Romain Rolland Biography and List of Works

French novelist, dramatist, essayist, mystic, and pacifist, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. Rolland had a strong sense of social responsibility - he saw that art must be a part of the struggle to bring enlightenment to people.

"In politics, he has always been a republican with advanced Socialist sympathies, and internationalist at heart, and, as they said in the eighteenth century, a 'citizen of the world.' He has always fought social injustice. In art, he loves, above all, Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Goethe... Rembrandt is the painter dearest to him. But his chosen country is Italy."
(Rolland on himself, World Authors 1900-1950, vol. 3, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens, 1996)

Romain Rolland was born in Clemency, to a middle-class family. His father was a lawyer and his mother, the former Antoinette-Marie Courot, was a pious and introspective woman. In 1880 the family moved to Paris in order to obtain a better schooling for their son.

In 1886 Rolland entered École Normale Supérieure, and in 1889 he passed his agrégation examination. Rolland continued his studies in Rome, where he formed a lasting friendship with Malwida von Meysenbug, who encouraged his first attempt to write. In 1892 Rolland married Clotilde Bréal, who shared his love for music. They lived for some time in Rome, where Rolland researched the origins of the opera, (before Jean-Baptiste Lully and Alessandro Scarlatti), for his doctoral thesis. Rolland received his doctorate in art in 1895, with the first dissertation on music ever presented at the Sorbonne.

Rolland became professor of art history at the École Normale in Paris and eight years later he became the professor of the history of music at the Sorbonne. Although a teacher, Rolland's first vocation was the theatre. In his mid-30s he wrote successful plays about the French Revolution. On completion of his best known work JEAN-CHRISTOPHE, (1904-12); Rolland devoted himself entirely to writing. The ten-volume novel is an epic story of a German musical genius, based partly on the life of Beethoven, but also taking elements from Mozart and Wagner's career. Rolland portrayed his protagonist as a heroic figure, a fighter for social justice true to his ideals. After killing a policeman, Christophe flees to Switzerland, and starts his career as a composer. He returns to Paris celebrated artists and dies there.

With a collection of antiwar writings, Above the Battle (1913) Rolland became a prominent figure in the pacifist movement during World War I, although the book caused protests in France. After the war, Rolland's plays were more popular in Germany than in France. Their declamatory, didactic nature probably influenced Brecht's concept of epic theatre.

In the 1920s Rolland became interested in Indian philosophy and wrote a biography of Mahatma Gandhi (1924) - the spiritual leader of India visited him in Switzerland in Villeneuve, on the shore of Lake Leman. In 1923 Rolland founded the international magazine Europe, which opposed nationalism. He welcomed the Socialist movement almost as a spiritual event, but he never was a member of the Communist Party. In 1935 Rolland met Gorky and Stalin in Moscow. However, gradually he started to reject Stalinism, and support non-violent social change. As early as 1900 Rolland had written a play, Danton, in which the spirit of revolution is sacrificed to revolutionary discipline - a view that was not popular during the Moscow purge trials, orchestrated by Stalin.

Rolland lived in Switzerland from 1914 to 1937, where he completed the second novel cycle, The Enchanted Soul (1922-33). The seven-volume novel centres on a female counterpart of Jean-Christophe, and another woman, Annette, who becomes disenchanted with material possessions and struggles to achieve her spiritual freedom. The work reflects Rolland's interest in Communism - Annette becomes active in the defence of the Soviet Union.

Rolland married his second wife, Marie Koudachev, in 1934. In 1938 they returned to France, where Rolland was a courageous mouthpiece for the opposition to Fascism and the Nazis. During the last years of his life, Rolland lived in Vézelay and worked on the biography of Charles Péguy. On December 30, 1944 he succumbed to tuberculosis, an illness that had afflicted him since his childhood.

Among Rolland's other works are several psychological biographies of artists and politicians (Michelangelo, Danton, Beethoven, Tolstoy etc.). Rather than concentrate on single novels Rolland wrote cycles of works. His cycles of plays include The Tragedies and Faith, Saint Louis (1897), The Triumph of Reason (1899), and Theatre of Revolution, dramas concerning the French Revolution.

For further reading: Romain Rolland and the Politics of the Intellectual Engagement by D. Fisher (1987); Romain Rolland by K. Gore (1981); Romain Rolland by S. Zweig (1970); Romain Rolland by H. March (1971); Romain Rolland by W.T. Star (1971); Romain Rolland by M.Z. Karczewska (1964); Romain Rolland and a World at War by W. Starr (1956); Romain Rolland: the Story of a Conscience by A. Aronson (1944); Romain Rolland by S. Zweig (1921); Romain Rolland: Sa vie, son œuvre by J. Bonnerot (1921)

HISTOIRE DE L'OPÉRA EN EUROPE AVANT LULLY ET SCARLATTI, (1895)