French Catholic Literature
Fay, Bernard
264 THE COMMONWEAL January IZ, 1927 of Fascist enterprises, the large output of laws, the exalted tone of propaganda and the harangues on the Roman empire, are bewilderingmtending to create be-...
...The Tykhonite clergy do not preach or catechize...
...The collection of Le Roseau d'Or would deserve to be mentioned if it had done nothing more than reveal to French attention a new writer whose first book has created a tremendous impression...
...This period calls for reflection, for the husbanding of strength, for the cautious avoidance of hazardous adventures, for the formation of reliable nuclei, for the elaboration of necessary reforms with a view to a democratic renaissance...
...France has always had its Catholic writers...
...it will be necessary to face in its entirety the unsolved problem left by the Risorgimento---the problem, that is, of the complete participation of the people in politi- cal life, which was raised, each in his own way, by Mazzini, by Cattaneo, and then successively by the Radicals, the Socialists, and the Christian Democratsm afterward the Popular party...
...His grave face, his bloodless cheeks and regular features appear at times to be irradiated with some mysterious light from a rift in the sky...
...Jacques Maritain, a convert himself and a philosopher, came into the Church by way of Prot- estantism...
...In every category, in every domain, and from every school, original and powerful books have appeared...
...It will be seen now to what an extent French Cathol- icism is attesting its vitality and force in literature...
...There was talk of another daring but truly great poet, Paul Reverdy, who had made public profession of Catholicism...
...To all this the war came as a terrible interruption...
...But during the past century, their r61e has been much more important than previously, and also extremely delicate...
...And this impetus maintained it- self for years among the French Romanticists...
...It acknowledges the actual Russian government and, like the Anglicans and American Methodists, allows married bishops, remar-riage of priest-widowers, the Gregorian calendar, shaved beards, and short clerical hair...
...Gradu-ally Catholicism rallied to itself the best among the Symbolists of the younger generation, after Verlaine and Germain Nouveau, Rette, and those two great poets, both so highly dowered in their separate spheres, Francis Jammes and Paul Claudel...
...As he is unlikely to read these lines, I will go so far as to say that, in my eyes, he is a saint...
...It is im- possible to approach him without being struck by the serenity that seems literally to emanate from his per- son...
...The centre of this group is a man who would be remarkable in any age, who has been called upon to play a leading rble in France and whose prestige is enormous...
...although the last named was merely a Catholic "du dehors...
...The Synodist hierarchy has the backing and blessing of the Greek Orthodox Church of Constantinople, though it must gain the recognition of all other self-governing Ortho- dox churches before it has the right to unquestionable Orthodoxy...
...but his dream January 12, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 265 and his effort were not vain...
...Vedensky is a skilled antagonist of atheism, and his business is to oppose unbelievers in philosophical and theological arguments...
...Its defense was under- taken, too often in feeble and clumsy fashion, by the government and the clergy...
...then we must know how to teach it, how to answer the anti-religious objections spread so sys- tematically by the schools, by the countless scatterers of Bolshevist propaganda...
...Italy's institutional problem will have to be brought back into the foreground...
...Between 1914 and 1918, few were in a position to occupy their minds with poetry and the intellectual life when there was so much misery to succor...
...None of them could pretend to the magnetic influence they had once exercised...
...Between t9oo and 1914, it was quite clear that in creative literature the influence of Catholicism was steadily waxing...
...it con-trols 6o,ooo parish churches and has the allegiance of at least one-quarter (possibly one-third) of the total Russian Orthodox population...
...Prguy was dead, Jammes had retired to the country, Claudel had become a high government official...
...The foremost in time, and the most illustrious of these champions, was Chateaubriand...
...Then the movement toward conversion began afresh...
...In ex- act proportion as they ceased to be mere technicians and interested themselves in the inwardness of the problems they approached, the Symbolists were bound to find themselves attracted by Catholicism...
...A sort of crusade began in search of pure beauty--a quest for inspiration in its most hidden sources...
...264 THE COMMONWEAL January IZ, 1927 of Fascist enterprises, the large output of laws, the exalted tone of propaganda and the harangues on the Roman empire, are bewilderingmtending to create be- lief in an imaginary life and to foster a state of mind of messianic expectation...
...Among the first may be mentioned Three Re- formers, by Maritain himself, which contains a mag-nificent portrait of Martin Luther...
...It insists, in its poetry, its essays, and most of all, in its novels, upon the depth which religion gives the soul...
...After all the proscriptions, the massa- cres, the persecutions--after the closing of the churches and the embargo laid upon Mass and the Sacraments --a voice was uplifted, celebrating, in matchless ac-cents, the glories, artistic, moral, and philosophic, of the Catholic religion...
...so many dangers of all kinds to outface...
...His sincere conversion, his retreat at St...
...For the traveler, of course, it remains the country of wine and cathe- drals...
...We must teach...
...The more advanced literary circles were undergoing the influence of the forceful and complex Claudel...
...Of the nine or ten rival churches, the most numerous body comprises the fol- lowers of the late Patriarch Tykhon...
...In Moscow on October 7, 1925, he spoke thus to the Third Council of Pan-Russian Orthodox churches...
...But they busied themselves very little with religious matters...
...and of a novelist, Marcel Jouhandeau, whose inspiration was a mystery to all save mystics...
...The Symbolist school (t886-i896) sought to exist and endure in its sheer quality as a literary movement...
...This spring we have been given the story of Cocteau's con- version, and some charming poems by Max Jacob, Les Penitents en Maillot Rose...
...As one of the principal masters of the neo-Thomist philosophy, a large publishing house in Paris (Plon-Nourrit) had the happy idea to confer upon 266 THE COMMONWEAL January 12, I927 him the direction of a literary collection entitled Le Roseau d'Or, comprising novels, poetry, and critical essays--all orientated toward Catholicism and the spiritual life...
...To save the faith, no longer may we count on the re- ligious genius of the Russian folk...
...Its greatest thinker and preacher is Alexander Vedensky, the thirty-six-year-old ascetical Metropolitan of Moscow...
...It is this which gives solidity to the group...
...In the eighteenth century, French writers were still officially Catholic and were always so considered...
...Already, at the epoch when materialism and the materialistic school were in the ascendant, and when a bastard Romanticism had resigned itself to accept-ing, if not the mastery, at least the collaboration of realists and naturalists, a few free and eager spirits, irresistibly attracted by supernatural realities, had been seeking a path which would lead them away from the cult of the flesh and the bestial monotony amid which Zola and his school were floundering more and more each day...
...It is only a year since the volume appeared, and it has already given the French literary world several excellent books, and at least one master- piece...
...Besides Rimbaud, these adventurers recognized as their chiefs, Baudelaire and Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both alike devoured by a profound urge for faith and adoration, and who imagined they could find what they sought only through a devotion to the intenser and more diffi- cult forms of art, and in a frank abandonment to Catholic discipline...
...Benoit-sur-Loire, in an old Benedictine abbey of Charlemagne's days, where he lived quietly for four years, and the beautiful Catholic poetry which fol-lowed, were the starting-point of a positive Catholic renaissance in modern poetry...
...of Prguy, whose gradual and irresistible evolu- tion through socialism to Catholicism made him an ad- mirable propagandist for the Faith...
...They had even ended by capturing the most influential review in all France--La Revue des Deux Mondes...
...A plague of fatalism, and a thirst for facile pleasure, seemed in danger of replacing the spiritual activity of the decade before the war...
...This has resulted in the patriarchists' choice of an extremely passive, though unyielding, behavior toward the Russian government...
...Its 37 ~ pages are a long paroxysm, permeated with lamentation...
...First we must know what we ought to teach...
...On the contrary, it seems to have been a stimulus to imagination...
...FRENCH CATHOLIC LITERATURE By BERNARD FAY T O THE newspaper-reading foreigner, contem-porary France must appear a centre of dis-turbance, an obscure and dangerous region, where the ministry changes every week...
...The Patriarchate of Constantinople is only one portion of Eastern Orthodoxymand that not a very considerable one...
...We may add to the list, Max Lefrvre, editor-in-chief of the big review, Les Nouvelles Litteraries, and Jean Cocteau, widely known as the most precocious and most brilliant of French contemporary poets...
...of Jammes, more accessible, less original but more charm- ing...
...If we fail to teach our good Russianpeopie, they will become infidels and mockers...
...Few discern the intense intellectual and moral work which is going on in a country outwardly so static...
...The work of the Symbolists could have no value save in so far as it kept the public, and with all the more reason, its poets, in intimate contact with the deepest spiritual life of the human soul...
...We must be able to prove the spirituality of the soul of man, his power to reason, his free will, the existence of God, Who is maker...
...The Synodist Russian Church is Orthodox in teaching and progressive in its hier- archical make-up, and anti-monarchical in its civil and ecclesiastical political trend...
...He failed...
...To grapple with such a task, initiative, zeal, and even individual genius are small things beside the resources of which such a body as the Catholic Church can dispose, with all its traditions, its ceremonial, its hierarchy and its mysteries...
...The most significant thing about these conversions is their frankness and their abundant literary fruit...
...A professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, he is one of the most admirable and attractive figures in contemporary life...
...The emigrant patriarchist bishops have been criticized by their brother bishops in Russia for running away from Russia, and for weakening the Tykhonite cause through their counter-revolutionary, political propaganda for a revived Russian monarchy...
...Under the lash of this terrible national disaster, a new tendency did not take long in manifesting itself...
...Never were their reviews better written nor more widely read...
...Proscribed and banished by the Revolution, the French clergy were no longer there to speak in defense of Christianity, while the govern- ment had become either neutral or frankly anti-Christian...
...It is thanks to him that the first poets of the Roman- tic movement in France Lamartine, and the youthful Victor Hugo were Christian poets and positive apostles of the Faith...
...It is true that the middle of the century was remarkable for a period of reaction toward positivism and material- ism...
...His aspirations, cor-responding as they did to a widely felt need, aroused the attention of the best among the younger men...
...At one time, Metropolitan Anthony Krapovitsky, some time ago of Kieff, but now in Serbia, considered organizing an emigrant Russian patriarchate...
...Nevertheless, since the end of the great war, French literature has shown an extraordinary fecund- ity and a surprising variety...
...Religion is attacked from all sides...
...But reality showed how impossible this was...
...The Soviet policemen are watchful, and the Tykhonites in Russia suffer more than their needful share of police espionage...
...They are willing to leave the future to God...
...Preoccupied solely with the spiritual good of his fellows, absolutely disinterested, with an insight equaled by his generosity, Maritain has been instrumental in many of the conversions just men-tioned...
...Of course, the Tykhonite body has lost prestige since this great lead- er's death in 1925...
...During this period, a generation was growing to manhood, eager and stricken, very different from the one which had gone before, and even out of touch with it...
...One thing is sure and corresponds to the profound consciousness underlying modern civilization--that even in Italy, the time must come when the advent of a peaceful and progressive democracy, recognizing all parties in accordance with the "method of liberty," will restore Italy to her proper place as a centre of moral and artistic life, of religious and juridical thought, of activity in labor and commerce, as a factor in inter- national equilibrium--so that she may play her true part as a great pacific nation...
...At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the situa- tion changed abruptly...
...RELIGION IN RUSSIA TODAY By LAWRENCE MAYNARD GREY T HE news we get of religious affairs in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, continues to be scant and fragmentary...
...It produced several unmatched "worldly" novelists: Bourget, Bazin, even Barr/~s...
...For three or four years, the situation remained ob- scure...
...Among the latest and most widely commented conversions was that of the musician, Erik Satie, which took place in the hospital where he shortly afterward died...
...Few books have aroused such enthusiasm or upheaved so many minds...
...Its structure, its style, its images, and its concepts are abrupt and dazzling as lighming...
...Every Russian hears again and again that faith is opposed to knowledge, that religion is a disease of the nerves, a perversion of the sex instinct...
...Mere activity will not do...
...A spedes of in- tellectual fever laid hold on French Catholics...
...His influence upon literary youth was immense...
...For years, indeed, the two tendencies appeared to sweep everything before them and to leave little behind, until the year of war--I870...
...Bernanos especially has pages upon this point whose sheer movement is irresistible...
...It offers an amaz- ing picture of the intensity of Catholic spiritual life...
...The most curious and the most extraordinary instance was that of the "cubist" poet, Max Jacob, Jewish by birth, and a writer of authentic genius, for whom the return to Catholicism was the end of a very long journey...
...The second great section of Russian Orthodoxy is the Synodist Church, which claims lawful succession to the Synodal Church that functioned in Russia from the end of the Moscow patriarchate in 1721 to the set- ting up of the second patriarchate immediately subse- quent to the revolution of 1917 . This hierarchy is made up of 2oo bishops, and I7,OOO priests...
...But when they concerned themselves with religion at all, it was generally to attack it...
...But for several months now, the group which has attracted most pub- lie attention and which seems on the way to winning most prestige, is the group of Catholic writers...
...Nevertheless, with the exception of the adoption of the new style calendar, very few Synodist bishops or priests have taken advantage of the new rules...
...It is the story, at one and the same time sober and violent, of a priest tempted of Satan, who only works out his own salvation and the accomplishment of his task by extra- ordinary and superhuman efforts...
...The task of publicly championing Chris- tianity devolved upon lay writers who still believed in the truths revealed to the Church...
...But an aggressive dogma is not despised, nor is philosophy neglected...
...Inspired partly by the life of the Cur6 d'Ars and certain writ- ings of Rancr, it is the novel which has most moved, most interested, and most excited the French reading public during the last six months...
...Such things were treated by the clergy, under the protection of the government...
...Every one of these catechumens has accepted the Church without reserves or bargaining, yet it has not fettered production in the least...
...However one chooses to in-terpret the work of that strange and powerful poet who was called Arthur Rimbaud, the most famous and the least understood of all modern French poets, it is inevitable to see in him a sort of magician, and apostle, avid of the absolute, seeking to escape from material necessities and desirous of founding something ap-proaching a new religion...
...His Genius of Christianity, published in i8oI, had a large share in rallying public opinion and in bringing troubled spirits back to the fold...
...In the seventeenth century, all our lay writers were essentially Catholic...
...No novel at the present moment is being so dis-cussed, or commented upon with such passion, as Sous le Soleil de Satan, by Georges Bernanos...
...Therefore, we must master these problems...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 10
