Hemlocks (verse)

...that salvation is something stark and sheer and dan- If we cannot, M. Bernanos is willing to help us...

...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...

...call on God for help...

...Of temptation...

...Never forget this...

...What genius, what is left him, save to throw himself on his of morality...

...double possession, by God and by the devil, was in- JOHN HANLON...

...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...

...rooted . . . The motions of grace have not this At least one can very well understand the obsession sensual attraction...

...A hygiene for the senses...

...What do they make of the is maintained-exploited by some dark and ferocious inner life...

...A drab battle-ground of instincts...

...He Of hemlock trees above the sea, has certainly written an arousing and disquieting one...

...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...

...There are priests today who hardly that human weakness is not a final explanation, that it dare to name the devil...

...The ominous word Is there no saving hand to wrest Manichaean has already been heard...

...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...

...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...

...Novelles Litteraires, he has summarized the intention "Oh...

...a carnal appetite that seeks to tread it down...

...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...

...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...

...well as good, is loved for itself-served for itself...

...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...

...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...

...Of grace ?- knees, if not through love, at least through fear, and reason with intelligence as its partner...

...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...

...As far, unheeding ships pass bySilence and loneliness for me...

...ground...

...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...

...Wide silence, and the sobbing sigh Has M. Bernanos written a "good novel...

...The commonest episodes of the struggle that rages within us ~mlocks are hardly taken into account...

...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...

...Evil, as And silence is the sov'reign there...

...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...

...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...

...my son...

...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...

...This joy must be up- out the trials He permits the elect of His Cross...