François Mauriac: le prêtre et l’écrivain by Élisabeth Le Corre (review)

Mauriac used to be considered primarily as the leading exponent of the Catholic novel, but after the Second Vatican Council the questions of sin and salvation that lay at the heart of the genre seemed less pressing. Critical interest shifted to purely literary or more psychological approaches to Mauriac’s fictional writings (see Jean Touzot, La Planète Mauriac (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985) and Psycholectures/Psychoreadings, ed. by John Flower (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1995)), and also to his often anti-establishment journalism (see Mauriac avant Mauriac, ed. by Jean Touzot (Paris: Flammarion, 1977), or Touzot’s new edition of Bloc-notes (Paris: Seuil, 1993)). Mauriac’s portrayal of the priest figure, ubiquitous in both his fictional and his non-fictional writings, was often taken to be largely uncomplimentary. Whereas for Bernanos the priest represented the visible presence of the Church and its sacramental life even in the most unpropitious of settings, Mauriac found much to dislike, and preferred a more Jansenistic emphasis on a personal spiritual quest, in line with his reading of Pascal. But as Élisabeth Le Corre points out (p. 286), ‘La Paroisse morte’ is the title of a 1921 short story by Mauriac as well as being the original title for Bernanos’s Monsieur Ouine, which suggests more similarities between their two approaches than is often thought (although Mauriac’s distinctive form of pudeur and everyday realism is underlined). This welcome new book (originally a thesis supervised by Jeanyves Guérin), which deserves a wide readership, offers a comprehensive study of the priest figure in Mauriac’s essays, autobiographical writings, and correspondence as well as in his fiction and drama. It shows that Mauriac’s personal experience of and reflections on this incontournable figure were central to all his writing: ‘Dis-moi les prêtres qui t’aiment, et que tu aimes, et je te dirai qui tu es’ (p. 481, quoting Bloc-notes, ed. Touzot, i, 456). Despite his criticisms, Mauriac maintained ‘une certaine idée du prêtre’ (p. 147, quoting Souvenirs retrouvés, interviews with Jean Amrouche (Paris: Fayard, 1981)), as an ‘alter Christus’ in today’s world: a spiritual guide, but also subject to mockery and riddled with all-too-human imperfections. Mauriac was an ‘anti-anticlérical’ (p. 394), and a long-time supporter of moves to set priests free and make them more effective, although in later life he deeply regretted what he saw as a loss of distinctiveness and holiness. In Mauriac’s view, the Christian writer shares many elements of the priest’s calling, both positive and negative. A final chapter attempts a brief review of the various ways in which Mauriac’s writing fulfils the mission of being ‘un passeur du Royaume au monde’ (p. 347).