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This epic of King Louis IX is a drama of religious exaltation, born of the spirit of music, an adaptation of the Wagnerian idea of elucidating ancestral sagas in works of art. It was originally designed as an opera. Rolland actually composed an overture to the work; but this, like his other musical compositions, remains unpublished. Subsequently he was satisfied with lyrical treatment in place of music.We find no touch of Shakespearean passion in these gentle pictures. It is a heroic legend of the saints, in dramatic form. The scenes remind us of a phrase of Flaubert's in La légende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier ,in that they are "written as they appear in the stained-glass windows of our churches." The tints are delicate,like those of the frescoes in the Panthéon, where Puvis de Chavannes depicts another French saint, Sainte Geneviève watching over Paris. The soft moonlight playing on the saint's figure in the frescoes is identical with the light which in Rolland's drama shines like a halo of goodness round the head of the pious king of France.
The music of Parsifal seems to sound faintly through the work. We trace the lineaments of Parsifal himself in this monarch, to whom knowledge comes not through sympathy but through goodness, and who finds the aptest phrase to explain his own title to fame, saying: "Pour comprendre les autres, il ne faut qu'aimer"—To understand others, we need only love. His leading quality is gentleness, but he has so much of it that the strong grow weak before him;he has nothing but his faith, but this faith builds mountains of action. He neither can nor will lead his people to victory; but he makes his subjects transcend themselves, transcend their own inertia and the apparently futile venture of the crusade, to attain faith. Thereby he gives the whole nation the greatness which ever springs from self-sacrifice. In Saint Louis, Rolland for the first time presents his favorite type, that of the vanquished victor. The king never reaches his goal, but "plus qu'il est écrasé par les choses plus il semble les dominer davantage"—the more he seems to be crushed by things, the more does he dominate them. When, like Moses, he is forbidden to set eyes on the promised land, when it proves to be his destiny "de mourir vaincu," to die conquered,as he draws his last breath on the mountain slope his soldiers at the summit, catching sight of the city which is the goal of their aspirations, raise an exultant shout. Louis knows that to one who strives for the unattainable the world can never give victory, but "il est beau lutter pour l'impossible quand l'impossible est Dieu"—it is glorious to fight for the unattainable when the unattainable is God. For the vanquished in such a struggle, the highest triumph is reserved. He has stirred up the weak in soul to do a deed whose rapture is denied to himself; from his own faith he has created faith in others; from his own spirit has issued the eternal spirit.
Rolland's first published work exhales the atmosphere of Christianity. Humility conquers force,faith conquers the world, love conquers hatred;these eternal truths which have been incorporated in countless sayings and writings from those of the primitive Christians down to those of Tolstoi, are repeated once again by Rolland in the form of a legend of the saints. In his later works, however, with a freer touch, he shows that the power of faith is not tied to any particular creed. The symbolical world, which is here used as a romanticist vehicle in which to enwrap his own idealism, is replaced by the environment of modern days. Thus we are taught that from Saint Louis and the crusades it is but a step to our own soul, if it desire "to be great and to defend greatness on earth."