. . . political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
It is high time for you to realize that politics is a dirty business in which you would do better not to meddle.
—Lenin to Maxim Gorky, 1918
The strange progress of Romain Rolland—the once internationally celebrated novelist, biographer, and musicologist—raises questions about the nature and relationship of art and politics that have plagued literature since the French Revolution. Do artists as such have some special or superior insight into political affairs that gives them the privilege or obligation to act as guides and to hold forth on the subject? Have art and politics anything to do with ethics? Is the order of art the same as the order of politics? No particular respect is granted to politicians, should they choose to speak of art; indeed, their views on art and artists often appear risible or loathsome. But then, politicians are concerned with action and power, and with molding things as they are. Artists, on the other hand, are dreamers, eager to communicate their dreams, which they may be inclined to take for realities.
Reflections about such queries and distinctions are prompted by David James Fisher’s book, Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement.[1]This study offers a detailed account of the novelist’s political notions
