"ce qu’il y a de plus difficile à échanger, peut-être, c’est sa pensée ; il est malaisé de se connaître"

Rolland, Romain, French writer (1866-1944). Series of 21 autograph letters and three autograph postcards signed.

€ 6,500.00

Wide-ranging correspondence with Ethel Sidgwick (1877-1970), an English novelist and author of plays for children. Rolland's letters discuss his writing, including frequent references in the earlier letters to his ten-volume novel sequence "Jean-Christophe" (1904-12), writing particularly warmly after a letter of appreciation from Sidgwick on the last volume in the series. There is also much on the differing natures of the English and the French and of men and women, on the life of an artist, referring to his appreciation for non-French friends, including Malwida von Meysenbug (the friend of Wagner and Nietzsche), on happiness ("Le secret du bonheur, c'est d'aimer la vie"), mentioning his teaching on the history of music at the Sorbonne, his dislike of Paris ("Je n'aime pas ces fourmilières humaines"), his efforts as a pacifist during the Great War, and expressing weak support for women's suffrage in the same context ("I can only say that I am not a suffragist for men [...] How should I be one for women?", 25 May 1915).

"[...] ce qu’il y a de plus difficile à échanger, peut-être, c’est sa pensée; il est malaisé de se connaître [...] Mais Christophe m’a aidé à sortir de moi, et, depuis des années, tout ce que je pense, je le dis en lui [...] Mon Jean-Christophe est - (veut être) - bien plutôt que le poême d’un génie" (22 May 1909).