Clerambault: Histoire D'une Conscience Libre Pendant La Guerre

The novel that made Romain Rolland an exile from his own country. Set in the summer of 1914, it follows Agénor Clerambault, a sixty-year-old poet and lifelong humanist, as Europe hurtles toward war. Clerambault has spent decades believing in humanity's essential goodness, in reason over force. When the clouds gather, he refuses to bow to patriotic hysteria. He will not cheer for slaughter. He will not betray the conscience that has defined him. As his nation descends into war fever, as friends become enemies and neighbors become informers, Clerambault stands alone, and the novel becomes an agonizing examination of what it costs to remain human when everyone else has agreed to forget it. Rolland drew on his own experience as a Nobel laureate who was imprisoned for his anti-war position during the Great War, making this both a work of fiction and a passionate defense of intellectual courage in an age of mass delusion.