Rolland, Romain

(1866-1944)

   writer, Nobel laureate

   Born in Clamecy, during a sojourn at the École française de Rome (1889-91), Romain Rolland met Malwilda von Meysenbug, who introduced him to Germanic culture. Passionate about music as well as art history, he published Vies des hommes illustres (1903-11) and Vie de Beethoven (1903), in which he presented his idea of a humanitarian heroism. Divided between the thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, Rolland imagined a nonviolent hero who would seek to "understand all so as to love all." His Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915), a series of articles written during a self-imposed exile in Switzerland (he was a pacifist), won him the Nobel Prize (1916) but also enemies on both sides of the Rhine. In contact with some noted world figures (he met Mohandas Gandhi and Maxim Gorky), Rolland wrote two vast novel series, Jean-Christophe (1903-12) and L'Âme enchantée (1922-33), works on the theater, and later published his autobiography, Voyage intérieur (1942).