Above the Battle: Representations of the anonymous soldier in Romain Rolland's work

Abstract

Committed to pacifism and humanism, Romain Rolland lives with the First World War a personal and authorial debacle, seeing himself practically alone in a Europe where the “regiments of the pen” were orchestrating the hatred between the peoples. Instead, Rolland collaborated with the International Prisoners-of-War Agency in Switzerland, where he lived in a sort of exile until the end of the conflict. Hence, there he gains access to soldier’s testimonies from both sides, which he will later reflect in his articles, published in the volume Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915), in his diaries, correspondence with authors such as Stefan Zweig, and in the work that culminates this fateful period: Clerambault (1920).