TACK 
 
 AIN ROLLAND 
 
 71 
 
 nd 
 
 J-CHRISTOPHE 
 
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 f ). Kkkhbiei.. Hexd?:rsox, I.avigxac, 
 Q ^^= 1 YouxGj and others. 
 
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 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COiVPANY 
 
 19 West 44th Street New York
 
 ROMAIN HOLLAND 
 
 Whether the curiosity about " people who 
 have done things " hints of a weakness for 
 gossip or indicates the capacity for hero wor- 
 ship which is said to be a characteristic of 
 noble minds, it will find ample and delightful 
 gratification in the biography of Romain Hol- 
 land. 
 
 It is most interesting to hear from Romain 
 Rolland himself the genesis of a book that has 
 stirred two continents. While he was in Rome, 
 ten years before the first volume appeared, 
 he conceived the idea of the whole book, planned 
 the chapters, and entirely composed a great 
 part of the volumes v.hich are yet to be pub- 
 lished. "... I was isolated, stifling like so 
 many others in France in a world of moral 
 enmity. I wished to breathe, I wished to react 
 against an unhealthy civilization, against opinion 
 corrupted by a false minority. I wished to say 
 to this minority : ' You lie ! you do not represent 
 France.' For this I needed a hero with clear 
 vision and a pure heart, whose soul was un- 
 sullied enough to give him the right to speak 
 and whose voice was strong enough to make 
 itself heard. I built this hero patiently. Be- 
 fore deciding to write the first line of my 
 book I carried it within me for years; Chris- 
 tophe did not start on his journey until I 
 had seen his road to the end. ..." 
 
 And in Romain Rolland's answer to the ques- 
 tion " Is Jean-Christophe a novel or is it a
 
 Romain Holland 3 
 
 biography?" he defines succinctly his attitude 
 to his book. " It is clear," he says in a preface 
 to one of the books of " Jean-Christophe in 
 Paris," " that I have never had the pretension 
 to write a novel. . . . What then is this book? 
 A poem? Why do you need a name? When 
 you see a man, do you ask him is he a novel 
 or a poem? This is a man that I have made. 
 The life of man is not shut up in the narrow 
 limits of literary form. It is a law in itself 
 and each life has its own law. Some lives are 
 like tranquil lakes . . . others are fruitful 
 plains. . . . Jean-Christophe has always seemed 
 to me a river." 
 
 The above and what follows is from the 
 modest " Introduction," Jean Bonnerot has pro- 
 vided for a little volume of extracts in French 
 from Professor Holland's works. In this he 
 not only gives all sorts of interesting informa- 
 tion about Romain Holland's life, but in apt 
 quotations tells us more about the inspiration 
 and the methods of Romain Holland's work 
 and the author's own attitude to it, than we 
 could learn from volumes of anecdote or critical 
 analysis. "... My state of mind," Romain 
 Holland writes to a friend, " is always that 
 of a musician, not of a painter. At first, I 
 conceive like a nebulous musical impression the 
 whole of a work, then the principal motives, 
 and, above all, the rhytiim, not so much of 
 isolated phrases as the sequence of the volumes 
 in relation to the whole, the chapters in the 
 volumes, and the paragraphs in the chapters.'' 
 
 Romain Holland is French on both sides of 
 
 2030284
 
 Romain Rolland 
 
 the house. On his father's side he comes of a 
 family of notaries; his mother's family \vere 
 magistrates and lawyers. He was born in 
 Clamecy, Januarj^ 29th, 1866, and received his 
 early education from the schools there, and 
 his first lessons in music from his mother. 
 His parents destined him for the Polytechnic 
 School, but he wished to devote himself to 
 music, and in 1886 he entered the Ecole Normale 
 in Paris. Here he first became acquainted with 
 the works of Wagner and of Tolstoy, the two 
 men who, he says, with Shakespeare, have had 
 the greatest formative influence upon him. He 
 is wholly in sympathy with Wagner's theories 
 of music and with Tolstoy's ethical ideals, and 
 his play, " Orsino," written while he was at the 
 French School in Rome, and which narrowly 
 escaped production at the Comedie Fran^aise, 
 is based upon Shakespeare's methods. 
 
 A humbler influence may be traced to his 
 great-grandfather on the paternal side, who 
 was an ardent revolutionist and had an abso- 
 lute mania for writing down every day what 
 he read, heard, said, ate, and did. Almost the 
 whole of this immense journal was burned ex- 
 cept some fragments recounting the events of 
 July 14th, 1789, in Paris, where the old man 
 happened to be on the return of the victorious 
 people; but it is doubtless the origin of Olivier's 
 journal in " Jean-Christophe in Paris," and 
 more than one rejoinder and reflection in Ro- 
 main Rolland's play " I Juillet " were drawn 
 from the dust and shadow of these family 
 papers.
 
 Romain Holland 
 
 In August, 1895, a year after his return 
 from Rome to the Ecole Normale, he married. 
 A little later he was sent to Italy on an official 
 mission, and while there he collected the ma- 
 terial for his thesis, the " Origins of the Mod- 
 ern Lyric Theater; a History of Opera in 
 Europe before Lulli and Scarlatti," which was 
 accepted by the Sorbonne in 1895. In 1897 he 
 was appointed to a professorship, the History 
 of Art, in the Higher ficole Xormale, and in 
 1903, at the time the Ecole Xormale was re- 
 organized and its professors and pupils were 
 transplanted to the Sorbonne, the course in the 
 History of Art, which he had taught since 
 1897, became a course in the History of Music. 
 The most interesting account of the years of 
 his professorship and the dangers and difficul- 
 ties of university life is given in Jean-Chris- 
 tophe's talks with Olivier. 
 
 From 1898 to 190;:?, was the heroic period 
 of Romain Rolland's life. In 1898 the Theatre 
 de rCEuvre produced " Aert," a play in three 
 acts, and from this day "the life of Romain 
 RoUand mingles so profoundly with his work 
 that the former has no other aim, no other 
 reason for being." He determined to write a 
 dramatic commentary on the French Revolu- 
 tion — a sort of epic comprising a decade of 
 drama. These plays, each complete in itself, 
 taken as a whole are to be separate acts of the 
 Drama of the Revolution. 
 
 Professor, biographer, musical critic on one 
 important review and founder of another, play- 
 wright and novelist, the dream and ambition of
 
 Romain Rolland 
 
 Romain Rolland's life is to establish a People's 
 Theater, which shall express their aims, their 
 ideals and their wrongs, and set forth their 
 obligations and their opportunities. And it is 
 interesting, and amazing, to learn that Monsieur 
 Bonnerot considers that " Jean-Christophe "^ 
 in itself an achievement of magnitude — " ex- 
 plains, supplements, completes, the People's 
 Theater, It is addressed to all without dis- 
 tinction of class or origin; it is concerned with 
 the hatreds, the joys, the sorrows, in which all 
 are equal. It is a different thing from an in- 
 tellectual book written for the entertainment 
 of the salon or to achieve a vain success. Jean- 
 Christophe says" aloud what others are afraid 
 to think. ..." 
 
 In between the times of his multifarious in- 
 terests and accomplishments Romain Rolland 
 published and " dedicated to civilization " a 
 drama on the English issues in the Transvaal, 
 " The Time Will Come," and Monsieur Bonne- 
 rot tells us that he has put into the mouth of 
 one of Lord Clifford's prisoners the dominating 
 principle of his own life: "All injustice is 
 my enemy. . . . My country is everywhere 
 liberty is violated."
 
 Edwin Francis Edgett in the Boston Tran- 
 script, Decenmber 14, 1910. 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 The Story of a Temperament from Ixfaxcy 
 TO Manhood 
 
 Jean-Christophe: Dawn, Morning, Youth, Re- 
 volt. By Romain Holland, Translated In' Gil- 
 bert Cannan. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 
 
 The six hundred pages of " Jean-Christophe " 
 merely carry us across the threshold of its 
 hero's life. One volume has been made of the 
 four volumes in which the original French ver- 
 sion of the story appeared, and there are to 
 come, we believe, two more in Mr. Cannan's 
 highly commendable and eifective translation. 
 In Paris ten yellow-covered paper books will be 
 necessary to bring Jean-Christophe's multitudi- 
 nous adventures before the eager French public. 
 In these first six hundred pages we accompany 
 Jean-Christophe Krafft through the four early 
 stages of his career, and as he is only twenty 
 when the last word is said, it may easily be 
 seen that his life and M. Rolland's record of 
 it is very full. 
 
 In " Jean-Christophe " the novelist begins at 
 the beginning, at the very moment when the 
 new-born child is stirring in his cradle. " The 
 child wakes and cries, and his eyes are troubled. 
 Oh ! how terrible ! The darkness, the sudden
 
 8 Romain Rolland 
 
 flash of the lamp, the hallucinations of a mind 
 as yet hardly detached from chaos, the stifling, 
 roaring night in which it is enveloped, the 
 illimitable gloom from which, like blinding 
 shafts of light, there emerge acute sensations, 
 sorrows, phantoms — those enormous faces lean- 
 ing over him, those eyes that pierce through 
 him, penetrating, are beyond his comprehen- 
 sion ! He has not the strength to cry out, 
 terror holds him motionless, with eyes and 
 mouth wide open and he rattles in his throat. 
 His large head, that seems to have swollen 
 up, is wrinkled with the grotesque and lamen- 
 table grimaces that he makes, the skin of his 
 face and hands is brown and purple, and 
 spotted with yellow." This is Jean-Christophe 
 as we first see him, and through twenty years 
 of infancy and youth he pursues an erratic 
 course in which his ideals are paramount and 
 continuously at odds with common sense. 
 
 Coming of artistic parentage, he could, per- 
 haps, be none other than he is. His father 
 and grandfather were musicians, both known 
 to all the musicians of the country from 
 Cologne to Mannheim, and at the time of his 
 birth they were living in a little town on the 
 Rhine, not far from the Belgian frontier. It 
 is there that the first twenty years of Jean- 
 Christophe's life are spent, and from end to 
 end of this first volume of his history we rarely 
 leave its borders. Thither the elder Krafi^t had 
 come in boyhood, and there he dwelt till the 
 end of his days. Jean-Christophe's mother was 
 of the servant class, and the old Jean Michel
 
 J ean-Christophe 
 
 had been profoundly humiliated by his son's 
 marriage, " for he had built great hopes upon 
 Melchior; he had wished to make him the dis- 
 tinguished man which he had failed to make 
 himself." All his ambitions, he felt, were de- 
 stroyed by this freak of his son. " He had 
 stormed at first, and showered curses upon 
 Melchior and Louisa. But, being a good- 
 natured creature, he forgave his daughter-in- 
 law when he learned to know her better; and 
 even came by a paternal affection for her, 
 which showed itself for the most part in snubs." 
 It is to show the contrast between the ideal 
 and the real, between the efforts of a genius 
 to keep his face to the future and the repress- 
 ing force of a community that looks inevitably 
 backward, that M. Holland has undertaken to 
 give us this finely particularized record and 
 closely analyzed study of the progress of a 
 youthful life and intellect. That his scenes and 
 characters are German appears to have no 
 national significance, for the novelist is not 
 satirizing a people or a community. He is 
 merely showing us a characteristic section of 
 humanity, and it is mere chance that it happens 
 to be German. " More than anywhere else 
 there reigned the distrust, so innate in the 
 German people, of anything new, the sort of 
 laziness in feeling anything true or powerful 
 which has not been pondered and digested by 
 several generations." Of the French, he will 
 doubtless have no less to say when Jean- 
 Christophe begins, at the age of twenty, his 
 life in Paris.
 
 10 Romain Rolland 
 
 Varied is the course of Jean-Christophe 
 through these twenty years, and unreserved 
 is M. Rolland in his record and commentary. 
 While scarcely more than a baby, he is taught 
 the piano by Melchior, who sees glorious visions 
 of a great future for the boy and an equally 
 auspicious old age for himself as the father 
 of a prodigy and a genius. But drink soon 
 ends him, and the boy goes his own way — which 
 is the way of an irresponsible prodigy and a 
 genius. He will brook no opposition, he will 
 endure no controverting of his own judgment, 
 and after quickly rising in the public esteem as 
 a composer and teacher, he makes an equally 
 rapid fall. All his doings, his motives, his 
 emotions, are disclosed by the novelist. We 
 read of his love affairs, both platonic and erotic. 
 We are told of his few triumphs and many 
 failures as a musician, and there is scarcely a 
 moment when we are unable to read his very 
 soul. And even though to the placid mind 
 which takes life as it finds it, his actions may 
 seem the height of folly, we see in them nothing 
 but what is as inevitable as it is frequently 
 inexplicable. His is a character that we need 
 not explain, and for which we need seek no 
 explanation. He is the type of the irresponsi- 
 ble artist whose conduct in all its extremes is 
 due to an unquenchable egotism that, while it 
 may be preposterous, is at the same time par- 
 donable. He lives in a world for which he is 
 unsuited, and he beats his feeble hands against 
 its bars in a futile attempt to escape to his 
 Utopia.
 
 Jean-Christophe 11 
 
 For no moment does the novelist lapse from 
 his consistent view of Jean-Christophe's char- 
 acter. While he offers us at times his own 
 opinions, he does not obtrude them, and they 
 are fused into the story. Despite its length, 
 the narrative does not seem unduly long. Six 
 hundred pages is a small amount of space over 
 which to spread the events of twenty years, 
 especially when they deal with a human being 
 whose mind and soul were filled with a pent-up 
 energy. From year to year the story moves 
 at a rapid pace. It never lags. It moves along 
 as time moves, speedily and irrevocably. It 
 brings to life one character after another, oiu 
 and young, men and women, as they cross the 
 path of Jean-Christophe, and always we see 
 them as he sees them, or as they should be seen 
 in relation to him. There can be no doubt 
 that " Jean-Christophe '' is the most momentous 
 novel that has come to us from France, or 
 from any other European country, in a decade. 
 It may not seem immediately great, but it is 
 unquestionably important and significant in its 
 presentation to us of the mind of man and the 
 soul of a man.
 
 By Francis E. Regal in the Springfield Be- 
 pubUcan, December 3, 1911. 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE IN PARIS 
 
 A Masterpiece or a New Day 
 
 Comments upon the second volume of the 
 English translation of Remain Rolland's great 
 novel. 
 
 We are to account no man happy until he 
 is dead; on the same principle we should con- 
 sider no book successful till it is finished. Yet 
 now and then the temptation to anticipate is 
 irresistible, as in the case of Romain Rolland's 
 huge masterpiece, " Jean-Christophe," the first 
 volume of which, comprising four of the ten 
 French volumes, was published early in the 
 year by Henry Holt & Co. The high estimate 
 then put upon it remains unaltered by a read- 
 ing of the second volume in English, issued 
 this fall by the same publishers, in which the 
 German hero comes to Paris and sees French 
 life as searchingly as in the first volume he 
 had seen the life of Germany. No work of 
 fiction published in our day has exerted a 
 greater influence on thoughtful readers, and 
 perhaps none has been more variously judged 
 by critics. 
 
 This discrepancy, in itself a mark of extraor- 
 dinary quality, is easily to be explained. The 
 reviewers who have treated it like an ordinary
 
 Jeuri-Christophe in Paris 13 
 
 novel of the day, applying the usual canons 
 as to unity, action, etc., have naturally found 
 it deficient. Those who have seen that it is 
 only in the technical sense a novel, and have 
 treated it as the most profound and compre- 
 hensive criticism of modern life which has yet 
 been vouchsafed, have wasted no time in con- 
 sidering its defects as a novel. It is not to 
 be judged by the ordinary rules, for the reason 
 that it is no ordinary novel. It is one of those 
 fundamental books that stand apart, that con- 
 tain the seeds of new life. Whether the seeds 
 sprout depends, of course, on the trend of his- 
 tory — great books may sink and be forgotten 
 because they appear on the slope of a descend- 
 ing wave in which they are swamped. But if 
 we are at the beginning of a great upward 
 sweep, a cyclic movement in art and letters, 
 " Jean-Christophe " will be reckoned one of 
 the epochal books of our time, not less im- 
 portant than the early masterpieces of the 
 romantic revival in the eighteenth century. It 
 is a work too big to be measured save by an 
 imaginative perspective view. 
 
 Nor is it a book for all readers; that should 
 be made clear at the outset to avoid disappoint- 
 ment. It does not, it is true, require of the 
 reader a technical knowledge of music, though 
 the hero is a great musician, modeled a little 
 on Beethoven, a very little on Wagner, and 
 somewhat on Hugo Wolf, whiV? bis ideas are 
 necessarily largely the ideas of Rolland. But 
 the reader does need, in order to appreciate 
 the critical discussion ''« which a large part
 
 li Romaiii RoUand 
 
 of this inordinately long book is devoted, some 
 familiarity with the conditions and problems 
 of modern artistic and intellectual life. From 
 the book itself one may understand much of 
 the throes through \vhich the Europe of to-day 
 is passing, but to appreciate fully the keen 
 analysis of contemporary art, music, letters, 
 and social life, a wide knowledge is required. 
 Yet it is by no means a book for the few alone; 
 many readers will find it stimulating and sug- 
 gestive, even though they miss the point of 
 many of the allusions. The author is a dis- 
 ciple, to some extent, of Tolstoi, and has 
 written an admirable book on the great Rus- 
 sian teacher. Something of the Tolstoian spirit 
 appears in " Jean-Christophe," specially in its 
 insistence on ethical ideals in art and literature 
 and the contempt shown for the shallow techni- 
 cal skill with which Europe has for a genera- 
 tion been surfeited. 
 
 The scope of this second volume of 473 pages 
 is quite as comprehensive as that of the first. 
 In that we were shown the infancy, childhood, 
 youth, and early career of a great genius, a 
 moody, passionate, exigent soul, chafing at the 
 mediocrity he saw triumphant about him, dash- 
 ing himself hopelessly against the walls of the 
 Philistines. We took leave of him crossing the 
 French frontier a fugitive from the militarism 
 which has devastated the land of Goethe and 
 Schiller. In this new volume we see him knock- 
 ing at the doors of Paris, and the book is 
 largely concerned with the shattering of the 
 ideals of that brilliant capital which he had
 
 Jean-Christophe in Paris 15 
 
 formed in his stuffy German provincial town, 
 and with his search for the real France, the 
 France that has been a lamp to the world. 
 He finds it at last, and the real France as 
 M. Holland pictures it is curiously different 
 from the conventional ideal of the country. 
 
 Paris, where Jean-Christophe undergoes hu- 
 miliations much like those of Wagner, who had 
 to support himself by arranging operatic airs 
 for the cornet, he finds exploited by foreigners 
 — Jews, Italians, Germans, Levantines, South 
 Americans. The arts were being prostituted 
 in the market-place; sensuality, obscenity, deca- 
 dence were everywhere: "The more closely he 
 examined that sort of art, the more acutely 
 he became aware of the odor which from the 
 first he had detected faintly in the beginning, 
 then more strongly, and finally it was suffocat- 
 ing; the odor of death. Death; it was every- 
 where beneath all the luxury and the uproar." 
 Jean-Christophe's quest is for the hidden life 
 of France, the sterling qualities hidden by the 
 glitter of the capital. He succeeds at last by 
 the help of a friend, a shy young French poet, 
 Olivier, brother of the French governess, An- 
 toinette, whom Jean-Christophe had encountered 
 in Germany, and whose sad history constitutes 
 a pathetic episode in this second volume. 
 Secretly she had loved the composer, but 
 Olivier keeps her secret. Through him Jean- 
 Christophe finally divines the secret of the 
 greatness of France, and finds it where one 
 would least look for it — not in academies or 
 salons or collective scientific undertakings, but
 
 16 Romain Rolland 
 
 in scattered individuals. So far from being 
 the most systematic and gregarious of nations, 
 they were the most divided: "There was no 
 sort of mutual interchange. There was no 
 unanimity on any . subject in France, except 
 at those very rare moments when unanimity 
 assumed an epidemic character, and, as a rule, 
 it was wrong, for it was morbid. A crazy 
 individualism predominated in every kind of 
 French activity; in scientific research as well 
 as in commerce, for it prevented business men 
 from combining and organizing ^\orking agree- 
 ments." All this is most unsettling to received 
 opinion, but "Jean-Christophe" is nothing if 
 not unsettling; it is a book which at almost 
 every point goes behind the received opinion. 
 It is a book which students of our own times, 
 whether they like it or not, cannot afford to 
 ignore.
 
 By Waldo R. Browne in The Dial, March 
 1, 1914 
 
 A review of the completed trilogy, including 
 Jeax-Christopiie: Jourxey's Exd 
 
 A GREAT CONTEMPORARY NOVEL 
 
 The first of the three volumes containing 
 "Jean-Christophe" in its English version ap- 
 peared during the winter of 1910; the last, 
 something less than a year ago. If the book 
 bore any relation to the generality of current 
 fiction, some apology for dealing with it so 
 tardily might be in order. But when one has 
 to do with a xcork of (jenius, apologies may as 
 well be dispensed with. Compared with the 
 great mass of current novels, "Jean-Christophe" 
 is as an oak-tree rising above a field of stimmer 
 grass. We should like to have been among the 
 earliest to proclaim its qualities; that privilege 
 having been missed, we can at least avoid a 
 place among the tardiest. 
 
 Notwithstanding its recognition by Mr. Ed- 
 mund Gosse and other high critical authorities 
 as "the first great novel of the new century," 
 the book seems as yet to have found only a 
 small fraction of its destined English audience. 
 Critical superlatives are too much soiled by 
 ignoble use to carry much force nowadays; and 
 as much as ever in the past, genius is still left 
 to make its own way as it can. No doubt the 
 unusual bulk of "Jean-Christophe" has de-
 
 18 Romain RoIIand 
 
 terred many possible readers. A generation 
 that is accustomed to considering its fiction, 
 like its pills, the better for being readily bolted 
 is not likely to look with favor upon a novel of 
 seventeen hundred rather closely printed pages. 
 But for our part, we should be glad if the 
 three volumes had been multiplied into thirty. 
 Indeed, the same material, — the same wealth 
 of character, the same reservoir of ideas, — 
 might well have served a less rigorous artist 
 for thirty novels instead of one. Into the mak- 
 ing of "Jean-Christophe" has gone the greater 
 part of its author's life. The French original, 
 in ten volumes, occupied nearly a decade in the 
 publishing; and M. Rolland has said that the 
 book was in conception many years before the 
 first page was written, — "Christophe only set 
 out on his journey when I had been able to see 
 the end of it for him." 
 
 "The writers of to-day," says Christophe to 
 his friend Olivier, in one of their discussions, 
 
 "Waste their energy in describing- human rari- 
 ties, or cases that are common enough in the 
 abnormal groups of men and women living on 
 the fringe of the great society of active, healtliy 
 human beings. Since they themselves have shut 
 themselves off from life, leave them and go 
 where there are men. Show the life of every 
 day to the men and women of every day: that 
 life is deeper and more vast than the sea. The 
 smallest among you bears the infinite in his 
 soul. The infinite is in every man who is sim- 
 ple enough to be a man, in the lover, in the 
 friend, in the woman who pays with her pangs 
 for the radiant glory of the day of childbirth, in 
 every man and every woman who lives in ob- 
 scure self-sacrifice which will never be known
 
 Jean-Christophe : Journey's End 19 
 
 to another soul: it is the very river of life, flow- 
 ing from one to another, from one to another, 
 and back again and round. . . . "Write the 
 simple life of one of these simple men. write 
 the peaceful epic of the days and nights fol- 
 lowing, following one like to another, and yet all 
 different, all sons of the same mother, from the 
 dawning of the first day in the life of the world. 
 Write it simply, as simple as its own unfold- 
 ing. Waste no thought upon the word, and the 
 letter, and the subtle vain researches in which 
 the force of the artists of to-day is turned to 
 naught. You are addressing all men: use the 
 language of all men. There are no words noble 
 or vulgar; there is no style chaste or impure: 
 there are only words and styles which say or 
 do not say exactly what they have to say. Be 
 sound and thorough in all you do: think just 
 what you think, — and feel just what you feel. 
 Let the rhythm of your heart prevail in your 
 writings! The style is the soul." 
 
 This is M. Rolland's literary creed, and out of 
 it has come "Jean-Christophe." There is noth- 
 ing of conventional plot in the book. Its con- 
 necting thread throughout is the history of ? 
 human soul, — the soul of Jean-Christophe Kraft, 
 native of Germany, the descendant of several 
 generations of musicians and himself destined 
 to be the greatest musician of them all. In 
 physique and will he does not belie his sur- 
 name; but his is the strength out of which 
 comes sweetness, — a strength that carries him 
 unconquered, though not unscathed, through 
 battle with all the forces that can be sent 
 against a man's spirit, — a strength that in- 
 spires and invigorates all who come within its 
 influence. Concerning the origin of his book, 
 M. Rolland has written: "I was stiflinar . . .
 
 20 Rom (tin Roll and 
 
 in a hostile moral atmosphere, I wanted to 
 breathe, I wanted to react against a sickly civ- 
 ilization. ... I needed a hero of pure eyes 
 and pnre heart, with a soul sufficiently un- 
 blemished to have the right to speak, and M'ith 
 a voice strong enough to make itself heard." 
 Such a hero is Jean-Christophe; but his purity 
 of eye and heart contains no trace of pharisa- 
 ism. He is a creature of stormy impulses and 
 emotions, who stumbles and blunders as fre- 
 quently as any, yet who never makes terms with 
 the enemy, whether within or without. 
 
 But the book as a whole is far more than a 
 biography of Jean-Christophe Kraft. It is an 
 analysis, a synthesis, a criticism of present-day 
 life in all of its most significant phases. It is 
 an illuminating estimate of European culture, 
 a sane and penetrative discussion of social ten- 
 dencies, an inspiring handbook of ethics, a pro- 
 found and eloquent treatise on music, — and 
 much else besides. AVe doubt if any other 
 writer since Tolstoy has been so successful in 
 clarifying the welter of our contemporary civ- 
 ilization, — "beneath the chaos of facts perceiv- 
 ing the little undistinguished gleam which re- 
 veals the progress of the historv of the human 
 mind." 
 
 Weavers, all of us, of the great fabric of 
 humanity, M-e are taken for a moment from the 
 tiny segment of our individual labor, and the 
 wide tangle of loose ends which shows for us 
 as the collective labor of our generation, and 
 are granted a glimpse of the ordered design
 
 Jean-Christophe: Journey^ s End 21 
 
 that is slowly taking form on the other side 
 of the fabric. And this, in our opinion, is the 
 noblest ser\ice that literature can perform. 
 
 "Jean-Christophe" is thus before all else an 
 interjiretation of life, a "novel of ideas" in the 
 truest sense. But for all that, its chief concern 
 is ^not with the "intellectuals" but with com- 
 monest and lowliest humanity. The kingdom it 
 ]iortrays is inherited not by the successful and 
 the arrogant — the so-called strong men who are 
 held up so generally in life and in literature 
 as patterns of human conduct, — but always by 
 the meek and the poor in spirit. Nothing in 
 the book is more typical of its author's spirit 
 than such a passage as this: 
 
 "Christophe felt utterly weary of the -fevered, 
 sterile world, the conflict between egoisms and 
 ideas, the little groups of human beings deem- 
 ing themselves above humanity, the ambitious, 
 the thinkers, the artists who think themselves 
 the brain of the world, and are no more than a 
 haunting, evil dream. And all his love went out 
 to those thousands of simple souls, of every na- 
 tion, whose lives burn away in silence, pure 
 flames of kindness, faith, and sacrifice, — the 
 heart of the world." 
 
 It is the ambition of M. Rolland's art to help 
 the people "to live, to correct their errors, to 
 conquer their prejudices, and to enlarge from 
 day to day their thoughts and their hearts." 
 Understanding as clearly as any the futility 
 and danger of many "popular" tendencies, he 
 yet never reacts into that attitude of harsh 
 intolerance or brutal indifference so common 
 among the intellectual classes of to-day. It is
 
 22 Roma'in Roll and 
 
 his belief that the individualist who cuts him- 
 self off from sjTnpathetic contact with the mass 
 of mankind repudiates thereby the first law of 
 Christianity. "If any man," says M. Holland, 
 "would see the living God face to face, he 
 must seek him, not in the empty firmament of 
 his own brain, but in the love of men." 
 
 As in every great work of art, this pervad- 
 ing quality of humaneness is here secondary 
 only to the quality of absolute sincerity. A 
 love of truth as passionate as Ruskin's, as un- 
 compromising as Carlyle's, g^ows through every 
 page. With Teufelsdrockh, Jean-Christophe 
 never fails to cry : "Truth ! though the heavens 
 crush me for following her: no Falsehood! 
 though a whole celestial Lubberland were the 
 price of Apostacy." This high sincerity could 
 scarcely fail to be inherent in a book so largely 
 the distillation of spiritual experience, so little 
 the product of artifice. The M'ork was con- 
 ceived, as we have seen, in a spirit of intense 
 reaction to falsehood and cant. Its author is 
 one who has evidently known the acutest mental 
 and physical suffering, but who yet has courage 
 "to look anguish in the face and venerate it." 
 In a day when there is so widespread a ten- 
 dency not only to repudiate the moral value 
 of suffering, but to fasten upon it a definite 
 stigma of shame, such a courage is as rare as 
 it is salutary. 
 
 It should not be inferred that "Jean-Chris- 
 tophe" is any the less appealing and readable 
 as a book of fiction because of the higher quali- 
 ties emphasized in the foregoing, — though of
 
 Jean-Christophe : Journej/s End 23 
 
 course the book could never interest those who 
 are content with the sta])le })roduct of our 
 fiction-factories. Even should the cultivated 
 reader wish to skip rather freely, in the residue 
 he will find a wealth of rare treasure. We 
 know of few pages in literature more subtly 
 and tenderly sympathetic than the record of 
 Christophe's early cliildhood, more deeply stirr- 
 ing than the spiritual battle de})icted in "The 
 Burning Bush," more poignantly beautiful than 
 the account of Christophe's passing in the final 
 chapter. And what a wonderful pageant of 
 human character moves through the book, — 
 what a gallery of vivid and varied portraiture ! 
 Who that has come to know them w ill ever for- 
 get Jean Michel, Gottfried, old Schulz, Olivier, 
 Christophe himself, among the men; Louisa, 
 Sabine, Antoinette, Grazia, among the women? 
 In conclusion, we shall venture the statement 
 that with this work M. Holland takes his place 
 in contemporary literature as the spiritual and 
 artistic successor of Tolstoy. He becomes the 
 standard-bearer around whom will rally the 
 idealistic forces of the new century. More pro- 
 foundly than any other yet offered by this cen- 
 tury, the gospel he has given us M'ill inspire and 
 direct those who are toiling in the cause of 
 human brotherhood, — "the free spirits of all 
 nations who suifer, fight, and will prevail." 
 That he assumes no authority, and claims no 
 followers, only makes his leadership the more 
 secure. He would have us understand almost 
 before all else that human progress, like life 
 itself, is not a smooth-flowing development, but
 
 24 Jea/n-Christophe in Paris 
 
 a series of metamorphoses or transmutations; 
 that each generation must wage its own battle 
 for its own truth, and then without bitterness 
 give place to a younger generation which per- 
 chance will carry the combat to a far different 
 quarter of the field. To fight is "the great duty; 
 to have fought, the only honor. The issue is 
 always in the future; the hope is always with 
 the new generation. In no other way can we 
 more fittingly take leave of this noble book 
 ^han in the words of its author, appended as a 
 preface *:o the final volume: 
 
 "I have written the tragedy of a generation 
 which is nearlng its end. I have sought to con- 
 ceal neither its vices nor its virtues, its 
 profound sadness, its chaotic pride, its heroic 
 efforts, its despondency beneath the overwhelm- 
 ing burden of a superhuman task, the burden of 
 the whole world, the reconstruction of the 
 world's morality, its esthetic principles, its 
 faith, the forging of a nev/ humanity. — Such 
 Vi-e have been. 
 
 "You young men, you men of to-day, march 
 over us, trample us under your feet, and press 
 onward. Be ye greater and happier than we. 
 
 "For myself, I bid the soul that was mine 
 farewell. I cast it from me like an empty shell. 
 Life is a succession of deaths and resurrections 
 We must die, Christophe, to be born again." 
 
 Jeajt-Christophe. Dawn — Morning — Youth 
 —Revolt. 
 Commences with the musician's childhood, 
 his fears, fancies, and troubles, and his almost 
 uncanny musical sense. He plays before the 
 Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for 
 greater things. An idol of the hour, in some 
 ways suggesting Richard Strauss, tries in vain 
 to wreck his faith in liis career. Early love.
 
 Romain Rolland 25 
 
 c])isode.s follow, and after a dramatic climax, 
 the hero, like Wagner, has to fly, a hopeful 
 exile. 
 
 Jeax-Christophe in- Paris. The Market-Place 
 
 — Antoinette — The House. 
 
 The further adventures of the great musician 
 after his exile to Paris. In "The Market- 
 place" we see the hero struggling to earn his 
 living and to conquer Paris. We are intro- 
 duced to numberless "society" circles in Paris, 
 and all the cliques of so-called musicians. 
 Christo})he's genius asserts itself and he be- 
 comes famous. The love story in "Antoinette" 
 is perhaps the finest thing in any of the three 
 books. The London Daily Mail says: "It is a 
 flawless gem." "The House" introduces us to 
 the friends and enemies of the young musician, 
 who gravitate around Christophe and his friend 
 Olivier amid the noisy and enigmatic whirl of 
 Parisian life. A war cloud rises between 
 France and Germany. The hero makes a hasty 
 trip to his Fatherland. 
 
 Jeax-Christophe: Jourxey's Ekd. Love and 
 Friendship — The Burning Bush — The New 
 Dawn. 
 
 This completes the great trilogy. 
 
 The first eighty pages are concerned chiefly 
 with the marriage of Christophe's best friend 
 Olivier, with Christophe's rise as a composer 
 and his love for a Parisian actress. Dramatic 
 episodes follow, and we see Jean-Christophe 
 fighting on the barricade in Paris, flying for
 
 26 Boohs on Music 
 
 his life to Switzerland, and there involved in 
 'an experience recalling Wagner's with Fran 
 Wesendonck. 
 
 Cloth, the set, $5.00 net; each volume $1.75 
 net. 
 
 Leather, the set, $10.00 net; individual vol- 
 umes not sold separately. 
 
 BOOKS ABOUT MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 
 
 By ROMAIN ROLLAND 
 
 In the following books the actual biographi- 
 cal material is given, but there is much more 
 than this. The author is a philosopher and 
 an artist; and against the background of the 
 bare facts he shows a living person and his 
 place in the history of music. His accounts 
 of the various musicians are rich with criti- 
 cisms of their work. 
 
 Some Musiciaxs or Former Days. Translated 
 by Mary Blaiklock. $1.50 net. 
 
 A rough sketch of the place of music in 
 general history opens the volume. Then fol- 
 low chapters on the beginnings of opera: Luigi 
 Rossi and his "Orfeo," the first^ opera played 
 in Paris; notes on Lully, Gluck, Gretry, 
 Mozart. 
 
 "The most interesting of contemporaneous 
 writers. Written with brilliant scholarship, 
 with critical insight and with flashes of human 
 sympathy and humor." — New York Sun.
 
 Henry Holt and Company £7 
 
 Musicians or To-dav. Translated from the 
 fifth French edition by Mary Bi^mklock. 
 With an Introduction by Claude Laxdi. 
 
 $1.50 net. 
 
 Berlioz's stormy career and music, Wagner's 
 "Siegfried" (that "rare vision of happiness in 
 a great tragic art") and "Tristan" ("more 
 religious perhaps through its sincerity than 
 Parsifal"), Saint-Saens, Vincent D'Indy, Hugo 
 Wolf, Perosi (the priest-composer), Debussy's 
 "Pelleas and Melisande," "The "Musical Move- 
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 concert music of Richard Strauss, etc. 
 
 "A remarkable study. For the first time full 
 and intelligent justice is done to Hector Ber- 
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 An interesting study of 'Pelleas et Melisande' 
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 discussed . . . shrewd comparisons between 
 the genius of French music and that of Ger- 
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 made by French musicians during the last 
 forty years. A book to be read many times." 
 — Philip Hale in the Boston Herald. 
 
 Beethovex. Translated by B. Coxstaxce 
 Hull. With a brief analysis of the 
 sonatas, the s\Tnphonies and the quartettes 
 by A. Eaglefteld Hull, and twenty-four 
 musical illustrations by Edward Carpenter. 
 
 $1.50 net.
 
 28 Books on Music 
 
 Haxdel. Translation and Introduction by A. 
 Eaglefield Hull. With seventeen musi- 
 cal illustrations and four jjlates. $1.50 net. 
 A work for the first time, putting the com- 
 poser of "The Messiah" into the proper aspect 
 not as a preacher, but as an artist, who loved 
 his fellows and the beauty of the world about 
 him. There are also musical illustrations, four 
 unusual pictures and an index. 
 
 "Much original criticism of the works them- 
 selves, discerning and discriminating, including 
 the Italian operas as well as the oratorios and 
 the instrumental compositions. Upholds M. 
 Holland's great reputation; . . . sounds sane 
 and well balanced ; a work not only of rip« 
 scholarship, but also of the judicious apprecia- 
 tion." — ISew York Times. 
 
 Music and Musicians. By Albert I.avigxac. 
 Translated by William Marchaxt. With 
 chapters on "Music in America" and "The 
 Present State of the Art of Music" by 
 H. E. Krehbiel. With numerous illustra- 
 tions. $2.00 net. 
 
 Practically a cyclopaedia of its subject. 
 
 The Rixg of the Nibelungen. By G. T. 
 DippoLD. $1.50 net. 
 
 'The mythological basis is explained. Then 
 the stories of the four music dramas are given, 
 with translations of many passages and some 
 description of the music,
 
 Henry Holt and Company 29 
 
 OrR Fa3iiliaii Songs and Those Who Made 
 TiiEM. By Hei.ex K. Johxsox. .$3.50 net. 
 Three hundred standard songs of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking race, arranged with piano accom- 
 paniment and preceded by sketches of the 
 writers and histories of tlie songs. 
 
 The Nibeluxgexlied. Translated by George H. 
 Needler into rhymed English verse in the 
 metre of the original. $2.00 net. 
 
 More Mastersixgers. By Filsox Youxg. $1.50 
 net. 
 The "Pastoral Symphony"; "Tristan and 
 Isolde"; Bach's "Organ Fugues"; Mozart's 
 "Requiem"; Tschaikovsky's "Sixth Symphony" 
 (Pathetique) ; "The Music of the Cafes"; "The 
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 Organists"; "Charles Halle"; "The Spirit of 
 the Piano"; "An Irish Musician"; "Hector 
 Berlioz." 
 
 More Mastersixgers. 
 
 $1.50 net. 
 
 "Place of Music in Modern Life"; "The 
 Musician as Composer"; "The Musician as 
 Interpreter"; "The Musician as Hearer"; "The 
 Art of the Conductor"; "The Music of the 
 Salon"; "The Old Age of Richard Wagner"; 
 "The Two Westminsters"; with some thoughts 
 on music and religion. 
 
 Some Forerux'X'ers of Italiax- Opera. By 
 W. J. Hex^dersox-^, musical critic of The 
 Sun, author of "Richard Wagner, His 
 Life and Dramas," "The Art of the Singer," 
 etc. $1.40 net.
 
 30 Boohs on Music 
 
 An account of Mediaeval lyric drama, showing 
 among other things the real artistic significance 
 of the birth of recitative, and leading up to 
 the introduction of opera in the last decade 
 of the sixteenth century by Peri and Caccini. 
 
 The contents cover early "Liturgical Drama," 
 the "Sacre Rappresentazioni," "Birthplace of 
 the Secular Drama," "The Artistic Impulse," 
 "Poliziano's 'Favola di Orfeo' " (five chapters 
 covering the work, the performance, music, 
 solos and orchestra), "Frottola Drama to Ma- 
 drigal," "Preponderance of the Spectacular," 
 "Influence of the Taste for Comedy," "Vecchi 
 and the Matured Madrigal Drama," the "Spec- 
 tacular Element in Music" and the "Medium 
 for Individual Utterance." 
 
 Chapters of Opera. By Hexry Edward Kreh- 
 BiEL, musical critic of the Neio York 
 Tribune, author of "Music and Manners in 
 the Classical Period," "Studies in the Wag- 
 nerian Drama," "How to IJsten to Music," 
 etc., with over seventy portraits and pic- 
 tures of opera houses. 
 
 $3.00 net. 
 
 The Wixd Band and Its Instruments. By 
 Artiit'r Clappe, 
 $1.75 net.
 
 B 
 
 III III III mil iiiiiiii iiiiiiiii 
 000 003 036 1 
 
 ROMAIX ROLLAND