Ra'issa Maritain:

...Suther completely accepts Raissa's orientation...

...She brings forward criticisms, acknowledges and explores them, and defends her subject against them...

...For Vera and Jacques, Raissa's mode of living was a gift: she served as witness for all of them...

...Mostly, she suffered from lethargy, or a general sense of being unwell...

...All three were dedicated to the religious life, but only Raissa occupied herself entirely with prayer and meditation-some of which she expressed in writing...

...But she was also homesick for France...

...Interested as I was in Suther's development of her thesis, I still couldn't agree...

...To the end of her life (after a stroke, at sixty-seven) she looked forward to the release from life's disharmonies, and the union with God she believed death would bring...

...My problem is with Raissa's corporeal life...

...I just wasn't persuaded by Suther's presentation of those episodes as real physical suffering, indivisible from Raissa's "receuillement"-the combination of prayer, meditation and contemplation that was Raissa's work, or being...

...Raissa's own concrete works consist of poems (Suther quotes many of these, and explicates them at length...

...Suther didn't persuade me that Raissa was an important writer...

...Jacques described his wife as "in the world but not of it," but she was discontent with the life in New York, Princeton, and Easthampton (interrupted by summers in France and Jacques's stint at the Vatican), that Suther categorizes as "exile," a state of being necessitated by her heritage and Jacques's entirely praiseworthy World War II politics...

...inspiration...

...The events-and, more, the nonevents-of her temporal existence undermine the sympathy Suther gives her subject, and which she asks us to share...

...Suther says this is because she was waiting for God...

...Toward the end, she says that Raissa "always considered herself a Jew...

...And as far as evaluating her greater, contemplative, vocation is concerned, evidence is shaky-ephemeral by the subject's nature-and judgment futile...

...My suspicion, however, is that she did not succeed in becoming a very developed one, because in discernible human terms she remained an over- and self-protected girl...

...Their constant, life-long support and protection made it possible...

...that is, everything else-from daily chores to her parents' feelings-could be dispensed with...

...Suther insists Raissa's writing can and must be understood only in relation to her faith...

...Most important of these, for the Maritains' personal lives, was that of Vera, who was baptized along with her sister and brother-in-law, took vows of celibacy as they did, and henceforth lived with them, forming what they called a "small community...

...She also regularly enjoyed ill health, "I feel the debility of recovery," she said, "not of illness," and, "I am ill because illness is salutary for me...

...To Raissa, all was "contingent" to her relationship with God...

...Her argument that in order to appreciate Raissa's written work one must accept and honor her spiritual achievement required a leap I couldn't make...

...It does not, however, support the claim implicit in such a finely executed work: the subject doesn't seem worthy of the author's attention...

...Pampered and, physically at least, idle-lying in bed cutting pictures out of magazines, being pushed in a wheelchair through spas-she seems, despite Suther's denials of hypochondria, a nineteenth-century neurasthenic...

...Madeline Marget Judith Suther's biography of Rai'ssa Maritain is elegantly constructed, thoroughly researched, meticulously annotated, and completely readable...

...Raissa never involved herself with Jacques's extensive political work, nor addressed, at least in conventional terms, social problems...

...To avoid confusion, Suther refers to both Maritains by their first names, and I will follow her example...

...The book's advocacy, enthusiasm, and scholarship engaged me (Judith Suther is a professor of French at the University of North Carolina), but it's Jacques, or maybe Vera, I'd exert myself for and about...

...Early in the book, explaining Raissa's attachment to France, Suther refers to "the intense cultural patriotism of which the Jewish soul is capable...

...There is, however, no cumulative "Jewish soul" and whatever roots Raissa had in Hebraic tradition, she was in fact, and by her adamant choice, a Catholic...

...Having met Jacques Maritain and, with him, pledging herself to a quest for the "Absolute"-they agreed to find God or kill themselves-she proceeded along an unwavering course...

...Raissa promptly and completely recovered from the few identifiable diseases Suther documents...

...This proviso has the obvious potential of prejudicing the reader against the work as much as for it...

...Raissa did not relinquish her death wish...

...Born in 1883 to Russian-Jewish parents who emigrated to France so that their children-Raissa and her sister Vera-might have greater educational opportunity, Raissa showed brilliant academic promise, but left the Sorbonne without receiving a degree...

...several are lovely), a two-volume autobiographical memoir, a journal (published after her death), a children's book, one on Chagall, reviews and essays, including "contributions to the mass circulation (!) Commonweal...

...Raissa seems a curiosity, her transaction with God too private-too limited-to serve as example or inspiration...

...In the United States, Vera, herself sick with serious illnesses, as usual dealt with tradesmen and tended her sister, Jacques was honored and supported, and Raissa wrote more than before, but her gratitude at the reception America gave her, and even for her well-being in contrast to that of millions of others, seems pro forma...

...That, Raissa had...

...I was grateful for the answers she gave to the questions her material raised, but they seemed to me more denials than refutations...

...Together, the Maritains converted to Catholicism, formed a manage blanc, followed the advice of a series of clerical mentors, partook of daily Mass at their house outside Paris, studied and taught Thomism, and were instrumental in numerous religious conversions...

...Understanding the quality of anyone's relationship with God is less a function of analysis than of faith...

...Suther concedes that Raissa-who was firm about women's subservient position, and apparently expected other people to take care of her-was anachronistic, and that sometimes her conduct was unintelligible, but she insists her subject was "exceptional" rather than "abnormal...