The French writer Romain Rolland (1866-1944) was the author of many works, all reflecting the conscience of a great humanist.

Romain Rolland was born on Jan. 29, 1866, in Clamecy (Burgundy). His family moved to Paris in 1880, where he graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in 1889 in history. During these years, disillusioned by the decadence of French society, having lost faith in Catholicism, but still looking for ideals, he turned toward the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. In 1889 he arrived in Rome, where he discovered the Italian Renaissance and met Malvida von Meysenburg, who introduced him to the heroes of revolution and German romanticism; these various influences appear for the first time in his two unpublished dramas--Empedocle and Orsino.

Rolland returned to Paris in 1891, where he slowly turned toward the incipient socialism. In 1898, involved in the polemic aroused by the Dreyfus Affair, he wrote Les Loups (The...