BAZIN, RENÉ. - French novelist, b. at Angers on 26 Dec. 1853, d. at Paris on 20 July 1932. Noble is the effort to encompass in his work all the social, religious and patriotic anxieties of his time: his political and social ideas are bound to the rigid Catholic doctrine of an enlightened believer, and his entire work as a narrator is sustained by a serene and active faith; in a single love he unites Catholic France and the Roman Church. A conservative in politics, he sympathizes with the ancien régime, yet nevertheless wishes to take an active part in the movement of contemporary social life in order to lead it back to the principles of former times. At times perhaps he exaggerated, but his good faith is evident.
His narrative work, at first more spontaneous and of rich inventiveness (Stéphanette, Ma tante Giron, Une tache d'encre, La sarcelle bleu etc.) achieves full success with La terre qui meurt (1899), in which the danger of the depopulation of the countryside is denounced. With l'Isolée (1905) he begins to gain in descriptive richness what he loses in invention: Le blé qui lève (1907) comes to correct, albeit involuntarily, the sadness of the novel of the Vendean marsh. One may also recall Les Oberlé (1901) with its strong patriotic accent, Donatienne (1903), one of his best works, the Mémoires d'une vieille fille (1908), la Barrière (1901), Les nouveaux Oberlé (1919) etc., as well as the Contes de bonne Perrette (1904), the Récits de la plaine et de la montagne (1903), the Pages religieuses (1906), Aujourd'hui et demain (1916).
B. always displays a notable faculty of observation, knows how to grasp the characteristic traits of things and people, to reveal in an atmosphere of poetry the bonds that bind man to his land: a sincere optimist, he extols in a pleasant, rich and easy language the beauty of Christian virtue and the necessity of moral and social laws.
Bibliography4 works
Jole Scudieri Ruggieri