Cathedral or Symphony

This book is an esthetic assessment of Romain Rolland's Nobel prize winning musical novel. Most critics focus their attention on Rolland's pacifism. Bresky adds to Rolland's previous portraits as an apostle of brotherhood a new portrait of Rolland as an homme de metier. Examining the novel's melodramatic topics, its ambitious composition and its characteristic stylistic features, the critic projects Rolland's masterpiece as a typical example of literary impressionism.