''Jean-Christophe'' (1904‒1912) is the novel in 10 volumes by

Romain Rolland Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production a ...

for which he received the

Prix Femina The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine '' La Vie heureuse'' (today known as '' Femina''). The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury. They reward French-language works writte ...

in 1905 and the

Nobel Prize for Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

in 1915. It was translated into English by

Gilbert Cannan Gilbert Eric Cannan (25 June 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a British novelist and dramatist. Early life Born in Manchester of Scottish descent, he got on badly with his family, and in 1897 he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Ca ...

. 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

The central character, Jean-Christophe Krafft, is a German musician of Belgian 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

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 Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

. 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 A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their pub ...

'' (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 Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

, and, as in ''

War and Peace ''War and Peace'' (russian: Война и мир, translit=Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: ; ) is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy that mixes fictional narrative with chapters on history and philosophy. It was first published ...

'', 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.

External links

* {{Authority control Novel series French bildungsromans Novels by Romain Rolland Novels about composers Novels about music

Plot

Criticism

See also

Further reading

External links