Mauriac et Bernanos: deux mondes romanesques entre la violence et l’amour (review)

In the opening pages of this study drawn from his doctoral thesis submitted to Sofia University in 2000, Kalin Mikhaïlov explores some of the ways in which violence plays a significant role in the worlds created by François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos in their novels — an original and fascinating issue. Mikhaïlov sees violence as a recurrent feature of much imaginative writing produced during the increasingly despiritualized climate of France during the post-First World War years. The only true counter to it, he argues, lies in a full acceptance of God’s love or grace, whose workings, however, remain elusive, beyond rational explanation: as Mauriac once defined it, grace is a ‘protagoniste mystérieux’. The subject is potentially rich. Murders or attempted murders, individual or collective acts of violence, physical brutality, sexual aggression, neglect or rejection, suicide, and psychological or social pressure driving individuals to despair or rebellion regularly feature in both authors’ novels. Where Mauriac and Bernanos differ significantly — although each produces what Mikhaïlov defines as ‘romans “théodicées’” (p. 108) — is in the way they describe how such violence may be met and overcome. For Mauriac, whom Mikhaïlov considers a more natural moralist than Bernanos, there is no outright confrontation. Only grace can triumph, but it remains, essentially, a presence that at best may be glimpsed or unconsciously sought by his protagonists; only rarely, as in Les Anges noirs for example, is there a suggestion that redemption may be won through vicarious suffering. For Bernanos, who is more militantly Christian, violence and evil — and even the Devil himself — are confronted directly by a priest or by someone like Chantal de Clergerie in L’Imposture, who embodies innocence. These points are reopened in a reflective and personal Postface, newly written for the present study, in which Mikhaïlov refines his position, arguing for the continued relevance in the world today of the work of these two authors and of others who are more openly edifying. Overall, Mikhaïlov’s approach raises some interesting points, but too frequently, and somewhat disappointingly, he allows his focus to slip. In discussions of Bernanos’s novels, for example, we are drawn into such commonplaces of Bernanos criticism as authenticity, ennui, or the esprit d’enfance. His analyses of Thérèse Desqueyroux or of Monsieur Ouine either lack vital elements (the significance of the dawn and Thérèse’s fleeting thought about God as she contemplates suicide) or are irrelevant (Monsieur Ouine as a precursor of the nouveau roman, for example). We are also battered with a plethora of references to critics or to works of which the supportive value is at best debatable, and yet there is no mention at all of the many works in English or German devoted to these two authors.