BERNANOS, GEORGES

BERNANOS, GEORGES. — French writer of novels, short stories, and essays, born in Paris on 20 February 1888, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 5 July 1948. Coming from Catholic circles, he drew inspiration for his work from a religious conception of life, from a deeply felt Catholicism, but one asserted with a force too often excessive and violent. His first novel, Sous le soleil de Satan, which may be called the novel of the interior life, published in 1926 with enormous success, ultimately arose from a tragic reaction to that facile optimism which had emerged in the first postwar period. It is the strange story of a priest, Abbé Donisson, who, although visited and persecuted by Satan, attains a holiness that superficial observers have readily compared with that of the holy Curé of Ars, also because of his special gift for reading souls and inducing them to make a full confession of their most hidden sins. L’imposture (1927) follows the path marked out by this first novel, accentuating its oddities and audacities, while La joie (1929) presents the figure of a girl raised to an exceptional mystical state. These were followed by La grande peur des bien-pensants (1931), a fiery and intemperate political-social satire; Noël à la maison de France (1933); Jeanne relapse et sainte (1934); and Un crime, which is linked to the first novel and seeks, through satirical and exaggerated portraits, to strike at indifference toward good and evil, as well as at the impossibility of following both simultaneously. Le journal d’un curé de campagne, of 1936, introduces us into 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, above all of his own, and resolves their spiritual problems with delicate assurance. In 1938 B. published a volume of essays, Les grands cimetières sous la lune, very partial 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. Nous autres français and Lettre aux anglais belong to the same period. Endowed with an original and powerful temperament, free 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 is equally effective in portraying pure priestly souls, certain highly questionable ones, and satanic souls (some critics have compared him with Dostojewski), in a style that creates a special pathos and at times a hallucinating obsession. B. lacks serenity and a sense of proportion; this necessitates certain reservations concerning his title as a Catholic writer.