Colas Breugnon (A Burgundian Story; French Classics)

Romain Rolland

jan. 2015 · Mondial

Om den här e-boken

"Colas Breugnon" is a charming romance of life in Burgundy three hundred years ago. It is an "autobiographical" novel, the story being told in the first person by Colas, who reviews his fifty years of life, and describes all its joys and sorrows. The story is gay and humorous, and full of wise observations about life. --- "Colas Breugnon is the jovial Burgundian, the lusty wood-carver, the practical joker always fond of his glass, the droll fellow. Before everything, Colas Breugnon is a free man. He loves his king, but only so long as the king leaves him his liberty; he loves his wife, but follows his own bent; he is on excellent terms with the priest of a neighboring parish, but never goes to church; he idolizes his children, but his vigorous individuality makes him unwilling to live with them. He is friendly with all, but subject to none; he is freer than the king; he has that sense of humor characteristic of the free spirit to whom the whole world belongs. From the artistic point of view, 'Colas Breugnon' may perhaps be regarded as Rolland's most successful work. This is because it is woven in one piece, because it flows with a continuous rhythm, because its progress is never arrested by the discussion of thorny problems. It is written throughout in the same key. The first sentence gives the note like a tuning fork, and thence the entire book takes its pitch. Throughout, the same lively melody is sustained. The writer employs a peculiarly happy form. His style is poetic without being actually versified; it has a melodious measure without being strictly metrical. This work is unlike any of Rolland's other writings. It is not an historic study, a critical appreciation, a philosophic essay, nor yet even, in the strictest sense of the word, a novel. It is rather a volume of reminiscences as told by a man of fifty; and the very aimlessness with which this man talks is in itself a pleasure; for Breugnon is himself the one subject of the book, holding our attention by the display of a wayward, sympathetic, and aggressive personality." (Stefan Zweig)

Om författaren

Romain Rolland was born in Clemency, France. The family moved to Paris in 1880 in order to obtain a better schooling for their son. In 1886 Rolland entered the École Normale Supérieure. He passed his agrégation examination in 1889 and continued his studies in Rome, where he formed a lasting friendship with Malwida von Meysenbug. She knew Wagner, Liszt, Nietzsche, and Ibsen, and encouraged his first attempt to write. He received his doctorate in art in 1895, with the first dissertation on music ever presented at the Sorbonne. Rolland became professor of art history at the École Normale in Paris. In 1904 he became a professor of the history of music at the Sorbonne. In his mid-30s he wrote successful dramas about the French Revolution. After his best-known work, Jean-Christophe, was finished, Rolland devoted himself entirely to writing. The ten-volume novel was an epic story of a German musical genius. Rolland had already published a biography on Beethoven in 1903. On completion of Jean-Christophe, Rolland was awarded the Grand Prize in Literature by the French Academy in 1913 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. With a collection of antiwar writings published in Swiss newspapers, Above the Battle, Rolland became a prominent figure in the pacifist movement during World War I. The book caused protests in France, but Rolland condemned the war and tried to show the oneness of western culture. Due to these opinions he was called traitor. In 1913 he wrote the novel Colas Breugnon, which was published in 1919. In the 1920s Rolland became interested in Indian philosophy and wrote a biography of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1923 Rolland founded the international magazine Europe, which opposed nationalism. Gradually he started to reject Stalinism, and support non-violent social change. From 1914 to 1937 Rolland lived in Switzerland. There he completed the second novel cycle, The Enchanted Soul. Rolland became a mouthpiece of the opposition to Fascism and the Nazis. During the last years of his life, Rolland lived in Vézelay and worked on the biography of Charles Péguy. On December 30, 1944 he succumbed to tuberculosis, an illness that had afflicted him since his childhood. Andrew Moore assisted James McNair on the last 10 of his cookbooks, including recipe development and editing. James and Andrew divide their time between a home in Northern California and their lodge on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.