Clerambault: The Story of an Independent Spirit During the War

Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
461K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals War and Military FictionForeign Literature War BackgroundPortrait GalleryHuman NatureAnti-war ThoughtPatriotismPsychological InsightIndependent SpiritConscience and ResistanceMoral DilemmaFrench Literature

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Clerambault: The Story of an Independent Spirit During the War by Romain RollandAuthor: Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

Romain Rolland's Clerambault portrays an intellectual who holds fast to independent thought in wartime. Its core is not battlefield spectacle but how a person preserves judgment under collective frenzy and public pressure. Built around the protagonist's spiritual struggle, the novel renders with care and weight the tension between individual conscience and the tide of the age. Rolland's narrative is intensely intellectual, placing characters under interrogation of morality and belief; it reads more like a spiritual biography. Its value lies in reminding readers that war redraws borders and also tests whether each person can still think independently. Suited to readers interested in modern European literature, war, and the intellectual's role. Read slowly, attending to the psychological logic behind each shift in the protagonist's stance rather than rushing toward plot outcomes.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn about the divisions among European intellectuals around World War I, then begin the text.
  2. As you read, note the triggering event behind each shift in the protagonist's stance and trace his spiritual trajectory.
  3. Read this alongside other works by Rolland to observe his consistent humanist concerns.
  4. Don't rush: one or two chapters a day, with room for reflection, works better.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47

FAQ

Is this book mainly about battle scenes? No. The novel centers on the protagonist's spiritual and intellectual struggle; war is the background and source of pressure, and frontline combat is not the main subject. Readers should not come to it expecting a war novel.
Can I read this without having read other works by Romain Rolland? Yes. The book stands on its own and requires no prior reading. Still, knowing Rolland's humanist stance and the context of World War I in advance makes it easier to understand the public climate the characters face.
What makes this book difficult to read? The main difficulty is the abundance of psychological description and intellectual discussion, with relatively slow plot progression. Readers used to plot-driven fiction may find the pace slow; adjust expectations and read more slowly.
Is it suitable as a literature course text? Yes. It touches on individual conscience, group pressure, and the ethics of war, and can serve as a text for discussing intellectuals and war, though it should be paired with historical background material to avoid decontextualized reading.

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About the author

Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944 Author

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) was a French writer. The library holds 30 of his works, most notably the various volumes of his novel series Jean-Christophe, including Jean-Christophe I, III, IV, and IX, Jean-Christophe in Paris, and Jean-Christophe: Journey's End. These works follow the life of a musician, depicting his growth, struggles, and spiritual pursuits in a style that combines idealism with realism and carries a strong musical and philosophical quality. Public information is limited, and details of his life, nationality, and exact dates are not clearly recorded in the library, so they are not elaborated here. His writing has had some influence on twentieth-century Chinese readers and is often regarded as a literary expression of the pursuit of spiritual freedom and personal independence.