This book supplies a real need and supplies it very competently.
Most lovers in America of the great French Catholic novelist,
Bernanos, author of Diary of a Country Priest, have only a hazy
idea of his political thought and activity. This volume traces his
political history and perceptively studies the convictions and
character of the man as he reacts - violently always - to political
conditions. The author depicts Bernanos as a Rightist, but not of
the fascist sort, dominated by motivations of a strictly religious
and patriotic nature. His political essays reflect the mind of a
philosopher and prophet rather than a politician. They are always
direct, even violent, because "the personality and thinking of
Bernanos was...unique... a blend of temperament, sensibility and
convictions", full of integrity, impatient of mediocrity and
compromise. A stimulating, scholarly study of an extraordinary man
of this century. (Kirkus Reviews)
Thomas Molnar's "Bernanos "is an illuminating study of the
personal evolution of the French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos
from a reactionary royalist to a religiously principled
anti-fascist. It also provides a detailed account of the
intellectual divisions within the French Catholic Right and
suggests a number of parallels with intellectual and literary
figures on the secular and religious left including Zola, Peguy,
and Simone Weil. But, as Molnar points out, the significance of
Bernanos is not exhausted by his writings. Bernanos the man is as
deserving of attention as is Bernanos the novelist, essayist, and
social critic.
Molnar shows Bernanos against the troubled political-religious
background of modern France: the Dreyfus case, the disillusionment
following World War I, the Franco regime, Vichy, and the beginnings
of the cold war. Whatever touched France touched Bernanos, and he
flung himself into each crisis, not armed with a political system
nor an academically sanctioned philosophy, but with a peasant's
respect for what is and a Christian's sense of what might be. The
portrait that Molnar draws is that of a passionately concerned
Christian who knows that truth is hard to come by, but who is ready
to follow it wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences.
A crucial theme covered by Molnar is Bernanos' long and
conflicted relations with Charles Maurras and the "Action
Francaise. "He makes clear the extent to which Bernanos' fervent
Catholicism set him apart from Maurras whose positivistic
inspiration and passion for order helped lay the groundwork for the
political collapse that led to the Vichy regime. Thomas Molnar's
book is a fascinating account of Georges Bernanos' stature as both
a political thinker and an important novelist. "Bernanos "will be
enjoyed by historians, political scientists, philosophers,
theologians, and scholars of literature.
General
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