Romain Rolland
Published: 2017-11-21
Total Pages: 590
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Excerpt from Some Musicians of Former Days Music is only just beginning to take the place due to it in general history. It seems a strange thing that concepts of the evolution of man's soul Should have been formed, while one of the strongest expressions of that soul has been ignored. But we know what difficulty the other arts have had in obtaining recognition in general history, even when they were more favoured and easier of approach by the French mind. Is it so long ago that this did not apply to the history of literature, and science, and philosophy, and, indeed, the whole of human thought Yet the political life of a nation is only a superficial part of its being and in order to learn its inner life - the source of its actions we must penetrate to its very soul by way of its literature, its philosophy, and its art, where the ideas, the passions, and the dreams of its people are reflected. We know that history may find resources in literature; and we know the kind of help, for example, that Corneille's poetry and Descartes' philosophy may bring to the understanding of the Treaty of Westphalia; or, again, what a dead letter the Revolution of '89 might be if we were not acquainted with the thought of the Encyclopaedists and eighteenth-century salons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.