1915 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Romain Rolland (1866-1944), french novelist, dramatist, essayist, mystic, and pacifist, awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. 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. Selected works:
More nobel prize winners: