Joel來談日本
NHK每個星期天的長篇歷史劇，會被稱為「大河劇」的原因，主要是受到法國文學家羅曼·羅蘭（Romain Rolland）的影響。他的小說《約翰·克利斯朵夫》（Jean-Christophe）描寫了主角如同一條巨大的河流般的人生。羅曼·羅蘭在這部作品中，將人的一生比喻為時而平靜如水，時而遼闊如天，時而湍急如瀑布，時而陡峭如山崖的河流。這部小說後來開創了一個新的文學類型，描寫人物壯闊一生的作品被稱為「大河小說」。
NHK最初製作的這類長篇歷史劇，在1963年播出的首部作品《花の生涯》當時被稱為「大型連続時代劇」（大型時代連續劇）。隔年，也就是1964年1月5日，在播出第二部作品《赤穂浪士》時，讀賣新聞在其電視節目預告欄中首次使用了「大河ドラマ」（大河劇）這個名稱。
之所以會使用「大河ドラマ」這個名稱，是因為讀賣新聞的記者認為，這些描寫歷史人物一生的電視劇，與描寫人物壯闊一生的「大河小說」有共通之處，因此借用了「大河」的概念來命名。雖然「大河ドラマ」這個稱呼最早是由報社提出的，但這個名稱隨後也隨著《赤穂浪士》的大受歡迎而廣為流傳。
儘管「大河ドラマ」的稱呼在1964年就已出現，但NHK本身並未立即在節目中正式採用這個名稱。在早期，節目的標題中並沒有「大河ドラマ」的字樣。NHK一直到2004年（平成16年）播出的第43部作品《新選組！》，才開始在節目開頭的畫面中加入「大河ドラマ」的字幕。
當時，三谷幸喜擔任這部戲的編劇。NHK的戲劇部長表示，正是在三谷幸喜編劇這部作品時，為了強化「戲劇」這個類型，加上三谷幸喜本人從小就是大河劇的忠實觀眾，終於能親手創作大河劇，所以決定從他的作品開始，在畫面上顯示「大河ドラマ」的字樣。當時，無論是製作團隊還是演員，對於電視畫面上出現「大河ドラマ」都感到非常高興。
之後，在2010年（平成22年）播出的第49部作品《龍馬伝》中，「大河ドラマ」則成為節目標題的一部分。自此之後，「大河ドラマ」這個名稱便固定以節目開頭字幕或節目標題的一部分的形式出現。
資料來源：NHK
Joel來談日本
公眾人物長篇小說系列，每部小說均自成完整，講述一個中心人物、一個國家生活時代或一個家庭的幾代人的故事。
Inspired by successful 19th-century cycles such as Honoré de Balzac’s Comédie humaine and Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart, the roman-fleuve was a popular literary genre in France during the first half of the 20th century. Examples include the 10-volume Jean-Christophe (1904–12) by Romain Rolland, the 7-part À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27; Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust, the 8-part Les Thibault (1922–40) by Roger Martin du Gard, and Les Hommes de bonne volonté, 27 vol. (1932–46; Men of Good Will) by Jules Romains. Proust’s work is the masterpiece of the genre.
epic
epic, long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written compositions. The prime examples of the oral epic are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Outstanding examples of the written epic include Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia in Latin, Chanson de Roland in medieval French, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata in Italian, Cantar de mio Cid in Spanish, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene in English. There are also seriocomic epics, such as the Morgante of a 15th-century Italian poet, Luigi Pulci, and the pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Another distinct group is made up of the so-called beast epics—narrative poems written in Latin in the Middle Ages and dealing with the struggle between a cunning fox and a cruel and stupid wolf. Underlying all of the written forms is some trace of an oral character, partly because of the monumental persuasiveness of Homer’s example but more largely because the epic was, in fact, born of an oral tradition. It is on the oral tradition of the epic form that this article will focus.
General characteristics
An epic may deal with such various subjects as myths, heroic legends, histories, edifying religious tales, animal stories, or philosophical or moral theories. Epic poetry has been and continues to be used by peoples all over the world to transmit their traditions from one generation to another, without the aid of writing. These traditions frequently consist of legendary narratives about the glorious deeds of their national heroes. Thus, scholars have often identified “epic” with a certain kind of heroic oral poetry, which comes into existence in so-called heroic ages. Such ages have been experienced by many nations, usually at a stage of development in which they have had to struggle for a national identity. This effort, combined with such other conditions as an adequate material culture and a sufficiently productive economy, tend to produce a society dominated by a powerful and warlike nobility, constantly occupied with martial activities, whose individual members seek, above all, everlasting fame for themselves and for their lineages.
Uses of the epic
The main function of poetry in heroic-age society appears to be to stir the spirit of the warriors to heroic actions by praising their exploits and those of their illustrious ancestors, by assuring a long and glorious recollection of their fame, and by supplying them with models of ideal heroic behavior. One of the favorite pastimes of the nobility in heroic ages in different times and places has been to gather in banquet halls to hear heroic songs, in praise of famous deeds sung by professional singers as well as by the warriors themselves. Heroic songs also were often sung before a battle, and such recitations had tremendous effect on the morale of the combatants. Among the Fulani (Fulbe) people in the Sudan, for instance, whose epic poetry has been recorded, a nobleman customarily set out in quest of adventures accompanied by a singer (mabo), who also served as his shield bearer. The singer was thus the witness of the heroic deeds of his lord, which he celebrated in an epic poem called baudi.
The aristocratic warriors of the heroic ages were thus members of an illustrious family, a link in a long chain of glorious heroes. And the chain could snap if the warrior failed to preserve the honor of the family, whereas, by earning fame through his own heroism, he could give it new luster. Epic traditions were to a large extent the traditions of the aristocratic families: the Old French word geste, used for a form of epic that flourished in the Middle Ages, means not only a story of famous deeds but also a genealogy.
The passing of a heroic age does not necessarily mean the end of its heroic oral poetry. An oral epic tradition usually continues for as long as the nation remains largely illiterate. Usually it is after the heroic age has passed that the narratives about its legendary heroes are fully elaborated. Even when the nobility that originally created the heroic epic perishes or loses interest, the old songs can persist as entertainments among the people. Court singers, then, are replaced by popular singers, who recite at public gatherings. This popular tradition, however, must be distinguished from a tradition that still forms an integral part of the culture of a nobility. For when a heroic epic loses its contact with the banquet halls of the princes and noblemen, it cannot preserve for long its power of renewal. Soon it enters what has been called the reproductive stage in the life cycle of an oral tradition, in which the bards become noncreative reproducers of songs learned from older singers. Popular oral singers, like the guslari of the Balkans, no doubt vary their songs to a certain extent each time they recite them, but they do so mainly by transposing language and minor episodes from one acquired song to another. Such variations must not be confounded with the real enrichment of the tradition by succeeding generations of genuine oral poets of the creative stage. The spread of literacy, which has a disastrous effect on the oral singer, brings about a quick corruption of the tradition. At this degenerate stage, the oral epic soon dies out if it is not written down or recorded.
The ancient Greek epic exemplifies the cycle of an oral tradition. Originating in the late Mycenaean period, the Greek epic outlasted the downfall of the typically heroic-age culture (c. 1100 bce) and maintained itself through the “Dark Age” to reach a climax in the Homeric poems by the close of the Geometric period (900–750 bce). After Homer, the activity of the aoidoi, who sang their own epic songs at the courts of the nobility, slowly declined. During the first half of the 7th century, the aoidoi produced such new poems as those of Hesiod and some of the earlier poems of what was to become known as the Epic Cycle. Between 625 and 575 bce the aoidoi gave way to oral reciters of a new type, called rhapsodes or “stitchers of songs,” who declaimed for large audiences the already famous works of Homer while holding in their hand a staff (rhabdos), which they used to give emphasis to their words. It seems probable that these rhapsodes, who played a crucial role in the transmission of the Homeric epic, were using some sort of written aids to memory before Homeric recitations were adopted in 6th-century Athens as part of the Panathenaic festivals held each year in honor of the goddess Athena.
Verbal formulas
To compose and to memorize long narrative poems like the Iliad and the Odyssey, oral poets used a highly elaborate technical language with a large store of traditional verbal formulas, which could describe recurring ideas and situations in ways that suited the requirements of meter. So long as an oral epic tradition remains in its creative period, its language will be continually refined by each generation of poets in opposite directions, refinements that are called scope and economy. Scope is the addition of new phrases to express a larger number of recurrent concepts in varying metrical values fitting the possible positions in a verse. Economy is the elimination of redundancies that arise as gifted poets invent new set phrases that duplicate, both in a general sense and in metrical value, the formulas that already exist in the traditional stock.
Nowhere has this refinement proceeded any nearer to perfection than in the language of the Homeric epic. As has been shown by statistical analysis, it exhibits a remarkable efficiency, both in the rareness of unnecessarily duplicative variants and in the coverage of each common concept by the metrical alternatives useful in the composition of the six-foot metric line the Greeks used for epic poetry.
Thus, for example, if the idea of a ship has to be expressed at the end of a line of verse, the ship may be described as “well-trimmed” (nēos eisēs), “curved” (nēos amphielissa), or “dark-prowed” (nēos kyanoprōiros), depending entirely on the number of feet that remain to be filled by the phrase in the hexameter; if the phrase has to cover the two final feet of the verse and the words have to be put in the dative case, the formula “of a well-trimmed ship” will be replaced by “to a black ship” (nēi melainē). The sole occurrence of “Zeus who gathers lightning” (steropēgereta Zeus), which is an exact metrical equivalent of the more common “Zeus who delights in thunder” (Zeus terpikeraunos), constitutes one of the very few actual duplications of such formulas found in Homer.
Finally, some of the typical scenes in the heroic life, such as the preparation of a meal or sacrifice or the launching or beaching of a ship, contain set descriptions comprising several lines that are used by rote each time the events are narrated.
This highly formalized language was elaborated by generations of oral poets to minimize the conscious effort needed to compose new poems and memorize existing ones. Because of it, an exceptionally gifted aoidos, working just prior to the corruption of the genre, could orally create long and finely structured poems like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and those poems could then be transmitted accurately by the following generations of rhapsodes until complete written texts were produced.
Bases
Oral heroic poetry, at its origin, usually deals with outstanding deeds of kings and warriors who lived in the heroic age of the nation. Since the primary function of this poetry is to educate rather than to record, however, the personages are necessarily transformed into ideal heroes and their acts into ideal heroic deeds that conform to mythological or ideological patterns. Some of these patterns are archetypes found all over the world, while others are peculiar to a specific nation or culture. Thus, in many epic traditions, heroes are born as a result of the union of a maiden with a divine or supernatural being; because these unions occur outside the usual social norms, the heroes are exposed at birth, fed by an animal, and brought up by humble foster parents in a rustic milieu; they grow up with marvelous speed, fight a dragon—in their first combat—to rescue a maiden whom they marry, and die young in circumstances as fabulous as those that surrounded their birth.
In the traditions of Indo-European peoples, a hero is often a twin who acquires soon after his supernatural birth an invulnerability that has one defect, generally of his heel or of some other part of his foot, which ultimately causes his death. He is educated by a blacksmith, disguises himself as a woman at some time in his youth, and conquers a three-headed dragon, or some other kind of triple opponent, in his first battle. He then begets, by a foreign or supernatural woman, a child who, reared by his mother in her country, becomes a warrior as brave as his father. When this child meets his unknown father, the latter fails to recognize him, so that the father kills his own child after a long and fierce single combat. The hero himself usually dies after committing the third of three sins.
In Japan, to take another example, renowned members of the warrior aristocracy of the past, who have acquired the status of popular heroes, are in many cases supplied in their legend with four exceptionally brave and faithful retainers called their shi-tennō (“guardian kings”), who guard the four cardinal points; these form the closest entourage of their lord—who is usually depicted as excelling in command but not in physical strength—and defend him from dangers. The retainers reflect a mythological model, taken from Buddhism, of four deva kings, who guard the teaching of the Buddha against the attack of the devils.
A striking pattern for a number of epic traditions has been found in a so-called tripartite ideology or “trifunctional system” of the Indo-Europeans. The concept was based on the discovery of the remarkable philosophy of a prehistoric nation that survived as a system of thought in the historic Indo-European civilizations and even in the subconsciousness of the modern speakers of Indo-European tongues.
This philosophy sees in the universe three basic principles that are realized by three categories of people: priests, warriors, and producers of riches. In conformity with this philosophy, most Indo-European epics have as their central themes interaction among these three principles or functions which are: (1) religion and kingship; (2) physical strength; (3) fecundity, health, riches, beauty, and so forth. In the long Indian epic the Mahabharata, for example, the central figures, the Pandava brothers, together with their father, Pandu, their two uncles, Dhritarashtra and Vidura, and their common wife, Draupadi, correspond to traditional deities presiding over the three functions of the Indo-European ideology.
During the first part of their earthly career, the Pandavas suffer constantly from the persistent enmity and jealousy of their cousins, Duryodhana and his 99 brothers, who, in reality, are incarnations of the demons Kali and the Paulastya. The demons at first succeeded in snatching the kingdom from the Pandavas and in exiling them. The conflict ends in a devastating war, in which all the renowned heroes of the time take part. The Pandavas survive the massacre, and establish on earth a peaceful and prosperous reign, in which Dhritarashtra and Vidura also participate.
This whole story, it has been shown, is a transposition to the heroic level of an Indo-European myth about the incessant struggle between the gods and the demons since the beginning of the world. Eventually, it results in a bloody eschatological battle, in which the gods and the devils exterminate each other. The destruction of the former world order, however, prepares for a new and better world, exempt from evil influences, over which reign a few divine survivors of the catastrophe.
Early patterns of development
In the ancient Middle East
The earliest known epic poetry is that of the Sumerians. Its origin has been traced to a preliterate heroic age, not later than 3000 bce, when the Sumerians had to fight, under the direction of a warlike aristocracy, for possession of this fertile Mesopotamian land. Among the extant literature of this highly gifted people are fragments of narrative poems recounting the heroic deeds of their early kings: Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh. By far the most important in the development of Mesopotamian literature are the five poems of the Epic of Gilgamesh. This cycle tells the odyssey of a king, Gilgamesh, part human and part divine, who seeks immortality. A god who dislikes his rule, fashions a wild man, Enkidu, to challenge him. Enkidu first lives among wild animals, then goes to the capital and engages in a trial of strength with Gilgamesh, who emerges victorious. The two, now friends, set out on various adventures, in one of which they kill a wild bull that the goddess of love had sent to destroy Gilgamesh because he spurned her marriage proposal. Enkidu dreams the gods have decided he must die for the death of the bull, and, upon awakening, he does fall ill and die. Gilgamesh searches for a survivor of the Babylonian flood to learn how to escape death. The survivor shows him where to find a plant that renews youth, but after Gilgamesh gets the plant it is snatched away by a serpent. Gilgamesh returns, saddened, to his capital.
The legend of Gilgamesh was taken over by the Babylonians, who developed it into a long and beautiful poem, one of the masterpieces of humankind.
Another Babylonian epic, composed about 2000 bce, is called in Akkadian Enuma elish, after its opening words, meaning “When on high.” Its subject is not heroic but mythological. It recounts events from the beginning of the world to the establishment of the power of Marduk, the great god of Babylon. The outline of a Babylonian poem narrating the adventure of a hero named Adapa (“Man”) can be reconstructed from four fragmentary accounts. It shares with the Epic of Gilgamesh the theme of a human potential for and loss of immortality.
Among clay tablets of the 14th century bce, covered with inscriptions in an old Phoenician cuneiform alphabet, from Ras Shamra (the site of ancient Ugarit), in northern Syria, there are important fragments of three narrative poems. One of these is mythological and recounts the career of the god Baal, which seems to coincide with the yearly cycle of vegetation on earth. As was usual with the death of gods in the ancient Mediterranean world, Baal’s end brings about a drought that ceases only with his resurrection. Another fragment, about a hero named Aqhat, is perhaps a transposition of this myth of Baal to the human level. Just as the death of Baal is avenged on his slayer by Baal’s sister Anath, so is the murder of Aqhat, which also causes a drought, revenged by his sister Paghat. Since the end of the poem is missing, however, it is not known whether Paghat, like Anath, succeeds in bringing her brother back to life.
The third fragment, the Ugaritic epic of Keret, has been interpreted as a Phoenician version of the Indo-European theme of the siege of an enemy city for the recovery of an abducted woman. This theme is also the subject of the Greek legend of the Trojan War and of the Indian epic Ramayana. The fragmentary text does not reveal, however, whether the expedition of Keret, like that of the Achaean army against Troy, was meant to regain the hero’s wife or to acquire for him a new bride.
Presentation
The following account of the work of Romain Rolland is by Sven Söderman, Swedish Critic*
Romain Rolland was born on January 29, 1866, in the district of Nièvre. He studied literature, music, and philosophy, and in 1895 he published two doctoral theses: Les Origines du théâtre lyrique moderne, an erudite and penetrating work which was awarded a prize by the French Academy, and a Latin thesis, Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit, a study of the decline of Italian painting in the sixteenth century. After several tiresome years as a schoolmaster, he was appointed to the École Normale as maître de conférences and thereafter (1903) to the Sorbonne, where until 1910 he gave a remarkable course on the history of music. In addition to his duties at the university, he devoted himself to music criticism during these years and acquired a wide reputation not only in France but all over Europe when he published his articles and reviews in book form under the titles Musiciens d’autrefois (1908) [Some Musicians of Former Days] and Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (1908) [Musicians of Today]. They reveal him as a critic of great judgment, both fair and bold, without prejudices or allegiance to any one party, and as one always striving to reach through music the very sources of life. His biographies of Beethoven (1903) and Händel (1910), inspired as well as learned, are proof of his understanding of music. Besides these, he has written equally remarkable biographies of François Millet (1902), Michelangelo (1905-06), and Tolstoi (1911), in which he has stressed the heroic character of the lives and talents of these artists.
Rolland made his debut in pure literature in 1897 with a play in five acts, Saint-Louis, which he published together with Aërt (1898) and Le Triomphe de la raison (1899), under the common title Les Tragédies de la foi (1909) [Tragedies of Faith]. In these plays he sought to set forth, under the mask of historical events, the miseries that souls faithful to their ideals meet in their struggle with the world. He also wrote Théâtre de la révolution (1909), which includes Le 14 Juillet (1902), Danton (1900), Les Loups (1898) [The Wolves], and a pacifist drama about the war in the Transvaal, Le Temps viendra (1903) [The Time Will Come]. The plays about the Revolution were conceived during a period when Rolland dreamed of a dramatic reform. He wanted to create a new theatre, to free the art from the domination of a selfish clique, and to entrust it to the people. He had previously outlined his ideas in an essay called Le Théâtre du peuple (1900-03) [The People’s Theatre]. He tried to make his own contribution to this new popular drama by describing the principal episodes of the French Revolution and by representing in a dramatic cycle the Iliad of the French nation. These dramas, which seek moral truth at the sacrifice of anecdotal color, reveal historical intuition, and their characters are fully alive. They are very interesting to read and deserve to be staged.
From 1904 to 1912 Rolland published his great novel Jean-Christophe, which is composed of a series of independent narratives: L’Aube, Le Matin, L’Adolescent, La Révolte, La Foire sur la place, Antoinette, Dans la maison, Les Amies, Le Buisson ardent, and La Nouvelle Journée [Dawn, Morning, Youth, Revolt, The Market Place, Antoinette, The House, Love and Friendship, The Burning Bush, The New Dawn]. In 1910 he resigned from his duties at the University; since then he has devoted himself entirely to writing, living most of the time in Rome and Switzerland. During the war, he wrote a series of articles in Swiss newspapers; these were subsequently published in a volume called Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915) [Above the Battle]. In this, he maintains that the future of mankind is superior to the interests of nations. War for him is barbarous violence, and over the bloody struggles of nations which seek power he turns our eyes toward the cause of humanity. Rolland’s recent works are a novel, Colas Breugnon (1918), a dramatic fantasy, Liluli (1919), and a study of Empedocles (1917).
Romain Rolland’s masterpiece, for which he has received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915, is Jean-Christophe. This powerful work describes the development of a character in whom we can recognize ourselves. It shows how an artistic temperament, by raising itself step by step, emerges like a genius above the level of humanity; how a powerful nature which has the noblest and most urgent desire for truth, moral health, and artistic purity, with an exuberant love of life, is forced to overcome obstacles that rise up ceaselessly before it; how it attains victory and independence; and how this character and this intelligence are significant enough to concentrate in themselves a complete image of the world. This book does not aim solely at describing the life of the principal hero and his environment. It seeks also to describe the causes of the tragedy of a whole generation; it gives a sweeping picture of the secret labour that goes on in the hidden depths and by which nations, little by little, are enlightened; it covers all the domains of life and art; it contains everything essential that has been discussed or attempted in the intellectual world during the last decades; it achieves a new musical aesthetic; it contains sociological, political and ethnological, biological, literary, and artistic discussions and judgments, often of the highest interest. The artistic personality which is revealed in Jean-Christophe is one of rare resoluteness and strong moral structure. In this work Rolland has not simply followed a literary impulse; he does not write to please or to delight. He has been compelled to write by his thirst for truth, his need for morality, and his love of humanity. For him the purpose of the aesthetic life consists not merely in the creation of beauty; it is an act of humanism. Jean-Christophe is a profession of faith and an example; it is a combination of thought and poetry, of reality and symbol, of life and dream, which attracts us, excites us, reveals us to ourselves, and possesses a liberating power because it is the expression of a great moral force.
In addition to the Romain Rolland who is concerned about truth and altruism there is also the artist. He is a poet of great scope. Although he has assigned the novel only to second place in his work, his mastery of the genre is superb. The character study of Jean-Christophe is an inspired creation, astonishing in spontaneity, with individuality in every trait, every movement, every thought.
Around this central, monumental figure, we find a whole series of characters of great human interest. Rolland’s observation is precise and profound. He penetrates to the depths of the beings whom he describes; he studies their characters and paints their souls with incomparable psychological art. His portraits of women, especially, are masterpieces. His characters come from all walks of life and are astonishingly true to type – the bourgeois, the politician, the artist. Sometimes the descriptions are brief but powerful sketches full of drama and pathos; sometimes they are extended to form immense tableaux of manners that are striking because of their keenness of vision and their singular penetration. His innate sincerity prevents Rolland from using rhetorical devices. He says in an exact and natural manner what he has to say – and nothing more. But when his thought is inflamed, when his heart is filled with emotion-love, anger, enthusiasm, scorn, joy, or sadness – then a wind swells the sentence and gives to the text a beauty that, before Rolland, only the greatest masters of French prose have attained.
The author of Jean-Christophe is one of the most imposing literary figures of the contemporary era; he is a mighty spirit and an original poet. His masterpiece has taken its place in world literature among the most original, the boldest, and the healthiest works of our century.
Biographical note on Romain Rolland
The works of Romain Rolland (1866-1945) written after the First World War continued to reflect all his earlier interests. During the twenties he began another «roman fleuve», L’Ame enchantée (7 vols., 1922-33) [The Soul Enchanted]. Music and the problem of the artist are the subject of his Beethoven: Les grandes époques créatrices (1928) [Beethoven the Creator]. Rolland persisted in his quest for peace and was attracted by the non-violence movement of Ghandi, about whom he wrote a book (1924). His fascination with India and Buddhism led to the study Essai sur la mystique et l’action de L’Inde vivante (1929-30) [Prophets of the New India]. His political ideas were increasingly influenced by socialism, as is evident from his many essays. Other works of his later period are Les Précurseurs (1919) [The Forerunners], Clerambault: histoire d’une conscience libre pendant la guerre (1920) [Clerambault], Le Jeu de l’amour et de la mort (1925) [The Game of Love and Death], and Péguy (1944), the study of his boyhood friend.
* The Nobel Prize in Literature 1915 was announced on November 9, 1916.
Romain Rolland died on December 30, 1944.
Jean-Christophe (1904‒1912) is the novel in 10 volumes by Romain Rolland for which he received the Prix Femina in 1905 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. It was translated into English by Gilbert Cannan.
The first four volumes are sometimes grouped as Jean-Christophe, the next three as Jean-Christophe à Paris, and the last three as La fin du voyage ("Journey's End").
- L'Aube ("Dawn", 1904)
- Le Matin ("Morning", 1904)
- L'Adolescent ("Youth", 1904)
- La Révolte ("Revolt", 1905)
- La Foire sur la place ("The Marketplace", 1908)
- Antoinette (1908)
- Dans la maison ("The House", 1908)
- Les Amies ("Love and Friendship", 1910)
- Le Buisson ardent ("The Burning Bush", 1911)
- La Nouvelle Journée ("The New Dawn", 1912)
The English translations appeared between 1911 and 1913.
Plot
[edit]The central character, Jean-Christophe Krafft, is a Frеnch musician of German extraction, a composer of genius whose life is depicted from cradle to grave. He undergoes great hardships and spiritual struggles, balancing his pride in his own talents with the necessity of earning a living and taking care of those around him. Tormented by injustices against his friends, forced to flee on several occasions as a result of his brushes with authority and his own conscience, he finally finds peace in a remote corner of Switzerland before returning in triumph to Paris a decade later.
Criticism
[edit]Although Rolland first conceived the work in Rome in the spring of 1890, he began in earnest in 1903 after publishing a biography of Beethoven. A letter of 13 September 1902 reveals his plans:
- My novel is the story of a life, from birth to death. My hero is a great German musician who is forced by circumstances to leave when he is 16-18 years old, living outside of Germany in Paris, Switzerland, etc. The setting is today's Europe [...] To spell it out, the hero is Beethoven in the modern world.
But in his preface to Dans la maison, published in 1909, Rolland denied that he was writing a novel in the traditional sense, but a "musical novel" in which emotions, not classical action, dictated the course of events. "When you see a man, do you ask yourself whether he is a novel or a poem? [...] Jean-Christophe has always seemed to me to flow like a river; I have said as much from the first pages." This coined the term roman-fleuve (river-novel), which has since been applied to other novel sequences in the same style.
Many individual tomes swerve from the story of Krafft to focus on the other characters. Rolland was an admirer of Leo Tolstoy, and, as in War and Peace, a very large proportion of the work is devoted to the author's thoughts on various subjects: music, art, literature, feminism, militarism, national character, and social changes in the Third Republic, largely attributed to Krafft, although Rolland denied that he shared many traits with his fictional composer. The didactic aspects of Jean-Christophe have been criticised by many readers. In his heavy use of matter-of-fact detail, Rolland followed the methods of naturalist predecessors with whom he otherwise had little in common.
See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland The Man and His Work (Cedar Paul, translator), 1921
External links
[edit]- Jean-Christophe, translated by Gilbert Cannan at Standard Ebooks
Jean-Christophe public domain audiobook at LibriVox
