PREFACE

As I reflect back on this work's various incarnations, I realize that its basic thrust was toward building bridges. I was trained in modern European intellectual and cultural history at the University of Wisconsin in the middle and late 1960s and early 1970s. Madison pulsated to the politics of the American antiwar movement, the life-style experiments and rebelliousness of the counterculture, and the theoretical preoccupations of the New Left. If I never fit into any single category or grouping, perhaps a function of my nonconformism and my desire to resist excess, I was influenced deeply by all these trends. I attempted to find my own independent path and to integrate what seemed valid among all three. My studies were highlighted by an immersion in the writings of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Sartre, including a study of their contemporary commentators and the movements generated in their names and against their names. My graduate education perhaps failed to professionalize me, and certainly ill-prepared me for the life of an academic historian in the "real world" of shrinking jobs, but it did teach me how to think. For that I am deeply grateful.

Cultural history appealed to me because it presented a powerful method of analysis and because it was so all-embracing. We read astounding books by incredible writers—novels, philosophical essays, poetry, and culture criticism—yet did not get bogged down in technical philosophical disputes, circular language games, and the formalism of certain schools of literary criticism. I learned to interpret texts contextually, to tease out the various meanings in terms of the time, place, and circumstances of their production. Historical consciousness was exciting in itself, working against the passionate current to be relevant, while keeping me aware of the legitimate parallels between the recent past and the present. Looking to Europe, above all to European thinkers and cultural movements, meant getting away from America and all that was shallow, con-

formist, mediocre, and corrupt in American politics and culture. I was self-consciously alienated and I permitted myself to follow my alienation to certain extremes.

I became fascinated with a form of cultural history that focused on intellectuals themselves. Intellectual history, conceived of as the vertical history of intellectuals, was not narrow at all, in that it touched horizontally on the convergence of cultural life with ideology, politics, and social movements. I learned from the social historians, especially those not intimidated by ideas, who did not need to posture against the so-called elitism of researching realms of high culture. I became obsessed with the problematic of the responsibility of the intellectual. I turned to French high culture because the world of the French intellectual was closely linked to sociopolitical change. Cultural creativity and innovation, I discovered, were tied to an ongoing commitment to renovate, even revolutionize, modern society, while resisting the forces of decadence and outmoded tradition. I was intrigued by the concept and contradictions of the intellectual serving as an avant-garde of a cultural revolution.

There was a subjective component to this process as well. I was searching for a figure who worked at the frontier between disciplines, between genres, between different civilizations, between writing and politics, and who reflected on the meaning of being an intellectual in the twentieth century. I found a soul mate in Romain Rolland. I subsequently discovered that I was searching for someone who epitomized integrity, an individual articulating and defending, in moments of crisis, an idealistic stance grounded in a sense of fundamental decency. This used to be called humanism, or radical humanism. I suppose I am still moved by it. Romain Rolland was simultaneously, or at least serially, a man of imagination, reason, and conscience who attempted to use his talents to create a new version of committed writing. No typology or sociology of the intellectual helped me to situate his life and work in his own day. This book contributes to the existing literature on committed intellectuals by discussing the origins, significance, and limitations of Romain Rolland's engagement.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the climate at the University of Wisconsin in the period from 1965 to 1973. As an undergraduate and then a doctoral candidate I was first exposed to an educational

atmosphere where politics and culture intersected. In Madison there was a genuine spirit of inquiry; students were encouraged to raise questions, to respect authentic learning and rigorous research. My professors were inspiring, and in studying with them I felt close to European ways of thinking. At moments they became Europe itself. In Madison a respect for theory went with a disrespect for authority; scholarly learning was valued, not as an end in itself, but only if it provided a foundation for critical thinking about oneself and the world.

This work began as a George L. Mosse doctoral thesis, and I would be delighted to have it identified with studies associated with his name. Professor Mosse is a man of vast learning, intuition, and historical probity. I first learned of Romain Rolland in his provocative lectures on modern European cultural history. Mosse focused on how persons, institutions, and cultural movements helped to shape attitudes, values, feelings, stereotypes, and myths that subsequently determined historical choices and events. His distrust of posturing and idealization went with a demythologizing form of analysis. He not only dared us to think historically and critically, but showed us how it was done. In working with Harvey Goldberg, I encountered an oratorical genius. Goldberg's history of revolution blended his photographic memory, his mastery of historical narrative and analysis, and his own admiration for courage and commitment within a left-wing heritage. Goldberg's lectures were undoubtedly the best show in town. With the History Department divided between the dominant personalities and points of view of Mosse and Goldberg, there was pressure to choose one or the other. I declined this choice and tried to incorporate the most salient features of both approaches into my own vision. It was not accidental that Goldberg's magisterial Life of Jean Jaurès (1962) opens with an epigraph by Romain Rolland; Romain Rolland also emerged as the "hero" of Mosse's iconoclastic Culture of Western Europe (1961). This Rolland book then was unconsciously and consciously conceived as a tribute to Mosse and Goldberg; it represents my own effort to bridge their distinct personalities and world views.

Working with Germaine Brée at the University of Wisconsin was a rare opportunity. Professor Brée both practiced and taught a disciplined, methodical approach to her subject, contemporary

French culture. Her perspective was marked by its balance and generosity. She was a Camusian presence for me in a Sartrean era, a presence I found refreshing and invaluable.

I should also like to mention the impact of a number of courses with Hans H. Gerth. Professor Gerth was a sociologist in the tradition of Weber and Karl Mannheim; in practice, his courses were idiosyncratic versions of cultural history, where insight mingled with compassion, encyclopedic knowledge with a zany joy of living. My one year at New York University brought me in contact with Leo Gershoy, who introduced me to the scholarship and passions generated by the French Revolution. I also attended the brilliant lectures of Frank Manuel, whose articulation of the history of ideas was enormously stimulating and artful. His attempts to integrate history and psychoanalysis still fire my imagination.

I spent two years in Paris following the completion of my thesis. I enrolled in a postdoctoral seminar at the Sixième Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes directed by Georges Haupt. It was called "The Geography of Marxism." Professor Haupt was a Romanian intellectual who had survived the concentration camps, been educated in the Soviet Union, and finally settled in Paris. He had lived, as well as reflected on, the history of the European midcentury. As a distinguished historian of European socialism and communism, his teaching was characterized by his intellectual curiosity, love of the archives, a capacity to ask pertinent questions, and a personal warmth and accessibility to students. Haupt loved a good discussion, appreciated ambiguity, and knew how to bring interesting people together. He died prematurely and is much missed.

Living in Paris was itself an education. Combining elements of the bohemian, left-wing intellectual, and post-1968 life-styles, those years of my life were a movable feast. How rich it was to live and work in Paris as a young man, full of hopes and dreams, despite the poverty and student status.

Over the years I have had fruitful conversations with friends and colleagues concerning the themes of this book. The following individuals were exceedingly empathic to me, especially in some of my more despairing moments. I want to thank by name Laurie Baron, Richard Levine, Robert Nye, John Cammett, and Walter Langlois. Robert Frykenberg, Joseph Elder, and Stanley Wolpert helped me

with my chapter on Gandhi and India. I had a valuable correspondence with the historian of pacifism Peter Brock. William T. Starr, a Romain Rolland specialist from Northwestern University, granted an interview with me, shared his bibliography, and was receptive to my work. More recently I received astute and generous critiques of the manuscript from Sandi Cooper, David Schalk, and Robert Rosenstone. Peter Loewenberg read several seminal chapters and Robert Wohl assessed the entire text; I have profited from their suggestions, encouragement, and desire to have me submit the book to the University of California Press. Robert Wohl persuaded me that the process of writing a book was integrally connected to cutting and revising, even after the author thinks it is done. Rudolf Ekstein patiently transmitted to me the distinction between "learning for love" and the authentic "love of learning," which he possesses in large measure. Among his many virtues, he understands experientially the dilemmas of the committed European intellectual.

Alain Hénon from the University of California Press was a tactful and discerning editor, who believed in my manuscript, appreciated the importance of Romain Rolland, and urged me to make this book accessible to my readers. Uri Hertz assisted me in editing the text. Jill Sellers was a superb copyeditor. Irene Baldon was a most cooperative and competent typist. Mike Sigman, publisher of the L.A. Weekly , gave generously of his time and expertise to proofread the text. Mary Renaud, project editor at the University of California Press, saw the project through, and Andrew Joron prepared the index. The book is dedicated to my parents, who first took me to France in 1961, instilled a love of books in me, and taught me to treasure the liberating effects of learning and cultural activity. My wife, Karen Fund, provided me with the psychological and emotional atmosphere necessary to complete the work. Her understanding of the heart and ability to get along in the world have become a necessary balance to my own orientation toward intellectual analysis and critical dialogue. To see this book in print will make her proud, and making her proud gladdens me.