Rolland, Romain
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1866-1944) French academic, journalist, playwright and author, best known for the nonfantastic Jean-Christophe series of novels beginning with L'Aube ["Dawn"] (1908). The exuberant life of the protagonist of Colas Breugnon (1919; trans Katherine Miller as Colas Breugnon Burgundian 1919) casts a fantasticated, Rabelaisian light on life in France three centuries prior. Of sf interest is La Révolte de Machines ou La pensée déchaînée (graph 1921; trans William A Drake as The Revolt of the Machines or Invention Run Wild: A Motion Picture Fantasy 1932) with Frans Masereel, couched as a (never-made and probably unrealizable) film script (see Cinema), in which Robots revolt against Homo sapiens, relegating the survivors to a Pastoral enclave. In the absence of humans, the robots, built in the image of their former masters, destroy themselves. The last image of the book is that of a new race of machines, apocalyptically huge, descending upon the world.
Rolland was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 1915. [JC]
Romain Rolland
born Clamency, Nièvre, France: 29 January 1866
died Vézelay, Yonne, France: 30 December 1944
works (highly selected)
- Colas Breugnon (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1919) [pb/nonpictorial]
- Colas Breugnon Burgundian (New York: Henry Holt, 1919) [trans by Katherine Miller of the above: hb/]
- La Révolte de Machines ou La pensée déchaînée (Paris: Editions du Sablier, 1921) [graph: illus/hb/Frans Masereel]
- The Revolt of the Machines or Invention Run Wild: A Motion Picture Fantasy (Ithaca, New York: The Dragon Press, 1932) [graph: trans by William A Drake of the above: illus/hb/Frans Masereel]
about the author
- Stefan Zweig. Romain Rolland: The Man and His Work (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1921) [nonfiction: trans by Eden and Cedar Paul from original MS: hb/]
links
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