Petrograd, end of December, 1916.
My dear and valued comrade Romain Rolland,
WILL you be good enough to write a biography of Beethoven, suitable for children? I am simultaneously writing to H. G. Wells, whom I ask to let me have a life of Addison; Fridtjof Nansen will do the life of Christopher Columbus; I shall myself deal with the life of Garibaldi; the Hebrew poet Bialik will write the life of Moses. With the aid of the leading authors of our day I hope to produce a number of books for children, containing biographies of the leaders of mankind. The whole series will be issued under my editorship....
You know that in these days nothing needs our attention so much as young people. We grown-ups, we whose course is nearly run, are leaving a poor inheritance to our children, are bequeathing to them a sad life. This foolish war is a striking proof of our moral weakness, of the decay of civilisation. Let us, then, remind our children that men have not always been so weak and so bad as we are. Let us remind them that in all the nations there have been and still are great men, fine spirits. Now, above all, should we do this, when savagery and brutality are rife.... I beseech you, my dear Romain Rolland, to pen this biography of Beethoven, for I am convinced that no one can do it better than yourself....
I have read and reread the articles you have published during the war, and I take this opportunity of telling you that they have inspired me with profound respect and love for you. You are one of the rare persons whose soul has remained unaffected by the madness of this war. It is a delight to me to know that you have continued to cherish the best principles of humanity.... Allow me, from a great distance, to clasp you by the hand, dear comrade.
Maxim Gorki.
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At the end of January, Romain Rolland replied, accepting the proposal that he should rewrite the life of Beethoven for young people, and asking Gorki to indicate the length and the method of treatment. Was the book to be a causerie, or a plain statement of facts? Rolland suggested additional names for the series of biographies: Socrates; Francis of Assisi; representative figures of Asia.
. . . Will you permit me to make a friendly remark? I am a trifle uneasy as to some of the names mentioned in your letter, uneasy as to the effect upon children's minds. You propose to put before them such formidable examples as that of Moses. Your aim, obviously, is to impress on them the importance of moral energy, which is the source of all light. But it is not a matter of indifference whether this light be turned towards the past or towards the future. There is no lack of moral energy to-day. The quality abounds, but it is devoted to the service of an obsolete ideal, an ideal which oppresses and kills. I must admit that I am somewhat estranged from the great men of the past, considered as examples for the conduct of life. For the most part I am disappointed in them. I admire them on aesthetic grounds, but I cannot endure the intolerance and the fanaticism they so often display. Many of the gods whom they worshipped have to-day become dangerous idols. Mankind, I fear, will fail to fulfil its lofty destiny unless it can transcend these earlier ideals, unless it prove able to offer wider horizons to the coming generations. In a word, I love and admire the past; but I wish the future to excel the past. It can; it must....
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