Jean-Christophe

This is the opening volume of Romain Rolland’s vast ten-part life story of Jean-Christophe Krafft, a German-born musical genius modeled loosely on Beethoven. It begins at the cradle, in a poor Rhineland household where the boy discovers music amid drink, poverty, and a bullying father, and where his sensitivity to sound and to injustice is already forming the artist he will become. Rolland traces a single soul across a whole era, weighing genius against the compromises of ordinary life. The full cycle won him the 1915 Nobel Prize and stands as one of the great achievements of the roman-fleuve. Published beginning in 1904, this Gilbert Cannan translation is free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.