Chapter XVII: The Call Lost in the Void

The ears of the people were deaf. Rolland's work seemed to have been fruitless. Not one of the dramas was played for more than a few nights. Most of them were buried after a single performance, slain by the hostility of the critics and the indifference of the crowd. Futile, too, had been the struggles of Rolland and his friends on behalf of the people's theater. The government to which they had addressed an appeal for the founding of a popular theater in Paris, paid little attention. M. Adrien Bernheim was dispatched to Berlin to make inquiries. He reported. Further reports were made. The matter was discussed for a while, but was ultimately shelved. Rostand and Bernstein continued to triumph in the boulevards; the great call to idealism had remained unheard.

Where could the author look for help in the completion of his splendid program? To what nation could he turn when his own made no response, _Le théâtre de la révolution_ remained a fragment. A _Robespierre_, which was to be the spiritual counterpart of _Danton_, already sketched in broad outline, was left unfinished. The other segments of the great dramatic cycle have never been touched. Bundles of studies, newspaper cuttings, loose leaves, manuscript books, waste paper, are the vestiges of an edifice which was planned as a pantheon for the French people, a theater which was to reflect the heroic achievements of the French spirit. Rolland may well have shared the feelings of Goethe who, mournfully recalling his earlier dramatic dreams, said on one occasion to Eckermann: "Formerly I fancied it would be possible to create a German theater. I cherished the illusion that I could myself contribute to the foundations of such a building.... But there was no stir in response to my efforts, and everything remains as of old. Had I been able to exert an influence, had I secured approval, I should have written a dozen plays like _Iphigenia_ and _Tasso_. There was no scarcity of material. But, as I have told you, we lack actors to play such pieces with spirit, and we lack a public to form an appreciative audience."

The call was lost in the void. "There was no stir in response to my efforts, and everything remains as of old." But Rolland, likewise, remains as of old, inspired with the same faith, whether he has succeeded or whether he has failed. He is ever willing to begin work over again, marching stoutly across the land of lost endeavor towards a new and more distant goal. We may apply to him Rilke's fine phrase, and say that, if he needs must be vanquished, he aspires "to be vanquished always in a greater and yet greater cause."