146 ROMAIN HOLLAND
ancholy is my delight. He frankly acknowledges that
"a thousand joys are not worth as much as a single
sorrow." From the beginning to the end of his life he
seems to be hewing his way, cutting an interminable
dark gallery leading towards the light. This way is his
greatness, leading us all nearer towards eternity.
Holland feels that Michelangelo's life embraces a
great heroism, but cannot give direct consolation to those
who suffer. In this case, the one who lacks is not able
to come to terms with destiny by his own strength, for
he needs a mediator beyond this life. He needs God,
"the refuge of all those who do not make a success of
life here below! Faith which is apt to be nothing other
than lack of faith in life, in the future, in oneself; a
lack of courage; a lack of joy. We know upon how
many defeats this painful victory is upbuilded." Hol-
land here admires a work, and a sublime melancholy;
but he does so with sorrowful compassion, and not with
the intoxicating ardor inspired in him by the triumph
of Beethoven. Michelangelo is chosen merely as an ex-
ample of the amount of pain that may have to be en-
dured in our mortal lot. His example displays great-
ness, but greatness that conveys a warning. Who con-
quers pain in producing such work, is in truth a victor.
Yet only half a victor; for it does not suffice to endure
life. We must, this is the highest heroism, "know life,
and yet love it."
 CHAPTER V
TOLSTOI

THE biographies of Beethoven and Michelangelo

were fashioned out of the superabundance of
life. They were calls to heroism, odes to en-
ergy. The biography of Tolstoi, written some years
later, is a requiem, a dirge. Holland had been near to
death from the accident in the Champs Elysees. On his
recovery, the news of his beloved master's end came to
him with profound significance and as a sublime exhorta-
tion.
Tolstoi typifies for Holland a third form of heroic
suffering. Beethoven's infirmity came as a stroke of
fate in mid career. Michelangelo's sad destiny was in-
born. Tolstoi deliberately chose his own lot. All the
externals of happiness promised enjoyment. He was in
good health, rich, independent, famous; he had home,
wife, and children. But the heroism of the man with-
out cares lies in this, that he makes cares for himself,
through doubt as to the best way to live. What plagued
Tolstoi was his conscience, his inexorable demand for
truth. He thrust aside the freedom from care, the low
aims, the petty joys, of insincere beings. Like a fakir,
he pierced his own breast147with the thorns of doubt.
 148 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Amid the torment, he blessed doubt, saying: "We must

thank God if we be discontented with ourselves. A
cleavage between life and the form in which it has to be
lived, is the genuine sign of a true life, the precondition
of all that is good. The only bad thing is to be con-
tented with oneself."
For Holland, this apparent cleavage is the true Tolstoi,
just as for Holland the man who struggles is the only man
truly alive. Whilst Michelangelo believes himself to
see a divine life above this human life, Tolstoi sees a
genuine life behind the casual life of everyday, and to
attain to the former he destroys the latter. The most
celebrated artist in Europe throws away his art, like a
knight throwing away his sword, to walk bare-headed
along the penitent's path; he breaks family ties; he un-
dermines his days and his nights with fanatical ques-
tions. Down to the last hour of his life he is at war
with himself, as he seeks to make peace with his con-
science; he is a fighter for the invisible, that invisible
which means so much more than happiness, joy, and
God ; a fighter for the ultimate truth which he can share
with no one.
This heroic struggle is waged, like that of Beethoven
and Michelangelo, in terrible isolation, is waged like
theirs in airless spaces. His wife, his children, his
friends, his enemies, all fail to understand him. They
consider him a Don Quixote, for they cannot see the
opponent with whom he wrestles, the opponent who is
himself. None can bring him solace; none can help
him. Merely that he may die at peace, he has to flee
 TOLSTOI 149

from his comfortable home on a bitter night in winter,

to perish like a beggar by the wayside. Always at this
supreme altitude to which mankind looks yearningly up,
the atmosphere is ice-bound and lonely. Those who
create for all must do so in solitude, each one of them a
savior nailed to the cross, each suffering for a different
faith; and yet suffering every one of them for all man-
kind.
 CHAPTER VI
THE UNWRITTEN BIOGRAPHIES

ON the cover of the Beethoven, the first of Hol-

land's biographies, was an announcement of
the lives of a number of heroic personalities.
There was to be a life of Mazzini. With the aid of
Malwida von Meysenbug, who had known the great
revolutionist, Holland had been collecting relevant docu-
ments for years. Among other biographies, there was
to be one of General Hoche ; and one of the great utopist,
Thomas Paine. The original scheme embraced lives of
many other spiritual heroes. Not a few of the biog-
raphies had already been outlined in the author's mind.
Above all, in his riper years, Holland designed at one
time to give a picture of the restful world in which
Goethe moved; to pay a tribute of thanks to Shake-
speare; and to discharge the debt of friendship to one
little known to the world, Malwida von Meysenbug.
These "vies des hommes illustres" have remained un-
written. The only biographical studies produced by
Holland during the ensuing years were those of a more
scientific character, dealing with Handel and Millet,
and the minor biographies of Hugo Wolf and Berlioz.
Thus the third grandly conceived 150
creative cycle like-
 THE UNWRITTEN BIOGRAPHIES 151
wise remained a fragment. But on this occasion the
discontinuance of the work was not due to the disfavor
of circumstances or to the indifference of readers. The
abandonment of the scheme was the outcome of the au-
thor's own moral conviction. The historian in him had
come to recognize that his most intimate energy, truth,
was not reconcilable with the desire to create enthusiasm.
In the single instance of Beethoven it had been possible
to preserve historical accuracy and still to bring solace,
for here the soul had been lifted towards joy by the
very spirit of music. In Michelangelo's case a certain
strain had been felt in the attempt to present as a con-
queror of the world this man who was a prey to inborn
melancholy, who, working in stone, was himself petrified
to marble. Even Tolstoi was a herald rather of true
life, than of rich and enthralling life, life worth living.
When, finally, Rolland came to deal with Mazzini, he
realized, as he sympathetically studied the embitterment
of the forgotten patriot in old age, that it would either
be necessary to falsify the record if edification were to
be derived from this biography, or else, by recording the
truth, to provide readers with further grounds for de-
pression. He recognized that there are truths which
love for mankind must lead us to conceal. Of a sudden
he has personal experience of the conflict, of the tragical
dilemma, which Tolstoi had had to face. He became
aware of "the dissonance between his pitiless vision
which enabled him to see all the horror of reality, and
his compassionate heart which made him desire to veil
these horrors and retain his readers' affection. We have
152 ROMAIN ROLLAND

all experienced this tragical struggle. How often has

the artist been filled with distress when contemplating a
truth which he will have to describe. For this same
healthy and virile truth, which for some is as natural
as the air they breathe, is absolutely insupportable to
others, who are weak through the tenor of their lives or
through simple kindliness. What are we to do? Are
we to suppress this deadly truth, or to utter it unspar-
ingly? Continually does the dilemma force itself upon
us, Truth or Love?"
Such was the overwhelming experience which came
upon Rolland in mid career. It is impossible to write
the history of great men, both as historian recording
truth, and as lover of mankind who desires to lead his
fellows upwards towards perfection. To Rolland, the
enthusiast, the historian's function now seemed the less
important of the two. For what is the truth about a
man? "It is so difficult to describe a personality.
Every man is a riddle, not for others alone, but for him-
self likewise. It is presumptuous to claim a knowledge
of one who is not known even by himself. Yet we can-
not help passing judgments on character, for to do so is
a necessary part of life. Not one of those we believe
ourselves to know, not one of our friends, not one of
those we love, is as we see him. In many cases he is ut-
terly different from our picture. We wander amid the
phantoms we create. Yet we have to judge; we have to

Justice to himself, justice to those whose names he

act."
honored, veneration for the truth, compassion for his
 THE UNWRITTEN BIOGRAPHIES 153

fellows — all these combined to arrest his half -completed

design. Rolland laid aside the heroic biographies. He
would rather be silent than surrender to that cowardly
idealism which touches up lest it should have to re-
pudiate. He halted on a road which he had recognized
to be impassable, but he did not forget his aim "to de-
fend greatness on earth." Since these historic figures
would not serve the ends of his faith, his faith created
a figure for itself. Since history refused to supply him
with the image of the consoler, he had recourse to art.,
fashioning amid contemporary life the hero he desired,
creating out of truth and fiction his own and our own
Jean Christophe.
 PART IV

JEAN CHRISTOPHE

It is really astonishing to note how

the epic and the philosophical are
here compressed within the same
work. In respect of form we have
so beautiful a whole. Reaching out-
wards, the work touches the infinite,
touches both art and life. In fact
we may say of this romance, that it
is in no respects limited except in
point of esthetic form, and that
where it transcends form it comes into
contact with the infinite. I might
compare it to a beautiful island lying
between two seas.
SCHILLER TO GOETHE CONCERN-
ING Wilhelm Meister.
October 19, 1796.
 CHAPTER I
SANCTUS CHRISTOPHORUS

UPON the last page of his great work, Holland

relates the well-known legend of St. Christo-
pher. The ferryman was roused at night by a
little boy who wished to be carried across the stream.
With a smile the good-natured giant shouldered the light
burden. But as he strode through the water the weight
he was carrying grew heavy and heavier, until he felt
he was about to sink in the river. Mustering all his
strength, he continued on his way. When he reached the
other shore, gasping for breath, the man recognized that
he had been carrying the entire meaning of the world.
Hence his name, Christophorus.
Holland has known this long night of labor. When
he assumed the fateful burden, when he took the work
upon his shoulders, he meant to recount but a single life.
As he proceeded, what had been light grew heavy. He
found that he was carrying the whole destiny of his gen-
eration, the meaning of the entire world, the message of
love, the primal secret of creation. We who saw him
making his way alone through the night, without recog-
nition, without helpers, without a word of cheer, without
a friendly light winking at him from the further shore,
 158 ROMAIN HOLLAND

imagined that he must succumb. From the hither bank

the unbelievers followed him with shouts of scornful
laughter. But he pressed manfully forward during
these ten years, what time the stream of life swirled
ever more fiercely around him ; and he fought his way in
the end to the unknown shore of completion. With
bowed back, but with the radiance in his eyes undimmed,
did he finish fording the river. Long and heavy night
of travail, wherein he walked alone! Dear burden,
which he carried for the sake of those who are to come
afterwards, bearing it from our shore to the still untrod-
den shore of the new world. Now the crossing had been
safely made. When the good ferryman raised his eyes,
the night seemed to be over, the darkness vanished.
Eastward the heaven was all aglow. Joyfully he wel-
comed the dawn of the coming day towards which he
had carried this emblem of the day that was done.
Yet what was reddening there was naught but the
bloody cloud-bank of war, the flame of burning Europe,
the flame that was to consume the spirit of the elder
world. Nothing remained of our sacred heritage be-
yond this, that faith had bravely struggled from the
shore of yesterday to reach our again distracted world.
The conflagration has burned itself out; once more night
has lowered. But our thanks speed towards you, ferry-
man, pious wanderer, for the path you have trodden
through the darkness. We thank you for your labors,
which have brought the world a message of hope. For
the sake of us all have you marched on through the
 SANCTUS CHRISTOPHORUS 159

murky night. The flame of hatred will yet be extin-

guished; the spirit of friendship will again unite people
with people. It will dawn, that new day.
 CHAPTER II
RESURRECTION

th
ROMAIN HOLLAND was now in his fortie
year. His life seemed to be a field of ruins.
The banners of his faith, the manifestoes to
the French people and to humanity, had been torn to
rags by the storms of reality. His dramas had been
buried on a single evenin g. The figures of the heroes,
which were designed to form a stately series of historic
bronzes, stood neglected, three as isolated statues, while
the others were but rough-casts prematurely destroyed.
Yet the sacred flame still burned within him. With
heroic determination he threw the figures once more into
the fiery crucible of his heart, melting the metal that it
might be recast in new forms. Since his feeling for
truth made it impossible for him to find the supreme
consoler in any actual historical figure, he resolved to
create a genius of the spirit, who should combine and
typify what the great ones of all times had suffered,
a hero who should not belong to one nation but to all
peoples. No longer confining himself to historical
truth, he looked for a higher harmony in the new config-
uration oftruth and fiction. He fashioned the epic of
an imaginary personality.
160
 RESURRECTION 161

As if iby miracle, all that he had lost was now re-

gained. The vanished fancies of his school days, the boy
artist's dream of a great artist who should stand erect
against the world, the young man's vision on the Jani-
culum, surged up anew. The figures of his dramas,
Ae'rt and the Girondists, arose in a fresh embodiment;
the images of Beethoven, Michelangelo, and Tolstoi,
emerging from the rigidity of history, took their places
among our contemporaries. Rolland's disillusionments
had been but precious experiences; his trials, but a lad-
der to higher things. What had seemed like an end
became the true beginning, that of his masterwork, Jean
Christophe.
 CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK

JEAN CHRISTOPHE had long been beckoning the

poet from a distance. The first message had
come to the lad in the Normal School. During
those years, young Holland had planned the writing of a
romance, the history of a single-hearted artist shattered
on the rocks of the world. The outlines were vague;
the only definite idea was that the hero was to be a musi-
cian whose contemporaries failed to understand him.
The dream came to nothing, like so many of the dreams
of youth.
But the vision returned in Rome, when Rolland's
poetic fervor, long pent by the restrictions of school life,
broke forth with elemental energy. Malwida von Mey-
senbug had told him much concerning the tragical strug-
gles of her intimate friends Wagner and Nietzsche.
Holland came to realize that heroic figures, though they
may be obscured by the tumult and dust of the hour,
belong in truth to every age. Involuntarily he learned
to associate the unhappy experiences of these recent
heroes with those of the figures in his vision. In Parsi-
fal, the guileless Fool, by pity enlightened, he recog-
nized an emblem of the artist
162 whose intuition guides him
Remain Holland at the time of writing Jean Christophe
 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK 163

through the world, and who comes to know the world

through experience. One evening, as Rolland walked
on the Janiculum, the vision of Jean Christophe grew
suddenly clear. His hero was to be a pure-hearted
musician, a German, visiting other lands, finding his
god in Life; a free mortal spirit, inspired with a faith
in greatness, and with faith even in mankind, though
mankind rejected him.
The happy days of freedom in Rome were followed
by many years of arduous labor, during which the duties
of daily life thrust the image into the background.
Rolland had for a season become a man of action, and
had no time for dreams. Then came new experiences
to reawaken the slumbering vision. I have told of his
visit to Beethoven's house in Bonn, and of the effect
produced on his mind by the realization of the tragedy
of the great composer's life. This gave a new direction
to his thoughts. His hero was to be a Beethoven redivi-
vus, a German, a lonely fighter, but a conqueror.
Whereas the immature youth had idealized defeat, im-
agining that to fail was to be vanquished, the man of
riper years perceived that true heroism lay in this, "to
know life, and yet to love it." Thus splendidly did the
new horizon open as setting for the long cherished
figure, the dawn of eternal victory in our earthly strug-
gle. The conception of Jean Christophe was complete.
Rolland now knew his hero. But it was necessary
that he should learn to describe that hero's counterpart,
that hero's eternal enemy, life, reality. Whoever wishes
to delineate a combat fairly, must know both champions.
164 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Holland became intimately acquainted with Jean Chris-

tophe's opponent through the experiences of these years
of disillusionment, through his study of literature,
through his realization of the falseness of society and of
the indifference of the crowd. It was necessary for him
to pass through the purgatorial fires of the years in
Paris before he could begin the work of description.
At twenty, Holland had made acquaintance only with
himself, and was therefore competent to describe no
more than his own heroic will to purity. At thirty he
had become able to depict likewise the forces of resist-
ance. All the hopes he had cherished and all the dis-
ap ointments hehad suffered jostled one another in the
channel of this new existence. The innumerable news-
paper cuttings, collected for years, almost without a
definite aim, magically arranged themselves as material
for the growing work. Personal griefs were seen to
have been valuable experience; the boy's dream swelled
to the proportions of a life history.
During the year 1895 the broad lines were finished.
As prelude, Holland gave a few scenes from Jean
Christophe's youth. During 1897, in a remote Swiss
hamlet, the first chapters were penned, those in which
the music begins as it were spontaneously. Then (so
definitely was the whole design now shaping itself in his
mind) he wrote some of the chapters for the fifth and
ninth volumes. Like a musical composer, Holland fol-
lowed up particular themes as his mood directed, themes
which his artistry was to weave harmoniously into the
great symphony. Order came from within, and was
 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK 165
not imposed from without. The work was not done
in any strictly serial succession. The chapters seemed
to come into being as chance might direct. Often they
were inspired by the landscape, and were colored by out-
ward events. Seippel, for instance, shows that Jean
Christophe's flight into the forest was suggested by the
last journey of Holland's beloved teacher Tolstoi. With
appropriate symbolism, this work of European scope
was composed in various parts of Europe; the opening
scenes, as we have said, in a Swiss hamlet ; U adolescent
in Zurich and by the shores of Lake Zug; much in Paris;
much in Italy; Antoinette in Oxford; while, after nearly
fifteen years' labor, the work was completed in Baveno.
In February, 1902, the first volume, L'aube, was pub-
lished in "Les cahiers de la quinzaine" and the last
serial number was issued on October 20, 1912. When
the fifth serial issue, La foire sur la place, appeared, a
publisher, Ollendorff, was found willing to produce the
whole romance in book form. Before the French orig-
inal was completed, English, Spanish, and German trans-
lations, were in course of publication, and Seippel's val-
uable biography had also appeared. Thus when the
work was crowned by the Academy in 1913, its reputa-
tion was already established. In the fifth decade of his
life, Rolland had at length become famous. His mes-
senger Jean Christophe was a living contemporary figure,
on pilgrimage through the world.
 CHAPTER IV
THE WORK WITHOUT A FORMULA

WHAT, then, is Jean Christophe? Can it be

properly spoken of as a romance? This
book, which is as comprehensive as the
world, an orbis pictus of our generation, cannot be de-
scribed bya single all-embracing term. Holland once
said: "Any work which can be circumscribed by a
definition is a dead work." Most applicable to Jean
Christophe is the refusal to permit so living a creation
to be hidebound by the restrictions of a name. Jean
Christophe is an attempt to create a totality, to write a
book that is universal and encyclopedic, not merely nar-
rative; abook which continually returns to the central
problem of the world-all. It combines insight into the
soul with an outlook into the age. It is the portrait of
an entire generation, and simultaneously it is the biog-
raphy of an imaginary individual. Grautoff has termed
it "a cross-section of our society"; but it is likewise the
religious confession of its author. It is critical, but at
the same time productive; at once a criticism of reality,
and a creative analysis of the unconscious; it is a sym-
phony in words, and a fresco of contemporary ideas. It
is an ode to solitude, and likewise an Eroica of the great
166
 THE WORK WITHOUT A FORMULA 167

European fellowship. But whatever definition we at-

tempt, can deal with a part only, for the whole eludes
definition. In the field of literary endeavor, the nature
of a moral or ethical act cannot be precisely specified.
Rolland's sculptural energies enable him to shape the
inner humanity of what he is describing; his idealism
is a force that strengthens faith, a tonic of vitality. His
Jean Christophe is an attempt towards justice, an attempt
to understand life. It is also an attempt towards faith,
an attempt to love life. These coalesce in his moral
demand (the only one he has ever formulated for the
free human being), "to know life, and yet to love it."
The essential aim of the book is explained by its hero
when he refers to the disparateness of contemporary
life, to the manner in which its art has been severed into
a thousand fragments. "The Europe of to-day no longer
possesses a common book; it has no poem, no prayer, no
act of faith which is the common heritage of all. This
lack is fatal to the art of our time. There is no one who
has written for all; no one who has fought for all."
Rolland hoped to remedy the evil. He wished to write
for all nations, and not for his fatherland alone. Not
artists and men of letters merely, but all who are eager
to learn about life and about their own age, were to be
supplied with a picture of the environment in which
they were living. Jean Christophe gives expression to
his creator's will, saying: "Display everyday life to
everyday people — the life that is deeper and wider than
the ocean. The least among us bears infinity within him
. . . Describe the simple life of one of these simple
168 ROMAIN HOLLAND

men; . . . describe it simply, as it actually happens.

Do not trouble about phrasing; do not dissipate your en-
ergies, asdo so many contemporary writers, in straining
for artistic effects. You wish to speak to the many, and
you must therefore speak their language. . . . Throw
yourself into what you create; think your own thoughts;
feel your own feelings. Let your heart set the rhythm
to the words. Style is soul."
Jean Christophe was designed to be, and actually is, a
work of life, and not a work of art; it was to be, and is,
a book as comprehensive as humanity; for "Fart est la
vie domptee"; art is life broken in. The book differs
from the majority of the imaginative writings of our
day in that it does not make the erotic problem its cen-
tral feature. But it has no central feature. It at-
tempts to comprehend all problems, all those which are
a part of reality, to contemplate them from within, "from
the spectrum of an individual" as Grautoff expresses it.
The center is the inner life of the individual human
being. The primary motif of the romance is to expound
how this individual sees life, or rather, how he learns
to see it. The book may therefore be described as an
educational romance in the sense in which that term ap-
plies to Wilhelm Meister. The educational romance
aims at showing how, in years of apprenticeship and
years of travel, a human being makes acquaintance with
the lives of others, and thus acquires mastery over his
own life; how experience teaches him to transform into
individual views the concepts he has had transmitted to
him by others, many of which are erroneous; how he be-
 THE WORK WITHOUT A FORMULA 169

comes enabled to transmute the world so that it ceases

to be an outward phenomenon and becomes an inward
reality. The educational romance traces the change
from curiosity to knowledge, from emotional prejudice
to justice.
But this educational romance is simultaneously a his-
torical romance, a "comedie humaine" in Balzac's sense;
an "histoire contemporaine" in Anatole France's sense;
and in many respects also it is a political romance. But
Rolland, with his more catholic method of treatment,
does not merely depict the history of his generation, but
discusses the cultural history of the age, exhibiting the
radiations of the time spirit, concerning himself with
poesy and with socialism, with music and with the fine
arts, with the woman's question and with racial prob-
lems. Jean Christophe the man is a whole man, and
Jean Christophe the book embraces all that is human in
the spiritual cosmos. This romance ignores no ques-
tions; itseeks to overcome all obstacles; it has a uni-
versal life, beyond the frontiers of nations, occupations,
and creeds.
It is a romance of art, a romance of music, as well
as a historical romance. Its hero is not a saunterer
through life, like the heroes of Goethe, Novalis, and
Stendhal, but a creator. As with Gottfried Keller's Der
grime Heinrich, in this book the path through the exter-
nals of life leads simultaneously to the inner world, to
art, to completion. The birth of music, the growth of
genius, is individually and yet typically presented. In
his portrayal of experience, the author does not merely
 170 ROMAIN HOLLAND
aim at giving an analysis of the world; he desires also
to expound the mystery of creation, the primal secret of
life.
Furthermore, the book furnishes an outlook on the
universe, thus becoming a philosophic, a religious ro-
mance. The struggle for the totality of life, signifies for
Holland the struggle to understand its significance and
origin, the struggle for God, for one's own personal
God. The rhythm of the individual existence is in
search of an ultimate harmony between itself and the
rhythm of the universal existence. From this earthly
sphere, the Idea flows back into the infinite in an exultant
canticle.
Such a wealth of design and execution was unprece*
dented. In one work alone, Tolstoi's War and Peace,
had Holland encountered a similar conjuncture of a his-
torical picture of the world with a process of inner puri-
fication and a state of religious ecstasy. Here only had
he discerned the like passionate sense of responsibility
towards truth. But Holland diverged from this splendid
example by placing his tragedy in the temporal environ-
ment of the life of to-day, instead of amid the wars of
Napoleonic times; and by endowing his hero with the
heroism, not of arms, but of the invisible struggles which
the artist is constrained to fight. Here, as always, the
most human of artists was his model, the man to whom art
was not an end in itself, but was ever subordinate to an
ethical purpose. In accordance with the spirit of Tol-
stoi's teaching, Jean Christophe was not to be a literary
work, but a deed. For this reason, Holland's great sym-
 THE WORK WITHOUT A FORMULA 171

phony cannot be subjected to the restrictions of a con-

venient formula. The book ignores all the ordinary
canons, and is none the less a characteristic product of
its time. Standing outside literature, it is an overwhelm-
ingly powerful literary manifestation. Often enough it
ignores the rules of art, and is yet a most perfect ex-
pression ofart. It is not a book, but a message; it is not
a history, but is nevertheless a record of our time. More
than a book, it is the daily miracle of revelation of a
man who lives the truth, whose whole life is truth.
 CHAPTER V
KEY TO THE CHARACTERS

AS a romance, Jean Christophe has no prototype

in literature; but the characters in the book
have prototypes in real life. Holland the his-
torian does not hesitate to borrow some of the linea-
ments of his heroes from the biographies of great men.
In many cases, too, the figures he portrays recall per-
sonalities incontemporary life. In a manner peculiar
to himself, by a process of which he was the originator,
he combines the imaginative with the historical, fusing
individual qualities in a new synthesis. His delinea-
tions tend to be mosaics, rather than entirely new im-
aginative creations. In ultimate analysis, his method of
literary composition invariably recalls the work of a
musical composer; he paraphrases thematic reminis-
cences, without imitating too closely. The reader of
Jean Christophe often fancies that, as in a key-novel,
he has recognized some public personality; but ere long
he finds that the characteristics of another figure intrude.
Thus each portrait is freshly constructed out of a hun-
dred diverse elements.
Jean Christophe seems at first to be Beethoven. Seip-
pel has aptly described La vie de Beethoven as a preface
172
 KEY TO THE CHARACTERS 173

to Jean Christophe. In truth the opening volumes of

the novel show us a Jean Christophe whose image is
modeled after that of the great master. But it becomes
plain in due course that we are being shown something
more than one single musician, that Jean Christophe
is the quintessence of all great musicians. The figures
in the pantheon of musical history are presented in a
composite portrait; or, to use a musical analogy, Bee-
thoven, the master musician, is the root of the chord.
Jean Christophe grew up in the Rhineland, Beethoven's
home; Jean Christophe, like Beethoven, had Flemish
blood in his veins; his mother, too, was of peasant ori-
gin, his father a drunkard. Nevertheless, Jean Chris-
tophe exhibits numerous traits proper to Friedemann
Bach, son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Again, the letter
which young Beethoven redivivus is made to write to the
grand duke is modeled on the historical document; the
episode of his acquaintanceship with Frau von Kerich
recalls Beethoven and Frau von Breuning. But many
incidents, like the scene in the castle, remind the reader
of Mozart's youth ; and Mozart's little love episode with
Rose Cannabich is transferred to the life of Jean Chris-
tophe. The older Jean Christophe grows, the less does
his personality recall that of Beethoven. In external
characteristics he grows rather to resemble Gluck and
Handel. Of the latter, Rolland writes elsewhere that
"his formidable bluntness alarmed every one." Word
for word we can apply to Jean Christophe, Rolland's de-
scription ofHandel: "He was independent and irri-
table, and could never adapt himself to the conventions
174 ROMAIN HOLLAND
of social life. He insisted on calling a spade a spade,
and twenty times a day he aroused annoyance in all who
had to associate with him." The life history of Wagner
had much influence upon the delineation of Jean Chris-
tophe. The rebellious flight to Paris, a flight originat-
ing, as Nietzsche phrases it, "from the depths of in-
stinct"; the hack-work done for minor publishers; the
sordid details of daily life — all these things have been
transposed almost verbatim into Jean Christophe from
Wagner's autobiographical sketches Ein deutscher Mu-
siker in Paris.
Ernst Decsey's life of Hugo Wolf was, however, de-
cisive inits influence upon the configuration of the lead-
ing character in Holland's book, upon the almost violent
departure from the picture of Beethoven. Not merely
do we find individual incidents taken from Decsey's
book, such as the hatred for Brahms, the visit paid to
Hassler (Wagner), the musical criticism published in
"Dionysos" ("Wiener Salonblatt"), the tragi-comedy of
the unsuccessful overture to Penthesilea, and the memo-
rable visit to Professor Schulz (Emil Kaufmann). Fur-
thermore, Wolf's whole character, his method of musical
creation, is transplanted into the soul of Jean Christophe.
His primitive force of production, the volcanic eruptions
flooding the world with melody, shooting forth into eter-
nity four songs in the space of a day, with subsequent
months of inactivity, the brusque transition from the
joyful activity of creation to the gloomy brooding of
inertia — this form of genius which was native to Hugo
Wolf becomes part of the tragical equipment of Jean
 KEY TO THE CHARACTERS 175

Christophe. Whereas his physical characteristics re-

mind us of Handel, Beethoven, and Gluck, his mental
type is assimilated rather in its convulsive energy to that
of the great song-writer. With this difference, that to
Jean Christophe, in his more brilliant hours, there is
superadded the cheerful serenity, the childlike joy, of
Schubert. He has a dual nature. Jean Christophe is
the classical type and the modern type of musician com-
bined into a single personality, so that he contains even
many of the characteristics of Gustav Mahler and Cesar
Frank. He is not an individual musician, the figure of
one living in a particular generation; he is the sublima-
tion of music as a whole.
Nevertheless, in Jean Christophe's life we find inci-
dents deriving from the adventures of those who were
not musicians. From Goethe's Wahrheit und Dichtung
comes the encounter with the French players; I have
already said that the story of Tolstoi's last days was
represented in Jean Christophe's flight into the forest
(though in this latter case, from the figure of a benighted
traveler, Nietzsche's countenance glances at us for a mo-
ment) . Grazia typifies the well-beloved who never dies;
Antoinette is a picture of Renan's sister Henriette; Fran-
goise Oudon, the actress, recalls Eleanora Duse, but
in certain respects she reminds us of Suzanne Depres.
Emmanuel contains, in addition to traits that are purely
imaginary, lineaments that are drawn respectively from
Charles Louis Philippe and Charles Peguy; among the
minor figures, lightly sketched, we seem to see Debussy,
Verhaeren, and Moreas. When La foire sur la place
176 ROMAIN HOLLAND
was published, the figures of Roussin the deputy, Levy-
Coeur, the critic, Gamache the newspaper proprietor,
and Hecht the music seller, hurt the feelings of not a
few persons against whom no shafts had been aimed by
Rolland. The portraits had been painted from studies
of the commonplace, and typified the incessantly re-
curring mediocrities which are eternally real no less
than are figures of exquisite rarity.
One portrait, however, that of Olivier, would seem to
have been purely fictive. For this very reason, Olivier
is felt to be the most living of all the characters, pre-
cisely because we cannot but feel that in many respects
we have before us the artist's own picture, displaying
not so much the circumstantial destiny as the human es-
sence of Remain Rolland. Like the classical painters,
he has, almost unmarked, introduced himself slightly
disguised amid the historical scenario. The descrip-
tion is that of his own figure, slender, refined, slightly
stooping; here we see his own energy, inwardly directed,
and consuming itself in idealism; Rolland's enthusiasm
is displayed in Olivier's lucid sense of justice, in his
resignation as far as his personal lot is concerned, though
he never resigns himself to the abandonment of his cause.
It is true that in the novel this gentle spirit, the pupil of
Tolstoi and Renan, leaves the field of action to his
friend, and vanishes, the symbol of a past world. But
Jean Christophe was merely a dream, the longing for
energy sometimes felt by the man of gentle disposition.
Olivier-Rolland limns this dream of his youth, designing
upon his literary canvas the picture of his own life.
 CHAPTER VI
A HEROIC SYMPHONY

AN abundance of figures and events, an impres-

sive multiplicity of contrasts, are united by a
single element, music. In Jean Christophe,
music is the form as well as the content. For the sake of
simplicity we have to call the work a romance or a novel.
But nowhere can it be said to attach to the epic tradition
of any previous writers of romance: whether to that of
Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, who aimed at analyzing so-
ciety into its chemical elements; or to that of Goethe,
Gottfried Keller, and Stendhal, who sought to secure a
crystallization of the soul. Holland is neither a narra-
tor, nor what may be termed a poetical romancer; he
is a musician who weaves everything into harmony. In
ultimate analysis, Jean Christophe is a symphony born
out of the spirit of music, just as in Nietzsche's view
classical tragedy was born out of that spirit; its laws are
not those of the narrative, of the lecture, but those of
controlled emotion. Holland is a musician, not an epic
poet.
Even qua narrator, Holland does not possess what^we
term style. He does not write a classical French; he
has no stable architechtonic177in his sentences, no definite
178 ROMAIN ROLLAND

rhythm, no typical hue in his wording, no diction pe-

culiar to himself. His personality does not obtrude
itself, since he does not form the matter but is formed
thereby. He possesses an inspired power of adaptation
to the rhythm of the events he is describing, to the mood
of the situation. The writer's mind acts as a resonator.
In the opening lines the tempo is set. Then the rhythm
surges on through the scene, carrying with it the epi-
sodes, which often seem like individual brief poems each
sustained by its own melody — songs and airs which ap-
pear and pass, rapidly giving place to new movements.
Some of the preludes in Jean Christophe are examples of
pure song-craft, delicate arabesques and capriccios,
islands of tone amid the roaring sea; then come other
moods, gloomy ballads, nocturnes breathing elemental
energy and sadness. When Rolland's writing is the out-
come of musical inspiration, he shows himself one of
the masters of language. At times, however, he speaks
to us as historian, as critical student of the age. Then
the splendor fades. Such historical and critical pas-
sages are like the periods of cold recitative in musical
drama, periods which are requisite in order to give
continuity to the story, and which thus fulfill an intel-
lectual need, however much our aroused feelings may
make us regret their interpolation. The ancient conflict
between the musician and the historian persists unrecon-
ciled in Rolland's work.
Only through the spirit of music can the architectonic
of Jean Christophe be understood. However plastic the
elaboration of the characters, their effective force is dis-
 A HEROIC SYMPHONY 179

played solely in so far as they are thematically

interwoven into the resounding tide of life's modulations.
The essential matter is always the rhythm which these
characters emit, and which issues most powerfully of all
from Jean Christophe, the master of music. The struc-
ture, the inner architectural conception of the work, can-
not be understood by those who merely contemplate its
obvious subdivision into ten volumes. This is dictated
by the exigencies of book production. The essential
caesuras are those between the lesser sections, each of
which is written in a different key. Only a trained
musician, one familiar with the great symphonies, can
follow in detail the way in which the epic poem Jean
Christophe is constructed as a symphony, an Eroica ; only
a musician can realize how in this work the most com-
prehensive type of musical composition is transposed
into the world of speech.
Let the reader recall the chorale-like undertone, the
booming note of the Rhine, We seem to be listening to
some primal energy, to the stream of life in its roaring
progress through eternity. A little melody rises above
the general roar. Jean Christophe, the child, has been
born out of the great music of the universe, to fuse in
turn with the endless stream of sound. The first figures
make a dramatic entry; the mystical chorale gradually
subsides; the mortal drama of childhood begins. By
degrees the stage is filled with personalities, with melo-
dies; voices answer the lisping syllables of Jean Chris-
tophe; until, finally, the virile tones of Jean Christophe
and the gentler voice of Olivier come to dominate the
180 ROMAIN HOLLAND
theme. Meanwhile, all the forms of life and music are
unfolded in concords and discords. Thus we have the
tragical outbreaks of a melancholy like that of Beetho-
ven; fugues upon the themes of art; vigorous dance
scenes, as in Le buisson ardent; odes to the infinite and
songs to nature, pure like those of Schubert. Wonder-
ful is the interconnection of the whole, and marvelous
is the way in which the tide of sound ebbs once more.
The dramatic tumult subsides; the last discords are re-
solved into the great harmony. In the final scene, the
opening melody recurs, to the accompaniment of invis-
ible choirs; the roaring river flows out into the limitless
sea.
Thus Jean Christophe, the Eroica, ends in a chorale to
the infinite powers of life, ends in the undying ocean
of music. Holland wished to convey the notion of
these eternal forces of life symbolically through the
imagery of the element which for us mortals brings us
into closest contact with the infinite; he wished to typify
these forces in the art which is timeless, which is free,
which knows nothing of national limitations, which is
eternal. Thus music is at once the form and the con-
tent of the work, "simultaneously its kernel and its
shell," as Goethe said of nature. Nature is ever the law
of laws for art.
 CHAPTER VII
THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK

JEAN CHRISTOPHE took the form of a book of

life rather than that of a romance of art, for Hol-
land does not make a specific distinction between
poietic types of men and those devoid of creative genius,
but inclines rather to see in the artist the most human
among men. Just as for Goethe, true life was identical
with activity; so for Holland, true life is identical with
production. One who shuts himself away, who has no
surplus being, who fails to radiate energy that shall
flow beyond the narrow limits of his individuality to
become part of the vital energy of the future, is doubt-
less still a human being, but is not genuinely alive.
There may occur a death of the soul before the death
of the body, just as there is a life that outlasts one's
own life. The real boundary across which we pass from
life to extinction is not constituted by physical death but
the cessation of effective influence. Creation alone is
life. "There is only one delight, that of creation.
Other joys are but shadows, alien to the world though
they hover over the world. Desire is creative desire;
for love, for genius, for action. One and all are born
out of ardor. It matters not whether we are creating
181
182 ROMAIN HOLLAND

in the sphere of the body or in the sphere of the spirit.

Ever, in creation, we are seeking to escape from the
prison of the body, to throw ourselves into the storm of
life, to be as gods. To create is to slay death."
Creation, therefore, is the meaning of life, its secret,
its innermost kernel. While Holland almost always
chooses an artist for his hero, he does not make this
choice in the arrogance of the romance writer who likes
to contrast the melancholy genius with the dull crowd.
His aim is to draw nearer to the primal problems of ex-
istence. In the work of art, transcending time and
space, the eternal miracle of generation out of nothing
(or out of the all) is made manifest to the senses, while
simultaneously its mystery is made plain to the intelli-
gence. For Holland, artistic creation is the problem of
problems precisely because the artist is the most human
of men. Everywhere Holland threads his way through
the obscure labyrinth of creative work, that he may draw
near to the burning moment of spiritual receptivity, to
the painful act of giving birth. He watches Michel-
angelo shaping pain in stone; Beethoven bursting forth
in melody; Tolstoi listening to the heart-beat of doubt
in his own laden breast. To each, Jacob's angel is re-
vealed in a different form, but for all alike the esctatic
force of the divine struggle continues to burn. Through-
out the years, Holland's sole endeavor has been to dis-
cover this ultimate type of artist, this primitive element
of creation, much as Goethe was in search of the arche-
typal plant. Holland wishes to discover the essential
creator, the essential act of creation, for he knows that
 THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK 183

in this mystery are comprised the root and the blossoms

of the whole of life's enigma.
As historian he had depicted the birth of art in hu-
manity. Now, as poet, he was approaching the same
problem in a different form, and was endeavoring to
depict the birth of art in one individual. In his His-
toire de V opera avant Lully et Scarlatti, and in his
Musiciens d'autrefois, he had shown how music, "blos-
soming throughout the ages," begins to form its buds;
and how, grafted upon different racial stems and upon
different periods, it grows in new forms. But here be-
gins the mystery of creation. Every beginning is
wrapped in obscurity; and since the path of all mankind
is symbolically indicated in each individual, the mystery
recurs in each individual's experience. Rolland is
aware that the intellect can never unravel this ultimate
mystery. He does not share the views of the monists,
for whom creation has become trivialized to a mechani-
cal effect which they would explain by talking of primi-
tive gases and by similar verbiage. He knows that na-
ture is modest, and that in her secret hours of genera-
tion she would fain elude observation ; he knows that we
are unable to watch her at work in those moments when
crystal is joining to crystal, and when flowers are spring-
ing tiut of the buds. Nothing does she hide more jeal-
ously than her inmost magic, everlasting procreation, the
very secret of infinity.
Creation, therefore, the life of life, is for Rolland
a mystic power, far transcending human will and human
intelligence. In every soul there lives, side by side with
184 ROMAIN HOLLAND

the conscious individuality, a stranger as guest. "Man's

chief endeavor since he became man has been to build
up dams that shall control this inner sea by the powers
of reason and religion. But when a storm comes (and
those most plenteously endowed are peculiarly subject
to such storms), the elemental powers are set free."
Hot waves flood the soul, streaming forth out of the un-
conscious; not out of the will, but against the will; out
of a super-will. This "dualism of the soul and its
daimon" cannot be overcome by the clear light of rea-
son. The energy of the creative spirit surges from the
depths of the blood, often from parents and remoter
progenitors, not entering through the doors and windows
of the normal waking consciousness, but permeating the
whole being as atmospheric spirits may be conceived
to do. Of a sudden the artist is seized as by intoxica-
tion, inspired by a will independent of the will, sub-
jected to the power "of the ineffable riddle of the world
and of life," as Goethe terms the daimonic. The divine
breaks upon him like a hurricane; or opens before him
like an abyss, "dieu abime," into which he hurls himself
unreflectingly. In Holland's sense, we must not say
that the true artist has his art, but that the art has the
artist. Art is the hunter, the artist is the quarry; art is
the victor, whereas the artist is happy in that he is
again and again and forever the vanquished. Thus be-
fore creation we must have the creator. Genius is pre-
destined. Atwork in the channels of the blood, while
the senses still slumber, this power from without pre-
pares the great magic for the child. Wonderful is Rol-
 THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK 185

land's description of the way in which Jean Christophe's

soul was already filled with music before he had heard
the first notes. The daimon is there within the youth-
ful breast, awaiting but a sign before stirring, before
making himself known to the kindred spirit within the
dual soul. When the boy, holding his grandfather's
hand, enters the church and is greeted by an outburst of
music from the organ, the genius within acclaims the
work of the distant brother and the child is filled with
joy. Again, driving in a carriage, and listening to the
melodious rhythm of the horse's hoofs, his heart goes
out in unconscious brotherhood to the kindred element.
Then comes one of the most beautiful passages in the
book, probably the most beautiful of those treating of
music. The little Jean Christophe clambers on to the
music stool in front of the black chest filled with magic,
and for the first time thrusts his -fingers into the unend-
ing thicket of concords and discords, where each note
that he strikes seems to answer yes or no to the uncon-
scious questions of the stranger's voice within him.
Soon he learns to produce the tones he desires to hear.
At first the airs had sought him out, but now he can
seek them out. His soul which, thirsting for music, has
long been eagerly drinking in its strains, now flows forth
creatively over the barriers into the world.
This inborn daimon in the artist grows with the child,
ripens with the man, and ages as the man grows old.
Like a vampire it is nourished by all the experiences of
its host, drinking his joys and his sorrows, gradually
sucking up all the life into itself, so that for the creative
186 ROMAIN HOLLAND

human being nothing more remains but the eternal thirst

and the torment of creation. In Holland's sense the
artist does not will to create, but must create. For him,
production is not (as Nordau and Nordau's congeners
fancy in their simplicity) a morbid outgrowth, an ab-
normality oflife, but the only true health; unproductiv-
ity is disease. Never has the torment of the lack of in-
spiration been more splendidly described than in Jean
Christophe. The soul in such cases is like a parched
land under a torrid sun, and its need is worse than
death. No breath of wind brings coolness; everything
withers; joy and energy fade; the will is utterly relaxed.
Suddenly comes a storm out of the swiftly overcast
heavens, the thunder of the burgeoning power, the light-
ning of inspiration ; the stream wells up from inexhausti-
ble springs, carrying the soul along with it in eternal de-
sire; the artist has become the whole world, has become
God, the creator of all the elements. Whatever he en-
counters, hesweeps along with him in his rush; "tout lui
est pretexte a sa fecondite intarissable" ; everything is
material for his inexhaustible fertility. He transforms
the whole of life into art; like Jean Christophe he trans-
forms his death into a symphony.
In order to grasp life in its entirety, Holland has en-
deavored todescribe the profoundest mystery of life; to
describe creation, the origin of the all, the development
of art in an artist. He has furnished a vivid descrip-
tion of the tie between creation and life, which weak-
lings are so eager to avoid. Jean Christophe is simul-
taneously the working genius and the suffering man; he
 THE ENIGMA OF CREATIVE WORK 187

suffers through creation, and creates through suffering.

For the very reason that Rolland is himself a creator,
the imaginary figure of Jean Christophe, the artist, is
transcendently alive.
 CHAPTER VIII

JEAN CHRISTOPHE

ART has many forms, but its highest form is al-

ways that which is most intimately akin to na-
ture in its laws and its manifestations. True
genius works elementally, works naturally, is wide as
the world and manifold as mankind. It creates out of
its own abundance, not out of weakness. Its perennial
effect, therefore, is to create more strength, to glorify
nature, and to raise life above its temporal confines into
infinity.
Jean Christophe is inspired with such genius. His
name is symbolical. Jean Christophe Krafft is himself
energy (Kraft), the indefatigable energy that springs
from peasant ancestry. It is the energy which is hurled
into life like a projectile, the energy that forcibly over-
comes every obstacle. Now, as long as we identify the
concept of life with quiescent being, with inactive ex-
istence, with things as they are, this force of nature must
be ever at war with life. For Rolland, however, life is
not the quiescent, but the struggle against quiescence; it
is creation, poiesis, the eternal, upward and onward im-
pulse against the inertia of "the perpetual as-you-were."
Among artists, one who is a fighter, an innovator, must
188
 JEAN CHRISTOPHE 189

necessarily be such a genius. Around him stand other

artists engaged in comparatively peaceful activities, the
contemplators, the sage observers of that which is, the
completers of the extant, the imperturbable organizers
of accomplished facts. They, the heirs of the past, have
repose; he, the precursor, has storm. It is his lot to
transform life into a work of art; he cannot enjoy life as
a work of art; first he must create life as he would have
it, create its form, its tradition, its ideal, its truth, its
god. Nothing for him is ready-made; he has eternally
to begin. Life does not welcome him into a warm
house, where he can forthwith make himself at home.
For him, life is but plastic material for a new edifice,
wherein those who come after will live. Such a man,
therefore, knows nothing of repose. "Work unrest-
ingly," says his god to him; "you must fight ceaselessly."
Obedient to the injunction, from boyhood to the day of
his death he follows this path, fighting without truce, the
flaming sword of the will in his hand. Often he grows
weary, wondering whether struggle must indeed be un-
ending, asking himself with Job whether his days be not
"like the days of an hireling." But soon, shaking off
lethargy, he recognizes that "we cannot be truly alive
while we continue to ask why we live; we must live life
for its own sake." He knows that labor is its own re-
ward. In an hour of illumination he sums up his des-
tiny in the splendid phrase: "I do not seek peace; I
seek life."
But struggle implies the use of force. Despite his
natural kindliness of disposition, Jean Christophe is an
 190 ROMAIN HOLLAND

apostle of force. We discern in him something barbaric

and elemental, the power of a storm or of a torrent
which, obeying not its own will but the unknown laws
of nature, rushes down from the heights into the lower
levels of life. His outward aspect is that of a fighter.
He is tall and massive, almost uncouth, with large hands
and brawny arms. He has the sanguine temperament,
and is liable to outbursts of turbulent passion. His foot-
fall isheavy; his gait is awkward, though he knows noth-
ing of fatigue. These characteristics derive from the
crude energy of his peasant forefathers on the maternal
side; their pristine strength gives him steadfastness in
the most arduous crises of existence. "Well is it with
him who amid the mishaps of life is sustained by the
power of a sturdy stock, so that the feet of father and
grandfathers may carry forward the son when he grows
weary, so that the vigorous growth of «nore robust fore-
bears may relift the crushed soul." The power of re-
silence against the oppression of existence is given by
such physical energy. Still more helpful is Jean Chris-
tophe's trust in the future, his healthy and unyielding
optimism, his invincible confidence in victory. "I have
centuries to look forward to," he cries exultantly in an
hour of disillusionment. "Hail to life! Hail to joy!"
From the German race he inherits Siegfried's confidence
in success, and for this reason he is ever a fighter. He
knows, "le genie veut 1'obstacle, 1'obstacle fait le genie"
— genius desires obstacles, for obstacles create genius.
Force, however, is always wilful. Young Jean Chris-
tophe, while his energies have not yet been spiritu-
 JEAN CHRISTOPHE 191

ally enlightened, have not yet been ethically tamed, can

see no one but himself. He is unjust towards others,
deaf and blind to remonstrance, indifferent as to whether
his actions may please or displease. Like a woodcutter,
ax in hand, he hastes stormfully through the forest,
striking right and left, simply to secure light and space
for himself. He despises German art without under-
standing it,and scorns French art without knowing any-
thing about it. He is endowed with "the marvelous
impudence of opinionated youth"; that of the under-
graduate who says, "the world did not exist till I cre-
ated it." His strength has its fling in contentiousness;
for only when struggling does he feel that he is himself,
then only can he enjoy his passion for life.
These struggles of Jean Christophe continue through-
out the years, for his maladroitness is no less conspicu-
ous than his strength. He does not understand his op-
ponents. He is slow to learn the lessons of life; and it
is precisely because the lessons are learned so slowly,
piece by piece, each stage besprinkled with blood and
watered with tears, that the novel is so impressive and
so full of help. Nothing comes easily to him; no ripe
fruit ever falls into his hands. He is simple like Parsi-
fal, naive, somewhat boisterous and provincial. Instead
of rubbing off his angularities upon the grindstones of
social life, he bruises himself by his clumsy movements.
He is an intuitive genius, not a psychologist; he fore-
sees nothing, but must endure all things before he can
know. "He had not the hawklike glance of Frenchmen
and Jews, who discern the most trifling characteristics of
192 ROMAIN HOLLAND
all that they see. He silently absorbed everything he
came in contact with, as a sponge absorbs. Not until
days or hours had elapsed would he become fully aware
of what had now become a part of himself." Nothing
was real to him so long as it remained objective. To be
of use, every experience must be, as it were, digested and
worked up into his blood. He could not exchange ideas
and concepts one for another as people exchange bank
notes. After prolonged nausea, he was able to free
himself from all the conventional lies and trivial notions
which had been instilled into him in youth, and was then
at length enabled to absorb fresh nutriment. Before he
could know France, he had to strip away all her masks
one after another; before he could reach Grazia, "the
well-beloved who never dies," he had to make his way
through less lofty adventures. Before he could discover
himself and before he could discover his god, he had to
live the whole of his life through. Not until he reaches
the other shore does Christophorus recognize that his
burden has been a message.
He knows that "it is good to suffer when one is strong,"
and he therefore loves to encounter hindrances.
"Everything great is good, and the extremity of pain bor-
ders on enfranchisement. The only thing that crushes
irremediably, the only thing that destroys the soul, is
mediocrity of pain and joy." He gradually learns to
recognize his enemy, his own impetuosity; he learns to
be just; he begins to understand himself and the world.
The nature of passion becomes clear to him. He real-
izes that the hostility he encounters is aimed, not at him
 JEAN CHRISTOPHE 193

personally, but at the eternal powers goading him on; he

learns to love his enemies because they have helped him
to find himself, and because they march towards the same
goal by other roads. The years of apprenticeship have
come to an end. As Schiller admirably puts it in
the above-quoted letter to Goethe: "Years of appren-
ticeship are a relative concept. They imply their cor-
relative, which is mastery. The idea of mastery is pre-
sup osed to elucidate and ground the idea of apprentice-
ship." Jean Christophe, in riper years, begins to see
that through all his transformations he has by degrees be-
come more truly himself. Preconceptions have been
cast aside ; he has been freed from beliefs and illusions,
freed from the prejudices of race and nationality. He
is free and yet pious, now that he grasps the meaning of
the path he has to tread. In the frank and noisy opti-
mism of youth, he had exclaimed, "What is life? A
tragedy. Hurrah!" Now, "transfigure par la foi," this
optimism has been transformed into a gentle, all-em-
bracing wisdom. His freethinker's confessions runs:
"To serve God and to love God, signifies to serve life and
to love life." He hears the footsteps of coming genera-
tions. Even in those who are hostile to him he salutes
the undying spirit of life. He sees his fame growing like
a great cathedral, and feels it be to something remote
from himself. He who was an aimless stormer, is now
a leader; but his own goal does not become clear to him
until the sonorous waves of death encompass him, and he
floats away into the vast ocean of music, into eternal
peace.
194 ROMAIN HOLLAND

What makes Jean Christophe's struggle supremely

heroic is that he aspires solely towards the greatest, to-
wards life as a whole. This striving man has to upbuild
everything for himself; his art, his freedom, his faith, his
God, his truth. He has to fight himself free from every-
thing which others have taught him ; from all the fellow-
ships of art, nationality, race, and creed. His ardor
never wrestles for any personal end, for success or for
pleasure. "II n'y a aucun rapport entre la passion et
le plaisir." Jean Christophe's loneliness makes this
struggle tragical. It is not on his own behalf that he
troubles to attain to truth, for he knows that every man
has his own truth. When, nevertheless, he becomes a
helper of mankind, this is not by words, but by his own
essential nature, which exercises a marvelously harmon-
izing influence in virtue of his vigorous goodness. Who-
ever comes into contact with him — the imaginary person-
alities inthe book, and no less the real human beings who
read the book — is the better for having known him.
The power through which he conquers is that of the life
which we all share. And inasmuch as we love him, we
grow enabled to cherish an ardent love for the world
of mankind.
 CHAPTER IX

OLIVIER

JEAN CHRISTOPHE is the portrait of an artist.

But every form and every formula of art and the
artist must necessarily be one-sided. Holland,
therefore, introduces to Christophe in mid career, "nel
mezzo del cammin," a counterpart, a Frenchman as foil
to the German, a hero of thought as contrast to the hero
of action. Jean Christophe and Olivier are comple-
mentary figures, attracting one another in virtue of the
law of polarity. "They were very different each from
the other, and they loved one another on account of this
difference, being of the same species" — the noblest.
Olivier is the essence of spiritual France, just as Jean
Christophe is the offspring of the best energies of Ger-
many; they are ideals, alike fashioned in the form of
the highest ideal; alternating like major and minor, they
transpose the theme of art and life into the most wonder-
ful variations.
In externals the contrast between them is marked, both
in respect of physical characteristics and social origins.
Olivier is slightly built, pale and delicate. Whereas
Jean Christophe springs from working folk, Olivier de-
rives from an old and somewhat195 effete bourgeois stock,
 196 ROMAIN HOLLAND

and despite all his ardor he has an aristocratic aloofness

from vulgar things. His vitality does not come like that
of his robust comrade from excess of bodily energy, from
muscles and blood, but from nerves and brain, from will
and passion. He is receptive rather than productive.
"He was ivy, a gentle soul which must always love and
be loved." Art is for him a refuge from reality, whereas
Jean Christophe flings himself upon art to find in it life
many times multiplied. In Schiller's sense of the terms,
Olivier is the sentimental artist, whilst his German
brother is the naive genius. Olivier represents the
beauty of a civilization; he is symbolic of "la vaste
culture et le genie psychologique de la France"; Jean
Christophe is the very luxuriance of nature. The
Frenchman represents contemplation; the German, ac-
tion. The former reflects by many facets ; the latter has
the genius which shines by its own light. Olivier "trans-
fers to the sphere of thought all the energies that he has
drawn from action," producing ideas where Christophe
radiates vitality, and wishing to improve, not the world,
but himself. It suffices him to fight out within himself
the eternal struggle of responsibility. He contemplates
unmoved the play of secular forces, looking on with the
skeptical smile of his teacher Renan, as one who knows
in advance that the perpetual return of evil is inevitable,
that nothing can avert the eternal victory of injustice and
wrong. His love, therefore, goes out to humanity, the
abstract idea, and not to actual men, the unsatisfactory
realizations of that idea.
At first we incline to regard him as a weakling, as
 OLIVIER 197
timid and inactive. Such is the view taken at the outset
by his forceful friend, who says almost angrily: "Are
you incapable of feeling hatred?" Olivier answers with
a smile: "I hate hatred. It is repulsive to me that I
should struggle with people whom I despise." He does
not enter into treaties with reality; his strength lies in
isolation. No defeat can daunt him, and no victory can
persuade him: he knows that force rules the world, but
he refuses to recognize the victor. Jean Christophe,
fired by Teutonic pagan wrath, rushes at obstacles and
stamps them underfoot; Olivier knows that next day the
weeds that have been trodden to the earth will spring
up again. He does not love struggle for its own sake.
When he avoids struggle, this is not because he fears de-
feat, but because victory is indifferent to him. A free-
thinker, he is in truth animated by the spirit of Chris-
tianity. "Ishould run the risk of disturbing my soul's
peace, which is more precious to me than any victory. I
refuse to hate. I desire to be just even to my enemies.
Amid the storms of passion I wish to retain clarity of
vision, that I may understand everything and love every-
thing."
Jean Christophe soon comes to recognize that Olivier
is his spiritual brother, learning that the heroism of
thought is just as great as the heroism of action, that his
friend's idealistic anarchism is no less courageous than
his own primitive revolt. In this apparent weakling, he
venerates a soul of steel. Nothing can shake Olivier,
nothing can confuse his serene intelligence. Superior
force is no argument against him. "He had an hide-
198 ROMAIN HOLLAND

pendence of judgment which nothing could overcome.

When he loved anything, he loved it in defiance of the
world." Justice is the only pole towards which the
needle of his will points unerringly; justice is his sole
form of fanaticism. Like Ae'rt, his weaker prototype,
he has "la faim de justice." Every injustice, even the
injustices of a remote past, seem to him a disturbance
of the world order. He belongs, therefore, to no party ;
he is unfailingly the advocate on behalf of all the un-
happy and all the oppressed ; his place is ever "with the
vanquished"; he does not wish to help the masses
socially, but to help individual souls, whereas Jean
Christophe desires to conquer for all mankind every
paradise of art and freedom. For Olivier there is but
one true freedom, that which comes from within, the
freedom which a man must win for himself. The illu-
sion of the crowd, its eternal class struggles and national
struggles for power, distress him, but do not arouse his
sympathy. Standing quite alone, he maintains his men-
tal poise when war between Germany and France is immi-
nent, when all are shaken in their convictions, and when
even Jean Christophe feels that he must return home to
fight for his fatherland. "I love my country," says the
Frenchman to his German brother. "I love it just as
you love yours. But am I for this reason to betray my
conscience, to kill my soul? This would signify the be-
trayal of my country. I belong to the army of the
spirit, not to the army of force." But brute force takes
its revenge upon the man who despises force, and he is
killed in a chance medley. Only his ideals, which were
 OLIVIER 199

his true life, survive him, to renew for those of a later

generation the mystic idealism of his faith.
Marvelously delineated is the answer made by the
advocate of mental force to the advocate of physical
force, by the genius of the spirit to the genius of action.
The two heroes are profoundly united in their love for
art, in their passion for freedom, in their need for spirit-
ual purity. Each is "pious and free" in his own sense;
they are brothers in that ultimate domain which Holland
finely terms "the music of the soul" — in goodness. But
Jean Christophe's goodness is that of instinct; it is ele-
mental, therefore, and liable to be interrupted by pas-
sionate relapses into hate. Olivier's goodness, on the
other hand, is intellectual and wise, and is tinged merely
at times by ironical skepticism. But it is this contrast
between them, it is the fact that their aspirations towards
goodness are complementary, which draws them together.
Christophe's robust faith revives joy in life for the lonely
Olivier. Christophe, in turn, learns justice from
Olivier. The sage is uplifted by the strong, who is him-
self enlightened by the sage's clarity. This mutual ex-
change of benefits symbolizes the relationship between
their nations. The friendship between the two indi-
viduals isdesigned to be the prototype of a spiritual alli-
ance between the brother peoples. France and Germany
are "the two pinions of the west." The European spirit
is to soar freely above the blood-drenched fields of the
past.
 CHAPTER X

GRAZIA

JEAN CHRISTOPHE is creative action; Olivier is

creative thought; a third form is requisite to com-
plete the cycle of existence, that of Grazia, cre-
ative being, who secures fulfillment merely through her
beauty and refulgence. In her case likewise the name
is symbolic. Jean Christophe Krafft, the embodiment
of virile energy, reencounters, comparatively late in life,
Grazia, who now embodies the calm beauty of woman-
hood. Thus his impetuous spirit is helped to realize the
final harmony.
Hitherto, in his long march towards peace, Jean Chris-
tophe has encountered only fellow-soldiers and enemies.
In Grazia he comes for the first time into contact with a
human being who is free from nervous tension, with one
characterized by that serene concord which in his music
he has unconsciously been seeking for many years.
Grazia is not a flaming personality from whom he him-
self catches fire. The warmth of her senses has long ere
this been cooled, through a certain weariness of life, a
gentle inertia. But in her, too, sounds that "music of
the soul"; she too is inspired with that goodness which
is needed to attract Jean Christophe's
200 liking. She does
 GRAZIA 201

not incite him to further action. Already, owing to the

many stresses of his life, the hair on his temples has been
whitened. She leads him to repose, shows him "the
smile of the Italian skies," where his unrest, tending as
ever to recur, vanishes at length like a cloud in the eve-
ning air. The untamed amativeness which in the past
has convulsed his whole being, the need for love which
has flamed up with elemental force in Le buisson ardent,
threatening to destroy his very existence, is clarified here
to become the "suprasensual marriage" with Grazia,
"the well-beloved who never dies." Through Olivier,
Jean Christophe is made lucid; through Grazia, he is
made gentle. Olivier reconciled him with the world;
Grazia, with himself. Olivier had been Virgil, guiding
him through purgatorial fires; Grazia is Beatrice, point-
ing towards the heaven of the great harmony. Never
was there a nobler symbolization of the European triad ;
the restrained fierceness of Germany; the clarity of
France; the gentle beauty of the Italian spirit. Jean
Christophe's life melody is resolved in this triad; he has
now been granted the citizenship of the world, is at home
in all feelings, lands, and tongues, and can face death in
the ultimate unity of life.
Grazia, "la linda" (the limpid), is one of the most
tranquil figures in the book. We seem barely aware of
her passage through the agitated worlds, but her soft
Mona Lisa smile streams like a beam of light athwart the
animated space. Had she been absent, there would have
been lacking to the work and to the man the magic of
"the eternal feminine," the solution of the ultimate rid-
202 ROMAIN HOLLAND

die. When she vanishes, her radiance still lingers, fill-

ing this book of exuberance and struggle with a soft
lyrical melancholy, and transfusing it with a new beauty,
that of peace.
 CHAPTER XI
JEAN CHRISTOPHE AND HIS FELLOW MEN

s
NOTWITHSTANDING the intimate relationship
described in the previous chapters, the path of
Jean Christophe the artist is a lonely one. He
walks by himself, pursuing an isolated course that leads
deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of his own being.
The blood of his fathers drives him along, out of an infi-
nite of confused origins, towards that other infinite of
creation. Those whom he encounters in his life's jour-
ney are no more than shadows and intimations, mile-
stones of experience, steps of asCent and descent, epi-
sodes and adventures. But what is knowledge other than
a sum of experiences; what is life beyond a sum of en-
counters? Other human beings are not Jean Chris-
tophe's destiny, but they are material for his creative
work. They are elements of the infinite, to which he
feels himself akin. Since he wishes to live life as a
whole, he must accept the bitterest part of life, mankind.
All he meets are a help to him. His friends help him
much; but his enemie help him still more, increasing his
s
vitality and stimulating his energy. Thus even those
who wish to hinder his work, further it; and what is the
true artist other than the work203upon which he is engaged?
 204 ROMAIN HOLLAND

In the great symphony of his passion, his fellow beings

are high and low voices inextricably interwoven into
the swelling rhythm. Many an individual theme he dis-
misses after a while with indifference, but many another
he pursues to the end. Into his childhood's days comes
Gottfried, the kindly old man, deriving more or less from
the spirit of Tolstoi. He appears quite incidentally,
never for more than a night, shouldering his pack, the
undying Ahasuerus, but cheerful and kindly, never
mutinous, never complaining, bowed but splendidly un-
flinching, ashe wends his way Godward. Only in pass-
ing does he touch Christophe's life, but this transient con-
tact suffices to set the creative spirit in movement. Con-
sider, again, Hassler, the composer. His face flashes
upon Jean Christophe, a lightning glimpse, at the be-
ginning ofthe young man's work; but, in this instant,
Jean Christophe recognizes the danger that he may come
to resemble Hassler through indolence, and he collects
his forces. Intimations, appeals, signs — such are other
men to him. Every one acts as a stimulus, some through
love, some through hatred. Old Schulz, with sympa-
thetic understanding, helps him in a moment of despair.
The family pride of Frau von Kerich and the stupidity of
the Gothamites drive him anew to despair, which cul-
minates this time in flight, and thus proves his salvation.
Poison and antidote have a terrible resemblance. But
to his creative spirit nothing is unmeaning, for he stamps
his own significance upon all, sweeping into the current
of his life the very things which were imposing them-
gelves as hindrances to the stream. Suffering is need-
 CHRISTOPHE AND HIS FELLOW MEN 205

ful to him for the knowledge it brings. He draws his

best forces out of sadness, out of the shocks of life.
Designedly does Holland make Jean Christophe conceive
the most beautiful of his imaginative works during the
times of his profoundest spiritual distresses, during the
days after the death of Olivier, and during those which
followed the departure of Grazia. Opposition and afflic-
tion, the foes of the ordinary man, are friends to the
artist, just as much as is every experience in his career.
Precisely for his profoundest creative solitude, he re-
quires the influences which emanate from his fellows.
It is true that he takes long to learn this lesson, judg-
ing men falsely at first because he sees them tempera-
mently, not knowledgeably. To begin with, Jean Chris-
tophe colors all human beings with his own overflowing
enthusiasm, fancying them to be as upright and good-
natured as he is himself, to speak no less frankly and
spontaneously than he himself speaks. Then, after the
first disillusionments, his views are falsified in the oppo-
site direction by bitterness and mistrust. But gradu-
ally he learns to hold just measure between overvalua-
tion and its opposite. Helped towards justice by Olivier,
guided to gentleness by Grazia, gathering experience
from life, he comes to understand, not himself alone,
but his foes likewise. Almost at the end of the book we
find a little scene which may seem at first sight insignifi-
cant. Jean Christophe comes across his sometime
enemy, Levy-Coeur, and spontaneously offers his hand.
This reconciliation implies something more than tran-
sient sympathy. It expresses the meaning of the long
206 ROMAIN HOLLAND

pilgrimage. It leads us to his last confession, which

runs as follows, with a slight alteration from his old
description of true heroism: "To know men, and yet to
love them."
 CHAPTER XII
JEAN CHRISTOPHE AND THE NATIONS

YOUNG Headstrong, looking upon his fellow men

with passion and prejudice, fails to understand
their natures; at first he contemplates the
families of mankind, the nations, with like passion and
prejudice. It is a part of our inevitable destiny that to
begin with, and for many of us throughout life, we know
our own land from within only, foreign lands only from
without. Not until we have learned to see our own coun-
try from without, and to understand foreign countries
from within as the natives of these countries understand
them, can we acquire a European outlook, can we realize
that these various countries are complementary parts of
a single whole. Jean Christophe fights for life in its
entirety. For this reason he must pursue the path by
which the nationalist becomes a citizen of the world and
.acquires a "European soul."
As must happen, Jean Christophe begins with preju-
dice. At first he overvalues France. Ideas have been
impressed upon his mind concerning the artistic, cheer-
ful, liberal-spirited French, and he regards his own Ger-
many as a land full of restriction. His first sight of
Paris brings disillusionment; 207 he can see nothing but lies,
208 ROMAIN ROLLAND

clamor, and cheating. By degrees, however, he dis-

covers that the soul of a nation is not an obvious and
superficial thing, like a paving-stone in the street, but
that the observer of a foreign people must dig his way
to that soul through a thick stratum of illusion and false-
hood. Ere long he weans himself of the habit which
leads people to talk of the French, the Italians, the Jews,
the Germans, as if members of these respective nations
or races were all of a piece, to be classified and docketed
in so simple a fashion. Each people has its own meas-
ure, its own form, customs, failings, and lies; just as
each has its own climate, history, skies, and race; and
these things cannot be easily summarized in a phrase
or two. As with all experience, our experiences of a
country must be built up from within. With words
alone we can build nothing but a house of cards.
"Truth is the same to all nations, but each nation has its
own lies which it speaks of as its idealism. Every mem-
ber of each nation inhales the appropriate atmosphere
of lying idealism from the cradle to the grave, until it
becomes the very breath of his life. None but isolated
geniuses can free themselves by heroic struggle, during
which they stand alone in the free universe of their own
thought." We must free ourselves from prejudice if we
are to judge freely. There is no other formula; there
are no other psychological prescriptions. As with all
creative work, we must permeate the material with which
we have to deal, must yield ourselves without reserve.
In the case of nations as in the case of individual men,
he who would know them will find that there is
 CHRISTOPHE AND THE NATIONS 209
but one science, that of the heart and not of books.
Nothing but such mutual understanding passing from
soul to soul can weld the nations together. What keeps
them asunder is misunderstanding, the way those of each
nation hold their own beliefs to be the only right ones,
look upon their own natures as the only good ones. The
mischief lies ^n the arrogance of persons who believe
that all others are wrong. Nation is estranged from na-
tion by the collective conceit of the members of each
nation, by the "great European plague of national
pride" which Nietzsche termed "the malady of the cen-
tury." They stand like trees in a forest, each stem prid-
ing itself on its isolation, though the roots interlace
underground and the summits touch overhead. The
common people, the proletariat, living in the depths,
universally human in its feelings, know naught of na-
tional contrasts. Jean Christophe, making the acquaint-
ance of Sidonie, the Breton maidservant, recognizes
with astonishment "how closely she resembles respect-
able folk in Germany." Look again at the summits,
at the elite. Olivier and Grazia have long been living
in that lofty sphere known to Goethe "in which we feel
the fate of foreign nations just as we feel our own."
Fellowship is a truth; mutual hatred is a falsehood;
justice is the only real tie linking men and linking na-
tions. "All of us, all nations, are debtors one to an-
other. Let us, then, pay our debts and do our duty
together." Jean Christophe has suffered at the hands of
every nation, and has received gifts from every nation;
disillusioned by all, he has also been benefited by all.
210 ROMAIN HOLLAND
To the citizen of the world, at the end of his pilgrim-
age, all nations are alike. In each his soul can make
itself at home. The musician in him dreams of a sub-
lime work, of the great European symphony, wherein
the voices of the peoples, resolving discords, will rise
in the last and highest harmony, the harmony of man-
kind.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE PICTURE OF FRANCE

is
THE picture ofseFrance in the great romance
notable becau we are here shown a country
from a twofold outlook, from without and from
within, from the perspective of a German and with the
eyes of a Frenchman. It is likewise notable because
Christophe's judgment is not merely that of one who
sees, but that of one who learns in seeing.
In every respect, the German's thought process is in-
tentionally presented in a typical form. In his little
native town he had never known a Frenchman. His
feelings towards the French, of whom he had no con-
crete experience whatever, took the form of a genial, but
somewhat contemptuous, sympathy. "The French are
good fellows, but rather a slack lot," would seem to sum
up his German prejudice. They are a nation of spine-
less artists, bad soldiers, corrupt politicians, women of
easy virtue; but they are clever, amusing, and liberal-
minded. Amid the order and sobriety of German life,
he feels a certain yearning towards the democratic free-
dom of France. His first encounter with a French ac-
tress, Corinne, akin to Goethe's Philine, seems to con-
firm this facile judgment;211 but soon, when he meets
212 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Antoinette, he comes to realize the existence of another
France. "You are so serious," he says with astonish-
ment to the demure, tongue-tied girl, who in this foreign
land is hard at work as a teacher in a pretentious, parvenu
household. Her characteristics are not in keeping with
his traditional prejudices. A Frenchwoman ought to
be trivial, saucy, and wanton. For the first time France
presents to him "the riddle of its twofold nature." This
initial appeal from the distance exercises a mysterious
lure. He begins to realize the infinite multiplicity of
these foreign worlds. Like Gluck, Wagner, Meyerbeer,
and Offenbach, he takes refuge from the narrowness of
German provincial life, and flees to Paris, the fabled
home of universal art.
His feeling on arrival is one of disorder, and this im-
pression never leaves him. The first and last impres-
sion, the strongest impression, to which the German in
him continually returns, is that powerful energies are
being squandered through lack of discipline. His first
guide in the fair is one of those spurious "real Pari-
sians," one of the immigrants who are more Parisian
in their manners than those who are Parisian by birth, a
Jew of German extraction named Sylvain Kohn, who
here passes by the name of Hamilton, and in whose hands
all the threads of the trade in art are centered. He
shows Jean Christophe the painters, the musicians, the
politicians, the journalists; and Jean Christophe turns
away disheartened. It seems to him that all their works
exhale an unpleasant "odor femininus," an oppressive
atmosphere laden with scent. He sees praises showered
 THE PICTURE OF FRANCE 213

upon second-rate persons, hears a clamor of apprecia-

tion, without discovering a single genuine work of art.
There is indeed art of a kind amid the medley, but it is
over-refined and decadent; the work of taste and not of
power; lacking integration through excess of irony; an
Alexandrian-Greek literature and music; the breath of a
moribund nation; the hothouse blossom of a perishing
civilization. He sees an end, but no beginning. The
German in him already hears "the rumbling of the can-
non" which will destroy this enfeebled Greece.
He learns to know good men and bad; many of them
are vain and stupid, dull and soulless; not one does he
meet, in his experience of social life in Paris, who gives
him confidence in France. The first messenger comes
from a distance; this is Sidonie, the peasant girl who
tends him during his illness. He learns, all at once,
how calm and inviolable, how fertile and strong, is the
earth, the humus, out of which the Parisian exotics suck
their energies. He becomes acquainted with the people,
the robust and serious-minded French people, which tills
the land, caring naught for the noise of the great fair,
the people which has made revolutions with the might
of its wrath and has waged the Napoleonic wars with its
enthusiasm. From this moment he feels there must be
a real France still unknown to him. In conversation
with Sylvain Kohn, he asks, "Where can I find France?"
Kohn answers grandiloquently, "We are France!" Jean
Christophe smiles bitterly, knowing well that he will
have a long search. Those among whom he is now mov-
ing have hidden France.
214 ROMAIN HOLLAND

At length comes the rencounter which is a turning-

point in his fate; he meets Olivier, Antoinette's brother,
the true Frenchman. Just as Dante, guided by Virgil,
wanders through new and ever new circles of knowledge,
so Jean Christophe, led by Olivier, learns with astonish-
ment that behind this veil of noise, behind this clamorous
fagade, an elite is quietly laboring. He sees the work of
persons whose names are never printed in the newspa-
pers; sees the people, those who, remote from the hurly-
burly, tranquilly pursue their daily round. He learns
to know the new idealism of the France whose soul has
been strengthened by defeat. At first this discovery fills
him with rage. "I cannot understand you all," he cries
to the gentle Olivier. "You live in the most beautiful
of countries, are marvelously gifted, are endowed with
the highest human sensibilities, and yet you fail to turn
these advantages to account. You allow yourselves to
be dominated and to be trampled upon by a handful of
rascals. Rouse yourselves; get together; sweep your
house clean!" The first and most natural thought of
the German is for organization, for the drawing together
of the good elements; the first thought of the strong
man is to fight. Yet the best in France insist on holding
aloof, some of them content with a mysterious clarity of
vision, and others giving themselves up to a facile resig-
nation. With that tincture of pessimism in their sagacity
to which Renan has given such lucid expression, they
shrink from the struggle. Action is uncongenial to
them, and the hardest thing of all is to combine them
for joint action. "They are over cautious, and visualize
 THE PICTURE OF FRANCE 215

defeat before the battle begins." Lacking the optimism

of the Germans, they remain isolated individuals, some
from prudence, others from pride. They seem to be
affected with a spirit of exclusiveness, the operation of
which Jean Christophe is able to study in his own dwell-
ing. On each story there live excellent persons who
could combine well, but they will have nothing to do
with one another. For twenty years they pass on the
staircase without becoming acquainted, without the least
concern about one another's lives. Thus the best among
the artists remain strangers.
Jean Christophe suddenly comes to realize with all its
merits and defects the essential characteristic of the
French people, the desire for liberty. Each one wishes
to be free for himself, free from ties. They waste enor-
mous quantities of energy because each tries to wage
the time struggle unaided, because they will not permit
themselves to be organized, because they refuse to pull
together in harness. Although their activities are thus
paralyzed by their reason, their minds nevertheless re-
main free. Consequently they are enabled to permeate
every revolutionary movement with the religious fervor
of the solitary, and they can perpetually renew their own
revolutionary faith. These things are their salvation,
preserving them from an order which would be unduly
rigid, from a mechanical system which would impose
excessive uniformity. Jean Christophe at length un-
derstands that the noisy fair exists only to attract the un-
thinking, and to preserve a creative solitude for the really
active spirits. He sees that for the French temperament
216 ROMAIN HOLLAND
this clamor is indispensable, is a means by which the
French fire one another to labor; he sees that the appar-
ent inconsequence of their thoughts is a rhythmical form
of continuous renewal. His first impression, like that
of so many Germans, had been that the French are effete.
But after twenty years he realizes that in truth they are
always ready for new beginnings, that amid the appar-
ent contradictions of their spirit a hidden order reigns,
a different order from that known to the Germans, just
as their freedom is a different freedom. The citizen
of the world, who no longer desires to impose upon any
other nation the characteristics of his own, now con-
templates with delight the eternal diversity of the races.
As the light of the. world is composed of the seven colors
of the spectrum, so from this racial diversity arises that
wonderful multiplicity in unity, the fellowship of all
mankind.
 CHAPTER XIV

THE PICTURE OF GERMANY

IN this romance, Germany likewise is viewed in a

twofold aspect; but whereas France is seen first
from without, with the eyes of a German, and then
from within, with the eyes of a Frenchman, Germany is
first viewed from within and then regarded from abroad.
Moreover, just a's happened in the case of France, two
worlds are imperceptibly superimposed one upon the
other; a clamant civilization and a silent one, a false
culture and a true. We see respectively the old Ger-
many, which sought its heroism in the things of the
spirit, discovered its profundity in truth; and the new
Germany, intoxicated with its own strength, grasping at
the powers of the reason which as a philosophical disci-
pline had transformed the world, and perverting them
to the uses of business efficiency. It is not suggested
that German idealism had become extinct; that there no
longer existed the belief in a purer and more beautiful
world freed from the compromises of our earthly lot.
The trouble rather was that this idealism had been too
widely diffused, had been generalized until it had grown
thin and superficial. The German faith in God, turning
practical, and now directed217towards mundane ends, had
218 ROMAIN HOLLAND

been transformed into grandiose ideas of the national

future. In art, it had been sentimentalized. In its new
manifestations, it was signally displayed in the cheap
optimism of Emperor William. The defeat which had
spiritualized French idealism, had, from the German
side, as a victory, materialized German idealism.
"What has victorious Germany given to the world?"
asks Jean Christophe. He answers his own question by
saying: "The flashing of bayonets; vigor without mag-
nanimity; brutal realism; force conjoined with greed for
profit; Mars as commercial traveler." He is grieved
to recognize that Germany has been harmed by victory.
He suffers; for "one expects more of one's own coun-
try than of another, and is hurt more by the faults of
one's own land." Ever the revolutionist, Christophe de-
tests noisy self-assertion, militarist arrogance, the chur-
lishness ofcaste feeling. In his conflict with militarized
Germany, in his quarrel with the sergeant at the dance
in the Alsatian village inn, we have an elemental erup-
tion of the hatred for discipline felt bj the artist, the
lover of freedom; we have his protest against the brutal-
ization of thought. He is compelled to shake the dust of
Germany off his feet.
When he reaches France, however, he begins to realize
Germany's greatness. "In a foreign environment his
judgment was freed" ; this statement applies to him as to
all of us. Amid the disorder of France he learned to
value the active orderliness of Germany; the skeptical
resignation of the French made him esteem the vigorous
optimism of the Germans; he was impressed by the con-
 THE PICTURE OF GERMANY 219

trast between a witty nation and a thoughtful one. Yet

he was under no illusions a*bout the optimism of the new
Germany, perceiving that it is often spurious. He be-
came aware that the idealism often took the form of
idealizing a dictatorial will. Even in the great masters,
he saw, to quote Goethe's wonderful phrase, "how read-
ily in the Germans the ideal waxes sentimental." His
passionate sincerity, grown pitiless in the atmosphere of
French clarity, revolts against this hazy idealism, which
compromises between truth and desire, which justifies
abuses of power with the plea of civilization, and which
considers that might is sufficient warrant for victory.
In France he becomes aware of the faults of France, in
Germany he realizes the faults of Germany, loving both
countries because they are so different. Each suffers
from the defective distribution of its merits. In France,
liberty is too widely diffused and engenders chaos,
while a few individuals comprising the elite keep their
idealism intact. In Germany, idealism, permeating the
masses, has been sugared into sentimentalism and wa-
tered into a mercantile optimism; and here a still smaller
elite preserves complete freedom aloof from the crowd.
Each suffers from an excessive development of national
peculiarities. Nationalism, as Nietzsche says, "has in
France corrupted character, and in Germany has cor-
rupted spirit and taste." Could but the two peoples
draw together and impress their best qualities upon one
another, they would rejoice to find, as Christophe him-
self had found, that "the richer he was in German
dreams, the more precious to him became the clarity
220 ROMAIN HOLLAND

of the Latin mind." Olivier and Christophe, forming a

pact of friendship, hope for the day when their personal
sentiments will be perpetuated in an alliance between
their respective peoples. In a sad hour of international
dissension, the Frenchman calls to the German in words
still unfulfilled: "We hold out our hands to you. De-
spite lies and hatred, we cannot be kept apart. We
have mutual need of one another, for the greatness of
our spirit and of our race. We are the two pinions of
the west. Should one be broken, the other is useless for
flight. Even if war should come, this will not unclasp
our hands, nor will it prevent us from soaring upwards

together."
 CHAPTER XV
THE PICTURE OF ITALY

JEAN CHRISTOPHE is growing old and weary

when he comes to know the third country that will
form part of the future European synthesis. He
had never felt drawn towards Italy. As had happened
many years earlier in -the case of France, so likewise
in the case of Italy, his sympathies had been chilled by
his acceptance of the disastrous and prejudiced formulas
by which the nations impose barriers between themselves
while each extols its own peculiarities as peculiarly right
and phenomenally strong. Yet hardly has he been an
hour in Italy when these prejudices are shaken off and
are replaced by enthusiastic admiration. He is fired by
the unfamiliar light of the Italian landscape. He be-
comes aware of a new rhythm of life. He does not see
fierce energy, as in Germany, or nervous mobility as in
France; but the sweetness of these "centuries of ancient
culture and civilization" makes a strong appeal to the
northern barbarian. Hitherto his gaze has always been
turned towards the future, but now he becomes aware
of the charms of the past. Whereas the Germans are
still in search of the best form of self-expression; and
whereas the French refresh and renew themselves through
221
 222 ROMAIN HOLLAND

incessant change; here he finds a nation with a clear se-

quence oftradition, a nation which need merely be true
to its own past and to its own landscape, in order to fulfill
the most perfect blossoming of its nature, in order to
realize beauty.
It is true that Christophe misses the element which
to him is the breath of life; he misses struggle. A gen-
tle drowsiness seems universally prevalent, a pleasant
fatigue which is debilitating and dangerous. "Rome is
too full of tombs, and the city exhales death." The fire
kindled by Mazzini and Garibaldi, the flame in which
United Italy was forged, still glows in isolated Italian
souls. Here, too, there is idealism. But it differs from
the German and from the French idealism; it is not yet
directed towards the citizenship of the world, but re-
mains purely national; "Italian idealism is concerned
solely with itself, with Italian desires, with the Italian
race, with Italian renown." In the calm southern atmos-
phere, this flame does not burn so fiercely as to radiate
a light through Europe; but it burns brightly and beau-
tifully inthese young souls, which are apt for all pas-
sions, though the moment has not yet come for the intens-
est ardors.
But as soon as Jean Christophe begins to love Italy,
he grows afraid of this love. He realises that Italy is
also essential to him, in order that in his music and
in his life the impetuosity of the senses shall be clari-
fied to a perfect harmony. He understands how neces-
sary the southern world is to the northern, and is now
aware that only in the trio of Germany, France, and
 THE PICTURE OF ITALY 223

Italy does the full meaning of each voice become clear.

In Italy, there is less illusion and more reality; but
the land is too beautiful, tempting to enjoyment and kill-
ing the impulse towards action. Just as Germany finds
a danger in her own idealism, because that idealism is
too widely disseminated and becomes spurious in the av-
erage man; just as to France her liberty proves disas-
trous because it encourages in the individual an idea of
absolute independence which estranges him from the
community ; so for Italy is her beauty a danger, since it
makes her indolent, pliable, and self-satisfied. To every
nation, as to every individual, the most personal of char-
acteristics, the very things that commend the nation or
the individual to others, are dangerous. It would seem,
therefore, that nations and individuals must seek salva-
tion by combining as far as possible with their own op-
posites. Thus will they draw nearer to the highest ideal,
that of European unity, that of universal humanity. In
Italy, as aforetime in France and in Germany, Jean
Christophe redreams the dream which Holland at two-
and-twenty had first dreamed on the Janiculum. He
foresees the European symphony, which hitherto poets
alone have created in works transcending nationality, but
which the nations as yet have failed to realize for them-
selves.
 CHAPTER XVI
THE JEWS

IN the three diversified nations, by each of which

Christophe is now attracted, now repelled, he finds
a unifying element, adapted to each nation, but not
completely merged therein — the Jews. "Do you no-
tice," he says on one occasion to Olivier, "that we are
always running up against Jews? It might be thought
that we draw them as by a spell, for we continually find
them in our path, sometimes as enemies and sometimes
as allies." It is true that he encounters Jews wherever
he goes. In his native town, the first people to give him
a helping hand (for their own ends, of course) were the
wealthy Jews who ran "Dionysos"; in Paris, Sylvain
Kohn had been his mentor, Levy-Coeur his bitterest foe,
Weil and Mooch his most helpful friends. In like man-
ner, Olivier and Antoinette frequently hold converse
with Jews, either on terms of friendship or on terms of
enmity. At every cross-roads to which the artist comes,
they stand like signposts pointing the way, now towards
good and now towards evil.
Christophe's first feeling is one of hostility. Al-
though he is too open-minded to entertain a sentiment
of hatred for Jews, he has 224 imbibed from his pious
 THE JEWS 225

mother a certain aversion ; and sharp-sighted though they

are, he questions their capacity for the real understand-
ing of his work. But again and again it becomes ap-
parent tohim that they are the only persons really con-
cerned about his work at all, the only ones who value
innovation for its own sake.
Olivier, the clearer-minded of the two, is able to ex-
plain matters to Christophe, showing that the Jews, cut
off from tradition, are unconsciously the pioneers of
every innovation which attacks tradition; these people
without a country are the best assistants in the campaign
against nationalism. "In France, the Jews are almost
the only persons with whom a free man can discuss
something novel, something that is really alive. The
others take their stand upon the past, are firmly rooted
in dead things. Of enormous importance is it that this
traditional past does not exist for the Jews; or that in so
far as it exists, it is a different past from ours. The
result is that we can talk to Jews about to-day, whereas
with those of our own race we can speak only of yes-
terday ... I do not wish to imply that I invariably find
their doings agreeable. Often enough, I consider these
doings actually repulsive. But at least they live, and
know how to value what is alive ... In modern Eu-
rope, the Jews are the principal agents alike of good
and of evil. Unwittingly they favor the germination of
the seed of thought. Is it not among Jews that you
have found your worst enemies and your best friends?"
Christophe agrees, saying: "It is perfectly true that
they have encouraged me and helped me; that they have
226 ROMAIN HOLLAND

uttered words which invigorated me for the struggle,

showing me that I was understood. Nevertheless, these
friends are my friends no longer; their friendship was
but a fire of straw. No matter! A passing sheen is
welcome in the night. You are right, we must not be

ungrateful."
He finds a place for them, these folk without a coun-
try, in his picture of the fatherlands. He does not fail
to see the faults of the Jews. He realizes that for Eu-
ropean civilization they do not form a productive ele-
ment in the highest sense of the term; he perceives that
in essence their work tends to promote analysis and
decomposition. But this work of decomposition seems
to him important, for the Jews undermine tradition, the
hereditary foe of all that is new. Their freedom from
the ties of country is the gadfly which plagues the "mangy
beast of nationalism" until it loses its intellectual bear-
ings. The decomposition they effect helps us to rid
ourselves of the dead past, of the "eternal yesterday";
detachment from national ties favors the growth of a
new spirit which it is itself incompetent to produce.
These Jews without a country are the best assistants of
the "good Europeans" of the future. In many respects
Christophe is repelled by them. As a man cherishing
faith in life, he dislikes their skepticism ; to his cheerful
disposition, their irony is uncongenial; himself striving
towards invisible goals, he detests their materialism, their
canon that success must be tangible. Even the clever
Judith Mannheim, with her "passion for intelligence,"
understands only his work, and not the faith upon which
 THE JEWS 227
that work is based. Nevertheless, the strong will of the
Jews appeals to his own strength, their vitality to his
vigorous life. He sees in them "the ferment of action,
the yeast of life." A homeless man, he finds himself
most intimately and most quickly understood by these
"sanspatries." Furthermore, as a free citizen of the
world, he is competent to understand on his side the
tragedy of their lives, cut adrift from everything, even
from themselves. He recognizes that they are useful as
means to an end, although not themselves an end. He
sees that, like all nations and races, the Jews must
be harnessed to their contrast. "These neurotic beings
. . . must be subjected to a law that will give them sta-
bility. . . . Jews are like women, splendid when rid-
den on the curb, though it would be intolerable to be
ruled either by Jews or by women." Just as little as
the French spirit or the German spirit, is the Jewish
spirit adapted for universal application. But Chris-
tophe does not wish the Jews to be different from what
they are. Every race is necessary, for its peculiar char-
acteristics are requisite for the enrichment of multi-
plicity, and for the consequent enlargement of life.
Jean Christophe, now in his later years making peace
with the world, finds that everything has its appointed
place in the whole scheme. Each strong tone contributes
to the great harmony. What may arouse hostility in
isolation, serves to bind the whole together. Nay more,
it is necessary to pull down the old buildings and to
clear the ground before we can begin to build anew; the
analytic spirit is the precondition of the synthetic. In
228 ROMAIN ROLLAND

all countries Christophe acclaims the folk without a

country as helpers towards the foundation of the uni-
versal fatherland. He accepts them all into his dream
of the New Europe, whose still distant rhythm stirs his
responsive yearnings.
 CHAPTER XVII
THE GENERATIONS

THUS the entire human herd is penned within ring

after ring of hurdles, which the life-force must
break down if it would win to freedom. We
have the hurdle of the fatherland, which shuts us away
from other nations; the hurdle of language, which im-
poses its constraint upon our thought; the hurdle of
religion, which makes us unable to understand alien
creeds; the hurdle of our own natures, barring the way
to reality by prejudice and false learning. Terrible are
the resulting isolations. The peoples fail to under-
stand one another; the races, the creeds, individual hu-
man beings, fail to understand one another; they are
segregated; each group or each individual has expe-
rience of no more than a part of life, a part of truth, a
part of reality, each mistaking his part for the whole.
Even the free man, "freed from the illusion of father-
land, creed, and race," even he, who seems to have es-
caped from all the pens, is still enclosed within an ulti-
mate ring of hurdles. He is confined within the limits
of his own generation, for generations are the steps of
the stairway by which humanity ascends. Every genera-
tion builds on the achievements 229 of thosq that have gone
230 ROMAIN HOLLAND

before; here there is no possibility of retracing our foot-

steps; each generation has its own laws, its own form,
its own ethic, its own inner meaning. And the tragedy
of such compulsory fellowship arises out of this, that a
generation does not in friendly fashion accept the
achievements of its predecessors, does not gladly under-
take the development of their acquisitions. Like indi-
vidual human beings, like nations, the generations are
animated with hostile prejudices against their neigh-
bors. Here, likewise, struggle and mistrust are the
abiding law. The second generation rejects what the
first has done; the deeds of the first generation do not
secure approval until the third or the fourth genera-
tion. All evolution takes place according to what Goethe
termed "a spiral recurrence." As we rise, we revolve
on narrowing circles round the same axis. Thus the
struggle between generation and generation is unceasing.
Each generation is perforce unjust towards its prede-
cessors. "As the generations succeed one another, they
become more strongly aware of the things which divide
them than they are of the things which unite. They
feel impelled to affirm the indispensability, the impor-
tance, of their own existence, even at the cost of injus-
tice or falsehood to themselves." Like individual hu-
man beings, they have "an age when one must be un-
just ifone is to be able to live." They have to live out
their own lives vigorously, asserting their own pecul-
iarities inrespect of ideas, forms, and civilization. It
is just as little possible to them to be considerate to-
wards later generations, as it has been for earlier gen-
 THE GENERATIONS 231

erations to be considerate towards them. There pre-

vails in this self-assertion the eternal law of the forest,
where the young trees tend to push the earth away from
the roots of the older trees, and to sap their strength,
so that the living march over the corpses of the dead.
The generations are at war, and each individual is un-
wit ingly a champion on behalf of his own era, even
though he may feel himself out of sympathy with that
era.
Jean Christophe, the young solitary in revolt against
his time, was without knowing it the representative of
a fellowship. In and through him, his generation de-
clared war against the dying generation, was unjust in
his injustice, young in his youth, passionate in his pas-
sion. He grew old with his generation, seeing new
waves rising to overwhelm him and his work. Now,
having gained wisdom, he refused to be wroth with
those who were wroth with him. He saw that his ene-
mies were displaying the injustice and the impetuosity
which he had himself displayed of yore. Where he had
fancied a mechanical destiny to prevail, life had now
taught him to see a living flux. Those who in his youth
had been fellow revolutionists, now grown conservative,
were fighting against the new youth as they themselves
in youth had fought against the old. Only the fighters
were new; the struggle was unchanged. For his part,
Jean Christophe had a friendly smile for the new, since
he loved life more than he loved himself. Vainly does
his friend Emmanuel urge him to defend himself, to
pronounce a moral judgment upon a generation which
232 ROMAIN HOLLAND

declared valueless all the things which they of an earlier

day had acclaimed as true with the sacrifice of their
whole existence. Christophe answers: "What is true?
We must not measure the ethic of a generation with the
yardstick of an earlier time." Emmanuel retorts:
"Why, then, did we seek a measure for life, if we were
not to make it a law for others?" Christophe refers
him to the perpetual flux, saying: "They have learned
from us, and they are ungrateful; such is the inevitable
succession of events. Enriched by our efforts, they ad-
vance further than we were able to advance, realizing
the conquests which we struggled to achieve. If any of
the freshness of youth yet lingers in us, let us learn from
them, and seek to rejuvenate ourselves. If this is be-
yond our powers, if we are too old to do so, let us at
least rejoice that they are young."
Generations must grow and die as men grow and die.
Everything on earth is subject to nature's laws, and the
man strong in faith, the pious freethinker, bows himself
to the law. But he does not fail to recognize (and
herein we see one of the profoundest cultural acquire-
ments of the book) that this very flux, this transvalua-
tion of values, has its own secular rhythm. In former
times, an epoch, a style, a faith, a philosophy, endured
for a century; now such phases do not outlast a genera-
tion, endure barely for a decade. The struggle has
become fiercer and more impatient. Mankind marches
to a quicker measure, digests ideas more rapidly than
of old. "The development of European thought is pro-
ceeding at a livelier pace, much as if its acceleration
 THE GENERATIONS 233

were concomitant with the advance in our powers of

mechanical locomotion . . . The stores of prejudices
and hopes which in former times would have nourished
mankind for twenty years, are exhausted now in a lus-
trum. In intellectual matters the generations gallop
one after another, and sometimes outspace one another."
The rhythm of these spiritual transformations is the
epopee of Jean Christophe. When the hero returns to
Germany from Paris, he can hardly recognize his native
land. When from Italy he revisits Paris, the city seems
strange to him. Here and there he still finds the old
"foire sur la place," but its affairs are transacted in a
new currency; it is animated with a new faith; new
ideas are exchanged in the market place; only the clamor
rises as of old. Between Olivier and his son Georges
lies an abyss like that which separates two worlds, and
Olivier is delighted that his son should regard him with
contempt. The abyss is an abyss of twenty years.
Life must eternally express itself in new forms; it
refuses to allow itself to be dammed up by outworn
thoughts, to be hemmed in by the philosophies and re-
ligions ofthe past; in its headstrong progress it sweeps
accepted notions out of its way. Each generation can
understand itself alone; it transmits a legacy to unknown
heirs who will interpret and fulfill as seems best to
them. As the heritage from his tragical and solitary
generation, Holland offers his great picture of a free
soul. He offers it "to the free souls of all nations; to
those who suffer, struggle, and will conquer." He offers
it with the words:
234 ROMAIN ROLLAND

"I have written the tragedy of a vanishing generation.

I have made no attempt to conceal either its vices or its
virtues, to hide its load of sadness, its chaotic pride, its
heroic efforts, its struggles beneath the overwhelming
burden of a superhuman task — the task of remaking an
entire world, an ethic, an aesthetic, a faith, a new hu-
manity. Such were we in our generation.
"Men of to-day, young men, your turn has come.
March forward over our bodies. Be greater and hap-
pier than we have been.
"For my part, I say farewell to my former soul. I
cast it behind me like an empty shell. Life is a series
of deaths and resurrections. Let us die, Christophe,
that we may be reborn."
 CHAPTER XVIII
DEPARTURE

JEAN CHRISTOPHE has reached the further shore.

He has stridden across the river of life, encir-
cled by roaring waves of music. Safely carried
across seems the heritage which he has borne on his
shoulders through storm and flood — the meaning of the
world, faith in life.
Once more he looks back towards his fellows in the
land he has left. All has grown strange to him. He
can no longer understand those who are laboring and
suffering amid the ardors of illusion. He sees a new
generation, young in a different way from his own, more
energetic, more brutal, more impatient, inspired with a
different heroism. The children of the new days have
fortified their bodies with physical training, have steeled
their courage in aerial flights. "They are proud of their
muscles and their broad chests." They are proud of
their country, their religion, their civilization, of all that
they believe to be their own peculiar appanage; and
from each of these prides they forge themselves a
weapon. "They would rather act than understand."
They wish to show their strength and test their powers.
The dying man realizes with alarm that this new gen-
eration, which has never known war, wants war.
235
236 ROMAIN ROLLAND

He looks shudderingly around: "The fire which had

been smouldering in the European forest was now break-
ing forth into flame. Extinguished in one place, it
promptly began to rage in another. Amid whirlwinds
of smoke and a rain of sparks, it leaped from point to
point, while the parched undergrowth kindled. Out-
post skirmishes in the east had already begun, as pre-
ludes to the great war of the nations. The whole of
Europe, that Europe which was still skeptical and apa-
thetic like a dead forest, was fuel for the conflagration.
The fighting spirit was universal. From moment to mo-
ment, war seemed imminent. Stifled, it was continually
reborn. The most trifling pretext served to feed its
strength. The world felt itself to be at the mercy of
chance, which would initiate the terrible struggle. It
was waiting. A feeling of inexorable necessity weighed
upon all, even upon the most pacific. The ideologues,
sheltering in the shade of Proudhon the titan, hailed
war as man's most splendid claim to nobility.
"It was for this, then, that there had been effected a
physical and moral resurrection of the races of the west!
It was towards these butcheries that the streams of action
and passionate faith had been hastening! None but a
Napoleonic genius could have directed these blind im-
pulses to a foreseen and deliberately chosen end. But
nowhere in Europe was there any one endowed with the
genius for action. It seemed as if the world had singled
out the most commonplace among its sons to be gover-
nors. The forces of the human spirit were coursing in
other channels."
 DEPARTURE 237

Christophe recalls those earlier days when he and Oli-

vier had been concerned about the prospect of war. At
that time there were but distant rumblings of the storm.
Now the storm clouds covered all the skies of Europe.
Fruitless had been the call to unity; vain had been the
pointing out of the path through the darkness. Mourn-
fully the seer contemplates in the distance the horsemen
of the Apocalypse, the heralds of fratricidal strife.
But beside the dying man is the Child, smiling and
full of knowledge ; the Child who is Eternal Life.
 PART FIVE

INTERMEZZO SCHERZOSO

(Colas Breugnon)

"Brugnon, mauvais gargon, tu ris,

n'as tu pas honte?" — "Que veux tu,
mon ami? Je suis ce que je suis.
Rire ne m'empeche pas de souffrir;
mais souffrir n'empechera jamais un
bon Frangais de rire. Et qu'il rie
ou larmoie, il faut d'abord qu'il
COLAS BREUGNON.
voie."
 CHAPTER I

TAKEN UNAWARES

AT length, in this arduous career, came a period

of repose. The great ten-volume novel had
been finished ; the work of European scope had
been completed. For the first time Romain Rolland
could exist outside his work, free for new words, new
configurations, new labors. His disciple Jean Chris-
tophe, "the livest man of our acquaintance," as Ellen
Key phrased it, had gone out into the world ; Christophe
was collecting a circle of friends around him, a quiet
but continually enlarging community. For Rolland,
nevertheless, Jean Christophe's message was already a
thing of the past. The author was in search of a new
messenger, for a new message.
Romain Rolland returned to Switzerland, a land he
loved, lying between the three countries to which his af-
fection had been chiefly given. The Swiss environment
had been favorable to so much of his work. Jean Chris-
tophe had been begun in Switzerland. A calm and
beautiful summer enabled Rolland to recruit his ener-
gies. There was a certain relaxation of tension. Al-
most idly, he turned over various plans. He had al-
ready begun to collect materials for a new novel, a dra-
241
242 ROMAIN HOLLAND
matic romance belonging to the same intellectual and
cultural category as Jean Christophe.
Now of a sudden, as had happened twenty-five years
earlier when the vision of Jean Christophe had come to
him on the Janiculum, in the course of sleepless nights
he was visited by a strange and yet familiar figure, that
of a countryman from ancestral days whose expansive
personality thrust all oilier plans aside. Shortly before,
Holland had revisited Clamecy. The old town had
awakened memories of his childhood. Almost una-
wares, home influences were at work, and his native
province had begun to insist that its son, who had de-
scribed so many distant scenes, should depict the land
of his birth. The Frenchman who had so vigorously
and passionately transformed himself into a European,
the man who had borne his testimony as European be-
fore the world, was seized with a desire to be, for a
creative hour, wholly French, wholly Burgundian, wholly
Nivernais. The musician accustomed to unite all voices
in his symphonies, to combine in them the deepest ex-
pressions offeeling, was now longing to discover a new
rhythm, and after prolonged tension to relax into a merry
mood. For ten years he had been dominated by a sense
of strenuous responsibility; the equipment of Jean Chris-
tophe had been, as it were, a burden which his soul had
had to bear. Now it would be a pleasure to pen a
scherzo, free and light, a work unconcerned with the
stresses of politics, ethics, and contemporary history.
It should be divinely irresponsible, an escape from the
exactions of the time spirit.
 TAKEN UNAWARES 243

During the day following the first night on which the

idea came to him, he had exultantly dismissed other
plans. The rippling current of his thoughts was effort-
less in its flow. Thus, to his own astonishment, during
the summer months of 1913, Holland was able to com-
plete his light-hearted novel Colas Breugnon, the French
intermezzo in the European symphony.
 CHAPTER II
THE BURGUNDIAN BROTHER

IT seemed at first to Holland as if a stranger, though

one from his native province and of his own blood,
had come cranking into his life. He felt as though,
out of the clear French sky, the book had burst like a
meteor upon his ken. True, the melody is new; different
are the tempo, the key, the epoch. But those who have
acquired a clear understanding of the author's inner life
cannot fail to realize that this amusing book does not
constitute an essential modification of his work. It is
but a variation, in an archaic setting, upon Remain
Rolland's leit-motif of faith in life. Prince Aert and
King Louis were forefathers and brothers of Olivier.
In like manner Colas Breugnon, the jovial Burgundian,
the lusty wood-carver, the practical joker always fond
of his glass, the droll fellow, is, despite his old-world
costume, a brother of Jean Christophe looking at us
adown the centuries.
As ever, we find the same theme underlying the novel.
The author shows us how a creative human being (those
who are not creative, hardly count for Rolland) comes to
terms with life, and above all with the tragedy of his
own life. Colas Breugnon, like Jean Christophe, is the
244
 THE BURGUNDIAN BROTHER 245

romance of an artist's life. But the Burgundian is an

artist of a vanished type, such as could not without
anachronism have been introduced into Jean Christophe.
Colas Breugnon is an artist only through fidelity, dili-
gence, and fervor. In so far as he is an artist, it is in
the faithful performance of his daily task. What raises
him to the higher levels of art is not inspiration, but his
broad humanity, his earnestness, and his vigorous sim-
plicity. For Rolland, he was typical of the nameless
artists who carved the stone figures that adorn French
cathedrals, the artist-craftsmen to whom we owe the
beautiful gateways, the splendid castles, the glorious
wrought ironwork of the middle ages. These artificers
did not fashion their own vanity into stone, did not
carve their own names upon their work; but they put
something into that work which has grown rare to-day,
the joy of creation. In Jean Christophe, on one oc-
casion, Romain Rolland had indited an ode to the civic
life of the old masters who were wholly immersed in
the quiet artistry of their daily occupations. He had
drawn attention to the life of Sebastian Bach and his
congeners. In like manner, he now wished to display
anew what he had depicted in so many portraits of the
artists, in the studies of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Tol-
stoi, and Handel. Like these sublime figures, Colas
Breugnon took delight in his creative work. The mag-
nificent inspiration that animated them was lacking to
the Burgundian, but Breugnon had a genius for straight-
forwardness and for sensual harmony. Without aspir-
ing to bring salvation to the world, not attempting to
 246 ROMAIN HOLLAND
wrestle with the problems of passion and the spiritual
life, he was content to strive for that supreme simplicity
of craftsmanship which has a perfection of its own and
thus brings the craftsman into touch with the eternal.
The primitive artist-artisan is contrasted with the com-
paratively artificialized artist of modern days; Hephais-
tos, the divine smith, is contrasted with the Pythian
Apollo and with Dionysos. The simpler artist's sphere
is perforce narrower, but it is enough that an artist
should be competent to fill the sphere for which he is pre-
ordained.
Nevertheless, Colas Breugnon would not have been
the typical artist of Holland's creation, had not struggle
been a conspicuous feature of his life, and had we not
been shown through him that the real man is always
stronger than his destiny. Even the cheerful Colas ex-
periences afull measure of tragedy. His house is
burned down, and the work of thirty years perishes in
the flames; his wife dies; war devastates the country;
envy and malice prevent the success of his last artistic
creations; in the end, illness elbows him out of active
life. The only defenses left him against his troubles,
against age, poverty, and gout, are "the souls he has
made," his children, his apprentice, and one friend.
Yet this man, sprung from the Burgundian peasantry,
has an armor to protect him from the bludgeonings of
fate, armor no less effectual than was the invincible
German optimism of Jean Christophe or the inviolable
faith of Olivier. Breugnon has his imperturbable cheer-
fulness. "Sorrows never prevent my laughing; and
 THE BURGUNDIAN BROTHER 247

when I laugh, I can always weep at the same time."

Epicure, gormandizer, deep drinker, ever ready to leave
work for play, he is none the less a stoic when misfor-
tune comes, an uncomplaining hero in adversity. When
his house burns, he exclaims: "The less I have, the
more I am." The Burgundian craftsman is a man of
lesser stature than his brother of the Rhineland, but the
Burgundian's feet are no less firmly planted on the be-
loved earth. Whereas Christophe's daimon breaks forth
in storms of rage and frenzy, Colas reacts against the
visitations of destiny with the serene mockery of a
healthy Gallic temperament. His whimsical humor
helps him to face disaster and death. Assuredly this
mental quality is one of the most valuable forms of
spiritual freedom.
Freedom, however, is the least important among the
characteristics of Rolland's heroes. His primary aim
is always to show us a typical example of a man armed
against his doom and against his god, a man who will
not allow himself to be defeated by the forces of life.
In the work we are now considering, it amuses him
to present the struggle as a comedy, instead of portray-
ing itin a more serious dramatic vein. But the comedy
is always transfigured by a deeper meaning. Despite
the lighter touches, as when the forlorn old Colas is un-
willing to take refuge in his daughter's house, or as
when he boastfully feigns indifference after the destruc-
tion of his home (lest his soul should be vexed by hav-
ing to accept the sympathy of his fellow men), still amid
248 ROMAIN HOLLAND
this tragi-comedy he is animated by the unalloyed desire
to stand by his own strength.
Before everything, Colas Breugnon is a free man.
That he is a Frenchman, that he is a burgher, are sec-
ondary considerations. He loves his king, but only so
long as the king leaves him his liberty; he loves his wife,
but follows his own bent; he is on excellent terms with
the priest of a neighboring parish, but never goes to
church; he idolizes his children, but his vigorous indi-
viduality makes him unwilling to live with them. He is
friendly with all, but subject to none; he is freer than
the king; he has that sense of humor characteristic of
the free spirit to whom the whole world belongs. Among
all nations and in all ages, that being alone is truly alive
who is stronger than fate, who breaks through the seine
of men and things as he swims freely down the great
stream of life. We have seen how Christophe, the
Rhinelander, exclaimed: "What is life? A tragedy!
Hurrah!" From his Burgundian brother comes the re-
sponse: "Struggle is hard, but struggle is a delight."
Across the barriers of epoch and language, the two look
on one another with sympathetic understanding. We
realize that free men form a spiritual kinship independ-
ent of the limitations imposed by race and time.
 CHAPTER III
GAULOISERIES

Colas
ROMAIN HOLLAND had looked upon
Breugnon as an intermezzo, as an easy occupa-
tion, which should, for a change, enable him
to enjoy the delights of irresponsible creation. But
there is no irresponsibility in art. A thing arduously
conceived is often heavy in execution, whereas that which
is lightly undertaken may prove exceptionally beautiful.
From the artistic point of view, Colas Breugnon may
perhaps be regarded as Holland's most successful work.
This is because it is woven in one piece, because it flows
with a continuous rhythm, because its progress is never
arrested by the discussion of thorny problems. Jean
Christophe was a book of responsibility and balance.
It was to discuss all the phenomena of the day; to show
how they looked from every side, in action and reaction.
Each country in turn made- its demand for full consid-
eration. The encyclopedic picture of the world, the de-
liberate comprehensiveness of the design, necessitated
the forcible introduction of many elements which trans-
cended the powers of harmonious composition. But
Colas Breugnon is written throughout in the same key.
The first sentence gives the note like a tuning fork, and
249
250 ROMAIN HOLLAND
thence the entire book takes its pitch. Throughout, the
same lively melody is sustained. The writer employs a
peculiarly happy form. His style is poetic without be-
ing actually versified ; it has a melodious measure with-
out being strictly metrical. The book, printed as prose,
is written in a sort of free verse, with an occasional
rhymed series of lines. It is possible that Holland
adopted the fundamental tone from Paul Fort; but that
which in the Ballades frangaises with their recurrent
burdens leads to the formation of canzones, is here
punctuated throughout an entire book, while the phras-
ing is most ingeniously infused with archaic French
locutions after the manner of Rabelas.
Here, Holland wishes to be a Frenchman. He goes
to the very heart of the French spirit, has recourse to
"gauloiseries," and makes the most successful use of
the new medium, which is unique, and which cannot be
compared with any familiar literary form. For the
first time we encounter an entire novel which, while
written in old-fashioned French like that of Balzac's
Contes drolatiques, succeeds in making its intricate dic-
tion musical throughout. "The Old Woman's Death"
and "The Burned House" are as vividly picturesque as
ballads. Their characteristic and spiritualized rhyth-
mical quality contrasts with the serenity of the other pic-
tures, although they are not essentially different from
these. The moods pass lightly, like clouds drifting
across the sky; and even beneath the darkest of these
clouds, the horizon of the age smiles with a fruitful
clearness. Never was Holland able to give such exqui-
 GAULOISERIES 251

site expression to his poetic bent as in this book wherein

he is wholly the Frenchman. What he presents to us as
whimsical sport and caprice, displays more plainly than
anything else the living wellspring of his power: his
French soul immersed in its favorite element of music.
 CHAPTER IV

A FRUSTRATE MESSAGE

JEANCHRISTOPHE was the deliberate divergence

from a generation. Colas Breugnon is another
divergence, unconsciously effected; a divergence
from the traditional France, heedlessly cheerful. This
"bourguinon sale" wished to show his fellow countrymen
of a later day how life can be salted with mockery and
yet be full of enjoyment. Holland here displayed all
the riches of his beloved homeland, displaying above all
the most beautiful of these goods, the joy of life.
A heedless world, our world of to-day, was to be awak-
ened by the poet singing of an earlier world which had
been likewise impoverished, had likewise wasted its ener-
gies in futile hostility. A call to joy from a Frenchman,
echoing down the ages, was to answer the voice of the
German, Jean Christophe. Their two voices were to
mingle harmoniously as the voices mingle in the Ode to
Joy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. During the tran-
quil summer the pages were stacked like golden sheaves.
The book was in the press, to appear during the next
summer, that of 1914.
But the summer of 1914 reaped a bloody harvest.
The roar of the cannon, drowning
252 Jean Christophe's
 A FRUSTRATE MESSAGE 253

warning cry, deafened the ears of those who might other-

wise have hearkened also to the call to joy. For five
years, the five most terrible years in the world's history,
the luminous figure stood unheeded in the darkness.
There was no conjuncture between Colas Breugnon and
"la douce France"; for this book, with its description of
the cheerful France of old, was not to appear until that
Old France had vanished for ever.
 PART SIX

THE CONSCIENCE OF EUROPE

One who is aware of values which he

regards as a hundredfold more pre-
cious than the wellbeing of the "fa-
therland," ofsociety, of the kinships
of blood and race, values which
stand above fatherlands and races,
international values, such a man
would prove himself hypocrite
should he try to play the patriot. It
is a degradation of mankind to en-
courage national hatred, to admire
it, or to extol it.
NIETZSCHE, Vorreden Material im
Nachlass.
La vocation ne peut etre connue et
prouvee que par le sacrifice que fait
le savant et 1'artiste de son repos et
son bien-etre pour suivre sa vocation.
LETTER DE TOLSTOI A ROMAIN
ROLLAND.
4, Octobre, 1887.
 CHAPTER I
THE WARDEN OF THE INHERITANCE

THE events of August 2, 1914, broke Europe into

fragments. Therewith collapsed the faith which
the brothers in the spirit, Jean Christophe and
Olivier, had been building with their lives. A great
heritage was cast aside. The idea of human brother-
hood, once sacred, was buried contemptuously by the
grave-diggers of all the lands at war, buried among the
million corpses of the slain.
Romain Rolland was faced by an unparalleled re-
sponsibility. Hehad presented the problems in imagi-
native form. Now they had come up for solution as
terrible realities. Faith in Europe, the faith which he
had committed to the care of Jean Christophe, had no pro-
tector, no advocate, at a time when it was more than ever
necessary to raise its standard against the storm. Well
did the poet know that a truth remains naught but a half-
truth while it exists merely in verbal formulation. It
is in action that a thought becomes genuinely alive. A
faith proves itself real in the form of a public confession.
In Jean Christophe, Romain Rolland had delivered his
message to this fated hour. To make the confession a
live thing, he had to give something 257 more, himself. The
 258 ROMAIN ROLLAND

time had come for him to do what Jean Christophe had

done for Olivier's son. He must guard the sacred flame;
he must fulfil what his hero had prophetically fore-
shadowed. The way in which Rolland fulfilled this
obligation has become for us all an imperishable exam-
ple of spiritual heroism, which moves us even more
strongly than we were moved by his written words. We
saw his life and personality taking the form of an actu-
ally living conviction. We saw how, with the whole
power of his name, and with all the energy of his artistic
temperament, he took his stand against multitudinous
adversaries in his own land and in other countries, his
gaze fixed upon the heaven of his faith.
Rolland had never failed to recognize that in a time of
widespread illusion it would be difficult to hold fast to
his convictions, however self-evident they might seem.
But, as he wrote to a French friend in September, 1914,
"We do not choose our own duties. Duty forces itself
upon us. Mine is, with the aid of those who share my
ideas, to save from the deluge the last vestiges of the
European spirit . . . Mankind demands of us that those
who love their fellows should take a firm stand, and
should even fight, if needs must, against those they love."
For five years we have watched the heroism of this
fight, pursuing its own course amid the warring of the
nations. We have watched the miracle of one man's
keeping his senses amid the frenzied millions, of one
man's remaining free amid the universal slavery of pub-
lic opinion. We have watched love at war with hate,
the European at war with the patriots, conscience at war
 THE WARDEN OF THE INHERITANCE 259

with the world. Throughout this long and bloody night,

when we were often ready to perish from despair at the
meaninglessness of nature, the one thing which has con-
soled us and sustained us has been the recognition that
the mighty forces which were able to crush towns and
annihilate empires, were powerless against an isolated
individual possessed of the will and the courage to be
free. Those who deemed themselves the victors over
millions, were to find that there was one thing which they
could not master, a free conscience.
Vain, therefore, was their triumph, when they buried
the crucified thought of Europe. True faith works
miracles. Jean Christophe had burst the bonds of death,
had risen again in the living form of his own creator.
 CHAPTER II

FOREARMED

WE do not detract from the moral services of

Remain Rolland, but we may perhaps ex-
cuse to some extent his opponents, when we
insist that Rolland had excelled all contemporary imagi-
native writers in the profundity of his preparatory studies
of war and its problems. If to-day, in retrospect, we
contemplate his writings, we marvel to note how, from
the very first and throughout a long period of years,
they combined to build up, as it were, a colossal pyramid,
culminating in the point upon which the lightnings of
war were to be discharged. For twenty years, the au-
thor's thought, his whole creative activity, had been un-
intermittently concentrated upon the contradictions be-
tween spirit and force, between freedom and the father-
land, between victory and defeat. Through a hundred
variations he had pursued the same fundamental theme,
treating it dramatically, epically, and in manifold other
ways. There is hardly a problem relevant to this ques-
tion which is not touched upon by Christophe and Olivier,
by Aert and by the Girondists, in their discussions. In-
tellectually regarded, Rolland's writings are a maneu-
vering ground for all the incentives to war. He thus had
260
 FOREARMED 261

his conclusions already drawn when others were begin-

ning an attempt to come to terms with events. As his-
torian, he had described the perpetual recurrence of
war's typical accompaniments, had discussed the psy-
chology ofmass suggestion, and had shown the effects of
wartime mentality upon the individual. As moralist and
as citizen of the world, he had long ere this formulated
his creed. We may say, in fact, that Rolland's mind had
been in a sense immunized against the illusions of the
crowd and against infection by prevalent falsehoods.
Not by chance does an artist decide which problems he
will consider. The dramatist does not make a "lucky
selection" of his theme. The musician does not "dis-
cover" abeautiful melody, but already has it within
him. It is not the artist who creates the problems, but
the problems which create the artist; just as it is not the
prophet who makes his prophecy, but the foresight which
creates the prophet. The artist's choice is always pre-
ordained. The man who has foreseen the essential prob-
lem of a whole civilization, of a disastrous epoch, must
of necessity, in the decisive hour, play a leading part.
He only who had contemplated the coming European
war as an abyss towards which the mad hunt of recent
decades, making light of every warning, had been speed-
ing, only such a one could command his soul, could re-
frain from joining the bacchanalian rout, could listen un-
moved to the throbbing of the war drums. Who but such
a man could stand upright in the greatest storm of illu-
sion the world has ever known?
Thus it came to pass that not merely during the first
262 ROMAIN HOLLAND

hour of the war was Holland in opposition to other writ-

ters and artists of the day. This opposition dated from
the very inception of his career, and hence for twenty
years he had been a solitary. The reason why the con-
trast between his outlook and that of his generation had
not hitherto been conspicuous, the reason why the cleav-
age was not disclosed until the actual outbreak of war,
lies in this, that Holland's divergence was a matter not
so much of mood as of character. Before the apocalyp-
tic year, almost all persons of artistic temperament had
recognized quite as definitely as Holland had recognized
that a fratricidal struggle between Europeans would be
a crime, would disgrace civilization. With few excep-
tions, they were pacifists. It would be more correct to
say that with few exceptions they believed themselves to
be pacifists. For pacifism does not simply mean, to be a
friend to peace, but to be a worker in the cause of peace,
an etpipoTroioSj as the New Testament has it. Pacifism
signifies the activity of an effective will to peace, not
merely the love of an easy life and a preference for re-
pose. It signifies struggle; and like every struggle it
demands, in the hour of danger, self-sacrifice and hero-
ism. Now these "pacifists" we have just been consider-
ing had merely a sentimental fondness for peace; they
were friendly towards peace, just as they were friendly
towards ideas of social equality, towards philanthropy,
towards the abolition of capital punishment. Such faith
as they possessed was a faith devoid of passion. They
wore their opinions as they wore their clothing, and when
the time of trial came they were ready to exchange their
 FOREARMED 263

pacifist ethic for the ethic of the war-makers, were ready

to don a national uniform in matters of opinion. At bot-
tom, they knew the right just as well as Rolland, but
they had not the courage of their opinions. Goethe's
saying to Eckermann applies to them with deadly force.
"All the evils of modern literature are due to lack of
character in individual investigators and writers."
Thus Rolland did not stand alone in his knowledge,
which was shared by many intellectuals and statesmen.
But in his case, all his knowledge was tinged with re-
ligious fervor; his beliefs were a living faith; his
thoughts were actions. He was unique among imagina-
ive writers for the splendid vigor with which he remained
true to his ideals when all others were deserting the
standard; for the way in which he defended the European
spirit against the raging armies of the sometime European
intellectuals now turned patriots. Fighting as he had
fought from youth upwards on behalf of the invisible
against the world of reality, he displayed, as a foil to
the heroism of the trenches, a higher heroism still.
^While the soldiers were manifesting the heroism of blood,
Rolland manifested the heroism of the spirit, and showed
the glorious spectacle of one who was able, amid the
intoxication of the war-maddened masses, to maintain the
sobriety and freedom of an unclouded mind.
 CHAPTER III

THE PLACE OF REFUGE

AT the outbreak of the war, Remain Rolland was

in Vevey, a small and ancient city on the lake
of Geneva. With few exceptions he spent his
summers in Switzerland, the country in which some of
his hest literary work had been accomplished. In
Switzerland, where the nations join fraternal hands to
form a state, where Jean Christophe had heralded Euro-
pean unity, Rolland received the news of the world dis-
aster.
Of a sudden it seemed as if his whole life had become
meaningless. Vain had been his exhortations, vain the
twenty years of ardent endeavor. He had feared this
disaster since early boyhood. He had made Olivier cry
in torment of soul: "I dread war so greatly, I have
dreaded it for so long. It has been a nightmare to me,
and it poisoned my childhood's days." Now, what he
had prophetically anticipated had become a terrible real-
ity for hundreds of millions of human beings. The
agony of the hour was nowise diminished because he had
foreseen its coming to be inevitable. On the contrary,
while others hastened to deaden their senses with the
opium of false conceptions of duty and with the hashish
dreams of victory, Rolland's
264 pitiless sobriety enabled
 THE PLACE OF REFUGE 265
him to look far out into the future. On August 3rd he
wrote in his diary: "I feel at the end of my resources.
I wish I were dead. It is horrible.to live when men have
gone mad, horrible to witness the collapse of civiliza-
tion. This European war is the greatest catastrophe in
the history of many centuries, the overthrow of our dear-
est hopes of human brotherhood." A few days later,
in still greater despair, he penned the following entry:
"My distress is so colossal an accumulation of distresses
that I can scarcely breathe. The ravaging of France,
the fate of my friends, their deaths, their wounds. The
grief at all this suffering, the heartrending sympathetic
anguish with the millions of sufferers. I feel a moral
death-struggle as I look on at this mad humanity which
is offering up its most precious possessions, its energies,
its genius, its ardors of heroic devotion, which is sacri-
ficing all these things to the murderous and stupid idols
of war. I am heartbroken at the absence of any divine
message, any divine spirit, any moral leadership, which
might upbuild the City of God when the carnage is at an
end. The futility of my whole life has reached its cli-
max. If I could but sleep, never to reawaken."
Frequently, in this torment of mind, he desired to re-
turn to France; but he knew that he could be of no use
there. In youth, undersized and delicate, he had been
unfit for military service. Now, hard upon fifty years of
age, he would obviously be of even less account. The
merest semblance of helping in the war would have been
repugnant to his conscience, for his acceptance of Tol-
stoi's teaching had made his convictions steadfast. He
266 ROMAIN HOLLAND

knew that it was incumbent upon him to defend France,

but to do so in another sense than that of the combatants
and that of the intellectuals clamorous with hate. "A
great nation," he wrote more than a year later, in the
preface to Au-dessus de la melee, "has not only its fron-
tiers to protect; it must also protect its good sense. It
must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and
follies which war lets loose. To each his part. To the
armies, the protection of the soil of their native land. To
the thinkers, the defense of its thought. . . . The spirit
is by no means the most insignificant part of a people's
patrimony." In these opening days of misery, it was not
yet clear to him whether and how he would be called
upon to speak. Yet he knew that if and when he did
speak, he would take up his parable on behalf of intel-
lectual freedom and supranational justice.
But justice must have freedom of outlook. Nowhere
except in a neutral country could the observer listen to
all voices, make acquaintance with all opinions. From
such a country alone could he secure a view above the
smoke of the battle-field, above the mist of falsehood,
above the poison gas of hatred. Here he could retain
freedom of judgment and freedom of speech. In Jean
Christophe, he had shown the dangerous power of mass
suggestion. "Under its influence," he had written, "in
every country the firmest intelligences felt their most
cherished convictions melting away." No one knew bet-
ter than Holland "the spiritual contagion, the all-pervad-
ing insanity, of collective thought." Knowing these
things so well, he wished all the more to remain free
 THE PLACE OF REFUGE 267

from them, to shun the intoxication of the crowd, to avoid

the risk of having to follow any other leadership than
that of his conscience. He had merely to turn to his
own writings. He could read there the words of Olivier:
"I love France, but I cannot for the sake of France kill
my soul or betray my conscience. This would indeed be
to betray my country. How can I hate when I feel no
hatred? How can I truthfully act the comedy of hate?"
Or, again, he could read this memorable confession: "I
will not hate. I will be just even to my enemies. Amid
all the stresses of passion, I wish to keep my vision clear,
that I may understand everything and thus be able to
love everything." Only in freedom, only in indepen-
dence of spirit, can the artist aid his nation. Thus alone
can he serve his generation, thus alone can he serve
humanity. Loyalty to truth is loyalty to the fatherland.
What had befallen through chance was now confirmed
by deliberate choice. During the five years of the war
Remain Rolland remained in Switzerland, Europe's
heart; remained there -that he might fulfil his task, "de
dire ce qui est juste et humain." Here, where the
breezes blow freely from all other lands, and whence a
voice could pass freely across all the frontiers, here
where no fetters were imposed upon speech, he followed
the call of his invisible duty. Close at hand the endless
waves of blood and hatred emanating from the frenzy of
war were foaming against the frontiers of the cantonal
state. But throughout the storm, the magnetic needle of
one intelligence continued to point unerringly towards
the immutable pole of life — to point towards love.
 CHAPTER IV

THE SERVICE OF MAN

Holland's by
INfatherland view it was the artist's duty to serve his
conscientious service to all mankind,
to play his part in the struggle by waging war
against the suffering the war was causing and against
the thousandfold torments entailed by the war. He re-
jected the idea of absolute aloofness. "An artist has no
right to hold aloof while he is still able to help others."
But this aid, this participation, must not take the form of
fostering the murderous hatred which already animated
the millions. The aim must be to unite the millions
further, where unseen ties already existed, in their infi-
nite suffering. He therefore took his part in the ranks
of the helpers, not weapon in hand, but following the
example of Walt Whitman, who, during the American
Civil War, served as hospital assistant.
Hardly had the first blows been struck when cries of
anguish from all lands began to be heard in Switzerland.
Thousands who were without news of fathers, husbands,
and sons in the battlefields, stretched despairing arms
into the void. By hundreds, by thousands, by tens of
thousands, letters and telegrams poured into the little
House of the Red Cross in 268 Geneva, the only international
 THE SERVICE OF MAN 269

rallying point that still remained. Isolated, like stormy

petrels, came the first inquiries for missing relatives;
then these inquiries themselves became a storm. The
letters arrived in sackfuls. Nothing had been prepared
for dealing with suck an inundation of misery. The Red
Cross had no space, no organization, no system, and
above all no helpers.
Romain Rolland was one of the first to offer personal
assistance. The Musee Rath was quickly made available
for the purposes of the Red Cross. In one of the small
wooden cubicles, among hundreds of girls, women, and
students, Rolland sat for more than eighteen months,
engaged each day for from six to eight hours side by
side with the head of the undertaking, Dr. Ferriere, to
whose genius for organization myriads owe it that the
period of suspense was shortened. Here Rolland filed
letters, wrote letters, performed an abundance of detail
work, seemingly of little importance. But how moment-
ous was every word to the individuals whom he could
help, for in this vast universe each suffering individual
is mainly concerned about his own particular grain of
unhappiness. Countless persons to-day, unaware of the
fact, have to thank the great writer for news of their
lost relatives. A rough stool, a small table of unpolished
deal, the turmoil of typewriters, the bustle of human be-
ings questioning, calling one to another, hastening to and
fro — such was Romain Rolland's battlefield in this cam-
paign against the afflictions of the war. Here, while
other authors and intellectuals were doing their utmost
to foster mutual hatred, he endeavored to promote rec-
270 ROMAIN ROLLAND

onciliation, to alleviate the torment of a fraction among

the countless sufferers by such consolation as the circum-
stances rendered possible. He neither desired, nor occu-
pied, aleading position in the work of the Red Cross;
but, like so many other nameless assistants, he devoted
himself to the daily task of promoting the interchange of
news. His deeds were inconspicuous, and are therefore
all the more memorable.
When he was allotted the Nobel peace prize, he, re-
fused to retain the money for his own use, and devoted
the whole sum *to the mitigation of the miseries of Eu-
rope, that he might suit the action to the word, the word
to the action. Ecce homo! Ecce poeta!
 CHAPTER V
THE TRIBUNAL OF THE SPIRIT

NO one had been more perfectly forearmed than

Romain Rolland. The closing chapters of
Jean Christophe foretell the coming mass illu-
sion. Never for a moment had he entertained the vain
hope of certain idealists that the fact (or semblance) of
civilization, that the increase of human kindliness which
we owe to two millenniums of Christianity, would make
a future war, comparatively humane. Too well did he
know as historian that in the initial outbursts of war
passion the veneer of civilization and Christianity would
be rubbed off; that in all nations alike the naked bestial-
ity of human beings would be disclosed; that the smell
of the shed blood would reduce them all to the level of
wild beasts. He did not conceal from himself that this
strange halitus is able to dull and to confuse even the
gentlest, the kindliest, the most intelligent of souls. The
rending asunder of ancient friendships, the sudden soli-
darity among persons most opposed in temperament now
eager to abase themselves before the idol of the father-
land, the total disappearance of conscientious convic-
tion at the first breath of the actualities of war — in Jean
Christophe these things were 271 written no less plainly than
 272 ROMAIN HOLLAND

when of old the fingers of the hand wrote upon the palace
wall in Babylon.
Nevertheless, even this prophetic soul had underesti-
mated the cruel reality. During the opening days of the
war, Holland was horrified to note how all previous wars
were being eclipsed in the atrocity of the struggle, in its
material and spiritual brutality, in its extent, and in the
intensity of its passion. All possible anticipations had
been outdone. Although for thousands of years, by
twos or variously allied, the peoples of Europe had al-
most unceasingly been warring one with another, never
before had their mutual hatreds, as manifested in word
and deed, risen to such a pitch as in this twentieth cen-
tury after the birth of Christ. Never before in the his-
tory of mankind did hatred extend so widely through the
populations; never did it rage so fiercely among the in-
tellectuals; never before was oil pumped into the flames
as it was now pumped from innumerable fountains and
tubes of the spirit, from the canals of the newspapers,
from the retorts of the professors. All evil instincts
were fostered among the masses. The whole world of
feeling, the whole world of thought, became militarized.
The loathsome organization for the dealing of death by
material weapons was yet more loathsomely reflected in
the organization of national telegraphic bureaus to scat-
ter lies like sparks over land and sea. For the first
time, science, poetry, art, and philosophy became no less
subservient to war than mechanical ingenuity was sub-
servient. Inthe pulpits and professorial chairs, in the
research laboratories, in the editorial offices and in the
 THE TRIBUNAL OF THE SPIRIT 273

authors' studies, all energies were concentrated as by an

invisible system upon the generation and diffusion of
hatred. The seer's apocalyptic warnings were sur-
passed.
A deluge of hatred and blood such as even the blood-
drenched soil of Europe had never known, flowed from
land to land. Remain Rolland knew that a lost world, a
corrupt generation, cannot be saved from its illusions.
A world conflagration cannot be extinguished by a word,
cannot be quelled by the efforts of naked human hands.
The only possible endeavor was to prevent others adding
fuel to the flames, and with the lash of scorn and con-
tempt todeter as far as might be those who were engaged
in such criminal undertakings. It might be possible,
too, to build an ark wherein what was intellectually pre-
cious in this suicidal generation might be saved from the
deluge, might be made available for those of a future
day when the waters of hatred should have subsided. A
sign might be uplifted, round which the faithful could
rally, building a temple of unity amid, and yet high
above, the battlefields.
Among the detestable organizations of the general
staffs, mechanical ingenuity, lying, and hatred, Rolland
dreamed of establishing another organization, a fellow-
ship of the free spirits of Europe. The leading imagina-
tive writers, the leading men of science, were to constitute
the ark he desired; they were to be the sustainers of
justice in these days of injustice and falsehood. While
the masses, deceived by words, were raging against one
another in blind fury, the artists, the writers, the men of
274 ROMAIN HOLLAND

science, of Germany, France, and England, who for cen-

turies had been cooperating for discoveries, advances,
ideals, could combine to form a tribunal of the spirit
which, with scientific earnestness, should devote itself to
extirpating the falsehoods that were keeping their re-
spective peoples apart. Transcending nationality, they
could hold intercourse on a higher plane. For it was
Holland's most cherished hope that the great artists and
great investigators would refuse to identify themselves
with the crime of the war, would refrain from abandon-
ing their freedom of conscience and from entrenching
themselves behind a facile "my country, right or wrong."
With few exceptions, intellectuals had for centuries
recognized the repulsiveness of war. More than a thou-
sand years earlier, when China was threatened by ambi-
tious Mongols, Li Tai Peh had exclaimed: "Accursed
be war! Accursed the work of weapons! The sage has
nothing to do with these follies." The contention that
the sage has naught to do with such follies seems to rise
like an unenunciated refrain from all the utterances of
western men of learning since Europe began to have a
common life. In Latin letters (for Latin, the medium
of intercourse, was likewise the symbol of supranational
fellowship), the great humanists whose respective coun-
tries were at war exchanged their regrets, and offered
mutual philosophical solace against the murderous illu-
sions oftheir less instructed fellows. Herder was speak-
ing for the learned Germans of the eighteenth century
when he wrote: "For fatherland to engage in a bloody
struggle with fatherland is the most preposterous barbar-
 THE TRIBUNAL OF THE SPIRIT 275

ism." Goethe, Byron, Voltaire, and Rousseau, were at

one in their contempt for the purposeless butcheries of
war. To-day, in Rolland's view, the leading intellec-
tuals, the great scientific investigators whose minds would
perforce remain unclouded, the most humane among the
imaginative writers, could join in a fellowship whose
members would renounce the errors of their respective
nations. He did not, indeed, venture to hope that there
would be a very large number of persons whose souls
would remain free from the passions of the time. But
spiritual force is not based upon numbers; its laws are
not those of armies. In this field, Goethe's saying is ap-
plicable : "Everything great, and everything most worth
having comes from a minority. It cannot be supposed
that reason will ever become popular. Passion and
sentiment may be popularized, the reason will always
remain a privilege of the few." This minority, how-
ever, may acquire authority through spiritual force.
Above all, it may constitute a bulwark against falsehood.
If men of light and leading, free men of all nationalities,
were to meet somewhere, in Switzerland perhaps, to make
common cause against every injustice, by whomever com-
mit ed, a sanctuary would at length be established, an
asylum for truth which was now everywhere bound and
gagged. Europe would have a span of soil for home;
mankind would have a spark of hope. Holding mutual
converse, these best of men could enlighten one another;
and the reciprocal illumination on the part of such un-
prejudiced persons could not fail to diffuse its light over
the world.
276 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Such was the mood in which Holland took up his pen
for the first time after the outbreak of war. He wrote
an open letter to Hauptmann, to the author whom among
Germans he chiefly honored for goodness and humane-
ness. Within the same hour he wrote to Verhaeren,
Germany's bitterest foe. Holland thus stretched forth
both his hands, rightward and leftward, in the hope that
he could bring his two correspondents together, so that
at least within the domain of pure spirit there might be
a first essay towards spiritual reconciliation, what time
upon the battlefields the machine-guns with their infernal
clatter were mowing down the sons of France, Germany,
Belgium, Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
 CHAPTER VI
THE CONTROVERSY WITH GERHART HAUPTMANN

ROMAIN HOLLAND had never been personally

acquainted with Gerhart Hauptmann. He
was familiar with the German's writings, and
admired their passionate participation in all that is
human, loved them for the goodness with which the
individual figures are intentionally characterized. On
a visit to Berlin, he had called at Hauptmann's house,
but the playwright was away. The two had never before
exchanged letters.
Nevertheless, Holland decided to address Hauptmann
as a representative German author, as writer of Die
Weber and as creator of many other figures typifying
suffering. He wrote on August 29, 1914, the day on
which a telegram issued by Wolff's agency, ludicrously
exaggerating in pursuit of the policy of "f rightfulness,"
had announced that "the old town of Louvain, rich in
works of art, exists no more to-day." An outburst of
indignation was assuredly justified, but Holland en-
deavored to exhibit the utmost self-control. He began
as follows: "I am not, Gerhart Hauptmann, one of
those Frenchmen who regard Germany as a nation of
barbarians. I know the 277
intellectual and moral great-
278 ROMAIN ROLLAND

ness of your mighty race. I know all that I owe to the

thinkers of Old Germany; and even now, at this hour, I
recall the example and the words of our Goethe — for
he belongs to the whole of humanity — repudiating all na-
tional hatreds and preserving the calmness of his soul
on those heights 'where we feel the happiness and the
misfortunes of other peoples as our own.' ' He goes on
with a pathetic self -consciousness for the first time notice-
able in the work of this most modest of writers. Recog-
nizing his mission, he lifts his voice above the contro-
versies ofthe moment. "I have labored all my life to
bring together the minds of our two nations; and the
atrocities of this impious war in which, to the ruin of
European civilization, they are involved, will never lead
me to soil my spirit with hatred."
Now Rolland sounds a more impassioned note. He
does not hold Germany responsible for the war. "War
springs from the weakness and stupidity of nations."
He ignores political questions, but protests vehemently
against the destruction of works of art, asking Haupt-
mann and his countrymen, "Are you the grandchildren
of Goethe or of Attila?" Proceeding more quietly, he
implores Hauptmann to refrain from any attempt to
justify such things. "In the name of our Europe, of
which you have hitherto been one of the most illustrious
champions, in the name of that civilization for which
the greatest of men have striven all down the ages, in the
name of the very honor of your Germanic race, Gerhart
Hauptmann, I adjure you, I challenge you, you and the
intellectuals of Germany, among whom I reckon so many
 CONTROVERSY WITH HAUPTMANN 279
friends, to protest with the utmost energy against this
crime which will otherwise recoil upon yourselves."
Rolland's hope was that the Germans would, like him-
self, refuse to condone the excesses of the war-makers,
would refuse to accept the war as a fatality. He hoped
for a public protest from across the Rhine. Rolland
was not aware that at this time no one in Germany had
or could have any inkling of the true political situation.
He was not aware that such a public protest as he de-
sired was quite impossible.
Gerhart Hauptmann's answer struck a fiercer note than
Rolland's letter. Instead of complying with the French-
man's plea, instead of repudiating the German militarist
policy of frightfulness, he attempted, with sinister en-
thusiasm, tojustify that policy. Accepting the maxim,
"war is war," he, somewhat prematurely, defended the
right of the stronger. "The weak naturally have re-
course to vituperation." He declared the report of the
destruction of Louvain to be false. It was, he said, a
matter of life or death for Germany that the German
troops should effect "their peaceful passage" through
Belgium. He referred to the pronouncements of the
general staff, and quoted, as the highest authority for
truth, the words of "the Emperor himself."
Therewith the controversy passed from the spiritual to
the political plane. Rolland, embittered in his turn,
rejected the views of Hauptmann, who was lending his
moral authority to the support of Schlieffen's aggressive
theories. Hauptmann, declared Rolland, was "accept-
ing responsibility for the crimes of those who wield
280 ROMAIN ROLLAND

authority." Instead of promoting harmony, the cor-

respondence was fostering discord. In reality the two
had no common ground for discussion. The attempt
was ill-timed, passion still ran too high; the mists of pre-
valent falsehood still obscured vision on both sides.
The waters of the flood continued to rise, the infinite
deluge of hatred and error. Brethren were as yet un-
able to recognize one another in the darkness.
 CHAPTER VII
THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH VERHAEREN

HAVING written to Gerhart Hauptmann, the

German, Holland almost simultaneously ad-
dressed himself to Emile Verhaeren, the Bel-
gian, who had been an enthusiast for European unity,
but had now become one of Germany's bitterest foes.
Perhaps no one is better entitled than the present writer
to bear witness that Verhaeren's hostility to Germany
was a new thing. As long as peace lasted, the Belgian
poet had known no other ideal than that of international
brotherhood, had detested nothing more heartily than he
detested international discord. Shortly before the war,
in his preface to Henri Guilbeaux's anthology of Ger-
man poetry, Verhaeren had spoken of "the ardor of the
nations," which, he said, "in defiance of that other pas-
sion which tends to make them quarrel, inclines them
towards mutual love." The German invasion of Bel-
gium taught him to hate. His verses, which had hitherto
been odes to creative force, were henceforward dithy-
rambs in favor of hostility.
Holland had sent Verhaeren a copy of his protest
against the destruction of Louvain and the bombardment
of Rheims cathedral. Concurring 281 in this protest, Ver-
282 ROMAIN HOLLAND

haeren wrote: "Sadness and hatred overpower me.

The latter feeling is new in my experience. I cannot
rid myself of it, although I am one of those who have
always regarded hatred as a base sentiment. Such love
as I can give in this hour is reserved for my country,
or rather for the heap of ashes to which Belgium has
been reduced." Holland's answer ran as follows:
"Rid yourself of hatred. Neither you nor we should
give way to it. Let us guard against hatred even more
than we guard against our enemies! You will see at
a later date that the tragedy is more terrible than peo-
ple can realize while it is actually being played. . . .
So stupendous is this European drama that we have no
right to make human beings responsible for it. It is a
convulsion of nature . . . Let us build an ark as did
those who were threatened with the deluge. Thus we can
save what is left of humanity." Without acrimony,
Verhaeren rejected this adjuration. He deliberately
chose to remain inspired with hatred, little as he liked the
feeling. In La Belgique sanglante, he declared that
hatred brought a certain solace, although, dedicating his
work "to the man I once was," he manifested his yearn-
ing for the revival of his former sentiment that the world
was a comprehensive whole. Vainly did Rolland return
to the charge in a touching letter: "Greatly, indeed,
must you have suffered, to be able to hate. But I am
confident that in your case such a feeling cannot long
endure, for souls like yours would perish in this atmos-
phere. Justice must be done, but it is not a demand of
justice that a whole people should be held responsible
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH VERHAEREN 283
for the crimes of a few hundred individuals. Were there
but one just man in Israel, you would have no right to
pass judgment upon all Israel. Surely it is impossible
for you to doubt that many in Germany and Austria,
oppressed and gagged, continue to suffer and struggle.
. . . Thousands of innocent persons are being every-
where sacrificed to the crimes of politics! Napoleon
was not far wrong when he said: 'Politics are for us
what fate was for the ancients.' Never was the destiny
of classical days more cruel. Let us refuse, Verhaeren,
to make common cause with this destiny. Let us take
our stand beside the oppressed, beside all the oppressed,
wherever they may dwell. I recognize only two nations
on earth, that of those who suffer, and that of those who
cause the suffering."
Verhaeren, however, was unmoved. He answered as
follows: "If I hate, it is because what I saw, felt, and
heard, is hateful ... I admit that I cannot be just, now
that I am filled with sadness and burn with anger. I am
not simply standing near the fire, but am actually amid
the flames, so that I suffer and weep. I can no other-
wise." He remained loyal to hatred, and indeed loyal
to the hatred-for-hate of Remain Rolland's Olivier.
Notwithstanding this grave divergence of view between
Verhaeren and Rolland, the two men continued on terms
of friendship and mutual respect. Even in the preface
he contributed to Loyson's inflammatory book, Etes-vous
neutre (Levant le crime, Verhaeren distinguished be-
tween the person and the cause. He was unable, he said,
"to espouse Rolland's error," but he would not repudiate
284 ROMAIN HOLLAND

his friendship for Holland. Indeed, he desired to

emphasize its existence, seeing that in France it was al-
ready "dangerous to love Romain Rolland."
In this correspondence, as in that with Hauptmann,
two strong passions seemed to clash; but the opponents
in reality remained out of touch. Here, likewise, the
appeal was fruitless. Practically the whole world was
given over to hatred, including even the noblest creative
artists, and the finest among the sons of men.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE

AS on so many previous occasions in his life of

action, this man of inviolable faith had issued
to the world an appeal for fellowship, and had
issued it once more in vain. The writers, the men of
science, the philosophers, the artists, all took the side of
the country to which they happened to belong; the Ger-
mans spoke for Germany, the Frenchmen for France, the
Englishmen for England. No one would espouse the
universal cause ; no one would rise superior to the device,
my country right or wrong. In every land, among those
of every nation, there were to be found plenty of en-
thusiastic advocates, persons willing blindly to justify all
their country's doings, including its errors and its crimes,
to excuse these errors and crimes upon the plea of neces-
sity. There was only one land, the land common to them '
all, Europe, motherland of all the fatherlands, which
found no advocate, no defender. There was. only one
idea, the most self-evident to a Christian world, which
found no spokesman — the idea of ideas, humanity.
During these days, Holland may well have recalled
sacred memories of the time when Leo Tolstoi's letter
came to give him a mission in life. Tolstoi had stood
286 ROMAIN HOLLAND

alone in the utterance of his celebrated outcry, "I can no

longer keep silence." At that time his country was at
war. He arose to defend the invisible rights of human
beings, uttering a protest against the command that men
should murder their brothers. Now his voice was no
longer heard; his place was empty; the conscience of
mankind was dumb. To Holland, the consequent
silence, the terrible silence of the free spirit amid the
hurly-burly of the slaves, seemed more hateful than the
roar of the cannon. Those to whom he had appealed
for help had refused to answer the call. The ultimate
truth, the truth of conscience, had no organized fellow-
ship to sustain it. No one would aid him in the struggle
for the freedom of the European soul, the struggle of
truth against falsehood, the struggle of human loving-
kindness against frenzied hate. Holland once again was
alone with his faith, more alone than during the bitter-
est years of solitude.
But Holland has never been one to resign himself to
loneliness. In youth he had already felt that those who
are passive while wrong is being done are as criminal as
the very wrongdoer. "Ceux qui subissent le mal sont
aussi criminels que ceux qui le font." Upon the poet,
above all, it seemed to him incumbent to find words for
thought, and to vivify the words by action. It is not
enough to write ornamental comments upon the history
of one's time. The poet must be part of the very being
of his time, must fight to make his ideas realize them-
selves in action. "The elite of the intellect constitutes
 THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE 287

an aristocracy which would fain replace the aristocracy

of birth. But the aristocracy of intellect is apt to forget
that the aristocracy of birth won its privileges with blood.
For hundreds of years men have listened to the words of
wisdom, but seldom have they seen a sage offering him-
self up to the sacrifice. If we would inspire others with
faith we must show that our own faith is real. Mere
words do not suffice." Fame is a sword as well as a
laurel crown. Faith imposes obligations. One who had
made Jean Christophe utter the gospel of a free con-
science, could not, when the world had fashioned his
cross, play the part of Peter denying the Lord. He
must take up his apostolate, be ready should need arise
to face martyrdom. Thus, while almost all the artists
of the day, in their "passion d'abdiquer," in their mad
desire to shout with the crowd, were not merely extolling
force and victory as the masters of the hour, but were
actually maintaining that force was the very meaning of
civilization, that victory was the vital energy of the
world, Holland stood forth against them all, proclaiming
the might of the incorruptible conscience. "Force is
always hateful to me," wrote Holland to Jouve in this
decisive hour. "If the world cannot get on without
force, it still behooves me to refrain from making terms
with force. I must uphold an opposing principle, one
which will invalidate the principle of force. Each must
play his own part; each must obey his own inward moni-
tor." He did not fail to recognize the titanic nature of
the struggle into which he was entering, but the words
288 ROMAIN HOLLAND
he had written in youth still resounded in his memory.
"Our first duty is to be great, and to defend greatness
on earth."
Just as in those earlier days, when he had wished by
means of his dramas to restore faith to his nation, when
he had set up the images of the heroes as examples to
a petty time, when throughout a decade of quiet effort
he had summoned the people towards love and freedom,
so now, Holland set to work alone. He had no party, no
newspaper, no influence. He had nothing but his pas-
sionate enthusiasm, and that indomitable courage to
which the forlorn hope makes an irresistible appeal.
Alone he began his onslaught upon the illusions of the
multitude, when the European conscience, hunted with
scorn and hatred from all countries and all hearts, had
taken sanctuary in his heart.
 CHAPTER IX
THE MANIFESTOES

THE struggle had to be waged by means of news-

paper articles. Since Holland was attacking
prevalent falsehoods, and their public expres-
sion in the form of lying phrases, he had perforce to fight
them upon their own ground. But the vigor of his ideas,
the breath of freedom they conveyed, and the authority
of the author's name, made of these articles, manifestoes
which spoke to the whole of Europe and aroused a
spiritual conflagration. Like electric sparks given off
from invisible wires, their energy was liberated in all
directions, leading here to terrible explosions of hatred,
throwing there a brilliant light into the depths of con-
science, in every case producing cordial excitement in
its contrasted forms of indignation and enthusiasm.
Never before, perhaps, did newspaper articles exercise
so stupendous an influence, at once inflammatory and
purifying, as was exercised by these two dozen appeals
and manifestoes issued in a time of enslavement and
confusion by a lonely man whose spirit was free and
whose intellect remained unclouded.
From the artistic point of view the essays naturally
suffer by comparison with Holland's
289 other writings, care-
 290 ROMAIN HOLLAND

fully considered and fully elaborated. Addressed to

the widest possible public, but simultaneously hampered
by consideration for the censorship (seeing that to Hol-
land itwas all important that the articles published in
the "Journal de Geneve" should be reproduced in the
French press), the ideas had to be presented with
meticulous care and yet at the same time to be hastily
produced. We find in these writings marvelous and
ever-memorable cries of suffering, sublime passages of
indignation and appeal. But they are a discharge of
passion, so that their stylistic merits vary much. Often,
too, they relate to casual incidents. Their essential
value lies in their ethical bearing, and here they are of
incomparable merit. In relation to Holland's previous
work we find that they display, as it were, a new rhythm.
They are characterized by the emotion of one who is
aware that he is addressing an audience of many millions.
The author was no longer speaking as an isolated indi-
vidual. For the first time he felt himself to be the
public advocate of the invisible Europe.
Will those of a later generation, to whom the essays
have been made available in the volumes Au-dessus de
la melee and Les precurseurs, be able to understand
what they signified to the contemporary world at the
time of their publication in the newspapers? The mag-
nitude of a force cannot be measured without taking the
resistance into account; the significance of an action
cannot be understood without reckoning up the sacrifices
it has entailed. To understand the ethical import, the
heroic character, of these manifestoes, we must recall to
 THE MANIFESTOES 291

mind the frenzy of the opening year of the war, the spirit-
ual infection which was devastating Europe, turning the
whole continent into a madhouse. It has already become
difficult to realize the mental state of those days. We
have to remember that maxims which now seem com-
monplace, asfor instance the contention that we must
not hold all the individuals of a nation responsible for
the outbreak of a war, were then positively criminal,
that to utter them was a punishable offense. We must
remember that Au-dessus de la melee, whose trend al-
ready seems to us a matter of course, was officially
denounced, that its author was ostracised, and that for
a considerable period the circulation of the essays was
forbidden in France, while numerous pamphlets at-
tacking them secured wide circulation. In connec-
tion with these articles we must always evoke the atmos-
pheric environment, must remember the silence of
their appeal amid a vasty spiritual silence. To-day,
readers are apt to think that Holland merely uttered self-
evident truths, so that we recall Schopenhauer's mem-
orable saying: "On earth, truth is allotted no more than
a brief triumph between two long epochs, in one of which
it is scouted as paradoxical, while in the other it is
despised as commonplace." To-day, for the moment at
any rate, we may have entered into a period, when many
of Holland's utterances are accounted commonplace be-
cause, since he wrote, they have become the small change
of thousands of other writers. Yet there was a day when
each of these words seemed to cut like a whip-lash. The
excitement they aroused gives us the historic measure
292 ROMAIN HOLLAND
of the need that they should be spoken. The wrath of
Holland's opponents, of which the only remaining record
is a pile of pamphlets, bears witness to the heroism of
him who was the first to take his stand "above the battle."
Let us not forget that it was then the crime of crimes, "de
dire ce qui est juste et humain." Men were still so
drunken with the fumes of the first bloodshed that they
would have been fain, as Holland himself has phrased it,
"to crucify Christ once again should he have risen; to
crucify him for saying, Love one another."
 CHAPTER X
ABOVE THE BATTLE

ON September 22, 1914, the essay Au-dessus de

la melee was published in "Le Journal de
Geneve" After the preliminary skirmish
with Gerhart Hauptmann, came this declaration of war
against hatred, this foundation stone of the invisible Eu-
ropean church. The title, "Above the Battle," has be-
come at once a watchword and a term of abuse; but
amid the discordant quarrels of the factions, the essay
was the first utterance to sound a clear note of imper-
turbable justice, bringing solace to thousands.
It is animated by a strange and tragical emotion,
resonant of the hour when countless myriads were bleed-
ing and dying, and among them many of Holland's
intimate friends. It is the outpouring of a riven heart,
the heart of one who would fain move others, breathing
as it does the heroic determination to try conclusions with
a world that has fallen a prey to madness. It opens with
an ode to the youthful fighters. "0 young men that shed
your blood for the thirsty earth with so generous a joy!
0 heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction
to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of
all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, . . .
all of you, marching to your deaths, are dear to me . . .
293
294 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Those years of skepticism and gay frivolity in which we
in France grew up are avenged in you . . . Conquerors
or conquered, quick or dead, rejoice!" But after this
ode to the faithful, to those who believe themselves to
be discharging their highest duty, Holland turns to con-
sider the intellectual leaders of the nations, and apostro-
phises them thus : "For what are you squandering them,
these living riches, these treasures of heroism entrusted
to your hands? What ideal have you held up to the
devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves?
Mutual slaughter! A European war!" He accuses the
leaders of taking cowardly refuge behind an idol they
term fate. Those who understood their responsibilities
so ill that they failed to prevent the war, inflame and
poison it now that it has begun. A terrible picture. In
all countries, everything becomes involved in the torrent;
among all peoples, there is the same ecstasy for that
which is destroying them. "For it is not racial passion
alone which is hurling millions of men blindly one
against another . . . All the forces of the spirit, of rea-
son, of faith, of poetry, and of science, all have placed
themselves at the disposal of -the armies in every state.
There is not one among the leaders of thought in each
country who does not proclaim that the cause of his
people is the cause of God, the cause of liberty and of
human progress." He mockingly alludes to the pre-
posterous duels between philosophers and men of sci-
ence; and to the failure of what professed to be the two
great internationalist forces of the age, Christianity and
socialism, to stand aloof from the fray. "It would seem,
Remain Rolland at the time of writing Above the Battle
 ABOVE THE BATTLE 295

then, that love of our country can flourish only through

the hatred of other countries and the massacre of those
who sacrifice themselves in defense of them. There is
in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a Neronian dilet-
tantism, which revolts me to the very depths of my being.
No ! Love of my country does not demand that I should
hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also
love theirs, but rather that I should honor them and seek
to unite with them for our common good." After some
further discussion of the attitude of Christians and of
socialists towards the war, he continues : "There was no
reason for war between the western nations; French,
English, and German, we are all brothers and do not hate
one another. The war-preaching press is envenomed
by a minority, a minority vitally interested in the diffu-
sion of hatred; but our peoples, I know, ask for peace
and liberty, and for that alone." It was a scandal, there-
fore, that at the outbreak of the war the intellectual lead-
ers should have allowed the purity of their thought to be
besmirched. It was monstrous that intelligence should
permit itself to be enslaved by the passions of a puerile
and absurd policy of race. Never should we forget, in
the war now being waged, the essential unity of all our
fatherlands. "Humanity is a symphony of great col-
lective souls. He who cannot understand it and love it
until he has destroyed a part of its elements, is a bar-
barian . . . For the finer spirits of Europe, there are
two dwelling places: our earthly fatherland, and the
City of God. Of the one we are the guests, of the other
the builders ... It is our duty to build the walls of this
296 ROMAIN HOLLAND

city ever nigner and stronger, that it may dominate the

injustice and the hatred of the nations. Then shall we
have a refuge wherein the brotherly and free spirits from
out all the world may assemble." This faith in a lofty
ideal soars like a sea-mew over the ocean of blood.
Holland is well aware how little hope there is that his
words can make themselves audible above the clamor of
thirty million warriors. ."I know that such thoughts
have little chance of being heard to-day. I do not speak
to convince. I speak only to solace my conscience.
And I know that at the same time I shall solace the hearts
of thousands of others who, in all lands, cannot and dare
not speak for themselves." As ever, he is on the side
of the weak, on the side of the minority. His voice
grows stronger, for he knows that he is speaking for the
silent multitude.
 CHAPTER XI

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED

THE essay Au-dessus de la melee was the first

stroke of the woodman's axe in the overgrown
forest of hatred ; thereupon, a roaring echo thun-
dered from all sides, reverberating reluctantly in the
newspapers. Undismayed, Rolland resolutely continued
his work. He wished to cut a clearing into which a few
sunbeams of reason might shine through the gloomy and
suffocating atmosphere. His next essays aimed at
illuminating an open space of such a character. Espe-
cially notable were Inter Anna Caritas (October 30,
1914) ; Les idoles (December 4, 1914) ; Notre prochain
Vennemi (March 15, 1915) ; Le meutre des elites (June
14, 1915). These were attempts to give a voice to the
silent. "Let us help the victims! It is true that we can-
not do very much. In the everlasting struggle between
good and evil, the balance is unequal. We require a
century for the upbuilding of that which a day destroys.
Nevertheless, the frenzy lasts no more than a day, and
the patient labor of reconstruction is our daily bread.
This work goes on even during an hour when the world
is perishing around us."
The poet had at length come to understand his task.
297
 298 ROMAIN HOLLAND

It is useless to attack the war directly. Reason can ef-

fect nothing against the elemental forces. But he re-
gards itas his predestined duty to combat throughout the
war everything that the passions of men lead them to
undertake for the deliberate increase of horror, to combat
the spiritual poison of the war. The most atrocious
feature of the present struggle, one which distinguishes
it from all previous wars, is this deliberate poisoning.
That which in earlier days was accepted with simple
resignation as a disastrous visitation like the plague, was
now presented in a heroic light, as a sign of "the gran-
deur of the age." An ethic of force, an ethic of destruc-
tion, was being preached. The mass struggle of the na-
tions was being purposely inflamed to become the mass
hatred of individuals. Rolland, therefore, was not, as
many have supposed, attacking the war; he was attack-
ing the ideology of the war, the artificial idolization of
brutality. As far as the individual was concerned, he
attacked the readiness to accept a collective morality
constructed solely for the duration of the war; he at-
tacked the surrender of conscience in face of the pre-
vailing universalization of falsehood; he attacked the
suspension of inner freedom which was advocated until
the war should be over.
His words, therefore, are not directed against the
masses, not against the peoples. These know not what
they do ; they are deceived ; they are dumb driven cattle.
The diffusion of lying has made it easy for them to hate.
"II est si commode de hair sans comprendre." The
fault lies with the inciters, with the manufacturers of lies,
 THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED 299

with the intellectuals. They are guilty, seven times

guilty, because, thanks to their education and experience,
they cannot fail to know the truth which nevertheless they
repudiate; because from weakness, and in many cases
from calculation, they have surrendered to the current
of uninstructed opinion, instead of using their authority
to deflect this current into better channels. Of set pur-
pose, instead of defending the ideals they formerly es-
poused, the ideals of humanity and international unity,
they have revived the ideas of the Spartans and of the
Homeric heroes, which have as little place in our time
as have spears and plate-armor in these days of machine-
gun warfare. Heretofore, to the great spirits of all time,
hatred has seemed a base and contemptible accompani-
ment of war. The thoughtful among the non-combatants
•put it away from them with loathing; the warriors re-
jected the sentiment upon grounds of chivalry. Now,
hatred is not merely supported with all the arguments of
logic, science, and poesy; but is actually, in defiance of
gospel teaching, raised to a place among the moral duties,
so that every one who resists the feeling of collective
hatred is branded as a traitor. Against these enemies of
the free spirit, Holland takes up his parable: "Not only
have they done nothing to lessen reciprocal misunder-
standing; not only have they done nothing to limit the
diffusion of hate; on the contrary, with few exceptions,
they have done everything in their power to make hatred
more widespread and more venomous. In large part,
this war is their war. By their murderous ideologies
they have led thousands astray. With criminal self-
confidence, unteachable in their arrogance, they have
300 ROMAIN HOLLAND

driven millions to death, sacrificing their fellows to the

phantoms which they, the intellectuals, have created."
The persons to whom blame attaches are those who know,
or who might have known; but who, from sloth, coward-
ice, or weakness, from desire for fame or for some other
personal advantage, have given themselves over to lying.
The hatred breathed by the intellectuals was a false-
hood. Had it been a truth, had it been a genuine pas-
sion, those who were inspired with this feeling would
have ceased talking and would themselves have taken up
arms. Most people are moved either by hatred or by
love, not by abstract ideas. For this reason, the attempt
to sow dissension among millions of unknown individ-
uals, the attempt to "perpetuate" hatred, was a crime
against the spirit rather than against the flesh. It was a
deliberate falsification to include leaders and led, drivers
and driven, in a single category; to generalize Germany
as an integral object for hatred. We must join one fel-
lowship or the other, that of the truthtellers or that of the
liars, that of the men of conscience or that of the men
of phrase. Just as in Jean Christophe, Holland, in or-
der to show forth the universally human fellowship, had
distinguished between the true France and the false, be-
tween the old Germany and the new; so now in wartime
did he draw attention to the ominous resemblance be-
tween the war fanatics in both camps, and to the heroic
isolation of those who were above the battle in all the
belligerent lands. Thus did he endeavor to fulfill Tol-
stoi's dictum, that it is the function of the imaginative
writer to strengthen the ties that bind men together. In
 THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED 301

Holland's comedy Liluli, the "cerveaux enchaines,"

dressed in various national uniforms, dance the same
Indian war-dance under the lash of Patriotism, the
negro slave-driver. There is a terrible resemblance be-
tween the German professors and those of the Sorbonne.
All of them turn the same logical somersaults; all join
in the same chorus of hate.
But the fellowship to which Holland wishes to draw
our attention, is the fellowship of solace. It is true that
the humanizing forces are not so well organized as the
forces of destruction. Free opinion is gagged, whereas
falsehood bellows through the megaphones of the press.
Truth has to be sought out with painful labor, for the
state makes it its business to hide truth. Nevertheless,
those who search perseveringly can discover truth among
all nations and among all races. In these essays, Hol-
land gives many examples, drawn equally from French
and from German sources, showing that even in the
trenches, nay, that especially in the trenches, thousands
upon thousands are animated with brotherly feelings.
He publishes letters from German soldiers, side by side
with letters from French soldiers, all couched in the same
phraseology of human friendliness. He tells of the
women's organizations for helping the enemy, and shows
that amid the cruelty of arms the same lovingkindness is
displayed on both sides. He publishes poems from
either camp, poems which exhale a common sentiment.
Just as in his Vie des hommes illustres he had wished to
show the sufferers of the world that they were not alone,
but that the greatest minds of all epochs were with them,
302 ROMAIN HOLLAND
so now does he attempt to convince those who amid the
general madness are apt to regard themselves as out-
casts because they do not share the fire and fury of the
newspapers and the professors, that they have everywhere
silent brothers of the spirit. Once more, as of old, he
wishes to unite the invisible community of the free. "I
feel the same joy when I find the fragile and valiant flow-
ers of human pity piercing the icy crust of hatred that
covers Europe, as we feel in these chilly March days
when we see the first flowers appear above the soil.
They show that the warmth of life persists below the sur-
face, and that soon nothing will prevent its rising again."
Undismayed he continues on his '^humble pelerinage,"
endeavoring "to discover, beneath the ruins, the hearts of
those who have remained faithful to the old ideal of
human brotherhood. What a melancholy joy it is to
come to their aid." For the sake of this consolation, for
the sake of this hope, he gives a new significance even to
war, which he has hated and dreaded from early child-
hood. "To war we owe one painful benefit, in that it
has served to bring together those of all nations who
refuse to share the prevailing sentiments of national
hatred. It has steeled their energies, has inspired them
with an indefatigable will. How mistaken are those who
imagine that the ideas of human brotherhood have been
stifled . . . Not for a moment do I doubt the coming
unity of the European fellowship. That unity will be
realized. The war is but its baptism of blood."
Thus does the good Samaritan, the healer of souls, en-
deavor tobring to the despairing that hope which is the
 THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HATRED 303

bread of life. Perchance Holland speaks with a confi-

dence that runs somewhat in advance of his innermost
convictions. But he only who realized the intense yearn-
ings of the innumerable persons who at that date were
imprisoned in their respective fatherlands, barred in the
cages of the censorships, he alone can realize the value
to such poor captives of Holland's manifestoes of faith,
words free from hatred, bringing at length a message of
brotherhood.
 CHAPTER XII
OPPONENTS

FROM the first, Rolland knew perfectly well that

in a time when party feeling runs high, no task
can be more ungrateful than that of one who
advocates impartiality. "The combatants are to-day
united in one thing only, in their hatred for those who
refuse to join in any hymn of hate. Whoever does not
share the common delirium, is suspect. And nowadays,
when justice cannot spare the time for thorough investiga-
tion, every suspect is considered tantamount to a traitor.
He who undertakes in wartime to defend peace on earth,
must realize that he is staking his faith, his name, his
tranquillity, his repute, and even his friendships. But
of what value would be a conviction on behalf of which
a man would take no risks?" Rolland was likewise
aware that the most dangerous of all positions is that be-
tween the fronts, but this certainty of danger was but
a tonic to his conscience. "If it be really needful, as
the proverb assures us, to prepare for war in time of
peace, it is no less needful to prepare for peace in time
of war. In my view, the latter role is assigned to those
who stand outside the struggle, and whose mental life
has brought them into unusually close contact with the
world-all. I speak of the members of that little lay
304
 OPPONENTS 305

church, of those who have been exceptionally well able

to maintain their faith in the unity of human thought,
of those for whom all men are sons of the same father.
If it should chance that we are reviled for holding this
conviction, the reviling is in truth an honor to us, and
we may be satisfied to know that we shall earn the ap-
probation ofposterity."
It is plain that Holland is forearmed against opposi-
tion. Nevertheless, the fierceness of the onslaughts ex-
ceeded all expectation. The first rumblings of the storm
came from Germany. The passage in the Letter to Ger-
hart Hauptmann, "are you the sons of Goethe or of
Attila," and similar utterances, aroused angry echoes.
A dozen or so professors and scribblers hastened to
"chastise" French arrogance. In the columns of "Die
Deutsche Rundschau," a narrow-minded pangerman dis-
closed the great secret that under the mask of neutrality
Jean Christophe had been a most dangerous French at-
tack upon the German spirit.
French champions were no less eager to enter the lists
as soon as the publication of the essay Au-dessus de la
melee was reported. Difficult as it seems to realize the
fact to-day, the French newspapers were forbidden to
reprint this manifesto, but fragments became known to
the public in the attacks wherein Holland was pilloried
as an antipatriot. Professors at the Sorbonne and his-
torians ofrenown did not shrink from leveling such ac-
cusations. Soon the campaign was systematized.
Newspaper articles were followed by pamphlets, and
ultimately by a large volume from the pen of a carpet
306 ROMAIN ROLLAND

hero. This book was furnished with a thousand proofs,

with photographs, and quotations; it was a complet dos-
sier, avowedly intended to supply materials for a prose-
cution. There was no lack of the basest calumnies. It
was asserted that since the beginning of the war Rolland
had joined the German society "Neues Vaterland"; that
he was a contributor to German newspapers; that his
American publisher was a German agent. In one pam-
phlet he was accused of deliberately falsifying dates.
Yet more incriminatory charges could be read between
the lines. With the exception of a few newspapers of
advanced tendencies and comparatively small circula-
tion, the whole of the French press combined to boycott
Rolland. Not one of the Parisian journals ventured to
publish a reply to the charges. A professor triumph-
antly announced: "Get auteur ne se lit plus en
France." His former associates withdrew in alarm
from the tainted member of the flock. One of his old-
est friends, the "ami de la premiere heure," to whom
Rolland had dedicated an earlier work, deserted at this
decisive hour, and canceled the publication of a book
upon Rolland which was already in type. The French
government likewise began to watch Rolland closely,
dispatching agents to collect "materials." A number
of "defeatist" trails were obviously aimed in part at
Rolland, whose essay was publicly stigmatized as
"abominable" by Lieutenant Mornet, the tiger of these
prosecutions. Nothing but the authority of his name,
the inviolability of his public life, and the fact that he
was a lonely fighter (this making it impossible to show
 OPPONENTS 307

that he had any suspect associations), frustrated the

well-prepared plan to put Holland in the dock among
adventurers and petty spies.
All this lunacy is incomprehensible unless we recon-
struct the forcing-house atmosphere of that year. It is
difficult to-day, even from a study of all the pamphlets
and books bearing on the question, to grasp the way in
which Holland's fellow-countrymen had become con-
vinced that he was an antipatriot. From his own writ-
ings, itis impossible for the most fanciful brain to ex-
tract the ingredients for a "cas Holland." From a study
of his own writings alone it is impossible to understand
the frenzy felt by all the intellectuals of France towards
this lonely exile, who tranquilly and with a full sense of
responsibility continued to develop his ideas.
In the eyes of the patriots, Holland's first crime was
that he openly discussed the moral problems of the war.
"On ne discute pas la patrie." The first axiom of war
ethics is that those who cannot or will not shout with
the crowd must hold their peace. Soldiers must never be
taught to think; they must only be incited to hate. A lie
which promotes enthusiasm is worth more in wartime than
the best of truths. In imitation of the principles of the
Catholic church, reflection, doubt, is deemed a crime
against the infallible dogma of the fatherland. It was
enough that Holland should wish to turn things over in
his mind, instead of unquestioningly affirming the cur-
rent political theses. Thereby he abandoned the "atti-
tude franchise"; thereby he was stamped as "neutre."
In those days "neutre" was a good rime to "traitre."
308 ROMAIN ROLLAND

Rolland's second crime was that he desired to be just

to all mankind, that he continued to regard the enemy as
human beings, that among them he distinguished between
guilty and not guilty, that he had as much compassion
for German sufferers as for French, that he did not hesi-
tate to refer to the Germans as brothers. The dogma of
patriotism prescribed that for the duration of the war the
feelings of humanitarianism should be stifled. Jus-
tice should be put away on the top shelf, to keep com-
pany there, until victory had been secured, with the
divine command, Thou shall not kill. One of the pam-
phlets against Rolland bears as its motto, "Pendant une
guerre tout ce qu'on donne de I'amour a 1'humanite, on
le vole a la patrie" — though it must be observed that
from the outlook of those who share Rolland's views, the
order of the terms might well be inverted.
The third crime, the offense which seemed most un-
pardonable ofall, and the one most dangerous to the
state, was that Rolland refused to regard a military vic-
tory as likely to furnish the elixir of morality, to pro-
mote spiritual regeneration, to bring justice upon earth.
Rolland's sin lay in holding that a just and bloodless
peace, a complete reconciliation, a fraternal union of
the European nations, would be more fruitful of blessing
than an enforced peace, which could only sow the
dragon's teeth of hatred and of new wars. In France
at this date, those who wished to fight the war to a finish,
to fight until the enemy had been utterly crushed, coined
the term "defeatist" for those who desired peace to be
based upon a reasonable understanding. Thus was
 OPPONENTS 309

paralleled the German terminology, which spoke of

"Flaumachern" (slackers) and of "Schmachfriede"
(shameful peace). Holland, who had devoted the
whole of his life to the elucidation of moral laws higher
than those of force, was stigmatized as one who would
poison the morale of the armies, as "1'initiateur du
defaitisme." To the militarists, he seemed to be the
last representative of "dying Renanism," to be the cen-
ter of a moral power, and for this reason they en-
deavored to represent his ideas as nonsensical, to depict
him as a Frenchman who desired the defeat of France.
Yet his words stood unchallenged: "I wish France to
be loved. I wish France to be victorious, not through
force; not solely through right (even that would be too
harsh) ; but through the superiority of a great heart. I
wish that France were strong enough to fight without
hatred; strong enough to regard even those whom she
must strike down, as her brothers, as erring brothers, to
whom she must extend her fullest sympathy as soon as
she has put it beyond their power to injure her." Hol-
land made no attempt to answer even the most calumni-
ous of attacks. He quietly let the invectives pass, know-
ing that the thought which he felt himself commissioned
to announce, was inviolable and imperishable. Never
had he fought men, but only ideas. The hostile ideas,
in this case, had long since been answered by the figures
of his own creation. They had been answered by Oli-
vier, the free Frenchman who hated hatred; by Faber,
the Girondist, to whom conscience stood higher than the
arguments of the patriots; by Adam Lux, who compas-
310 ROMAIN HOLLAND

sionately asked his fanatical opponent, "N'es tu pas

fatigue de ta haine"; by Teulier, and by all the great
characters through whom during more than two decades
he had been giving expression to his outlook upon the
struggle of the day. He was unperturbed at standing
alone against almost the entire nation. He recalled
Chamf ort's saying, "There are times when public opinion
is the worst of all possible opinions." The immeasur-
able wrath, the hysterical frenzy of his opponents, con-
firmed his conviction that he was right, for he felt that
their clamor for force betrayed their sense of the weak-
ness of their own arguments. Smilingly he contem-
plated their artificially inflamed anger, addressing them
in the words of his own Clerambault: "You say that
yours is the better way? The only good way? Very
well, take your own path, and leave me to take mine.
I make no attempt to compel you to follow me. I
merely show you which way I am going. What are you
so excited about? Perhaps at the bottom of your hearts
you are afraid that my way is the right one?"
 CHAPTER XIII
FRIENDS

AS soon as he had uttered his first words, a void

formed round this brave man. As Ver-
haeren finely phrased it, he positively loved to
encounter danger, whereas most people shun danger.
His oldest friends, those who had known his writings
and his character from youth upwards, left him in the
lurch; prudent folk quietly turned their backs on him;
newspaper editors and publishers refused him hospi-
tality. For the moment, Holland seemed to be alone.
But, as he had written in Jean Christophe, "A great soul
is never alone. Abandoned by friends, such a one
makes new friends, and surrounds himself with a circle
of that affection of which he is himself full."
Necessity, the touchstone of conscience, had deprived
him of friends, but had also brought him friends. It is
true that their voices were hardly audible amid the
clangor of the opponents. The war-makers had control
of all the channels of publicity. They roared hatred
through the megaphones of the press. Friends could do
no more than give expression to a few cautious words in
such petty periodicals as could slip through the meshes
of the censorship. Enemies formed a compact mass,
flowing to the attack in a huge wave (whose waters were
311
 312 ROMAIN HOLLAND
ultimately to be dispersed in the morass of oblivion) ;
his friends crystallized slowly and secretly around his
ideas, but they were steadfast. His enemies were a
regiment advancing fiercely to the attack at the word of
command; his friends were a fellowship, working tran-
quilly, and united only through love.
The friends in Paris had the hardest task. It was
barely possible for them to communicate with him,
openly. Half of their letters to him and half of his
replies were lost on the frontier. As from a beleaguered
fortress, they hailed the liberator, the man who was
freely proclaiming to the world the ideals which they
were forbidden to utter. Their only possible way of
defending their ideas was to defend the man. In Hol-
land's own fatherland, Amedee Dunois, Fernand Des-
pres, Georges Pioch, Renaitour, Rouanet, Jacques Mes-
nil, Gaston Thiesson, Marcel Martinet, and Severine,
boldly championed him against calumny. A valiant
woman, Marcelle Capy, raised the standard, naming
her book Une voix de ferrnne dans la melee. Separ-
ated from him by the blood-stained sea, they looked to-
wards him as towards a distant lighthouse upon the rock,
and showed their brothers the signal of hope.
In Geneva there formed round him a group of young
writers, disciples and friends, winning strength from
his strength. P. J. Jouve author of Vous etes des
hommes and Danse des marts, glowing with anger and
with love of goodness, suffering intensely at witnessing
the injustice of the world, Olivier redivivus, gave expres-
sion in his poems to his hatred for force. Rene Arcos,
 FRIENDS 313
who like Jouve had realized all the horror of war and
who hated war no less intensely, had a clearer compre-
hension of the dramatic moment, was more thoughtful
than Jouve, but equally simple and kindhearted. Arcos
extolled the European ideal; Charles Baudouin the ideal
of eternal goodness. Franz Masereel, the Belgian ar-
tist, developed his humanist plaint in a series of mag-
nificent woodcuts. Guilbeaux, zealot for the social rev-
olution, ever ready to fight like a gamecock against au-
thority, founded his monthly review "demain," which
was a faithful representative of the European spirit for
a time, until it succumbed because of its passion for
the Russian revolution. Charles Baudouin founded the
monthly review, "Le Carmel," providing a city of refuge
for the persecuted European spirit, and a platform upon
which the poets and imaginative writers of all lands
could assemble under the banner of humanity. Jean
Debrit in "La Feuille" combated the partisanship of the
Latin Swiss press and attacked the war. Claude de
Maguet founded "Les Tablettes," which, through the
boldness of its contributors and through the drawings of
Masereel, became the most vigorous periodical in Swit-
zerland. Alittle oasis of independence came into ex-
istence, and hither the breezes from all quarters wafted
greetings from the distance. Here alone was it pos-
sible tobreathe a European air.
The most remarkable feature of this circle was that,
thanks to Rolland, enemy brethren were not excluded
from spiritual fellowship. Whereas everywhere else
people were infected with the hysteria of mass hatred
 314 ROMAIN HOLLAND
or were terrified lest they should expose themselves to
suspicion, and therefore avoided their sometime inti-
mates of enemy countries like the pestilence should they
chance to meet them in the streets of some neutral city,
at a time when relatives were afraid to exchange letters
of enquiry regarding the life or death of those of their
own blood, Holland would not for a moment deny his
German friends. Never, indeed, had he shown more
love to those among them who remained faithful, at an
epoch when to love them was dangerous. He made
himself known to them in public, and wrote to them
freely. His words concerning these friendships will
never be forgotten: "Yes, I have German friends; just
as I have French, English, and Italian friends; just as I
have friends among the members of every race. They
are my wealth, which I am proud of, and which I seek
to preserve. If a man has been so fortunate as to en-
counter loyal souls, persons with whom he can share
his most intimate thoughts, persons with whom he is con-
nected bybrotherly ties, these ties are sacred, and the
hour of trial is the last of hours in which they should
be rent asunder. How cowardly would be the refusal
to recognize these friends, in deference to the impudent
demand of a public opinion which has no rights over our
feelings. . . . How painful, how tragical, these friend-
ships are at such a moment, the letters will show when
they are published. But it is precisely by means of
such friendships that we can defend ourselves against
hatred, more murderous than war, for it poisons the
 FRIENDS 315

wounds of war, and harms the hater equally with the ob-
ject of hate."
Immeasurable is the debt which friends and num-
berless unseen companions in adversity owe to Holland
for his brave and free attitude. He set an example to
all those who, though they shared his sentiments, were
isolated in obscurity, and who needed some such point
of crystallization before their thoughts and feelings
could be consolidated. It was above all for those who
were not yet sure of themselves that this archetypal
personality provided so splendid a stimulus. Holland's
steadfastness put younger men to shame. In his com-
pany we were stronger, freer, more genuine, more un-
prejudiced. Human lovingkindness, transfigured by his
ardor, radiated like a flame. What bound us together
was not that we chanced to think alike, but a passionate
exaltation, which often became a positive fanaticism
for brotherhood. We foregathered in defiance of pub-
lic opinion and in defiance of the laws of the belligerent
states, exchanging confidences without reserve ; our com-
radeship exposed us to all sorts of suspicions; these
things served but to draw us closer together, and in many
memorable hours we felt with a veritable intoxication
the unprecedented quality of our friendship. We were
but a couple of dozen who thus came together in Switzer-
land; Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Austrians, and
Italians. We few were the only ones among the hun-
dreds of millions who could look one another in the
face without hatred, exchanging our innermost thoughts.
316 ROMAIN HOLLAND

This little troop was all that then constituted Europe.

Our unity, a grain of dust in the storm which was rag-
ing through the world, was perhaps the seed of the
coming fraternity. How strong, how happy, how grate-
ful did we often feel. For without Holland, without
the genius of his friendship, without the connecting link
constituted by his disposition, we should never have at-
tained tofreedom and security. Each of us loved him
in a different way, and all of us regarded him with
equal veneration. To the French, he was the purest
spiritual expression of their homeland ; to us, he was the
wonderful counterpart of the best in our own world.
In this circle that formed round Holland there was the
sense of fellowship which has always characterized a
religious community in the making. The hostility be-
tween our respective nations, and the consciousness of
danger, fired our friendship to the pitch of exaggera-
tion; while the example of the bravest and freest man
we had ever known, brought out all that was best in us.
When we were near him, we felt ourselves to be in the
heart of true Europe. Whoever was able to know Hol-
land's inmost essence, acquired, as in the ancient saga,
new energy for the wrestle with brute force.
 CHAPTER XIV

THE LETTERS

ALL that Holland gave in those days to his friends

and collaborators of the European fellowship,
all that he gave by his immediate proximity,
was but a part of his nature. For beyond these per-
sonal limits, he diffused a consolidating and helpful in-
fluence. Whoever turned to him with a question, an
anxiety, a distress, or a suggestion, received an answer.
In hundreds upon hundreds of letters he spread the mes-
sage of brotherhood, splendidly fulfilling the vow he
had made a quarter of a century earlier, at the time
when Tolstoi's letter had brought him spiritual healing.
In Holland's self there had come to life, not only Jean
Christophe the believer, but likewise Leo Tolstoi, the
great consoler.
Unknown to the world, he shouldered a stupendous
burden during the five years of the war. For whoever
found himself in revolt against the time and in con-
flict with the prevailing miasma of falsehood, whoever
needed counsel in a matter of conscience, whoever wanted
aid, knew where he could turn for what he sought. Who
else in Europe inspired such confidence? The unknown
friends of Jean Christophe, 317 the nameless brothers of
 318 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Olivier, hidden in out-of-the-way parts, knowing no one

to whom they could whisper their doubts — in whom could
they better confide than in this man who had first brought
them tidings of goodness? They sent him requests, sub-
mitted proposals, disclosed the turmoil of their con-
sciences. Soldiers wrote to him from the trenches;
mothers penned letters to him in secret. Many of the
writers did not venture to give their names, merely wish-
ing to send a message of sympathy and to inscribe them-
selves citizens of that invisible "republic of free souls"
which the author of Jean Christophe had founded amid
the warring nations. Holland accepted the infinite labor
of being the centralizing point and administrator of all
these distresses and plaints, of being the recipient of all
these confessions, of being the consoler of a world di-
vided against itself. Wherever there was a stirring of
European, of universally human sentiment, Holland did
his best to receive and sustain it; he was the crossways
towards which all these roads converged. At the same
time he was continuously in communication with leading
representatives of the European faith, with those of all
lands who had remained loyal to the free spirit. He
studied the periodicals of the day for messages of rec-
onciliation. Wherever a man or a work was devoted
to the reconsolidation of Europe, Holland's help was
ready.
These hundreds and thousands of letters combine to
form an ethical achievement such as has not been paral-
leled by any previous writer. They brought happiness
to countless solitary souls, strength to the wavering, hope
 THE LETTERS 319

to the despairing. Never was the poet's mission more

nobly fulfilled. Considered as works of art, these let-
ters, many of which have already been published, are
among the finest and maturest of Holland's literary crea-
tions. To bring solace is the most intimate purpose of
his art. Here, when speaking as man to man he can
give himself without stint, he displays a rhythmical en-
ergy, an ardor of lovingkindness, which makes many of
the letters rank with the loveliest poems of our time.
The sensitive modesty which often makes him reserved
in conversation, was no longer a hindrance. The let-
ters are frank confessions, wherein his free spirit con-
verses freely with its fellows, disclosing the author's
goodness, his passionate emotion. That which is so gen-
erously poured forth for the benefit of unknown cor-
respondents, ithe
s most intimate essence of his nature.
Like Colas Breugnon he can say: "Voila mon plus
beau travail: les ames que j'ai sculptees."
 CHAPTER XV

THE COUNSELOR

DURING these years, many people, young for the

most part, came to Rolland for advice in mat-
ters of conscience. They asked whether, see-
ing that their convictions were opposed to war, they
ought to refuse military service, in accordance with the
teaching of Tolstoi, and following the example of the
conscientious objectors; or whether they should obey
the biblical precept, Resist not evil. They enquired
whether they should take an open stand against the in-
justices committed by their country, or whether they
should endure in silence. Others besought spiritual
counsel in their troubles of conscience. All who came
seemed to imagine that they were coming to one who
possessed a maxim, a fixed principle concerning conduct
in relation to the war, a wonder-working moral elixir
which he could dispense in suitable doses.
To all these enquiries Rolland returned the same an-
swer: "Follow your conscience. Seek out your own
truth and realize it. There is no ready-made truth, no
rigid formula, which one person can hand over to an-
other. Each must create truth for himself, according
to his own model. There is no other rule of moral con-
320
 THE COUNSELOR 321
duct than that a man should seek his own light and
should be guided by it even against the world. He
who lays down his arms and accepts imprisonment, does
rightly when he follows the inner light, and is not
prompted by vanity or by simple imitativeness. He
likewise is right, who takes up arms with no intention
to use them in earnest, who thus cheats the state that he
may propagate his ideal and save his inner freedom —
provided always he acts in accordance with his own
nature." Holland declared that the one essential was
that a man should believe in his own faith. He ap-
proved the patriot desirous of dying for his country,
and he approved the anarchist who claimed freedom
from all governmental authority. There was no other
maxim than that of faith in one's own faith. The only
man who did wrong, the only man who acted falsely,
was he who allowed himself to be swept away by an-
other's ideals, he who, influenced by the intoxication of
the crowd, performed actions which conflicted with his
own nature. A typical instance was that of Ludwig
Frank, the socialist, the advocate of a Franco-German
understanding, who, deciding to serve his party instead
of serving his own ideal, volunteered at the outbreak of
the war, and died for the ideals of his opponent, for the
ideals of militarism.
There is but one truth, such was Holland's answer to
all. The only truth is that which a man finds within
himself and recognizes as his very own. Any other
would-be truth is self-deception. What appears to be
egoism, serves humanity. "He who would be useful to
322 ROMAIN ROLLAND
others, must above all remain free. Even love avails
nothing, if the one who loves be a slave." Death for the
fatherland is worthless unless he who sacrifices himself
believes in his fatherland as in a god. To evade mili-
tary service is cowardice in one who lacks courage to
proclaim himself a sanspatrie. There are no true ideas
other than those which spring from inner experience;
there are no deeds worth doing other than those which
are the outcome of fully responsible reflection. He who
would serve mankind, must not blindly obey the argu-
ments of a stranger. We cannot regard as a moral act
anything which is done simply through imitativeness, or
in consequence of another's persuasion, or (as almost
universally under modern war stresses) through the sug-
gestive influence of mass illusion. "A man's first duty
is to be himself, to remain himself, at the cost of self-
sacrifice."
Rolland did not fail to recognize the difficulty, the
rarity, of such free acts. He recalled Emerson's saying:
"Nothing is more rare in any man, than an act of his
own." But was not the unfree, untrue thinking of the
masses, the inertia of the mass conscience, the prime
cause of our present troubles? Would the war between
European brethren have ever broken out if every towns-
man, every countryman, every artist, had looked within
to enquire whether the mines of Morocco and the swamps
of Albania were truly precious to him? Would there
have been a war if every one had asked himself whether
he really hated his brothers across the frontier as ve-
hemently as the newspapers and the professional poli-
 THE COUNSELOR 323
ticians would have him believe? The herd instinct, the
pattering of others' arguments, a blind enthusiasm on be-
half of sentiments that were never truly felt, could alone
render such a catastrophe possible. Nothing but the
freedom of the largest possible number of individuals
can save us from the recurrence of such a tragedy; noth-
ing can save us but that conscience should be an indi-
vidual and not a collective affair. That which each one
recognizes to be true and good for himself, is true and
good for mankind. "What the world needs before all
to-day is free souls and strong characters. For to-day
all paths seem to lead to an accentuation of herd life.
We see a passive subordination to the church, the in-
tolerant traditionalism of the fatherlands, socialist
dreams of a despotic unity . . . Mankind needs men
who can show that the very persons who love mankind
can, whenever necessary, declare war against the col-
lective impulse."
Holland therefore refuses to act as authority for
others. He demands that every one should recognize the
supreme authority of his own conscience. Truth can-
not be taught; it must be lived. He who thinks clearly,
and having done so acts freely, produces conviction, not
by words but by his nature. Holland has been able to
help an entire generation, because from the height of
his loneliness he has shown the world how a man makes
an idea live for all time by loyalty to that which he has
recognized as truth. Holland's counsel was not word
but deed; it was the moral simplicity of his own example.
 CHAPTER XVI
THE SOLITARY

was nowIt in touch with the life

ROLLAof ND'S the wholelifeworld. radiated influence in
all directions. Yet how lonely was this man
during the five years of voluntary exile. He dwelt
apart at Villeneuve by the lake of Geneva. His little
room resembled that in which he had lived in Paris.
Here, too, were piles of books and pamphlets ; here was
a plain deal table; here was a piano, the companion of
his hours of relaxation. His days, and often his nights
were spent at work. He seldom went for a walk, and
rarely received a visitor, for his friends were cut off
from him, and even his parents and his sister could only
get across the frontier about once a year. But the
worst feature of this loneliness was that it was loneli-
ness in a glass house. He was continually spied upon:
his least words were listened for by eavesdroppers; pro-
vocative agents sought him out, proclaiming themselves
revolution ists and sympathizers. Every letter was read
before it reached him; every word he spoke over the
telephone was recorded ; every interview was kept under
obsrvation. Romain Rolland in his glass prison-house
was the captive of unseen powers.
324
Holland's Mother
 THE SOLITARY 325

It seems hardly credible to-day that during the last

two years of the war Remain Rolland, to whose words
the world is now eager to listen, should have had no
facility for expressing his ideas in the newspapers, no
publisher for his books, no possibility of printing any-
thing beyond an occasional review article. His home-
land had repudiated him; he was the "fuoruscito" of the
middle ages, was placed under a ban. The more un-
mistakably he proclaimed his spiritual independence,
the less did he find himself regarded as a welcome guest
in Switzerland. He was surrounded by an atmosphere
of secret suspicion. By degrees, open attacks had been
replaced by a more dangerous form of persecution. A
gloomy silence was established around his name and
works. His earlier companions had more and more
withdrawn from him. Many of the new friendships
had been dissolved, for the younger men in especial were
devoting their interest to political questions instead of
to things of the spirit. The more stormy the outside
world, the more oppressive the stillness of Rolland's
existence. He had no wife as helpmate. What to him
was the best of all companionship, the companionship
of his own writings, was now unattainable, for he had no
freedom of publication in France. His country was
closed to him, his place of refuge was beset with a
hundred eyes. Most homeless among the homeless, he
lived, as his beloved Beethoven had said, "in the air,"
lived in the realm of the ideal, in invisible Europe.
Nothing shows better the energy of his living goodness
326 ROMAIN HOLLAND

than that he was no whit embittered by his experience,

and that the ordeal has served but to strengthen his faith.
For this utter solitude among men was a true fellowship
with mankind.
 CHAPTER XVII

THE DIARY

THERE was, however, one companion with whom

Holland could hold converse daily — his inner
consciousness. Day by day, from the outbreak
of the war, Rolland recorded his sentiments, his secret
thoughts, and the messages he received from afar. His
very silence was an impassioned conversation with the
time spirit. During these years, volume was added to
volume, until by the end of the war, they totaled no less
than twenty-seven. When he was able to return to
France, he naturally hesitated to take this confidential
document to a land where the censors would have a legal
right to study every detail of his private thoughts. He
has shown a page here and there to intimate friends, but
the whole remains as a legacy to posterity, for those who
will be able to contemplate the tragedy of our days with
purer and more dispassionate views.
It is impossible for us to do more than surmise the
real nature of this document, but our feelings suggest
to us that it must be a spiritual history of the epoch, and
one of incomparable value. Rolland's best and freest
thoughts come to him when he is writing. His most in-
spired moments are those when he is most personal.
327
328 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Consequently, just as the letters taken in their entirety

may be regarded as artistically superior to the pub-
lished essays, so beyond question his diary must be a
human document supplying a most admirable and pure-
minded commentary upon the war. Only to the chil-
dren of a later day will it become plain that what Hol-
land so ably showed in the case of Beethoven and the
other heroes, applies with equal force to himself. They
will learn at what a cost of personal disillusionment
his message of hope and confidence was delivered to
the world ; they will learn that an idealism which brought
help to thousands, and which wiseacres have often de-
rided as trivial and commonplace, sprang from the dark-
est abysses of suffering and loneliness, and was ren-
dered possible solely by the heroism of a soul in travail.
All that has been disclosed to us is the fact of his faith.
These manuscript volumes contain a record of the ran-
som with which that faith was purchased, of the pay-
ments demanded from day to day by the inexorable cred-
itor we name Life.
 CHAPTER XVIII
THE FORERUNNERS AND EMPEDOCLES

ROLLAND opened his campaign against hatred

almost immediately after the war began. For
more than a year he continued to deliver his
e
messag in opposition to the frenzied screams of ran-
cor arising from all lands. His efforts proved futile.
The war-current rose yet higher, the stream being fed
by new and ever new blood flowing from innocent vic-
tims. Again and again some additional country be-
came involved in the carnage. At length, as the clamor
still grew louder, Holland paused for a moment to take
breath. He felt that it would be madness were he to
continue the attempt to outcry the cries of so many
madmen.
After the publication of Au-dessus de la melee, Hol-
land withdrew from public participation in the contro-
versies with which the essays had been concerned. He
had spoken his word; he had sown the wind and had
reaped the whirlwind. He was neither weary in well-
doing nor was he weak in faith, but he realized that it
was useless to speak to a world which would not listen.
In truth he had lost the sublime illusion with which
he had been animated at the outset, the belief that men
329
 330 ROMAIN HOLLAND

desire reason and truth. To his intelligence now grown

clearer it was plain that men dread truth more than
anything else in the world. He began, therefore, to
settle accounts with his own mind by writing a satirical
romance, and by other imaginative creations, while con-
tinuing his vast private correspondence. Thus for a
time he was out of the hurlyburly. But after a year of
silence, when the crimson flood continued to swell, and
when falsehood was raging more furiously than ever, he
felt it his duty to reopen the campaign. "We must re-
peat the truth again and again," said Goethe to Scher-
mann, "for the error with which truth has to contend is
continually being repreached, not by individuals, but by
the mass." There was so much loneliness in the world
that it had become necessary to form new ties. Signs
of discontent and revolt in the various lands were more
plentiful. More numerous, too, were the brave men
in active revolt against the fate which was being forced
on them. Holland felt that it was incumbent upon
him to give what support he could to these dispersed
fighters, and to inspirit them for the struggle.
In the first essay of the new series, La route en lacets
qui monte, Holland explained the position he had reached
in December, 1916. He wrote: "If I have kept silence
for a year, it is not because the faith to which I gave
expression in Above the Battle has been shaken (it
stands firmer than ever) ; but I am well assured that it
is useless to speak to him who will not hearken. Facts
alone will speak, with tragical insistence; facts alone
will be able to penetrate the thick wall of obstinacy,
 THE FORERUNNERS AND EMPEDOCLES 331
pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded
their minds because they do not wish to see the light.
But we, as between brothers of all the nations; as be-
tween those who have known how to defend their moral
freedom, their reason, and their faith in human solidar-
ity; as between minds which continue to hope amid
silence, oppression, and grief — we do well to exchange,
as this year draws to a close, words of affection and
solace. We must convince one another that during the
blood-drenched night the light is still burning, that it
never has been and never will be extinguished. In the
abyss of suffering into which Europe is plunged, those
who wield the pen must be careful never 'to add an ad-
ditional pang to the mass of pangs already endured,
and never to pour new reasons for hatred into the
burning flood of hate. Two ways remain open for those
rare free spirits which, athwart the mountain of crimes
and follies, are endeavoring to break a trail for others,
to find for themselves an egress. Some are courage-
ously attempting in their respective lands to make
their fellow-countrymen aware of their own faults. . . .
My task is different, for it is to remind the hostile breth-
ren of Europe, not of their worst aspects but of their
best, to recall to them reasons for hoping that there will
one day be a wiser and more loving humanity."
The essays of the new series appeared, for the most
part, in various minor reviews, seeing that the more in-
fluential and widely circulated periodicals had long since
closed their columns to Rolland's pen. When we study
them as a whole, in the collective volume entitled Les
332 ROMAIN HOLLAND
vrecurseurs, we realize that they emit a new tone. Anger
has been replaced by intense compassion, this corre-
sponding to the change which had taken place at the
fighting front. In all the armies, during the third year
of the war, the fanatical impetus of the opening phases
had vanished, and the men were now animated by a
tranquil but stubborn sentiment of duty. Holland is
perhaps even more impassioned and more revolution-
ary in his outlook, and yet the essays are characterized
by greater gentleness than of old. What he writes is
no longer at grips with the war, but seems to soar above
the war. His gaze is fixed upon the distance; his mind
ranges down the centuries in search of like experiences;
looking for consolation, he endeavors to discover a
meaning in the meaningless. He recurs to the idea of
Goethe, that human progress is effected by a spiral as-
cent. At a higher level men return to a point only a
little above the old. Evolution and reversion go hand
in hand. Thus he attempts to show that even at this
tragical hour we can discern intimations of a better day.
The essays comprising Les precurseurs no longer at-
tack adverse opinions and the war. They merely draw
our attention to the existence in all countries of persons
who are fighting for a very different ideal, to the exist-
ence of those heralds of spiritual unity whom Nietzsche
speaks of as "the pathfinders of the European soul."
It is too late to hope for anything from the masses. In
the address Aux peuples assassines, he has nothing but
pity for the millions, for those who, with no will of
their own, must be the mute instruments of others'
 THE FORERUNNERS AND EMPEDOCLES 333

aims, for those whose sacrifice has no other meaning

than the beauty of self-sacrifice. His hope now turns
exclusively towards the elite, towards the few who have
remained free. These can bring salvation to the world
by splendid spiritual imagery wherein all truth is mir-
rored. For the nonce, indeed, their activities seem un-
availing, but their labors remain as a permanent record
of their omnipresence. Rolland provides masterly
analyses of the work of such contemporary writers; he
adds silhouettes from earlier times; and he gives a por-
trait of Tolstoi, the great apostle of the doctrine of hu-
man freedom, with an account of the Russian teacher's
views on war.
To the same series of writings, although it is not in-
cluded inthe volume Les precurseurs, belongs Rolland's
study dated April 15, 1918, entitled Emp£docle d'Agri-
gente et I*age de la haine. The great sage of classical
Greece, to whom Rolland at the age of twenty had dedi-
cated his first drama, now brings comfort to the man
of riper years. Rolland shows that two and a half
millenniums ago a poet writing during an epoch of
carnage had recognized that the world was characterized
by "an eternal oscillation from hatred to love, and from
love to hatred"; that history invariably witnesses a whole
era of struggle and hatred, and that as inevitably as the
succession of the seasons there ensues a period of hap-
pier days. With a broad descriptive sweep, he indi-
cates that from the time of the Sicilian philosopher to
our own the wise men of all ages have known the
truth, but have been powerless to cope with the mad-
334 ROMAIN HOLLAND

ness of the world. Truth, nevertheless, passes down

forever from hand to hand, being thus imperishable
and indestructible.
Even across these years of resignation there shines
a gentle light of hope, though manifest only to those
who have eyes to see, only to those who can lift their
gaze above their own troubles to contemplate the infinite.
 CHAPTER XIX
LILULI

DURING these five years, the ethicist, the phi-

lanthropist, the European, had been speaking
to the nations, but the poet had apparently
been dumb. To many it may seem strange that Rol-
land's first imaginative work to be written since 1914,
a work completed before the end of the war, should
have been a farcical comedy, Liluli. Yet this lightness
of mood sprang from the uttermost abysses of sorrow.
Rolland, stricken to the soul when contemplating his
powerlessness against the insanity of the world, turned
to irony as a means of abreaction — to employ a term
introduced by the psychoanalysts. From the pole of
repressed emotion, the electric spark flashes across into
the field of laughter. And here, as in all Rolland's
works, the author's essential purpose is to free himself
from the tyranny of a sensation. Pain grows to laugh-
ter, laughter to bitterness, so that in contrapuntal fashion
the ego may be helped to maintain its equipoise against
the heaviness of the time. When wrath remains power-
less, the spirit of mockery is still in being, and can be
shot like a fire-arrow across the darkening world.
Liluli is the satirical counterpart
335
to an unwritten trag-
 336 ROMAIN HOLLAND

edy, or rather to the tragedy which Holland did not need

to write, since the world was living it. The satire pro-
duces the impression of having become, in course of
composition, more bitter, more sarcastic, almost more
cynical, than the author had originally designed. We
feel that the time spirit intervened to make it more
pungent, more stinging, more pitiless. At the culminat-
ing point, a scene penned in the summer of 1917, we
behold the two friends who are misled by Liluli, the
mischievous goddess of illusion (for her name signifies
"1'illusion"), wrestling to their mutual destruction. In
these two princes of fable, there recurs Holland's ear-
lier symbolism of Olivier and Jean Christophe. France
and Germany here encounter one another, both hasten-
ing blindly forward under the leadership of the same
illusion. The two nations fight on the bridge of recon-
ciliation which in earlier days they had built across the
abyss dividing them. In the conditions then prevail-
ing, so pure a note of lyrical mourning could not be
sustained. As its creation progressed, the comedy be-
came more incisive, more pointed, more farcical. Ev-
erything that Holland contemplated around him, di-
plomacy, the intellectuals, the war poets (presented here
in the ludicrous form of dancing dervishes), those who
pay lip-service to pacifism, the idols of fraternity, lib-
erty, God himself, is distorted by his tearful eyes to
seem grotesques and caricatures. All the madness of
the world is fiercely limned in an outburst of derisive
rage. Everything is, as it were, dissolved and decom-
posed in the acrid menstruum of mockery; and finally
 LILULI 337

mockery itself, the spirit of crazy laughter, feels the

scourge. Polichinelle, the dialectician of the piece, the
rationalist in cap and bells, is reasonable to excess; his
laughter is cowardly, being a mask for inaction. When
he encounters Truth in fetters (Truth being the one fig-
ure in the comedy presented with touching seriousness
in all her tragical beauty), Polichinelle, though he loves
her, does not dare to take his stand by her side. In this
pitiable world, even the sage is a coward; and in the
strongest passage of the satire, Holland's own intense
feeling breaks forth against the one who knows but will
not bear testimony. "You can laugh," exclaims Truth;
"you can mock; but you do it furtively like a schoolboy.
Like your forebears, the great Polichinelles, like Eras-
mus and Voltaire, the masters of free irony and of
laughter, you are prudent, prudent in the extreme.
Your great mouth is closed to hide your smiles. . . .
Laugh away! Laugh your fill! Split your sides with
laughter at the lies you catch in your nets; you will
never catch Truth . . . You will be alone with your
laughter in the void. Then you will call upon me, but
I shall not answer, for I shall be gagged . . . When
will there come the great and victorious laughter, the
roar of laughter which will set me free?"
In this comedy we do not find any such great, vic-
torious, and liberating laughter. Holland's bitterness
was too profound for that mood to be possible. The
play breathes nothing but tragical irony, as a defense
against the intensity of the author's own emotions. Al-
though the new work maintains the rhythm of Colas
338 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Breugnon, with its vibrant rhymes, and although in

Liluli as in Colas Breugnon there is a strain of raillery,
nevertheless this satire of the war period, a tragi-comedy
of chaos, contrasts strikingly with the work that deals
with the happy days of "la douce France." In the
earlier book, the cheerfulness springs from a full heart,
but the humor of the later work arises from a heart
overfull. In Colas Breugnon we find the geniality, the
joviality, of a broad laugh; in Liluli the humor is ironi-
cal, bitter, breathing a fierce irreverence for all that ex-
ists. A world full of noble dreams and kindly visions
has been destroyed, and the ruins of this perished world
are heaped between the old France of Colas Breugnon
and the new France of Liluli. Vainly does the farce
move on to madder and ever madder caprioles; vainly
does the wit leap and o'erleap itself. The sadness of
the underlying sentiment continually brings us back
with a thud to the bloodstained earth. There is noth-
ing else written by him during the war, no impassioned
appeal, no tragical adjuration, which, to my feeling, be-
trays with such intensity Romain Holland's personal suf-
fering throughout those years, as does this comedy with
its wild bursts of laughter, its expression of the author's
self -enforced mood of bitter irony.
 CHAPTER XX
CLERAMBAULT

LILUL1, the tragi-comedy, was an outcry, a groan,

a painful burst of mockery; it was an element-
ary gesture of reaction against suffering that
was almost physical. But the author's serious, tranquil,
and enduring settlement of accounts with the times is his
novel, Clerambault, I'histoire d'une conscience libre pen-
dant la guerre, which was slowly brought to completion
in the space of four years. It is not autobiography,
but a transcription of Holland's ideas. Like Jean Chris-
tophe, it is simultaneously the biography of an imaginary
personality and a comprehensive picture of the age.
Matter is here collected that is elsewhere dispersed in
manifestoes and letters. Artistically, it is the subter-
ranean link between Holland's manifold activities.
Amid the hindrances imposed by his public duties, and
amid the difficulties deriving from other outward circum-
stances, the author built the work upwards out of the
depths of sorrow to the heights of consolation. It was
not completed until the war was over, when Holland had
returned to Paris in the summer of 1920.
Just as little as Jean Christophe can Clerambault
properly be termed a novel. It is something less than
339
 340 ROMAIN HOLLAND

a novel, and at the same time a great deal more. It de-

scribes the development, not of a man, but of an idea.
As in Jean Christophe, so here, we have a philosophy
presented, but not as something ready-made, complete,
a finished datum. In company with a human being,
we rise stage by stage from error and weakness to-
wards clarity. In a sense it is a religious book, the
history of a conversion, of an illumination. It is a
modern legend of the saints in the form of the life his-
tory of a simple citizen. In a word, as the sub-title
phrases it, we have here the story of a conscience.
The ultimate significance of the book is freedom, the at-
tainment ofself-knowledge, but raised to the heroic plane
inasmuch as knowledge becomes action. The scene
is played in the intimate recesses of a man's nature,
where he is alone with truth. In the new book, there-
fore, there is no countertype, as Olivier was the counter-
type to Jean Christophe; nor do we find in Clerambault
what was in truth the countertype of Jean Christophe,
external life. Clerambault's countertype, Clerambault's
antagonist, is himself; is the old, the earlier, the weak
Clerambault; is the Clerambault with whom the new,
the knowing, the true man has to wrestle, whom the
new Clerambault has to overcome. The hero's heroism
is not displayed, as was that of Jean Christophe, in a
struggle with the forces of the visible world. Cleram-
bault's war is waged in the invisible realm of thought.
At the outset, therefore, Holland designed to call the
book "un roman-meditation." It was to have been en-
titled "L'un centre tous," this being an adaptation of La
 CLERAMBAULT 341

Beetle's title Contr'un. The proposed name was, how-

ever, ultimately abandoned for fear of misunderstand-
ing. The spiritual character of the new work recalls
a long-forgotten tradition, the meditations of the old
French moralists, the sixteenth century stoics who dur-
ing a time of war-madness endeavored in besieged Paris
to maintain their intellectual serenity by engaging in
Platonic dialogues. The war itself, however, was not
to be the theme, for the free soul does not strive with
the elements. The author's intention was to discuss the
spiritual accompaniments of this war, for these to Hol-
land seemed as tragical as the destruction of millions
of men. His concern was the destruction of the indi-
vidual soul in the deluge produced by the overflowing of
the mass soul. He wished to show how strenuous an
effort must be made by any one who would escape from
the tyranny of the herd instinct; to display the hateful
enslavement of individuals by the revengeful, jealous,
and authoritarian mentality of the crowd; to depict the
terrific efforts which a man must make if he would
avoid being sucked into the maelstrom of epidemic false-
hood. He hoped to make it clear that what appears to
be the simplest thing in the world is in reality the
most difficult of tasks in these epochs of excessive soli-
darity, namely, for a man to remain what he really is,
and not to become that which the levelling forces of the
world, the fatherland, or some other artificial commun-
ity, would fain make of him.
Remain Rolland deliberately refrained from casting
his hero in a heroic mold, the treatment thus differing
342 ROMAIN HOLLAND

from what he had chosen in the case of Jean Christophe.

Agenor Clerambault is an inconspicuous figure, a quiet
fellow of little account, an author of no particular note,
one of those persons whose literary work succeeds in
pleasing a complaisant generation, though it has no
significance for posterity. He has the nebulous idealism
of mediocre minds; he hymns the praises of perpetual
peace and international conciliation. His own tepid
goodness makes him believe that nature is good, is
man's wellwisher, desiring to lead mankind gently on-
ward towards a more beautiful future. Life does not
torment him with problems, and he therefore extols life
amid the tranquil comforts of his bourgeois existence.
Blessed with a kindly and somewhat simple-minded wife,
and with two children, a son and a daughter, he may
be considered a modern Theocritus wearing the ribbon
of the Legion of Honor, singing the joyful present and
the still more joyful future of our ancient cosmos.
The quiet suburban household is suddenly struck as
by a thunderbolt with the news of the outbreak of war.
Clerambault takes the train to Paris; and no sooner is
he sprinkled with spray from the hot waves of en-
thusiasm, than all his ideals of international amity and
perpetual peace vanish into thin air. He returns home
a fanatic, oozing hate, and steaming with phrases. Un-
der the influence of the tremendous storm he begins to
sound his lyre: Theocritus has become Pindar, a war
poet. Holland gives a marvelously vivid description of
something every one of us has witnessed, showing how
Clerambault, like all persons of average nature, really
 CLERAMBAULT 343

takes a delight in horrors, however unwilling he may be

to admit it even to himself. He is rejuvenated, his life
seems to move on wings; the enthusiasm of the masses
stirs the almost extinguished flame of enthusiasm in his
own breast; he is fired by the national fire; he is physi-
cally and mentally refreshed by the new atmosphere.
Like so many other mediocrities, he secures in these
days his greatest literary triumph. His war songs,
precisely because they give such vigorous expression to
the sentiments of the man in the street, become a national
property. Fame and public favor are showered upon
him, so that (at this time when millions of his fellows
are perishing) he feels well, self-confident, alive as
never before.
His pride is increased, his joy of life accentuated,
when his son Maxime leaves for the front filled with
martial ardor. His first thought, a few months later,
when the young man comes home on leave, is that
Maxime should retail to him all the ecstasies of war.
Strangely enough, however, the young soldier, whose
eyes still burn with the sights he has seen, is unrespon-
sive. Not wishing to mortify his father, he does not
positively attempt to silence the latter's paeans, but for
his part, he maintains silence. For days this muteness
stands between them, and the father is unable to solve
the riddle. He feels dumbly that his son is conceal-
ing something. But shame binds both their tongues.
On the last day of the furlough, Maxime suddenly pulls
himself together, and begins, "Father, are you quite
sure . . .?" But the question remains unfinished, ut-
344 ROMAIN HOLLAND
terance is choked. Still silent, the young man returns
to the realities of war.
A few days later there is a fresh offensive. Maxime
is reported missing. Soon his father learns that he is
dead. Now Clerambault gropes for the meaning of
those last words behind the silence, and is tormented by
the thought of what was left unspoken. He locks him-
self into his room, and for the first time he is alone with
his conscience. He begins to question himself in search
of the truth, and throughout the long night he com-
munes with his soul as he traverses the road to Damas-
cus. Piece by piece he tears away the wrapping of
lies with which he has enveloped himself, until he stands
naked before his own criticism. Prejudices have eaten
deep into his skin, so that the blood flows as he plucks
them from him. They must all be surrendered; the
prejudice of the fatherland, the prejudice of the herd,
must go; in the end he recognizes that one thing only is
true, one thing only sacred, life. A fever of enquiry
consumes him; the old Adam perishes in the flame;
when the day dawns he is a new man.
He knows the truth now, and wishes to strengthen his
own faith. He goes to some of his fellows and talks
to them. Most of them do not understand him. Others
refuse to understand him. Some, however, among
whom Perrotin the academician is notable, are yet more
alarming. They know the truth. To their penetrating
vision the nature of the popular idols has long been
plain. But they are cautious folk. They compress
their lips and smile at one another like the augurs of
 CLERAMBAULT 345

ancient Rome. Like Buddha, they take refuge in Nir-

vana, looking down calmly upon the madness of the
world, tranquilly seated upon their pedestals of stone.
Clerambault calls to mind that other Indian saint, who
took a solemn vow that he would not withdraw from
the world until he had delivered mankind from suffer-
ing. The truth still glows too fiercely within him; he
feels as if it would stifle him as it strives to gush forth
in volcanic eruption. Once again he plunges into the
solitude of a wakeful night. Men's words have sounded
empty. He listens to his conscience, and it speaks with
the voice of his son. Truth knocks at the door of his
soul, and he opens to truth. In this lonely night Cler-
ambault begins to speak to his fellows; no longer to
individuals, but to all mankind. For the first time the
man of letters becomes aware of the poet's true mis-
sion, his responsibility for all persons and for every-
thing. He knows that he is beginning a new war, he
who alone must wage war for all. But the conscious-
ness of truth is with him, his heroism has begun.
"Forgive us, ye Dead," the dialogue of the country
with its children, is published. At first no one heeds
the pamphlet. But after a time it arouses public ani-
mosity. A storm of indignation bursts upon Cleram-
bault, threatening to lay his life in ruins. Friends for-
sake him. Envy, which had long been crouching for a
spring, now sends whole regiments to the attack. Am-
bitious colleagues seize the opportunity of proclaiming
their patriotism in contrast with his deplorable senti-
ments. Worst of all for Clerambault in that his inno-
346 ROMAIN HOLLAND
cent wife and daughter have to suffer on his account.
They do not upbraid him, but he feels as if he had aimed
a shaft against them. He who has hitherto sunned him-
self in the warmth of family life and has enjoyed the
comforts of modest fame, is now absolutely alone.
Nevertheless he continues on his course, although
these stations of the cross become harder and harder.
Rolland shows how Clerambault finds new friends, only
to discover that they too fail to understand him. How
his words are mutilated, his ideas misapplied. How he
is overwhelmed to learn that his fellows, those whom
he wishes to help, have no desire for truth, but are
nourished by falsehood; that they are continually in
search, not of freedom, but of some new form of slav-
ery. (In these wonderful passages the reader is again
and again reminded of Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor.)
He perseveres in his pilgrimage even when he has lost
faith in his power to help his fellow men, for this is
no longer his goal. He passes men by, marching on-
ward towards the unseen, towards truth; his love for
truth exposing him ever more pitilessly to the hatred
of men. By degrees he becomes entangled in a net
of calumnies; his troubles develop into a "Clerambault
affair"; at length a prosecution is initiated. The state
has recognized its enemy in the free man. But while
the case is still in progress, the "defeatist" meets his
fate from the pistol bullet of a fanatic. Clerambault's
end recalls the opening of the world catastrophe with
the assassination of Jaures.
Never has the tragedy of conscience been more simply
 CLERAMBAULT 347

and more poignantly depicted than in this account of

the martyrdom of an average man. Holland's ripe spir-
itual powers, his magical faculty for combining mastery
with the human touch, are here at their highest. Never
was his outlook over the world so extensive, never was
the view so serene, as from this last summit. And yet,
though we are thus led upwards to the consideration of
the ultimate problems of the spirit, we start from the
plain of everyday life. It is the soul of a commonplace
man, the soul it might seem of a weakling, which moves
through this long passion. Herein lies the marvel of
the moral solace which the book conveys. Holland was
the first to recognize the defect of his previous writings,
considered as means of helping the average man. In
the heroic biographies, heroism is displayed only by
those in whom the heroic soul is inborn, only by those
whose flight is winged with genius. In Jean Christophe,
the moral victory is a triumph of native energy. But
in Clerambault we are shown that even the weakling,
even the mediocre man, every one of us, can be stronger
than the whole world if he have but the will. It is
open to every man to be true, open to every man to
win spiritual freedom, if he be at one with his con-
science, and if he regard this fellowship with his con-
science as of greater value than fellowship with men and
with the age. For each man there is always time, for
each man there is always opportunity, to become master
of realities. Aert, the first of Holland's heroes to show
himself greater than fate, speaks for us all when he
says: "It is never too late to be free!"
 CHAPTER XXI

THE LAST APPEAL

FOR five years Remain Rolland was at war with

the madness of the times. At length the fiery
chains were loosened from the racked body of
Europe. The war was over, the armistice had been
signed. Men were no longer murdering one another;
but their evil passions, their hate, continued. Romain
Rolland's prophetic insight celebrated a mournful tri-
umph. His distrust of victory, his reiterated warnings
that conquerors are merciless, were more than justified
by the revengeful reality. "Victory in arms is disas-
trous to the ideal of an unselfish humanity. Men find
it extraordinarily difficult to remain gentle in the hour
of triumph." These forecasts were terribly fulfilled.
Forgotten were all the fine words anent the victory
of freedom and right. The Versailles conference
devoted itself to the installation of a new regime of
force and to the humiliation of a defeated enemy. What
the idealism of simpletons had expected to be the end
of all wars, proved, as the true idealists who look beyond
men towards ideas had foreseen, the seed of fresh
hatred and renewed acts of violence.
Once again, at the eleventh hour, Rolland raised his
848
 THE LAST APPEAL 349

voice in an address to the man whom sanguine persons

then regarded as the last representative of idealism, as
the advocate of perfect justice. Woodrow Wilson, when
he landed in Europe, was received by the exultant cries
of millions. But the historian is aware "that universal
history is but a succession of proofs that the conqueror
invariably grows arrogant and thus plants the seed of
new wars." Holland felt that there was never greater
need for a policy that should be moral, not militarist,
that should be constructive, not destructive. The citi-
zen of the world, the man who had endeavored to free
the war from the stigma of hate, now tried to perform
the same service on behalf of the peace. The Euro-
pean addressed the American in moving terms: "You
alone, Monsieur le President, among all those whose
dread duty it now is to guide the policy of the nations,
you alone enjoy world-wide moral authority. You
inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of
these passionate hopes! Take the hands which are
stretched forth, help them to clasp one another. . . .
Should this mediator fail to appear, the human masses,
disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break
forth into excesses. The common people will welter in
bloody chaos, while the parties of traditional order will
fly to bloody reaction. . . . Heir of George Washing-
ton and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of a
party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the
representatives of the peoples to the Congress of Man-
kind! Preside over it with the full authority which
you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and
350 ROMAIN HOLLAND

in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak

to all! The world hungers for a voice which will over-
leap the frontiers of nations and of classes. Be the
arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail
you by the name of Reconciler!"
The prophet's voice was drowned by the clamors for
revenge. Bismarckism triumphed. Literally fulfilled
was the prophecy that the peace would be as inhuman
as the war had been. Humanity could find no abiding
place among men. When the regeneration of Europe
might have been begun, the sinister spirit of conquest
continued to prevail. "There are no victors, but only
vanquished."
 CHAPTER XXII
DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND

DESPITE all disillusionments, Remain Rolland,

the indomitable, continued his addresses to the
ultimate court of appeal, to the spirit of fel-
lowship. On the day when peace was signed, June 26,
1919, he published in "L'Humanite" a manifesto com-
posed byhimself and subscribed by sympathizers of all
nationalities. In a world falling to ruin, it was to be
the cornerstone of the invisible temple, the refuge of the
disillusioned. With masterly touch Rolland sums up
the past, and displays it as a warning to the future. He
issues a clarion call.
"Brain workers, comrades, scattered throughout the
world, kept apart for five years by the armies, the cen-
sorship, and the mutual hatred of the warring nations,
now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being re-
opened, we issue to you a call to reconstitute our broth-
erly union, and to make of it a new union more firmly
founded and more strongly built than that which prev-
iously existed.
"The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the in-
tellectuals placed their science, their art, their reason,
at the service of the governments. We do not wish
to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches.
351
352 ROMAIN HOLLAND
We know the weakness of the individual mind and the
elemental strength of great collective currents. The
latter, in a moment, swept the former away, for noth-
ing had been prepared to help in the work of resist-
ance. Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us
for the future!
"First of all, let us point out the disasters that have
resulted from the almost complete abdication of in-
telligence throughout the world, and from its voluntary
enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers, artists,
have added an incalculable quantity of envenomed hate
to the plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of
Europe. In the arsenal of their knowledge, their mem-
ory, their imagination, they have sought reasons for
hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scien-
tific, logical, and poetical. They have labored to de-
stroy mutual understanding and mutual love among
men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled, debased,
degraded, Thought, of which they were the representa-
tives. They have made it an instrument of the pas-
sions; and (unwittingly, perchance) they have made it
a tool of the selfish interests of a political or social
clique, of a state, a country, or a class. Now, when,
from the fierce conflict in which the nations have been
at grips, the victors and the vanquished emerge equally
stricken, impoverished, and at the bottom of their hearts
(though they will not admit it) utterly ashamed of their
access of mania — now, Thought, which has been en-
tangled in their struggles, emerges, like them, fallen
from her high estate.
r>

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 INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND 353

"Arise! Let us free the mind from these compro-

mises, from these unworthy alliances, from these veiled
slaveries! Mind is no one's servitor. It is we who are
the servitors of mind. We have no other master. We
exist to bear its light, to defend its light, to rally
round it all the strayed sheep of mankind. Our role,
our duty, is to be a center of stability, to point out the
pole star, amid the whirlwind of passions in the night.
Among these passions of pride and mutual destruc-
tion, we make no choice; we reject them all. Truth only
do we honor; truth that is free, frontierless, limitless;
truth that knows naught of the prejudices of race or
caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For hu-
manity we work; but for humanity as a whole. We
know nothing of peoples. We know the People, unique
and universal; the People which suffers, which struggles,
which falls and rises to its feet once more, and which
continues to advance along the rough road drenched
with its sweat and its blood; the People, all men, all
alike our brothers. In order that they may, like our-
selves, realize this brotherhood, we raise above their
blind struggles the Ark of the Covenant — Mind, which is
free, one and manifold, eternal."
Many hundreds of persons have signed this manifesto,
for leading spirits in every land accept the message and
make it their own. The invisible republic of the spirit,
the universal fatherland, has been established among the
races and among the nations. Its frontiers are open to
all who wish to dwell therein; its only law is that of
brotherhood; its only enemies are hatred and arrogance
354 ROMAIN HOLLAND
between nations. Whoever makes his home within this
invisible realm becomes a citizen of the world. He is
the heir, not of one people but of all peoples. Hence-
forward he is an indweller in all tongues and in all
countries, in the universal past and the universal future.
 CHAPTER XXIII

ENVOY

has been the rhythm of this man's life,

STRANG surginEg again and again in passionate waves
against the time, sinking once more into the abyss
of disappointment, but never failing to rise on the crest
of faith renewed. Once again we see Romain Rolland
as prototype of those who are magnificent in defeat.
Not one of his ideals, not one of his wishes, not one
of his dreams, has been realized. Might has triumphed
over right, force over spirit, men over humanity.
Yet never has his struggle been grander, and never
has his existence been more indispensable, than during
recent years; for it is his apostolate alone which has
saved the gospel of crucified Europe; and furthermore
he has rescued for us another faith, that of the imagina-
tive writer as the spiritual leader, the moral spokesman
of his own nation and of all nations. This man of let-
ters has preserved us from what would have been an
imperishable shame, had there been no one in our days
to testify against the lunacy of murder and hatred. To
him we owe it that even during the fiercest storm in his-
tory the sacred fire of brotherhood was never extin-
guished. The world of the spirit has no concern with
355
356 ROMAIN HOLLAND

the deceptive force of numbers. In that realm, one

individual can outweigh a multitude. For an idea never
glows so brightly as in the mind of the solitary thinker;
and in the darkest hour we were able to draw consola-
tion from the signal example of this poet. One great
man who remains human can for ever and for all men
rescue our faith in humanity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 WORKS BY ROMAIN ROLLAND
I

CRITICAL STUDIES

Les origines du theatre lyrique moderne. (Histoire de 1'opera

en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti.) Fontemoing, Paris,
1895.
Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit. Fontemo-
ing, Paris, 1895.
Millet. Duckworth, London, 1902 (has appeared in English
translation only).
Vie de Beethoven. (Vie des hommes illustres.) Cahiers de
la quinzaine, serie IV, No. 10, Paris, 1903; Hachette,
Paris, 1907; another edition with woodcuts by Perrichon,
J. P. Laurens, P. A. Laurens, and Perrichon, published by
Edouard Pelletan, Paris, 1909.
Le Theatre du Peuple. Cahiers de la quinzaine, serie V, No.
4, Paris, 1903; Hachette, Paris, 1908; enlarged edition,
Hachette, Paris, 1913; Ollendorff, Paris, 1920.
Paris als Musikstadt. Marquardt, Berlin, 1905 (has appeared
in German translation only).
La vie de Michel-Ange. (Vie des hommes illustres.) Cahiers
de la quinzaine, serie VII, No. 18; serie VIII, No. 2,
Paris, 1906; Hachette, Paris, 1907.
Another edition in Les maitres de 1'art series, Librairie
de 1'art, ancien et moderne, Plon, Paris, 1905.
Musiciens d'autrefois, Hachette, Paris, 1908.
1. L'opera avant 1'opera. 2. Le premier opera joue a
Paris: L'Orfeo de Luigi Rossi. 3. Notes sur Lully. 4.
Gluck. 5. Gretry. 6. Mozart.
35Q
360 ROMAIN HOLLAND

Musicians d'aujourd'hui, Hachette, Paris, 1908.

1. Berlioz. 2. Wagner: Siegfried; Tristan. 3. Saint-
Saens. 4. Vincent d'Indy. 5. Richard Strauss. 6.
Hugo Wolf. 7. Don Lorenzo Perosi. 8. Musique fran-
c.aise et musique allemande. 9. Pelleas et Melisande.
10. Le renouveau: esquisse du movement musical a Paris
depuis 1870.
Paul Dupin. Mercure musical. S. J. M. 15/12, 1908.
Haendel. (Les maitres de la musique.) Alcan, Paris, 1910.
Vie de Tolstoi. (Vie des hommes illustres.) Hachette, Paris,
1911.
L'humble vie heroique. Pensees choisies et precedees d'une
introduction par Alphonse Seche. Sansot, Paris, 1912.
Empedocle d' Agrigente. Le Carmel, Geneva, 1917; La mai-
son francaise d'art et d'edition, Paris, 1918.
Voyage musical aux pays du passe. With woodcuts by D.
Gal an is. Edouard Joseph, Paris, 1919; Hachette, Paris,
1920.
Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales (1900-1910). Alcan, Paris,
1910.

II

POLITICAL STUDIES

Au-dessus de la melee. Ollendorff, Paris, 1915.

Les precurseurs. L'Humanite, Paris, 1919.
Aux peuples assassines. Jeunesses Socialistes Romandes, La
Chaux-de-Fonds, 1917; Ollendorff, Paris, 1920.
Aux peuples assassines (under the title: Civilisation). Pri-
vately printed, Paris, 1918.
Aux peuples assassines. As frontispiece a wood-engraving by
Frans Masereel. Restricted circulation. Ollendorff,
Paris, 1920.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 361
III
NOVELS

Jean-Christophe. 15 parts 1904-1912. Cahiers de la quin-

zaine, Serie V, Nos. 9 and 10; Serie VI, No. 8; Serie VIII,
Nos. 4, 6, 9; Serie IX, Nos. 13, 14, 15; Serie X, Nos. 9,
10; Serie XI, Nos. 7, 8; Serie XIII, Nos. 5, 6; Serie XIV,
Nos. 2, 3; Paris, 1904 et seq.
Jean-Christophe. 10 vols.
1. L'aube. 2. Le matin. 3. L'adolescent. 4. La re-
volte. (1904-1907.)
Jean-Christophe a Paris.
1. La foire sur la place. 2. Antoinette. 3. Dans la
maison. (1908-1910.)
Jean-Christophe. La fin du voyage.
1. Les amies. 2. Le buisson ardent. 3. La nouvelle
journee. (1910-1912.)
Ollendorff, Paris.
Colas Breugnon. Ollendorff, Paris, 1918.
Pierre et Luce. Le Sablier, Geneva, 1920; Ollendorff, Paris,
1920.
Clerambault. Ollendorff, Paris, 1920.
IV

PREFACES

Introduction to Une lettre inedite de Tolstoi, Cahiers de la

quinzaine, Serie III, No. 9, Paris, 1902.
Haendel et le Messie. (Preface to Le Messie de G. F. Haendel
by Felix Raugel.) Depot de la Societe cooperative des
compositeurs de musique, Paris, 1912.
Stendhal et la musique. (Preface to La vie de Havdn in the
complete
1913. edition of Stendhal's works.) Champion, Paris,
362 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Preface to Celles qui travaillent by Simone Bodeve, Ollendorff,
Paris, 1913.
Preface to Une voix de femme dans la melee by Marcelle Capy,
Ollendorff, Paris, 1916.
Anthologie des poetes centre la guerre. Le Sablier, Geneva,
1920.

DRAMAS

Saint Louis. (5 acts.) Revue de Paris, March-April, 1897.

Aert. (3 acts.) Revue de 1'art dramatique, Paris, 1898.
Les loups. (3 acts.) Georges Bellais, Paris, 1898.
Le triomphe de la raison. (3 acts.) Revue de 1'art dra-
matique, Paris, 1899.
Danton. (3 acts.) Revue de 1'art dramatique, Paris, 1900;
Cahiers de la quinzaine, Serie II, No. 6, 1901.
Le quatorze juillet. (3 acts.) Cahiers de la quinzaine, Serie
III, No. 11, Paris, 1902.
Le temps viendra. (3 acts.) Cahiers de la quinzaine, Serie
IV, No. 14, Paris, 1903; Ollendorff, Paris, 1920.
Les trois amoureuses. (3 acts.) Revue de 1'art dramatique,
Paris, 1904.
La Montespan.
1904. (3 acts.) Revue de 1'art dramatique, Paris,
Theatre de la Revolution.
Les loups. Danton. Le quatorze juillet.
Hachette, Paris, 1909 (now transferred to Ollendorff).
Les tragedies de la foi.
Saint Louis. Aert. Le triomphe de la raison.
Hachette, Paris, 1909 (now transferred to Ollendorff).
Liluli (with woodcuts by Frans JMasereel). Le Sablier,
Geneva, 1919; Ollendorff, Paris,' 1920.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 363

TRANSLATIONS

ENGLISH

Millet. Translated by Clementina Black. Duckworth, Lon-

don, 1902.
Beethoven. Translated by F. Rothwell. Drane, London, 1907.
Beethoven. Translated -by Constance Hull. With a brief
analysis of the sonatas, symphonies, and the quartets,
by A. Eaglefield Hull, and 24 musical illustrations and 4
plates and an introduction by Edward Carpenter. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1917.
The Life of Michael Angelo. Translated by Frederic Lees.
Heinemann, London, 1912.
Tolstoy. Translated by Bernard Miall. Fisher Unwin, Lon-
don, 1911.
Some Musicians of former Days. Translated by Mary Blaik-
lock. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1915.
Handel. Translated by A. Eaglefield Hull. Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner, London, 1916.
Musicians of To-day. Translated by Mary Blaiklock. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1915.
The People's Theater. Translated by Barrett H. Clark. Holt,
New York, 1918; G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1919.
Go to the Ant. (Reflections on reading Auguste Sorel.)
Translated by De Kay. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1919,
New York.
Above the Battlefield. With an introduction by G. Lowes Dick-
inson, Bowes, Cambridge, 1914.
Above the Battlefield. With an introduction by Rev. Richards
Roberts, M.A. Friends' Peace Committee, London, 1915.
Above the Battle. Translated by C. K. Ogden. G. Allen &
Unwin, London, 1916.
The Idols. Translated by C. K. Ogden. With a letter by R.
364 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Holland to Dr. van Eeden on the rights of small .nations.
Bowes, Cambridge, 1915.
The Forerunners. Translated by Eden & Cedar Paul. G.
Allen & Unwin, London, 1920; Harcourt, Brace, U. S. A.,
1920.
The Fourteenth of July and Danton: two plays of the French
Revolution. Translated with a preface by Barrett H.
Clarke. Holt, New York, 1918; G. Allen & Unwin, Lon-
don, 1919.
Liluli. The Nation, London, Sept. 20 to Nov. 29, 1919; Boni
& Liveright, New York, 1920.
Jean Christophe. Translated by Gilbert Cannan. Heine-
mann, London, 1910-1913; Holt, New York, 1911-1913.
Colas Breugnon. Translated by K. Miller. Holt, New York,
1919.
Clerambault. Translated by K. Miller. Holt, New York.
1921.

GERMAN

Beethoven. Translated by L. Langnese-Hug. Rascher, Zurich,

1917.
Michelangelo. Translated by W. Herzog. Riitten & Loenig,
Frankfort, 1918.
Michelangelo. Rascher, Zurich, 1919.
Tolstoi. Translated by W. Herzog. Riitten & Loenig, Frank-
fort, 1920.
Den hingeschlachteten Volkern, translated by Stefan Zweig.
Rascher, Zurich, 1918.
Au-dessus de la melee. Riitten & Loening, Frankfort.
Les precurseurs. Riitten & Loeing, Frankfort, 1920.
Johann Christof. Translated by Otto & Erna Grautoff. Riit-
ten & Loening, Frankfort, 1912-1918.
Meister Breugnon. Translated by Otto & Erna Grautoff.
Riitten & Loening, Frankfort, 1919.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 365
Clerambault. Translated by Stefan Zweig. Riitten & Loening,
Frankfort, 1920.
Die Wolfe. Translated by W. Herzog. Miiller, Munich, 1914.
Danton. Translated by Lucy von Jacobi and W. Herzog.
Miiller, Munich, 1919.
Die Zeit wird kommen. Translated by Stefan Zweig. "Die
Zwolf Bucher," Tal, Vienna, 1920.
SPANISH

Vie de Beethoven. Translated by J. R. Jimenez, a la Resi-

dentia de Estudiantes de Madrid, 1914.
Au-dessus de la melee. Delgado & Santonja, Madrid, 1916.
Jean-Christophe. Translated by Toro y Gomez. Ollendorff,
Paris-Madrid, 1905-1910.
Colas Breugnon. Agence de Librairie, Madrid, 1919.
ITALIAN

Au-dessus de la melee. Avanti, Milan, 1916.

Aux peuples assassines. Translated by Monanni with drawings
by Frans Masereel. Libreria Internationale, Zurich, 1917.
Jean-Christophe. Translated by Cesare Alessandri. Sonzogno,
Milan, 1920.
Vie de Michel-Ange. Translated by Maria Venti. Felice le
Monnier, Florence. [In the press.]
RUSSIAN
Theatre de la Revolution. Translated by Joseph Goldenberg,
St. Petersburg. 1909.
Theatre du Peuple. Translated by Joseph Goldenberg. St.
Petersburg. 1909.
Empedocle d'Agrigente. [In the press.]
Jean-Christophe. Unauthorized translation in 4 vols. Vetch-
erni Zvon, Moscow, 1912.
Jean-Christophe. Authorized translation by M. Tchlenoff.
366 ROMAIN HOLLAND
DANISH

Vie de Beethoven. Branner, Copenhagen, 1915.

Tolstoi. Branner, Copenhagen, 1917.
Musiciens d'aujourd'hui. Denmark & Norway, 1917.
Au-dessus de la melee. Lios, Copenhagen, 1916.
Jean-Christophe. Hagerup, Copenhagen, 1916.
Colas Breugnon. Denmark & Norway; Norstedt, Stockholm,
1917.

CZECH

Vie de Michel-Ange. Translated by M. Kalassova. Prague,

1912.
Danton. 1920.

POLISH

Vie de Beethoven. Jacewski, Warsaw, 1913.

Jean-Christophe. Translated by Edwige Sienkiewicz. Vols.
I & II, Bibljoteka Sfinska, Warsaw, 1910; the remaining
vols., Maski, Cracow, 1917-19—.
SWEDISH

Vie de Beethoven. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,

Stockholm. 1915.
Vie de Michelange. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,
Stockholm. 1916.
Vie de Tolstoi. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,
Stockholm. 1916.
Handel. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt, Stockholm.
1916.
Millet. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt, Stockholm.
1916.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 367

Musiciens d'aujourd'IiU', Translated by Mrs. Akermann,

Norstedt, Stockholm. ^.917.
Musiciens d'autiefois. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Nor-
stedt, Stockholm. 1917.
Voyage musical au pays du passe. Translated by Mrs. Aker-
mann, Norstedt, Stockholm. 1920.
Au-dessus de la melee. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Nor-
stedt, Stockholm. 1915.
Les precurseurs. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,
Stockholm. 1920.
Theatre de la Revolution. Translated by Mrs. Akermann,
Bonnier, Stockholm. 1917.
Tragedies de la foi. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Bonnier,
Stockholm. 1917.
Le temps viendra. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,
Stockholm.
Liluli. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Bonnier, Stockholm.
1920.
Jean-Christophe. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Bonnier,
Stockholm. 1913-1917.
Colas Breugnon. Translated by Mrs. Akermann, Norstedt,
Stockholm. 1919.
Clerambault. In course of preparation. Bonnier, Stockholm.
DUTCH
Vie de Beethoven, Simon, Amsterdam, 1913.
Jean-Christophe. Brusse, Rotterdam, 1915.
L'aube. Special edition, W. F. J. Tjeenk Willink, Zwolle,
1916.
Colas Breugnon. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1919.

JAPANESE
Tolstoi. Seichi Naruse, Tokyo, 1916.
And many other unauthorized translations.
368 ROMAIN HOLLAND

GREEK

Beethoven. Translated by Niramos. 1920.

WORKS ON ROMAIN ROLLAND

FRENCH

Jean Banner ot. Remain Rolland (Extraits de ses oeuvres avec

introduction biographique), Cahiers du Centre, Nevers,
1909.
Lucien Maury. Figures litteraires. Perrin, 1911.
/. H. Retinger. Histoire de la litterature franchise du ro-
mantisme a nos jours. B. Grasset, 1911.
Jules Bertaut. Les romanciers du nouveau siecle. Sansot,
1912.
Paul Seippel. Remain Rolland, Phomme et 1'oeuvre. Ollen-
dorff, 1913.
Marc Elder. Remain Rolland. Paris, 1914.
Robert Dreyfus. Maitres contemporains. (Peguy, Claudel,
Suares, Remain Rolland.) Paris, 1914.
Daniel Halevy. Quelques nouveaux maitres. Cahiers du
Centre. Figuiere, 1914.
G. Dwelshauvers. Remain Rolland. Vue caracteristique de
Phomme et de 1'oeuvre. Ed. de la Belgique artistique et
litteraire, Brussels, 1913 or 1914.
Paul Souday. Les drames philosophiques de Remain Rolland.
Emile Paul, Paris, 1914.
Max Hochstdlter. Essai sur 1'oeuvre de Remain Rolland.
Fischbacher, Paris; Georg & Co., Geneva, 1914.
Henri Guilbeaux. Pour Remain Rolland. Jeheber, Geneva,
1915.
Massis. Romain Rolland centre la France. Floury, Paris,
1915.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 369

P. H. Loyson. Etes-vous neutre devant le crime? Payot,

Paris and Lausanne, 1916.
Renaitour et Loyson. Dans la melee. Ed. du Bonnet Rouge,
1916.
Isabelle Debran. M. Remain Holland initiateur du defaitisme.
(Introduction de Diodore.) Geneva, 1918.
Jacques Servance. Reponse a Mme. Isabelle Debran. Comitc
d'initiative en faveur d'une paix durable, Neuchatel, 1916.
Charles Baudouin, Remain Rolland calomnie. Le Carmel,
Geneva, 1918.
Daniel Halevy. Charles Peguy et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine.
Payot, Paris, 1918 et seq.
Paul Colin. Romain Rolland, Bruxelles, 1920.
P. J. Jouve. Romain Rolland vivant, Ollendorff, 1920.
OTHER LANGUAGES

Otto Grautoff. Romain Rolland, Frankfurt, 1914.

Winifred Stephens. French Novelists of To-day. Second
series. J. Lane, London and New York, 1915.
Albert L. Guerard. Five Masters of French Romance. Scrib-
ner, New York, 1916.
Dr. J. Ziegler. Romain Rolland in "Johann Christof," fiber
Juden und Judentum. v. Dr. Ziegler, Rabbiner in Karls-
bad. Vienna, 1918.
Agnes Darmesteter. Twentieth Century French Writers. Lon-
don, 1919.
Blumenfeld. Etude sur Romain Rolland, en langue yiddisch.
Cahiers de litterature et d'art. Paris, 1920.
Albert Schinz. French Literature of the War. Appleton, New
York, 1920.
Pedro Cesare Dominici. De Lutecia, Arte y Critica. Ollen-
dorff, Madrid.
Papini. Studii di Romain Rolland. Florence, 1916.
F. F. Curtis. Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frank-
reichs. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 1920.
370 ROMAIN HOLLAND
Walter Kiichler. Vier Vortrage iiber R. Rolland, Henri Bar-
busse, Fritz v. Unruh. Wiirzburg, 1919.

Music CONNECTED WITH ROMAIN ROLLAND'S WRITINGS

Paul Dupin. Jean-Christophe. (Trois pieces pour piano.)

1. L'oncle Gottfried (dialogue avec Christophe).
2. Meditationde sur
3. Berceuse un passage du "Matin."
Louisa.
Chant du Pelerin (piano et chant). Paroles de Paul
Gerhardt. Ed. Demets, Paris, 1907.
Paul Dupin. Jean-Christophe. (Suite pour quatuor a
cordes.)
1. La mort de 1'oncle Gottfried.
2. Bienvenue au petit.
Ed. Senart et Roudanez, Paris, 1908.
Paul Dupin. Pastorale, Sabine. 1. Dans le Jardinet. Piano
et quatuor. Transcription pour piano et violon. Ed.
Senart et Roudanez, Paris, 1908.
Albert Doyen. Le Triomphe de la Liberte. (Scene finale du
Quatorze Juillet) . Prix de la ville de Paris, 1913. (Soli,
Orchestre et Choeurs.) Ed. A. Leduc, Paris.
 INDEX

Above the Battle, 266, 290, 291, Bibliography, 357 ff.

293-6, 297, 305, 329. Biographies, heroic, 133-53; un-
Abbesse de Jouarre, 1', 125. written, 150-3.
Aert, 66, 73, 77-S, 83-5, 87, 112. Bonn, 35, 140, 141.
Aert, 77-8, 83-5, 121, 125, 161, 198, Brahms, 174.
244, 260, 347. Breal, Michel, 35.
Antoinette, in Jean Christophe, 4, Breugnon, Colas, in Colas Breu-
165, 175, 212, 224. gnon, 241-53, 319; spiritual
Arcos, Rene, 312, 313. kinship of, with Jean Christophe,
Art, love of, and love of mankind, 244-48; see Colas Breugnon.
Brunetiere, 16.
20; epic quality in Holland's, Burckhardt, Jakob, 16.
63-66, 67 ff; moral force in
Holland's, 63 ff ; Tolstoi's views Byron, 275.
on, 18-20; universality of, 26.
Au-dessus de la melee, see Above "Cahiers de la quinzaine," 20, 40,
the Battle. 43, 50, 143.
Aux peuples assassines, 332. Caligula, 73.
"Carmel, le" 313.
Bach, Friedemann, 173. Carnot, 99.
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 173, 245. Claes, in Aert, 87.
Ballades frangaises, 250. Clamecy, birthplace of Holland, 3,
Balzac, 64, 65, 169, 177, 250. 4,99.
Barres, Maurice, 59, 62. Claudel, Paul, 89, 44, 59.
Baudouin, Charles, 313. Clerambault, I'histoire d'une con-
Beethoven, 50, 137 ff, 140-3, 150. science libre pendant la guerre,
Beethoven, 10, 18, 19, 40, 45, 67, 339-347.
104, 140-143, 144, 145, 147, 148, Clerambault, Agenor, in Cleram-
151, 161, 163, 172, 174, 175, 182, bault, 310, 339-347.
245, 252, 325, 328; festival, 35, Clerambault, Maxime, 343 ff.
influence of, on Holland's child- Clifford, General, in A Day Will
Come, 120, 121, 125.
hood, 5ff; Jean Christophe's
resemblance to, 173. Colas Breugnon, 241-153, 337; as
Beginnings of Opera, The, 34. an artistic production, 249-51;
Belgique sanglante, la, 282. gauloiseries in, 249-51; origin
Berlioz, 10, 150. of, 24143.
371
372 INDEX
Comedie Francaise, 71, 74. 130; People's Theater, 85-130;
Conscience, story of, in Cleram- poems, 28; tragedies of faith,
bault, 33947; see Freedom of 76-85; unknown cycle, 71-75.
conscience. Drames philosophiques, 125.
Corneille, 91, 92. Dreyfus affair, 38, 39, 106, 115,
Couthon, 99. 119, 133.
Credo quia verum, 16, 17. Dunois, Amedee, 312.
Corinne, in Jean Christophe, 211. Duse, Eleanore, 175.
Cycles, of Holland, 67-71.

D'Alembert, 87. Empedocle

de la haine,d'Agrigente
72, 333 ff. et I'dge
Danse des marts, 312.
Etes-vous neutre devant le crime,
Danton, 41, 101, 106-9, 113, 117. 283.
Danton, 99, 106-9, 113, 126.
Debrit, Jean, 313.
Debussy, 35, 175. Faber, in Le triomphe de la raison,
Declaration of the independence of 111, 114, 309.
the mind, 351-354. Faith, in Holland's philosophy of
Decsey, Ernest, 174. life, 77-79, 81 ff, 166-71, 244 ff;
Defeat, significance of, in Holland's tragedies of, 76-85.
philosophy of life, 61, 62, 83 ff, Fellowship, of free spirits, during
110 ff, 134 ff, 139. the war, 273 ff, 311-316: 351,
"Defeatism," 297-303. 354.
De Maguet, Claude, 313. Fetes de Beethoven, les, 141.
"Demain," 313. "Feuille, la," 313.
Depres, Suzanne, 175. Flaubert, 37, 58, 80, 177.
Desmoulins, 126. Forerunners, The, 290, 339-334
Despres, Fernand, 312. Fort, Paul, 250.
Deutscher Musiker in Paris, Ein, Fourteenth of July, The, 101-2,
174. 103-5, 109.
"Deutsche Rundschau, Die," 305. France, after 1870, 57; picture of,
Don Carlos, 101.
in Jean Christophe, 211-216
Dostoievsky, 2, 346. France, Anatole, 58, 84, 169.
Doyen, 105. Frank, Cesar, 175.
D'Oyron, in The Wolves, 114. Frank, Ludwig, 321.
Drama, and the masses, see People's Freedom, of conscience, 287 ff,
Theater; erotic vs. political, 257-9, 119, 274, 285-8, 298 ff,
127 ff: Drama of the Revolution, 320 ff, 33947 ; vs. the fatherland,
69, 70, 86-99, 100-18. see The Triumph of Reason.
Dramatic writings, of Holland, 25, French literature, state of, after
32, 39, 41, 57-130; craftsman- 1870, 37, 58 ff.
ship of, 127-130; cycles, 67-71; French Revolution, 68, 98 ff, 100-
Drama of the Revolution, 100- 120, 121, 122; see Drama of the
 INDEX 373

Hebbel, 73, 123.

Revolution;
ater. also People's The-
Hecht, in Jean Christophe, 175.
French stage, after 1870, 86-89. Heroes of suffering, 133-153.
Heroic biographies, 133-153.
Galeries des femmes de Shake- Herzen, 26.
speare, 6.
Camache, in Jean Christophe, 175. Historical
Theater . drama, see People's
"Gauloiseries," 250.
Generations, conflicting ideas of History, and the People's Theater,
the 229-234. 95 ff; Holland's conception of,
95 ff ; sense of, in early writings,
Geneva, during -the Great War, 32.
268 ff.
Hoche, General, 150.
Germany, picture of, in Jean Holderlin, 73.
Christophe, 217-220. Hugot, in The Triumph of Reason,
Girondists, in The Triumph of
63, 111, 114.
Reason, 110 ff, 121, 129, 169, 260. Hugo, Victor, 37, 64, 92, 121.
Gli Baglioni, 73, 74.
Cluck, 173, 175, 212. Idoles les, 299.
Goethe, 64, 72, 97, 118, 150, 155,
169, 175, 177, 180, 211, 184, 193, "Iliad of the French People," see
219, 230, 263, 275, 278, 305, People's Theater.
Illusions perdues, les, 65.
330, 332. Inter Arma Cantos, 297.
Gottfried, in Jean Christophe, 204.
Grautoff, 166, 168. Iphigenia, 118.
Italy, picture of, in Jean Christophe,
Grazia, in Jean Christophe, 175, 221-3.
200-202, 205.
Idealism, in Holland's philosophy,
Greatness, will to, in Holland's 60 ff, 85, 123, 166-71; char-
philosophy, 63.
acterization ofGermany, 211-216;
Great War, The, 1, 65, 257-355, 253, of Italy, 222.
264 ff, 339-347. Internationalism, 207-10, 255, 285-
Greek tragedy, method of, 128 ff 8, 3514; see Above the Battle;
Grunt Heinrich, Der, 169.
Fellowship, of free spirits;
Guilbeaux, Henri, 281, 313.
Hatred, Holland's campaign
Haendel 34.
against.
Handel, 150, 173, 175, 245. Ibsen, 126 ff.
Hatred Holland's campaign against, 71. Holland's sojourn in, 23-28,
Italy,
297-304; Verhaeren's attitude of,
during the war, 2814.
Jaures, 13, 41, 109, 346.
Hauptmann, 92, 276; Holland's
controversy with, 277-280. Jean Christophe, 18, 30, 36, 49,
Hardy, Thomas, 64. 65, 70, 130, 143, 157-237, 165,
Hassler in Jean Christophe, 174, 257, 300, 305, 311, 318, 339, 340;
204. as an educational romance, 166*
374 INDEX
71; characters of, 172-5; enigma Levy-Coeur, in Jean Christophe,
of creative work, 181-7; France, 175, 205, 224.
picture of, in, 211-16; genera- Le 14 Juillet, see Fourteenth of
tions, conflicting ideas of, in July, The.
229-34; Germany, picture of, in, Liberty, characterization of France,
211-16.
217-220; Italy, picture of, in
221-3; Jews, the, in, 224-8; mes- Life of Michael Angela, The, 40,
14446.
sage of, 157-159; music, form
and content of, 177-80; origin of Life of Timolien, 131.
162-5; writing of, 4344-, 162-5. Liluli, 300, 335-338, 339.
Jean Christophe, 26, 31, 38, 40, 42, Loups, les, see The Wolves.
43, 49, 50, 65, 68, 76, 97, 153, Lux, Adams, 101, 111, 112, 309.
157-237, 241, 246, 257, 258, 260, Lyceum of Louis the Great, 8.
317, 336, 340, 342; and Grazia, Madame Bovary, 64.
200-1; and his fellow men, 203-6; Mahler, Gustave, 35, 175.
and his generation, 229-36; and Mannheim, Judith, in Jean Chris-
the nations, 207-10; apostle of tophe, 226.
force, 189 ff; as the artist and Marat, 101.
creator, 188-94; character of, Martinet, Marcel, 312.
172-75; contrast to Olivier, Masereel, Franz, 313.
195 ff. Maupassant, 13, 58, 64, 91, 26, 150.
Jouve, 287, 312, 313. Mazzini, 151, 222.
Justice, problem of, considered by Meistersinger, Die, 92.
Holland in Dreyfus case, 39; vs. Mesnil, Jacques, 312.
the fatherland, see The Wolves. Meunier, 87.
Meutre des elites, le, 297.
Kaufmann, Emil, 174. Meyerbeer, 212.
Keller, Gottfried, 169, 177.
Michelangelo, 67, 71, 144-6, 147,
Kleist, 73, 92. 148, 151, 161, 182, 245.
Kohn, Sylvain, in Jean Christophe, Michelet, 13.
212, 224. Millet, 87, 50.
Krafft, Jean Christophe, see Jean Mirbeau, 85.
Christophe. Moliere, 92.
Monod Gabriel, 13, 16, 26, 73.
Language, as obstacle to interna- Man Oncle Benjamin, 3.
tionalism, 229 ff.
Lazare, Bernard, 39, 143. Montespan, la, 73, 119.
Lebens Abend einer Idealistin, Mooch, in Jean Christophe, 224.
Der, 27, 73. Moreas, 175.
Mornet, Lieutenant, 306.
Legende de Saint Julien I'Hospi-
talier, 80. Mounet-Sully, 74.
Letters, of Holland, during war, Mozart, 5, 173.
317-19. Music, early influence of, on Rol-
 INDEX 375
land, 4; form and content in Parsifal, 30, 81, 62, 191.
Jean Christophe 177-80; part of Peguy, Charles, 14, 20, 38, 39, 59,
Holland's drama 104 ff; Hol- 115, 143.
land's love of, 47; Holland's People's Theater, The, 41, 65, 133,
philosophy of, 132-3; Tolstoi's 68, 88, 94-97.
stigmatization of 19. Phillippe, Charles Louis, 44, 91.
Musiciens cTautrefois, 34, 35, 183. Philosophy of life, of Holland, see
Art of Holland; Conscience;
Nationalistic school of writers Defeat, significance of; Faith;
59, 60, 62. Freedom of Conscience; Great-
Nationalism, 208 ff; 217-20, 225, ness will to; Hatred, campaign
226.
against ; Idealism ; Internation-
Naturalism, 15. alism; Justice; Struggle, element
"Neues Vaterland," 306. of; Suffering, significance of.
Nietzsche, 2, 26, 37, 162, 174, 177, Picquart, 39, 115.
217-20, 255, 332. Perrotin, in Clerambault, 344.
Niobe, 73, 74. Pioch, Georges, 312.
Nobel peace prize, 270. Polichinelle, in Liluli, 337.
Normal School, 10, 11, 12-17, 13, Precurseurs, les, see The Fore-
14, 23, 29, 32, 162. runners.
Notre prochain Fennemi, 297. Pretre de Nemi, le, 125.
Novalis, 169. Prinz von Hamburg, Der, 92.
Provenzale, Francesco, 34.
Offenbach, 212.
Olivier, in Jean Christophe, 61, Quesnel, in Les Loups, 114.
68, 76, 78, 84, 176, 179, 195-9,
200, 201, 205, 214 ff, 220, 224, Racine, 91, 92.
225, 233, 244, 246, 257, 260, 264, Raiiber, Die, 92.
267, 283, 309, 318, 336 340. Red Cross, in Switzerland, 268 ff,
269 ff.
Olivier, Georges, in Jean Chris-
tophe, 233. Renaissance, 24, 25, 68, 71.
Offiziere, Die, 85. Renaitour, 312.
Oration on Shakespeare, 72. Renan, 12, 13, 25, 37, 125 ff, 176,
Orfeo, 33. 196, 214, 309.
Origines du theatre lyrique mod- "Revue de I'art dramatique," 35,
erne, les, 32, 183. 88.
Orsino, 72, 74, "Revue de Paris," 25, 141.
Oudon, Frangoise, in Jean Chris- Robespierre, 99, 101, 108, 113, 117,
126.
tophe, 75.
Holland, Madeleine, 3.
Pacifism, 262 ff. Holland, Remain, academic life of,
Paine, Thomas 9,7. 150. in Paris, 32-35, 42; adolescence
376 INDEX

of, 3-11 ; ancestry of, 3; and his Rousseau, 275.

epoch, 57-62; and the European Roussin, in Jean Christophe, 176.
Route en lacets qui monte, la, 330.
spirit, 52, 53; appeal to Presi-
dent Wilson, 348-50; as embodi-
ment of European spirit, 52-3; St Christophe, 157.
art of, 63-6; at Paris, 32-5, 36; Saint-Just, pseud^ 39, 84, 101. 108.
attitude of, during the war, 257- 113, 126.
355 ; campaign of, against hatred Saint Louis, 77-8, 80-82, 83.
297-303; childhood of, 3-7; con- 125, 244.
troversy of,with Hauptmann, 277- Salviati, 24.
80; correspondence of, with Satires, Andre, 14, 15, 39.
Verhaeren 2814; cycles of 67- Scarlatti, Alessandro, 34.
75; diary of, during the war, Schermann, 330.
327-28; drama of the revolution, Scheurer, Kestner, 39, 115.
100-30; dramatic writings, 25,28, Schiller, 73, 86, 87, 90, 92, 95, 97,
57, 130; Dreyfus case, 3847, 100-1, 123, 155, 193, 1%.
fame, 49, 50, 51, 48; father of, Schubert, 175, 180.
6; friendships, 13-15, 25, 26-28, Schulz, Prof, in Jean Christophe,
311-316; heroic biographies, 133- 174, 204.
153; humanitarianism of, 307 ff; Seippel, Paul, 50, 165, 172.
idealism of, 60 ff; influence of, Severine, 312.
during the war, 320-326, 355-6; Shakespeare, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 18,
influence of Tolstoi on, 19-22; 23, 24, 15, 64, 69, 72, 92, 100,
Jean Christophe, 157-237; letters 123, 125, 150.
of, during the war, 317-319; Sidonie, in Jean Christophe, 213.
marriage of, 35, 41, 73, 134;
Siege de Mantoue, le, 73.
mass suggestion in writings of, Sorbonne, 32, 33.
261, 266, 32947; mother of, 3,
27; newspaper writing of 289- Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeu-
292; opponents of, during the nesse, 12.
war, 304-10; portrait of, 46, 47; Spinoza, 10, 13, 18.
role of, in fellowship of free Stendahl, 169, 177.
spirits during the war, 273 ff; Strauss, Hugo, 35.
Rome, 23, 28 ; schooling of 5-17 ; Strindberg, 2, 126 ff.
seclusion, 43, 44, 45-7, 4849,
324; significance of life work, Struggle, element of, in Rolland's
philosophy, 222, 246 ff.
2; tragedies of faith, 76-85; un-
written biographies, 150-153. Suffering, significance of, in Rol-
Rossi, Ernesto, 24. land's philosophy, 133-136, 181-
Rossi, Luigi, 33. 7, 188-94; 204 ff; heroes of
Rostand, 117. 133-53.
Rouanet, 312. Switzerland, refuge of Rolland
during the war, 264-7.
 INDEX 377

"Tablettes, les" 313. Vie de Michel-Ange, la, see Life of

Tasso, 118. Michael Angela, The.
Teulier, in The Wolves, 114, 115, Vie des hommes illustres, 301.
121, 310. Von Kerich, Frau, in Jean Chris-
Theatre tophe, 173, 204.
Theatre.du peuple, le, see People's Vnn Meysenbug, Malwida, 26, 27,
Thiesson, Caston, 312. 28, 29, 29-31, 73, 150, 162.
Tillier, Claude, 3. Von Unruh, Fritz, 85.
Tolstoi, 18, 20, 21, 23, 15, 24, 53, Vorreden Material im Nachlass,
255.
60, 64, 67, 82, 86, 87, 90, 92, 94,
135, 138, 147-149, 151, 161, 165, Vous etes des hommes, 312.
170, 175, 176, 182, 204, 245, 255,
265, 300, 317, 320, 333. Wagner, 2, 9, 10, 14, 26, 29, 30,
To the Undying Antigone, 27. 31, 37, 64, 92, 162, 174, 212.
Tragedies de la foi, les, see Trag- Wahrheit und Dichtung, 175.
edies of Faith. War and Peace, 64, 170.
Tragedies of Faith, 69, 76-83, 76. War, dominant theme in Holland's
"Tribunal of the spirit," see plays, 28; of the generations,
Fellowship. 229-234; in Holland's writings,
Triumph of Reason, The, 63, 101, 260 S.
102, 113, 114, 119. Weber, Die, 92, 277.
Trois Amoureuses, les, 173. Weil, in Jean Christophe, 224.
Truth, in Liluli, 337. What is to be Done? 18.
Wilhelm Meister, 155, 168.
Unknown dramatic cycle, 71-75. William the Silent, 66.
Wilson, President, 348-50.
Verhaeren, 44, 77, 175, 276, 311; Wolf, Hugo, 35, 150, 174.
Holland's correspondence with, Wolff's news agency, 277.
281-84. Wolves, The, 39, 101, 102, 113, 114.
Vie de Beethoven, see Beethoven.
Vie de Tolstoi, see Tolstoi. Zola, 15, 58, 85, 87, 39, 91, 115, 177.
PQ Zweig, Stefan
2635 Romain Holland
05Z973

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY