The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clerambault, by Rolland, Romain

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Title: Clerambault
The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War

Author: Rolland, Romain

Release Date: January 30, 2004 [EBook #10868]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CLERAMBAULT

THE STORY OF AN INDEPENDENT SPIRIT DURING THE WAR

BY

ROMAIN ROLLAND

TRANSLATED BY

KATHERINE MILLER

1921

TO THE READER

This book is not a novel, but rather the confession of a free spirit
telling of its mistakes, its sufferings and its struggles from the
midst of the tempest; and it is in no sense an autobiography either.
Some day I may wish to write of myself, and I will then speak without
any disguise or feigned name. Though it is true that I have lent
some ideas to my hero, his individuality, his character and the
circumstances of his life are all his own; and I have tried to give a
picture of the inward labyrinth where a weak spirit wanders, feeling
its way, uncertain, sensitive and impressionable, but sincere and
ardent in the cause of truth.

Some chapters of the book have a family likeness to the meditations
of our old French moralists and the stoical essays of the end of the
XVIth century. At a time resembling our own but even exceeding it
in tragic horror, amid the convulsions of the League, the
Chief-Magistrate Guillaume Du Vair wrote his noble Dialogues, "De la
Constance et Consolation es Calamites Publiques," with a steadfast
mind. While the siege of Paris was at its worst he talked in his
garden with his friends, Linus the great traveller, Musee, Dean of the
Faculty of Medicine, and the writer Orphee. Poor wretches lay dead of
starvation in the streets, women cried out that pike-men were eating
children near the Temple; but with their eyes filled with these
horrible pictures these wise men sought to raise their unhappy
thoughts to the heights where one can reach the mind of the ages
and reckon up that which has survived the test. As I re-read these
Dialogues during the