Clerambault

Clerambault

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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: ISO-8859-1
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CLERAMBAULT ***

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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 ès Calamités 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, Musée, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and
the writer Orphée. 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 war I more than once felt
myself close to that true Frenchman who wrote: Man is born to see and
know everything, and it is an injustice to limit him to one place on the

earth. To the wise man the whole world is his country. God lends us the
world to enjoy in common on one condition only, that we act uprightly.
R.R.
PARIS,
May, 1920

INTRODUCTION [1]
[Footnote 1: This Introduction was published in the Swiss newspapers
in December, 1917, with an episode of the novel and a note explaining
the original title, _L'Un contre Tous_. "This somewhat ironical name
was suggested--with a difference--by La Boëtie's _Le Contr' Un_; but it
must not be supposed that the author entertained the extravagant idea of
setting one man in opposition to all others; he only wishes to summon
the personal conscience to the most urgent conflict of our time, the
struggle against the herd-spirit."]
This book is not written about the war, though the shadow of the war
lies over it. My theme is that the individual soul has been swallowed up
and submerged in the soul of the multitude; and in my opinion such an
event is of far greater importance to the future of the race than the
passing supremacy of one nation.
I have left questions of policy in the background intentionally, as I
think they should be reserved for special study. No matter what causes
may be assigned as the origins of the war, no matter what theses
support them, nothing in the world can excuse the abdication of
individual judgment before general opinion.
The universal development of democracies, vitiated by a fossilized
survival, the outrageous "reason of State," has led the mind of Europe
to hold as an article of faith that there can be no higher ideal than to
serve the community. This community is then defined as the State.

I venture to say that he who makes himself the servant of a blind or
blinded nation,--and most of the states are in this condition at the
present day,--does not truly serve it but lowers both it and himself; for
in general a few men, incapable of understanding the complexities of
the people, force thoughts and acts upon them in harmony with their
own passions and interests by means of the falsehoods of