BERNARDOS, GEORGES. - French writer of novels, short stories, and essays, b. in Paris on 20 Feb. 1888, d. at Neuilly-sur-Seine on 5 July 1948. Coming from Catholic circles, he infused his work with a religious conception of life, a Catholicism deeply felt but often asserted with excessive and violent force. His first novel, *Sous le soleil de Satan*, which may be called the novel of interior life, published in 1926 to enormous success, ultimately stems from a tragic reaction against the facile optimism that had arisen in the immediate post-war period. It is the strange story of a priest, Abbé Donissan, who, though visited and persecuted by Satan, attains a sanctity that superficial observers have readily compared to that of the holy curé d’Ars, also for his particular gift of reading souls and inducing them to make full confession of their most hidden sins.
*L’Imposture* (1927) follows the path marked out by this first novel, accentuating its strangeness and boldness, while *La joie* (1929) presents the figure of a girl elevated to an exceptional mystical state. These are followed by *La grande peur des bien-pensants* (1931), a fiery and intemperate political-social satire; *Noël à la maison de France* (1933); *Jeanne relapsé et sainte* (1934); and *Un crime*, which harks back to the first novel and seeks to strike with satirical and exaggerated portraits the indifference toward good and evil and the impossibility of pursuing both simultaneously.
*Le Journal d’un curé de campagne* (1936) introduces us to a more accessible milieu in which the supernatural becomes more intimate and profound; the modest country parish priest proves to be a true clinician of souls, especially his own, and resolves their spiritual problems with delicate assurance.
In 1938 B. published a volume of essays, *Les grands cimetières sous la lune*, highly partisan in its political judgments, while as early as 1927 he had published *La vie de S. Dominique* and in 1928 a collection of short stories, *Madame d’Argent*. During the German occupation he went into voluntary exile in America. From the same period are *Nous autres français* and *Lettre aux anglais*.
Endowed with an original and powerful temperament, devoid of erotic complications and morbid aestheticism, B. enriched French literature with an intense spiritual orientation and a profound sense of life. Coming from the school of Catholic novelists (J. Barbier d’Aurevilly, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L. Bloy), he knew how to represent with equal effectiveness both pure priestly souls and certain highly questionable ones, as well as satanic souls (some critics have likened him to Dostoevsky), in a style that creates a special pathos and at times a hallucinatory obsession. B. lacks serenity and a sense of measure, which obliges us to make some due reservations regarding his title of Catholic writer.