Ecrire devant l'absolu: Georges Bernanos et Miguel de Unamuno (review)

This study engages in a comparison of the work of Bernanos and his near-contemporary Unamuno, basing it upon their being two 'Catholic' writers who exemplify the engagement (and/or conflict) with modernity. The thesis is that they shared a vision of the world motivated by a mystic quest for an encounter with the absolute. There is no suggestion of mutual or even partial influence, and it is not clear what either writer would have made of the other. From the outset the two are necessarily recognized as different: separated by a generation and born into different national and political contexts their contrast is more evident than is their comparability. There are points in common: both had dreamed when children of sainthood, and both contemplated suicide at a later date. However, difference becomes more and more obvious as the text proceeds, other than the conviction of both that action was essential. The undoubting Bernanos fights his religious corner in a France unreceptive to faith, while Unamuno, in a context apparently more supportive of religion, has an experience based on the sharp and never-resolved intensity of doubt. Three sections deal respectively with the relationship of the writers to the society, politics and religion of their day, with a comparison of their literary output, and with the issue of 'écrire devant l'absolu'. The thesis is to highlight the religious certainties and desires of Bernanos and Unamuno (respectively), leading to some over-emphasis, at least in the case of the latter, of metaphysics over psychology, so that Unamuno, master of complexities of the self resulting from the desires and projections of others, is read as an author whose characters through their language assert a mythic, and hence external, identity. It is a question of emphasis. There are some nice moments: Bernanos is characterized by 'témoignage' and Unamuno by the vocation of 'démiurge' (p. 234); the passing and enlightening reference to Winnicott in the discussion of the writer and reader (p. 261); the provocative points raised in relation to Bernanos as pamphleteer; the ingenious linkage of Carolina to Cain ('El marqués de Lumbría', p. 299). This said, it is not entirely clear in this comparison who hangs on to the coat-tails of whom. Given the source (a French doctoral thesis), we might assume the intention is to elaborate — or even to liberate — Bernanos through a reading of Unamuno, but in the event liberation does not emerge. The alternative case, by which a reading of Unamuno is placed in the more emphatic and more convinced religious framework of Bernanos, does open some new windows of perception, but also encloses him excessively. The dense provision of footnotes is distracting rather than essential to the discussion, and some strenuous editing both here and in the main body of the text would have been beneficial.