Chapter II: The Heroes of Suffering

Like the revolutionary dramas, the new creative cycle was preluded by a manifesto, a new call to greatness. The preface to _Beethoven_ proclaims: "The air is fetid. Old Europe is suffocating in a sultry and unclean atmosphere. Our thoughts are weighed down by a petty materialism.... The world sickens in a cunning and cowardly egoism. We are stifling. Throw the windows wide; let in the free air of heaven. We must breathe the souls of the heroes." What does Rolland mean by a hero? He does not think of those who lead the masses, wage victorious wars, kindle revolutions; he does not refer to men of action, or to those whose thoughts engender action. The nullity of united action has become plain to him. Unconsciously in his dramas he has depicted the tragedy of the idea as something which cannot be divided among men like bread, as something which in each individual's brain and blood undergoes prompt transformation into a new form, often into its very opposite. True greatness is for him to be found only in solitude, in struggle waged by the individual against the unseen. "I do not give the name of heroes to those who have triumphed, whether by ideas or by physical force. By heroes I mean those who were great through the power of the heart. As one of the greatest (Tolstoi) has said, 'I recognize no other sign of superiority than goodness. Where the character is not great, there is neither a great artist nor a great man of action; there is nothing but one of the idols of the crowd; time will shatter them together.... What matters, is to be great, not to seem great.'"

A hero does not fight for the petty achievements of life, for success, for an idea in which all can participate; he fights for the whole, for life itself. Whoever turns his back on the struggle because he dreads to be alone, is a weakling who shrinks from suffering; he is one who with a mask of artificial beauty would conceal from himself the tragedy of mortal life; he is a liar. True heroism is that which faces realities. Rolland fiercely exclaims: "I loathe the cowardly idealism of those who refuse to see the tragedies of life and the weaknesses of the soul. To a nation that is prone to the deceitful illusions of resounding words, to such a nation above all, is it necessary to say that the heroic falsehood is a form of cowardice. There is but one heroism on earth--to know life and yet to love it."

Suffering is not the great man's goal. But it is his ordeal; the needful filter to effect purification; "the swiftest beast of burden bearing us towards perfection," as Meister Eckhart said. "In suffering alone do we rightly understand art; through sorrow alone do we learn those things which outlast the centuries, and are stronger than death." Thus for the great man, the painful experiences of life are transmuted into knowledge, and this knowledge is further transmuted into the power of love. Suffering does not suffice by itself to produce greatness; we need to have achieved a triumph over suffering. He who is broken by the distresses of life, and still more he who shirks the troubles of life, is stamped with the imprint of defeat, and even his noblest work will bear the marks of this overthrow. None but he who rises from the depths, can bring a message to the heights of the spirit; paradise must be reached by a path that leads through purgatory. Each must discover this path for himself; but the one who strides along it with head erect is a leader, and can lift others into his own world. "Great souls are like mountain peaks. Storms lash them; clouds envelop them; but on the peaks we breathe more freely than elsewhere. In that pure atmosphere, the wounds of the heart are cleansed; and when the cloudbanks part, we gain a view of all mankind."

To such lofty outlooks Rolland wishes to lead the sufferers who are still in the darkness of torment. He desires to show them the heights where suffering grows one with nature and where struggle becomes heroic. "Sursum corda," he sings, chanting a song of praise as he reveals the sublime pictures of creative sorrow.