“It is elder brother to Jean Christophe,” Rolland says, “less robust but not less faithful,” who uttered these words, which comprise Rolland’s creed in its most succinct formula.
To revive the energy of action of the French Revolution in order to continue thus the work interrupted in 1794; to set in motion the great passions, not for the purpose of arousing chauvinistic or revolutionary fanaticism, but in order to kindle anew the universal feeling of solidarity—this was the hope of Rolland and his friends for the future of France.
“This hope,” he says, “was one of the purest and holiest forces in our young lives.” Rolland, therefore, calls his Théâtre du peuple a document of the time, because it “reflects the artistic ideas and hopes of a whole generation.”
He gives voice now (1913) to that proud utterance: “Let the future judge us even should it prove that it was our crime to have believed too much in the future.”
That this little group has not yet been victorious, we know. Romain Rolland indicated the reason when he said: “In order to fashion a theatre for the people, we must first have a people; a people with a freedom of the soul able to enjoy art; a people with leisure; a people not oppressed by misery or incessant toil; a people not brutalized by every superstition and fanaticism from right and left; a people lord over itself and victor in the battle fought out from day to day.”
To these utterances of 1903 can be added one of this year, in which Rolland expressed himself most fervently and with comprehension in regard to the working class of women—and in that connection in regard to the whole woman question.[3] It was made evident, then, that the idealist Rolland is no advocate of the chauvanistic-religious reaction. His idealism is of the whirl of revolutionary times and the future.
His critique upon the classic French literature, his “Teutonism” in Jean Christophe, his political and religious radicalism, have made him as obnoxious to nationalistic-Catholic France as Mme. de Stael once was because of her De l’Allemagne. Among other evidences of Rolland’s status in his own country is the circumstance that when the French Academy recently awarded its new prize of 10,000 francs, it was given, through the influence of Maurice Barrès, to a wholly new man in French literature: André Lafon du Blaye, instructor in a Catholic private school, who had written a book about a school boy, a book which was found to possess that “elevated character” the awarding of the prize demanded! Jean Christophe had just been finished! It is, however, not merely in academic circles that Romain Rolland is denied recognition. He has succeeded in getting himself well hated in many another circle because of the cutting truths in Jean Christophe, directed against all factions. In Ord och Bild, 1912, George Brandes has given a brief but excellent characterization of Rolland’s spiritual and intellectual endowments and of his limitations.
Without doubt Rolland’s spiritual tendency in youth was determined not only by Tolstoy but also by Guyau; the more because Tolstoy has Guyau to thank for whatever of reason is found in his theories of art.
In regard to the influence of Guyau upon Tolstoy and Nietzsche, see, for example, Professor Albert Nilson’s excellent essay upon Guyau’s Aesthetics.
In the mind of Rolland as well as of Guyau, the ethical ideal is the highest intensive quality of life, the most effective energy. Rolland is far from the Christian asceticism that diluted the wine of Tolstoy. But along with Tolstoy, with Guyau, with Nietzsche, he demands an art that possesses life’s consummate vigor; that is itself the richest life, the highest intensity of power. In other words: the ethical ideal and the aesthetic are at heart the same thing; the fundamental principle of art and religion is solidarity; the sense of beauty is at the same time the most intensive and the most expansive of feelings, and so—like the love of humanity—the great fraternizing power. “They who love most create most richly,” and “the work that reveals to us the life of greatest value is the noblest”: these propositions permeated Rolland just as they did Guyau and Tolstoy, although Rolland establishes a basis of valuation quite different from that of the latter. Perhaps Bergson, too, has in some respects confirmed Rolland’s personal view of life. But as Rolland’s view was enunciated before Bergson began to write, the influence could have been only to strengthen, not to determine it. No idea harmonized better with Rolland’s own innermost being than that respecting the power of the spirit to make a way for creative, unfathomable, inexhaustible life. Jean Christophe, from the first chapter to the last, is an illustration of this explosive power, this élan vital.