The Devil at Noonday
Stuart, Henry L.
6o6 THE COMMONWEAL October 27, 1926 point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing last stage, only alarms...
...Its protagonist is a humble and unlettered country priest, immune to the Sous le Soleil de Satan, by Georges Bernanos...
...His spiritual progress is studied, that will shadow his ministry to the end...
...The sweat trickled between his shoulders...
...Its movement has had the preone by one, from his bulging chest...
...Antonio Fogazzaro, in 11 Santo, had al- just not omnipotent...
...Before that final delay I had been detached time he is not so much glad as simply terrified...
...What genius, what is left him, save to throw himself on his of morality...
...Forewarned even before his frightful of a novel...
...But it is only necessary to compare Piero encounter with Satan in person, by an instinct which Maroni with the Abbe Donissan for a moment to he dimly senses in the prelude to a complete revelarealize the vital difference between the Italian mas- tion, all doubt vanishes after he has encountered the ter's facile borrowings from the supernatural and the enemy of souls in human shape, has fought against terrible task that the French writer has chosen to despair as though for his life, and is left with a vision set himself...
...His because he is d..vastatingly discreet : who tries to hide fingers, which seemed to be the only things alive in a his red hands in his cuffs, to set his hob-nailed shoes body turned to stone by sheer horror, tore at the ground down carefully, to keep a voice low that was meant to in a despairing and mechanical movement, like the claws drive cows and horses...
...Abide in your sullen stupidity...
...One is an overwhelming Stooping with singular agility, he picked up a stone sense of pity...
...The commonest episodes of the struggle that rages within us ~mlocks are hardly taken into account...
...As far, unheeding ships pass bySilence and loneliness for me...
...To what end is the The busy song of cities, where example of so many wretched sinners and their predica- Wealth and companionship belong, ment left us...
...Yet, at that very instant, his break out into a perspiration . . . He plods the roads supreme thought was an obscure defiance...
...that salvation is something stark and sheer and dan- If we cannot, M. Bernanos is willing to help us...
...of view with the picturesque and final expression In France things are rather different...
...least give the ordinary man or woman a solid footOctober 27, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 607 ing in their spiritual warfare, and who, in God's un- ciple in the world, and of its control by one supersearchable providence, becomes the victim (using the natural being-infinitely clever, infinitely resourceful, word in all respect and reverence) of a calling to infinitely skilled in disguises and deceptions, and only sainthood...
...Since that delay has ended in decision, I have misunderstood by stupider people and is responsible had all sorts of changes in mere mood...
...Never forget this...
...the extreme point of a yard, and who sees beneath his In contrast to Maroni, everything about Donissan feet, no longer the sea, but the entire sidereal abyss, is rough-hewn, uncouth, near the earth...
...The despair- through which for billions on billions of leagues, misshapen ing vicar on whom he is thrust as curate, but who clouds boil and foam, whose eyes reach down-down will be the first to discover the hand of God in his through the measureless void which his eternal fall in ordeal, describes him a few moments must plumb, would not experience within the recesses of his being, a more absolute vertigo...
...It is hard to destined tempo of an arithmetical progression...
...Novelles Litteraires, he has summarized the intention "Oh...
...The name several times a day, but belief in his personal list of appreciations is one to make the mouth of the activities has grown a tenuous affair...
...He Of hemlock trees above the sea, has certainly written an arousing and disquieting one...
...The man with whom toward the end of nor the miracle that fails just as it seems on the point whose life the very genius of consolation takes up its of succeeding, present the difficulties to him that some abode, mistrusts its approaches toward himself and, pious critics are making them, unless one must set a because he has once felt it in Satan's arms, seeks to time limit to God's unfathomable mercies, or ration tear it from his own heart...
...my son...
...There Mr...
...Not a shred...
...gerous, and that Satan's crowning piece of craft is In an interview given to M. Frederic Lefevre for Les to make it seem otherwise...
...But the more point of the position is that the trap is simply the I thrust the thing into the back of my mind, the more truth...
...Public support, Mencken (or Monsieur Homais, for the name does as only too rarely happens, is solidly behind critical not greatly matter) is a familiar figure...
...of a beast...
...This joy must be up- out the trials He permits the elect of His Cross...
...A drab battle-ground of instincts...
...The doctor of souls to whom that led this young writer, in whom at times the lucid such spiritual power is given that none have been and disillusioned soul of the new France seems to be known to resist it successfully, is fully, fatally con- incarnate, toward a conviction that some malign scious that, every time he exerts it, another potentate, power, immeasurably greater than the aggregate of occult, malignant, to whom no ruse nor artifice is un- its works and pomps, is busy on the earth today as known, able at need to turn stones to bread and rods ever...
...well as good, is loved for itself-served for itself...
...Neither does the suicide of Mouchette, the It is made all the more so because Bernanos's great poor sinner really possessed by Satan, who asks with novel is really one episode of apparent defeat after her last breath to be carried to the foot of the altar, another...
...M. Calvet, of Mencken and his Americana rises before us...
...Education...
...grandeur of a great love affair...
...Throughout the novel stumbles along the Calvary that will reach to the end we are treading on perilous theological ground, and of his mortal days...
...Today we mention his to M. Bernanos's powerful and hair-raising novel...
...Of grace ?- knees, if not through love, at least through fear, and reason with intelligence as its partner...
...The whole the finality and simplicity of suicide...
...a carnal appetite that seeks to tread it down...
...call on God for help...
...To one writer, still very much under its spell, it seems that Catholic judgment generally must depend on the Is there no conquering dream that frees, view that is taken of his intention...
...He is certified by his creator as a neuras- country road at midnight, succored by a little horsethenic, open to all the vertigos of the senses, a fit sub- dealer through whose human travesty little by little ject for William James's Varieties, but far too tran- (and with what incomparable art 1) the diabolical sient and unsubstantial a mouthpiece for the eternal essence has pierced, finds himself looking "for the verities...
...The ominous word Is there no saving hand to wrest Manichaean has already been heard...
...ment of his sacred ministry...
...double possession, by God and by the devil, was in- JOHN HANLON...
...The La Vie Catholique, precedes his estimate, not always devil has grown to be as unfashionable as he is un- favorable, of it from the religious and orthodox point fathomable...
...But that legend misses the whole point of I did before...
...The fear of Mr...
...ground...
...of having been in a sense entrapped, even if doubts than in the last phase, when I was troubled he is glad to be entrapped...
...At every sparrow or fieldfare of letters makes no excuse for library in France it is reported as the "quickest movperching on his horizontal arms and picking the straws, ing" novel in years...
...all day like a tramp, lends a hand to the plowmen, and "I am about to quit you [it is the tempter covering cherishes the illusion that he is teaching them a few his defeat with blasphemy in which the unfortunate priest words less offensive to the Divine Majesty than those they realizes there is only too much truth...
...and even the last step, or the last effort to deny it...
...Evil, as And silence is the sov'reign there...
...and I think for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a I sympathize with doubts and difficulties more than mere trap...
...In later years, when Donissan's fame from the road, lifted it toward heaven between his fingers, as "the Saint of Lumbres" is nation-wide, and sinners and pronounced the words of consecration, ending them with a sort of joyous neigh . . . It all happened with from all over France resort to his confessional as to the rapidity of a flash of lightning...
...I pity them...
...But even a layman may recognize that an with which he is invested, his self-mistrust and the enemy who is shown fighting to keep his footing can task laid upon his shoulders, becomes almost unbear- hardly be said to be in "possession" of contested ably poignant...
...At least once ambitious native publisher, who is often driven to a week-and probably oftener-if we are Catholics, strange places to gather in his harvest of praise, water we join in the prayer, made when the sacrifice for sin with envy...
...which has received the attention that is being given Those who follow French literature, even cursorily, to M. Georges Bernanos's study of the devil, per- are probably by now in possession of the bare outsonal, active, and even corporeal when it suits his line of Sous le Soleil de Satan, indeed it is hard to purpose-Sous le Soleil de Satan.* For some four or see how they could escape it...
...The perkiest approval, if it did not even precede it...
...It cording to the rigid Lombrosian formula happily out- is the moment when poor Abbe Donissan, lost upon a grown...
...has been consummated, to be delivered "from Satan M. Leon Daudet, in hailing it as a landmark in and other evil spirits, who wander through the world French literature, declares that he is only uttering seeking the ruin of souls...
...No outstanding crisis marks the con- of the true nature of the being he is enlisted to fight version of Piero...
...fears of something that had trap, or the priests who have baited it...
...rooted . . . The motions of grace have not this At least one can very well understand the obsession sensual attraction...
...Because, we only-we, we I say again!priest mark him out for spiritual experiences such that refuse to be His dupes . . . , and, between His love to the very end of his life his salvation, not to say and His hate, have chosen, with a sagacity incomprehis reason, is doomed to tremble in the balance, and hensible to your brain of mud-His hate . . . But for a dereliction so absolute and unredeemed by the why do I seek to enlighten you, groveling dog that you more familiar forms of consolation, that his belief in are, submissive beast, slave that creates your Master God's goodness has to fight for its life at every mo- day after day...
...THE DEVIL AT NOONDAY By HENRY LONGAN STUART T HE Ahrimanian sect, we are told, worshipped five months it has been hard to take up any of the the devil, but refrained from ever mentioning more serious reviews without finding some reference his unpleasant name...
...There are priests today who hardly that human weakness is not a final explanation, that it dare to name the devil...
...What use do we make of the experience concerning the life of the soul that My country is beyond the song, centuries have accumulated for us...
...It is true he says Mass devoutly, but so slowly powering magnet of annihilation, he saw himself lost, and so clumsily that merely to watch him makes me and this time forever...
...The think of a book published in recent years, certainly copy in the writer's hands, printed weeks or even of no book written by a new and unknown author, months ago, is marked the twentieth thousand...
...devout notice it...
...The man has exactly If I may refer once more to a personal experience, I the same sense of having committed or compromised may say that I for one was never less troubled by himself...
...A man who has lost Rome's condemnation of a book which it is hard to all equilibrium, who is clinging with clenched hands to believe was once a storm-centre of discussion...
...It takes the reader by the throat...
...It and ready to regard all sorts of doctrines with an open may be that this real psychological experience has been mind...
...Wide silence, and the sobbing sigh Has M. Bernanos written a "good novel...
...All steps, except the be that I shall never again have such absolute assurlast step, he has taken eagerly on his own account, out ance that the thing is true as I had when I made my of interest in the truth...
...But for a considerable by fears...
...There are times when the con- it is possible that here and there a lay writer has overtrast between his humility and the spiritual power stepped...
...All the enigmatic parables however fallen, cannot explain, determined to identhat have dropped from the Master's mouth-the tify the "fons et origo mali" afresh, this time in lankingdom of heaven won by violence-the house, guage that the modern world will understand, to drag swept and garnished that attracts seven viler spirits, him from behind the smoke-screen of his own exhalathe swine, devil-free, that ran down the Gadarene tions, and to present him to us through the eyes of slope, the Word that can slay as well as save, are one stricken and upright soul, secure, by its very simfocused in the tragic conviction of this obscure priest plicity, from any chance of deception...
...6o8 THE COMMONWEAL October 27, 1926 From the awful revelation that has been thrust evitable, though the same writer humbly believes it upon him by an inscrutable Providence, Donissan arises from a misconception...
...I am never seen but once in a lifetime...
...him: "What do you see...
...The echo of his some specialist in penitence, the question will be asked laugh seemed to resound along the rim of the horizon...
...The whole point is that the man himself has certain I grew of what Thing it was...
...You will never use ordinarily...
...At the peak not in the light of any religious conviction, but ac- of his terrible novel, M. Bernanos must be quoted...
...I had only fears...
...He smells of the stable and the most see me again...
...But when it comes to any today what will be a commonplace tomorrow...
...To Donissan there is no mysready endeavored to make personal sanctity the theme tery in evil...
...And by a paramade his way toward the trap of truth, and not the dox that does not frighten me now in the least, it may trap that has run after the man...
...What do they make of the is maintained-exploited by some dark and ferocious inner life...
...It is not the Pope who has set the before...
...The stone reddened, grew white hot, and burst into a And he, like a child repeating a lesson, will only be flare of furious light...
...One can imagine him, watching the confusions to serpents, will feel his power challenged, will rise and basenesses of an unchastened world sink here and to the occasion, and come, bearing in his hand his own there into abysses of wickedness that human nature, sacrament of damnation...
...Just enough knowledge of Latin to read his breviary As though uprooted and dragged from life by the overpassably...
...into the mud, where it steamed a moment with a terrifyThe second is an exacerbated sense of the evil prin- ing hiss, and was quenched...
...His A big hobbledehoy with broad shoulders, so well- heart beat more and more furiously against his ribs, and meaning that you gnash your teeth, all the more so appeared to stop...
...Not for the first or second time, the dis- first time" into his companion's eyes...
...A hygiene for the senses...
...The comment Me from those tyrant hemlock trees, that Donissan's soul is viewed by his creator under a So strangely rooted in my breast...
...Ah ! if you knew what wages your Master reserves for you, you would not be What particular qualities in this unlettered country so generous...
...A nausea gripped his entrails...
...Laughing, he flung it from him able to answer: "I pity them...
...What sign is given you...
...bookshelves of every upright man...
...But I had no doubts or difficulties just the psychology...
...my child [it is M. Menou-Segrais speaking, the that lies behind Sous le Soleil de Satan: "If I have old vicar who alone understands the vocation to which forced the reader to descend to the depths of his own his curate has been called] only simpletons close their conscience, if I have shown him, by ultimate evidence, eyes to these things...
...Paris: commoner and baser forms of temptation which at Librairie Plon, Plan-Nourrit and Company...
...Of temptation...
...esteem of the thoughtful world has followed on A moan broke from him...
...For (definite estimate of his ravages, to any admission that Frederic Lefevre, of La Vie Litteraire, one of the he is still up and doing among us, with activities un- pontiffs of French criticism on whom the mantle of abated, and with no more limit set to his power than Sainte-Beuve or Lemaitre seems most obviously to in the old days when the righteousness of Job was have descended, its possession and appreciation is alfelt as a challenge to his professional vanity, we grow most a matter of conscience: "It should be on the vague and a little self-conscious...
...6o6 THE COMMONWEAL October 27, 1926 point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing last stage, only alarms him because it is so very true...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 25
