Pierre and Luce

Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesMar 2023

3.8

Word count: 123K words
Chapters: 13

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.Pierre and Luce by Romain RollandAuthor: Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 7, 2010

Editor's review

Pierre and Luce is a novella Romain Rolland wrote under the shadow of war. Tracing a young man and woman's meeting and their keeping faith with each other, it weighs private feeling against the violence of the age. Rolland's touch here is more compressed: lyricism and narrative advance by turns, and the characters' inner monologues often move the plot more than external events do. Its value lies not in retelling the war but in showing how ordinary people preserve small tenderness and dignity amid upheaval. Readers of Jean-Christophe will find a more restrained side of Rolland here; for newcomers it is a light entry into his humanitarian concern. This is the Project Gutenberg English electronic edition, suitable as extensive reading in English translation of French literature; as you read, note how landscape description mirrors the characters' states of mind.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who like Romain Rolland and want his shorter works
Readers interested in private emotional narratives set against World War I
Intermediate to advanced English learners needing extensive reading in English-translated French literature
Novel readers who prefer a lyrical tone and inner description

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a plot-driven, fast-paced war story
Beginners with weak English reading skills who need a Chinese parallel text
Readers who prefer contemporary narrative technique and have little patience for classical lyricism

Reading tips

Read chapter by chapter; pause at the end of each to look back at how landscape description corresponds to the characters' emotions.
Mark Pierre and Luce's dialogue separately and observe how Rolland uses conversation to advance their relationship.
After finishing, look up a World War I timeline to help understand the characters' situation without relying on notes.

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.

FAQ

Is this book connected to Romain Rolland's long novels?

The materials indicate that Pierre and Luce is a standalone novella with no direct plot connection to long works such as Jean-Christophe. It focuses more concentratedly on Rolland's concern with individual feeling and humanitarian value against the backdrop of war.

Is the English edition hard to read?

It is moderately to fairly difficult. Rolland's lyrical passages have long sentences, and the English translation retains a certain literariness; the plot itself is not complex, so readers with college-level English can finish it with a dictionary, ideally one chapter a day.

Is it suitable for a book club?

It suits a book club that wants a short, thematically focused book. Discussion can center on whether private feeling in wartime has a resistant meaning, and can compare how the two protagonists respond differently to the pressures of their time; there is ample material for discussion.

Comments

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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.