Resumen
Resumen de Clerambault
Para quién es
Readers who love novels about conscience, family and the pull of the crowd, and anyone drawn to the First World War as lived in Paris homes, hospitals and cafés rather than on the battlefield.
De qué trata este libro
Clerambault is a novel by Romain Rolland, written between 1916 and 1920 while he lived in Switzerland and watched Europe tear itself apart. Rolland wrote against hatred between nations, and this book gives that stand a human face. It follows Agénor Clerambault, a gentle French poet past fifty, whose life is overturned by the First World War.
At first Clerambault does what everyone around him does. He writes fiery poems, cheers the young men marching off and believes what the newspapers tell him. Then his son Maxime is lost at the front, and the poet sees what he has done with his gift. He begins to write against the war, and against the idea that a citizen must hand his mind over to the state. His friends fall away, his wife is frightened, and strangers shout at him in the street.
You get a story of a family, a city and a conscience. There is a daughter in love, a scholar who thinks clearly and acts timidly, and wounded young men who look to an older man for hope. You also get Rolland's argument that only a free mind can truly serve other people. The first key point is the quiet July evening in 1914 when a poet reads an ode to peace in his garden.
En este resumen
- 1A gentle poet trusts that peace will holdFree
- 2The crowd swallows the poet whole
- 3Maxime comes home and cannot be reached
- 4One night strips away every borrowed belief
- 5He finds no guide and begins to speak
- 6Speaking out costs him friends and family
- 7Young survivors, a false friend and a hostile mind
- 8The free mind against the collective soul
- 9How Rolland tells the story
Idea clave 1 de 9
A gentle poet trusts that peace will hold
The novel opens on a July evening in 1914 at Saint-Prix, a village outside Paris. Agénor Clerambault sits under the arbor in his garden and reads his family a new ode to universal peace. He is past fifty, tall and kind, with a thick blond mustache, and he has only lately become well known after years of obscurity. As he reads, he looks from face to face, certain that his own joy is shining back at him.
His listeners are drawn with warmth and a little humor. His wife Pauline loves him but drifts off during any reading, so she grabs the last words she heard and gushes over them. Maxime, nineteen, is a quick Parisian boy who teases his father and admires him all the more for it. Rosine, the quiet daughter, says almost nothing, yet her blush and her shining eyes show how deeply she takes in every word.
Rolland takes care to explain what kind of man this poet is. Clerambault is trusting and warm and nearsighted about evil, so he sees the best in everyone, and people forgive his errors because those errors flatter them. He loves the crowd more than he knows the people, and he enjoys melting his own self into what he calls the soul of everyone. The author adds that this was a fashion among thinkers of the day, who gave up the effort to stay free and called the surrender a choice.
The warning comes in plain sight. Maxime opens the evening paper and says that Austria has declared war on Serbia. His mother waves it off as news from the moon, and his father smiles and explains that war is a bogeyman that free democracies have outgrown. The night is calm, with crickets, a trickling fountain and the beam of the Eiffel Tower, while Rosine plays Schumann at the piano.
Six days later the calm breaks. Maxime says that it has happened, and then a telephone call brings word that Jaurès, the Socialist leader whom many trusted to hold back the storm, has been murdered. Clerambault sits through the night in despair, begging for it not to be true. This opening matters because it shows how much he has to lose and how little he has ever tested what he believes.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Clerambault
What is Clerambault by Romain Rolland about?
It follows a French poet who supports the First World War, loses his son at the front and then speaks out against the war. He faces the anger of friends, family and the press, and learns to trust his own conscience.
Is Clerambault a true story?
It is a novel, not a true account, though it grows out of Rolland's own stand against the war. He began it in 1916 in Switzerland and finished it in 1920, and it echoes real events such as the murder of Jaurès.
What does One Against All mean in the book?
It is the name a nationalist newspaper gives Clerambault to mock him as a lone voice against the nation. He comes to accept it, seeing himself as one of the free minds who stand alone for everyone.
Who is Perrotin and why does he matter?
Perrotin is Clerambault's old friend, a gifted scholar and Academician who sees the war's folly yet will not say so in public. He stands for the thinker who keeps freedom in his head and bows in action.
What is the main message of Clerambault?
Rolland argues that a person serves others best by staying free and sincere, even against everyone, and that handing your mind to the crowd or the state betrays both yourself and the community.