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The life and teachings of the 19th-century saint Ramakrishna, as written by a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in the early 1900s. Used in many colleges as an introduction to the saint. Beautiful translation from the French edition. ... Read more

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Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Three complete works collected in one edition formatted for the Kindle.ROMAIN ROLLAND [1866-1944] was born in France. He was a professor of the History of Music at the Sorbonne, and History Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure. In 1902, he published his first book. In 1903, he wrote an essay which influenced the establishment in Europe of the People's Theatre movement. From 1904 through 1912, he wrote the Jean-Christophe Cycle of ten volumes divided into three series— Jean-Christophe, Jean-Christophe a Paris, and La Fin du Voyage . In 1912, due to the succes of his books, he resigned from the university to write full time. In 1915, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a pacifist, and during World War I and later corresponded with Gandhi and Tagore. In 1928, he co-founded, with Edmund Bordeaux Szekely, the International Biogenic Society to promote the health of body and spirit through a vegetarian lifestyle. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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This is one of the early biographies of Swami Vivekananda.
Translated from the French. The author writes: Vivekananda's words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages at thirty years distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. and what shocks, what transports must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero. ... Read more

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:THE DEATH OF JEAN MICHELYeabs have passed. Jean-Christophe is nearly eleven. His musical education is proceeding. He is learning harmony with Florian Holzer, the organist of St. Martin's, a friend of his grandfather's, a very learned man, who teaches him that the chords and series of chords that he most loves, and the harmonies which softly greet his heart and ear, those that he cannot hear without a little thrill running down his spine, are bad and forbidden. When he asks why, no reply is forthcoming but that it is so; the rules forbid them. As he is naturally in revolt against discipline, he loves them only the more. His delight is to find examples of them in the great and admired musicians, and to take them to his grandfather or his master. His grandfather replies that in the great musicians they are admirable, and that Beethoven and Bach can take any liberty. His master, less conciliatory, is angry, and says acidly that the masters did better things.Jean-Christophe has a free pass for the concerts and the theater. He has learned to play every instrument a little. He is already quite skilful with the violin, and his father procured him a seat in the orchestra. He acquitted himself so well there that after a few months' probation he was officially appointed second violin in the Hof Musik Verein. He has begun to earn his living. Not too soon either, for affairs at home have gone from bad to worse. Melchior's intemperance has swamped him, and his grandfather is growing old.Jean-Christophe has taken in the melancholy situation. He is already as grave and anxious as a man. He fulfils his task valiantly, though it does not interest him, and he is apt to fall asleep in the orchestra in the evenings, because it is late and he is tired. The theater no longer rouses in him th... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

that's what we can call LIFE
If you want to love life, read this book; if you want to hate life, read this book, too. It makes you a hero.

A book for life.
Just like many of the readers, I first read it about ten years ago and surely it has since remained the best book I've ever read in my life. As a keen lover of music, I have experienced, am experiencing and will experience how music of Beethoven's gives me bravery and strength during dark and weak period of life. This book, too, certainly is the counterpart that will be accompanying me for life, sublimating my soul and give me
power and strength.

"Those who know not of 'suffer' ought not talk about it"
Jean-Christophe is a very touching story that does indeed prove the saying above.Jean Christophe may be the idea of a rascal, evil and full of hatred to the rich, but he's just a desperate man in need of comfort, of peace, and most of all, of appreciation. It just-in it's persuasive way-forces you to look upon the dirty, 'unworthy' ones with a new light, with pity-not disgust. The language simply cools down the heart like a mountain-full of ice by the beauty of it. And it's hatred for the world behind the mask just burns your heart as it did with Christophe. Down with pretense! Down with politeness! All in all, the tragedy of this impatient man who found peace in death will either pierce your heart with enlightment or choke you with laughter. Be it a long lecture, a 1600+ pages of enlightment, a rebellion, this is not a master of the great arts you will soon forget.

5 stars 10 years ago
I read this book when I was in high school. All summer nights in 1994!! I even felt bad as I progressed through the pages as if the book was a bag of cookies. Ideal, spiritual, as pure as the sound of a wood wind instrument.

A decade later I revisited this book this summer. The protagonist were no more as inspirational as before. First of all this Jean Christophe person is such a super moral man that I don't see any reality in his character. It is hard to imagine that Beethoven was such a character.( Another book by the same author. See how I was intrigued then.) Maybe I'm wrong. People born before WW2 could have lived different lives than our own.

A book of my life
I read it translated in Korean about 12 years ago. Though i felt it was somewhat boring at that time, i couldn't put it down, so i persisted. And now i know the book has been serving all these years as a formative novel to me. I am afraid I don't remember the details, but surely i remember how absolutely it absorbed me and arrested me. I want to get a copy of it now and read it again, for now I am sure i will be fully enjoying it, even loving the memory of boredom it gave me when i was a novice and dull reader. So sad it is out of print. ... Read more

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Defeat new-forges the chosen among men: it sorts out the people: it winnows out those who are purest and strongest, and makes them purer and stronger. But it hastens the downfall of the rest, or cuts short their flight. In that way it separates the mass of the people, who slumber or fall by the way, from the chosen few who go marching on. The chosen few know it and suffer: even in the most valiant there is a secret melancholy, a feeling of their own impotence and isolation. Worst of all,--cut off from the great mass of their people, they are also cut off from each other. Each must fight for his own hand. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: H. Holt and company in 1913 in 1600 pages; Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Short Stories; ... Read more

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1924. A biographical account of the man who became one with the universal being. Gandhi is considered the father of India and was an Indian nationalist and spiritual leader. The literal translation of Mahatma, the name which the people of India gave to Gandhi, is "the great soul." This word goes back to the Upanishads, where it is used in speaking of the Supreme Being, and through communion of knowledge and love, those who become one with Him. ... Read more

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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1919Original Publisher: H. Holt and CompanySubjects: Fiction / LiteraryForeign Language Study / FrenchHistory / GeneralLiterary Criticism / European / FrenchMusic / Genres ... Read more