This book tells the story of three young men: two French, one Russian; all born the same year, when European culture was moving from Romanticism to something else in painting, music, and literature. Influenced by the environment from which they came, all three grew to take a leading role in moving the arts in a bold new direction. It was the age when Impressionism reinvented what painting could be, when Naturalism changed how fiction is written, and when Russia moved from the edges of European society to the vital role it has played ever since. Leading, guiding, determining this new course were Monet, Tchaikovsky, and Zola.
Parallel biographies of these three artistic geniuses follow them from the magic year of their birth to the point when they established themselves as bold, original creators in the early 1870s. The book explores how they chose to follow careers in creative art, how each of them came to play such a central role in their respective domains, and how those arts interacted and influenced each other. As they move through the cultural world of 19th century Europe, a panorama appears of the rich intellectual environment of France and Russia in that period, as well as the unique experiences and talents that led all three to their towering position in modern culture. Often considered separately, art, music, and literature come together in this study to offer a multifaceted view of a key era in the development of modernism in all the arts.
