Moreover, what we lacked was an organiser who could bring the forces latent in us together effectively. We had only one prophet among us, a single man who looked ahead and saw what was to come, and the curious thing about it was that he lived among us, and it was a long time before we knew anything about him, although he had been sent by Fate as a leader. To me, finding him in the nick of time was a crucial stroke of luck, and it was hard to find him too, since he lived in the middle of Paris far from the hurly-burly of la foire sur la place.[4] Anyone who sets out to write an honest history of French literature in the twentieth century will be unable to ignore a remarkable phenomenon—the names of all kinds of writers were lauded to the skies in the Parisian newspapers of the time, except for the three most important of them, who were either disregarded or mentioned in the wrong context. From 1900 to 1914 I never saw the name of Paul Valéry mentioned as a poet in Le Figaro or Le Matin; Marcel Proust was considered a mere dandy who frequented the Paris salons, and Romain Rolland was thought of as a knowledgeable musicologist. They were almost fifty before the first faint light of fame touched their names, and their great work was hidden in darkness in the most enquiring city in the world.
It was pure chance that I discovered Romain Rolland at the right time. A Russian woman sculptor living in Florence had invited me to tea, to show me her work and try her hand at a sketch of me. I arrived punctually at four, forgetting that she was, after all, a Russian, so time and punctuality meant nothing to her. An old babushka who, I discovered, had been her mother’s nurse, took me into the studio—the most picturesque thing about it was its disorder—and asked me to wait. In all there were four small sculptures standing around, and I had seen them all within two minutes. So as not to waste time, I picked up a book, or rather a couple of brown-covered journals lying about the studio. These were entitled Cahiers de la Quinzaine,[5] and I remembered having heard that title in Paris before. But who could keep track of the many little magazines that sprang up all over the country, short-lived idealistic flowers, and then disappeared again? I leafed through one of them, containing L’Aube, by Romain Rolland, and began to read, feeling more astonished and interested as I went on. Who was this Frenchman who knew Germany so well? Soon I was feeling grateful to my Russian friend for her unpunctuality. When she finally arrived, my first question was, “Who is this Romain Rolland?” She couldn’t give me any very clear information, and only when I had acquired other issues of the magazine (the next was still in production) did I know that here at last was a work serving not just one European nation, but all of them and the fraternal connection between them. Here was the man, here was the writer who brought all the moral forces into play—affectionate understanding and an honest desire to find out more. He showed a sense of justice based on experience, and an inspiring faith in the unifying power of art. While the rest of us were squandering our efforts on small declarations of faith, he had set to work quietly and patiently to show the nations to one another through their most appealing individual qualities. This was the first consciously European novel being written at the time, the first vital call for fraternity, and it would be more effective in reaching a wider readership than Verhaeren’s hymns, and in being more cogent than all the pamphlets and protests. What we had all unconsciously been hoping and longing for was being quietly written here.
The first thing I did in Paris was to ask about him, bearing in mind what Goethe had said: “He has learnt, he can teach us.” I asked my friends about him. Verhaeren thought he remembered a play called The Wolves that had been staged at the socialist Théâtre du Peuple. Bazalgette had heard that Rolland was a musicologist and had written a short book on Beethoven. In the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale I found a dozen works of his about old and modern music, and seven or eight plays, all of which had appeared under the imprint of small publishing houses or in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine. Finally, by way of a first approach to him, I sent him a book of my own. A letter soon arrived inviting me to visit him, and thus began a friendship that, together with my relationships with Freud and Verhaeren, was one of the most fruitful and often crucial of my life.
Notable days in our lives have a brighter aura about them than the ordinary kind. So I now remember that first visit with great clarity. I climbed five narrow, winding flights of stairs in an unpretentious building in the boulevard Montparnasse, and even outside the door I felt a special kind of stillness; the noise in the street sounded hardly any louder than the wind blowing in the trees of an old monastery garden below the windows. Rolland opened the door and took me into his small room, which was crammed with books up to the ceiling. For the first time I saw his remarkably bright blue eyes, the clearest and at the same time kindest eyes I ever saw in any human being, eyes that drew colour and fire from his inmost feelings in conversation, darkly shadowed in sorrow, appearing to grow deeper when he was thinking, sparkling with excitement—those unique eyes, under lids that were a little overtired, easily became red-rimmed when he had been reading or staying up late, but could shine radiantly in a congenial and happy light. I observed his figure with a little anxiety. Tall and thin, he stooped slightly as he walked, as if the countless hours at his desk had weighed his head down; his very pale complexion and angular features made him look rather unwell. He spoke very quietly and was sparing of physical effort in general; he almost never went out walking, he ate little, did not drink or smoke, but later I realised, with admiration, what great stamina there was in that ascetic frame, what a capacity for intellectual work lay behind his apparent debility. He would write for hours at his small desk, which was piled high with papers; he would read in bed for hours, never allowing his exhausted body more than four or five hours of sleep, and the only relaxation in which he indulged was music. He played the piano very well, with a delicate touch that I shall never forget, caressing the keys as if to entice rather than force the notes out of them. No virtuoso—and I have heard Max Reger, Busoni and Bruno Walter playing in small gatherings—gave me such a sense of direct communication with the master composers he loved.
His knowledge was very wide, putting most of us to shame; although he really lived only through his reading eyes; he had a fine command of literature, philosophy, history, and the problems of all nations at all times. He knew every bar of classical music; he was familiar with even the least-known works of Galuppi and Telemann, and with the music of sixth-rate or seventh-rate composers as well, yet he took a passionate interest in all events of the present day. The world was reflected in this monastic cell of his as if in a camera obscura. He had been on familiar terms with the great men of his time, had been a pupil of Renan, a guest in Wagner’s house, a friend of Jaurès. Tolstoy had written him a famous letter that would go on record as human appreciation of his literary works. Here—and this always rejoices my heart—I sensed a human and moral superiority, an inner freedom without pride, something to be taken for granted in a strong mind. At first sight, and time has proved me right, I recognised him as the man who would be the conscience of Europe in its time of crisis. We talked about his Jean-Christophe novels. Rolland told me that he had tried to make the work fulfil a triple purpose—conveying his gratitude to music, his commitment to the cause of European unity, and an appeal to the nations to stop and think. Now we must all do what we could in our own positions, our own countries, our own languages. It was time, he said, to be more and more on our guard. The forces working for hatred, in line with their baser nature, were more violent and aggressive than the forces of reconciliation, and there were material interests behind them which, of their very nature, were more unscrupulous than ours. I found such grief over the fragility of earthly structures doubly moving in a man whose entire work celebrated the immortality of art. “It can bring comfort to us as individuals,” he replied to me, “but it can do nothing against stark reality.”
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The magazine in which Rolland’s