Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland (The Complete 10-Volume Novel), Translated by Gilbert Cannan, with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn, and Illustrations by Katherine Eglund

by Romain Rolland

Presenting "Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland (The Complete 10-Volume Novel), Translated by Gilbert Cannan, with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn, and Illustrations by Katherine Eglund." This collection is part of The Essential Series by Golding Books.

The ten volumes of Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe were published between 1904 and 1912, first in the Paris journal Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine. Depicting the life, from beginning to end, of a great artist, few books set out to achieve so much, and then succeed; it places Jean-Christophe in a rare company.

Romain Rolland received the Prix Femina for the first four volumes in 1905, and then for both the completed novel and his pamphlet Au-dessus de la mêlée (“Above the Battle,” 1915)—a call for France and Germany to respect humanity and truth during the fighting of World War I—he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

Genres: France, Novels, Fiction

776 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Varied works of French writer Romain Rolland include Jean Christophe (1904-1912), a series of satirical novels; he won the Nobel Prize of 1915 for literature.

The committee awarded him "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_...

Reviews

[Ali Nazifpour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean-Christophe, a massive novel in ten volumes and about 2000 pages, follows the life of a genius music composer from birth to death, including many relationships and his intellectual and artistic evolution. It's a great novel but it's not a good novel. Or if that's a strange thing to say, it's a very flawed masterpiece. It reads like the very opposite of an experimental novel. If experimental novels accentuate everything about modern literature, Jean-Christophe takes every aspect of classic novels to extreme. It's a very difficult read at points, and the effort you sink into reading it creates a sunk cost mentality that forces you to consider it a masterpiece and ignore its flaws.

What's great about it? No other novel has captured the entire biography of a character, narrating a human so comprehensively in his entirety. Emotional and artistic and intellectual aspects are portrayed. Like life itself, characters enter and exit the novel bit they're their own human beings. Jean-Christophe is an incredibly written character himself (in certain parts). When the novel is great, it's phenomenal. I cried at many places, especially the very last volume which I think is the best.

The flaws are numerous too. The novel shows that it was written in many years. Jean-Christophe is not a consistently written character and it's clear that many of his changes are not the result of an organic evolution of his character but Rolland forgetting his prior characterization. He jarringly shifts from one personality to the other and in the penultimate volume he is suddenly very political, something completely absent from his character prior to that. The novel can go on tiring and repetitive tangents about the state of music and society which feel like Rolland taking breaks from writing the novel to write essays. And at times the novel is melodramatic and hackneyed.

The experience of reading Jean-Christophe is akin to reading multiple novels spontaneously, and they're of very varying quality. I feel like if it was consistently as great as its best parts, it could be considered as a contender for the greatest novel of all time. But as it is, I have to admire the ambition more than the final product.

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the introduction, translator Gilbert Cannan claims "Jean Christophe is the first great book of the twentieth century." (location 168) I have to disagree. It's perhaps one of the last great novels of the 19th century, written and published a few years too late. Its style and content much more reflect the lengthy descriptions and the clear-eyed moral judgments of 19th century authors, and its characters come right out of Charles Dickens or some others. Rolland begins his work almost deliberately aping Leo Tolstoy, and his characters' nervousness and anxiety would fit well with more authors than I can list. It does not have the crisp descriptions or the moral ambiguities of the more representative 20th century authors.

That said, Rolland brings his 19th century empirical gaze onto the issues beginning to evolve and define the 20th century (and beyond), and this makes the work worthwhile. However, this same empirical approach can make his portrayal of categories of people (be they Germans, French, Swiss, Jews, men, women, workers, etc.) overly generalized and condescending. Certainly Rolland would have considered his open-minded approach to others as Liberal (given the times), but today's reader can't help but feel some of his remarks about Jews or women (for instance) are incredible and difficult to put up with. For instance, this gem: "The Jews are like women: admirable when they are reined in; but, with the Jews as with women, their use of mastery is an abomination, and those who submit to it present a pitiful and absurd spectacle." (location 17326) Nonetheless, it makes an interesting time capsule on culture and attitudes in Western Europe between the war of German unification and World War I.

In tracing the life of a (fictional) composer, Rolland does reveal his own love for and understanding of music. Anyone with a passion for art, particularly music, should appreciate much of this work. In fact, if you only know of a genius sort of person, you will probably recognize some of him/her in Jean Christophe Krafft.

Among the distracting, negative parts of the work are the author's deus ex machina; one moment Krafft is too busy to eat all day long, then suddenly he is able to loaf for hours on end without explanation. He is nearly always near starvation-poor, yet he inexplicably has so much money for so many things. One reason the work is so long is that Rolland develops a great many of his characters in length and depth, giving each of their own life stories in turn (he really could have abbreviated much of this, but evidently takes a biographer's joy in the task). His general descriptions of things often runs long; the protagonist's death at the end of the work is comically (painfully?) long, reminiscent of satires of overly melodramatic actors.

Overall it's worth reading and Rolland can be downright brilliant in patches. However, its length (and, more importantly, it's feeling of being too long) and some of its stylistic flaws make it a more time-consuming, less rewarding journey than it might have been. Put it on your "get around to reading someday" list but definitely don't drop whatever you're reading now to pick it up. Have a long journey coming up? That might be the time...

[papibook · Rating 5 out of 5]

For reasons I don't understand, this roman-fleuve is not on any list of classics we should read.

Why? Mystery.

Because it's too religious? Some anti-semitism by some of the characters. Maybe.

It was the novels who gave Proust his inspiration for La recherche…

In certain way, it's Proust, the "easy" version ( it's 1700 pages though)

Amazingly well-written, full of philosophical reflexions about life, littérature, music, art…

Eternal critics of high art vs low art

I recommend deeply.
One of great classics books that every person interested by great litterature should read.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Volumes 1-4 in a poorly prepared, heavily typoed version undertaken by the august publisher "premiumclassicbooks@gmail.com." I don't recommend that version, though I won't sully the deserved 4+ star rating by reducing mine.

In Rolland, especially in the first couple volumes, one can readily detect the echoes of Werther and the presentiments of Proust. Goethe looms, almost certainly intentionally, in our hero's melancholy over the setbacks of love and friendship, while one can see both Proust and Henry James in his descriptions of etiquette. His send up of Germany circa 1900, reconciling the great artistic heritage of the composers, of Goethe and Schiller, with the jackboot, would appear almost a caricature, but because we can see see four decades into Germany's future it looks prescient.

Jean-Christophe is difficult to love, an enfant terrible for much of the book with all the certitude of an undergrad sociology major at the Thanksgiving table. When he is skewering both his audience and the musical pantheon in print, we aren't sure whether to sympathize with him or to enjoy his inevitable deserts. Outside of Jean Michel and Gottfried, few in his family are particularly lovable; even Louisa becomes in time a touch ridiculous. Even his friends, acquaintances, and lovers are flawed, Rosa excepted. But in his relationships with them, in his rejection of the verities, and in his insistence on artistic integrity we see something that presages the century to come, with its tendency toward secularization, iconoclasm, and the rebellion of the creative classes.

[Skip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing book left me wondering what I will read after this that lives up to this book. Loved the complete characterizations, the philosophy. I especially liked how the author brought richness of nature into the reading.