BAZIN, RENÉ. - French novelist, born in Angers on 26 Dec. 1853, died in Paris on 20 July 1932. Noble is his effort to encompass in his work all the social, religious, and patriotic concerns of his time: his political and social ideas are tied to the rigid Catholic doctrine of an enlightened believer, and all his narrative work is sustained by a serene and active faith; in a single love he unites Catholic France and the Roman Church. Conservative in politics, he sympathizes with the ancien régime, yet he still wishes to take an active part in the movement of contemporary social life in order to guide it back to the principles of an earlier time. At times he may have exaggerated, but his good faith is evident.
His narrative work, initially more spontaneous and rich in invention (Stéphanette, Ma tante Giron, Une tache d'encre, La sacrelle bleu, etc.), achieves full success with La terre qui meurt (1890), in which the danger of rural depopulation 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 unintentionally, the sadness of the Vendée marsh novel. One may also recall Les Oberlé (1901), with its strong patriotic tone, Donatienne (1903), one of his best works, Mémoires d'une vieille fille (1908), La Barrière (1901), Les nouveaux Oberlé (1919), as well as Contes de bonne Perrette (1904), Récits de la plaine et de la montagne (1903), Pages religieuses (1906), and Aujourd’hui et demain (1916).
Bazin always demonstrates a notable power of observation, able to capture the characteristic traits of things and people, revealing in an atmosphere of poetry the bonds that connect man to his land: a sincere optimist, he selects in a pleasant, rich, and accessible language the beauty of Christian virtue and the necessity of moral and social laws.