romain rolland

Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866 - December 30, 1944) was a French writer. His first book was published in 1902, when he was already 36 years old. Thirteen years later, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature 1915 for his most important work, Jean-Christophe. His mind sculpted by a passion for music and hero-worship, he sought a means of communion among men for his entire life. Because of his insistence upon justice and his humanist ideal, he looked for peace during and after the First World War in the works of the philosophers of India ("Conversations with Rabindranath Tagore", and Mohandas Gandhi), then in the new world that the Soviet Union initially wanted to achieve. But he would not find peace except in writing his works.

Life

Rolland was born in Clamecy, Nivre to a family of notaries; he had both peasants and wealthy townspeople in his lineage. Writing introspectively in his Voyage intrieur (1942), he sees himself as a representative of an "antique species". He will cast these ancestors in a truculent bawdy tale Colas Breugnon (1919). Accepted to the cole normale suprieure in 1886, he first studied philosophy, but his independence of spirit led him to abandon that so as not to submit to the dominant ideology. He received his degree in history in 1889 and spent two years in Rome, where his encounter with Malwida von Meysenburg -- who had been the friend of Nietzsche and of Wagner -- and his discovery of Italian masterpieces were decisive for the development of his thought. When he returned to France in 1895, he received his doctoral degree with his thesis The origins of modern lyric theatre and his doctoral dissertation, A History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti.

A teacher, a pacifist, and a loner

He became a history teacher at Lyce Henri IV, then at the Lyce Louis le Grand, and the cole franaise de Rome, then a professor of the History of Music at the Sorbonne, and History Professor at the cole Normale Suprieure. A demanding, yet timid, young man, he did not like teaching. Not that he was indifferent to the youth: Jean-Christophe, Olivier and their friends -- the heroes of his novels -- are young people. But with living youths, like adults, Rolland only maintained distant relationships. He was above all a writer. Assured that literature would provide him with a modest income, he resigned from the university in 1912. Romain Rolland was a lifelong pacifist. In 1924, his book on Gandhi contributed to the latter's reputation, and the two men met in 1931. He moved to the shores of Lac Lman (Lake Geneva) to devote himself to writing. His life was interrupted by health problems, and by travels to art exhibitions. His voyage to Moscow (1935), on the invitation of Maxim Gorky, was an opportunity to meet Stalin, and he served unofficially as ambassador of the French artists to the Soviet Union. In 1937, he came back to live in Vzelay, which, in 1940, was occupied by the Germans. During the occupation, he isolated himself in complete solitude. Never stopping his work, in 1940, he finished his memoirs. He also placed the finishing touches on his musical research on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Shortly before his death, he wrote Pguy (1944), in which he examines religion and socialism through the context of his memories. He died December 30, 1944 in Vzelay.

Quotations

"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay." http://www.ocvhs.com/publications/papersarticles/iklecture01.html, Life of Ramakrishna "The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe." http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1996/3/1996-3-08.shtml, Life of Vivekananda

Bibliography

Romain Rolland Bibliography

width="70%">

Year	Work
1888	Amour d'enfants
1891	Les Baglioni	Unpublished during his lifetime.
1891	Empdocle (Empedocles)	Unpublished during his lifetime.
1891	Orsino	Unpublished during his lifetime.
1892	Le Dernier Procs de Louis Berquin (The Last Trial of Louis Berquin)
1895	Les Origines du thtre lyrique moderne (The origins of modern lyric theatre)	Academic treatise, which won a prize from the Acadmie Franaise
1895	Histoire de l'opra avant Lully et Scarlatti (A History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti)	Dissertation for his doctorate in Letters
1895	Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit	Latin-language thesis on the decline in Italian oil painting in the course of the sixteenth century
1897	Saint-Louis
1897	Art	Historical/philosophical drama
1898	Les Loups (The Wolves)	Historical/philosophical drama
1899	Le Triomphe de la raison (The Triumph of Reason)	Historical/philosophical drama
1899	Georges Danton	Historical/philosophical drama
1900	Le Poison idaliste
1901	Les Ftes de Beethoven Mayence
1902	Le Quatorze Juillet (July 14 -- Bastille Day)	Historical/philosophical drama
1902	Franois-Millet
1903	Vie de Beethoven (Life of Beethoven)	Biography
1903	Le temps viendra
1903	Le Thâtre du peuple (People's Theater)
1904	La Montespan	Historical/philosophical drama
1904 - 1912	Jean-Christophe	Cycle of ten volumes divided into three series -- Jean-Christophe, Jean-Christophe Paris, and la Fin du voyage, published by Cahiers de la Quinzaine
1904	L'Aube	First volume of the series Jean-Christophe
1904	Le Matin (Morning)	Second volume of the series Jean-Christophe
1904	L'Adolescent (The Adolescent)	Third volume of the series Jean-Christophe
1905	La Rvolte (The Revolt)	Fourth volume of the series Jean-Christophe
1907	Vie de Michel-Ange (Life of Michelangelo)	Biography
1908	Musiciens d'aujourd'hui (Contemporary Musicians)	Collection of articles and essays about music
1908	Musiciens d'autrefois (Musicians of the Past)	Collection of articles and essays about music
1908	La Foire sur la place	First volume of the series Jean-Christophe Paris
1908	Antoinette	Second volume of the series Jean-Christophe Paris
1908	Dans la maison (At Home)	Third volume of the series Jean-Christophe Paris
1910	Haendel
1910	Les Amies (Friends)	First volume of the series la Fin du voyage
1911	La Vie de Tolsto (Life of Tolstoy)	Biography
1911	Le Buisson ardent	Second volume of the series la Fin du voyage
1912	La Nouvelle Journe	Third volume of the series la Fin du voyage
1912	L'Humble Vie hroque (The Humble Life of the Hero)
1915	Au-dessus de la mle	Pacifist manifesto
1915		Received the Nobel Prize in Literature
1917	Salut la rvolution russe (Salute to the Russian Revolution)
1918	Pour l'internationale de l'Esprit (For the International of the Spirit)
1918	L'ge de la haine (The Age of Hatred)
1919	Colas Breugnon	Burgundian story
1919	Les Prcurseurs (The Precursors)
1920		Founded the review Europe
1920	Clrambault
1920	Pierre et Luce
1921	Pages choisies (Selected Pages)
1921	La Rvolte des machines (The Revolt of the Machines)
1922-1933	L'me enchante (The Enchanted Soul)	Seven volumes
1922	Annette et Sylvie	First volume of l'me enchante
1922	Les Vaincus
1924	L't (Summer)	Second volume of l'me enchante
1924	Mahatma Gandhi
1925	Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort (The Game of Love and Death)
1926	Pques fleuries
1927	Mre et fils (Mother and Child)	Third volume of l'me enchante
1928	Lonides
1928	De l'Hroque l'Appassionata (From the Heroic to the Passionate)
1929	Essai sur la mystique de l'action (A study of the Mystique of Action)
1929	L'Inde vivante (Living India)	Essays
1929	Vie de Ramakrishna (Life of Ramakrishna)	Essays
1930	Vie de Vivekananda (Life of Vivekananda)	Essays
1930	L'vangile universel	Essays
1930	Goethe et Beethoven	Essay
1933	L'Annonciatrice
1935	Quinze Ans de combat
1936	Compagnons de route
1937	Le Chant de la Rsurrection (Song of the Resurrection)
1938	Les Pages immortelles de Rousseau (The Immortal Pages of Rousseau)
1939	Robespierre	Historical/philosophical drama
1942	Le Voyage intrieur (The Interior Voyage)
1943	La Cathdrale interrompue (The Interrupted Cathedral)	Volumes I and II
1945	Pguy	Posthumous publication
1945	La Cathdrale interrompue	Volume III, posthumous

External Links

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1915 Rolland, Romain Rolland, Romain Rolland, Romain

<< Previous

Word Browser

Next >>

tithi
brian giovannini
lyric records
lunar month
paul o'neill
conflict
elftor
ior bock
caretaker
yalta
caron

hacek
battle of wisternitz
greenville college
ca al rich inclusions
haken manifold
the black tulip
quintus hortensius
dog food
cuyo
lek river
timeline of meteorology

gaius rabirius
jos echegaray y eizaguirre
paralegal
c. thomas howell
nielsen ratings
zoarces viviparus
titus labienus
impalement
cujo
evil empire (disambiguation)
quintus lutatius catulus

diaphragm pump
coracle
tyra banks
aulus gabinius
ac cobra
karl adolph gjellerup
ta'xet
uss keokuk
carl spitteler
stefan dusan
trichloramine