Selected Letters of Romain Rolland (An Old and Rare Book)

This selection of letters of Romain Rolland, many of which are published here for the first time, are presented on the occasion of the Festival of France in India. They recall the privileged dialogue between India and the French writer. Attentive to the messages of other cultures, Rolland assigned himself the role of 'a sort of archway linking together the minds of men and women, of peoples and races' and particularly between Asia and Europe.

Addressed to a wide range of correspondents from Leo Tolstoy to Albert Schweitzer, Paul Seippel, Pastor Louis Ferriere, and Barbusse, the theme of 'oppressive violence of human society' is the unifying thread. The correspondence with Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi represents a gradual transition, from intensity to a quiet fluid probing into the nature of man, the creative process and the place of the socially responsible citizen in the modern world, along with an inner life of reflection.

At no time was Romain Rolland an ivory tower intellectual. He was concerned not just to create art, but how to live his life. And it became even more apparent in his later equally impassioned stance against the rising tide of Nazism in Europe and in support of the Indian struggle for independence.

One can see, both from a list of his correspondents as also from the contents of his letters, that Romain Rolland was himself engaged in and was drawn to others engaged in the pursuit of inner sources and resources that could be a beacon for action. Even in these few letters, all of the major movements and issues of the last decades of the 19th century and the first four decades of the 20th century are laid before us.

The letters reveal Rolland's deepest perceptions of the arts, and a delicacy of inter-personal sensitivity that is profoundly moving. After reading only a small selection of these letters, one feels one has touched the man; just as it is clear that the man had touched and been touched by those with whom he was corresponding.

The letters assembled here testify to his commitment: the sense of the spiritual unity of the world, the affirmation of a humanism that transcends boundaries.

FRANCIS DORE has had a career both as a diplomat and as an academic. His links with India are old and deep rooted and he has written many books on the country. Dr Doré is a member of the Asiatic Society and Honorary Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently Commissioner General of the Festival of France in India.

MARIE-LAURE PRÉVOST is curator at the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Paris. She has catalogued a number of collections, including the papers of Louis Pasteur, as well as the Romain Rolland archive. She is currently a member of the Institute of Texts and Modern Manuscripts (CNRS), the editorial board of the Bulletin du Bibliophile, and the Comité administratif du Fonds Romain Rolland.

Sixty years ago, in January of 1930, Romain Rolland noted in his Diary that the publication of his Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel coincided with the Declaration of Independ ence of India by Gandhi and Nehru at the Opening ceremonies of the Congress of Lahore.'

This selection of letters of Romain Rolland, presented on the occasion of this double anniversary, and at the close of the Festival of France in India, recalls the privileged dialogue between India and the French writer. Attentive to the messages of other cultures, Rolland assigned himself the role of a sort of archway linking together the minds of men and women, of peoples and races' (letter 44), and particularly between Asia and Europe.

The Voyage intérieur, much like the interior voyage that the author took in his letters and writings, allows us a glimpse into the background of Romain Rolland's encounter with India.

Born in the small town of Clamecy, 29 January 1866, a pure provincial Frenchman, from the heart of the country'. Rolland's interest in India began long before his first active engagement with the country from 1915 on.

A fervent admirer of Hugo, the young student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure read translations of Burnouf's Bhagavad Gita and the works of Spinoza, 'our European Krishna". Called 'the musical Buddha of a revolutionary mysticism' by one of his fellow students. Rolland composed a notebook of readings on Le Bouddha Siddartha. Around the same time, with his comrades, he discovered the geography of India in the classroom of Vidal de La Blache, and among his papers is a programme for a concert of Oriental music held in 1889.

Romain Rolland, musician, biographer, novelist, social activist, Nobel Laureate, committed in life and art to non-violence and peace, evoked reverence from all for the nobility of his character and the integrity of his art. Identified with humanitarian causes, the heroes of his biographies and his novels are idealists, filled with a passion to create bridges of communication between one age and another, the world of ideas of the West with those of the East.

In a preface to Jean Christophe, he said: I was isolated... I was stiffling in a world morally inimical to me. I wanted air. I wanted to react against unhealthy civilisation, against ideas corrupted by a sham elite.

Through the character of Jean Christophe, Romain Rol land, who reveals the past and the present, leaves the future open. The pristine absolute integrity of his search was shared by others, both peers and contemporaries, especially Tolstoy and Gandhi. Romain Rolland began as a researcher of Scarlatti and gained recognition as a renowned art historian of the 17th century. The social ethical being in him was sen sitive, impassioned, and active. The eight plays inspired by the French Revolution commenced his twin journey as creative writer and a man committed to act by the values he cherished.

Biographies were his logical instrument. Beginning with Beethoven and Michelangelo, he explored the life of Rama krishna and Vivekananda. In a preface to the biography Prophets of New India, (the life of Ramakrishna and Vivek ananda) he voiced his opposition to the so-called two antithetical forms of spirit for which the West and the East are supposed to stand, and he asserted that 'there is neither East nor West for the naked soul. To his Eastern readers, he said: battle; at this distance the hedges between the fields melt into an immense expanse. I can only see the same river, a majestic 'chemin qui marche' in the words of our Pascal. And it is because Ramakrishna more fully than any other man not only conceived, but realized in himself the total Unity of this river of God, open to all rivers and all streams, that I have given him my love; and 1 have drawn a little of his sacred water to slake the great thirst of the world.

**Contents and Sample Pages**