Through the Past Darkly: History and Memory in François Mauriac’s Bloc-notes

5. In Search of Times Past

5 I N S E A R C H O F T I M E S PA S T L Il s’est produit un séisme, une coupure énorme entre hier et aujourd’hui, alors qu’il n’y en avait eu aucune entre hier et tout ce qui avait précédé.l.l.l. (“Samedi  juillet ,” BN IV, ) Ainsi je recherche avidement les moindres signes d’une permanence des temps d’autrefois, ce qui a résisté, ce qui résistera encore un peu à l’homme fou de technique. (“Jeudi  septembre ,” BN III, ) [There has been an earthquake, an enormous break between the past and the present, whereas there had been none between the past and everything that had come before.l.l.l. Thus I eagerly seek out the slightest signs of a permanence of times past: what has withstood the years, what will hold up a little longer against a humanity crazed with technology.] It is now a commonplace to observe that throughout the s, s, and s, Mauriac’s intense activity in the French press largely eclipsed the literary production that had established his renown as a novelist depicting stark sexual, social, and spiritual conflicts among the bourgeois Catholics of the Bordeaux region. Weighing in on the side of the Spanish Republicans fighting against Franco, Mauriac quickly appeared as a prominent voice in French politics and culture during the  last years of the Third Republic and went on to become the most widely read editorialist of the Fourth Republic.1 While his detractors attributed this major career shift to waning inspiration , if not diminishing talent, Mauriac himself presented his move from aesthetics to politics in a much different light. Speaking to L’Express (the venue of his own Bloc-notes at the time of this April  interview ), he characterized his turn from art to history in the following terms: .l.l. J’ai commencé à me détacher de la fiction au moment de la Guerre d’Espagne, par exemple. Je vivais jusque-là dans une espèce de rêve, de monde fictif, et la guerre d’Espagne a révéillé le garçon silloniste2 que j’étais à vingt ans.l.l.l. Je me suis débattu et puis il y a eu l’occupation, la Libération. Je me suis évadé le plus que j’ai pu entretemps: n’empêche que, depuis la guerre d’Espagne, je ne peux plus me détourner de la condition humaine telle qu’elle est imposée aux hommes par d’autres hommes. Joubert disait que “la révolution avait chassé son esprit du monde réel en le lui rendant trop horrible.” Pour moi, c’est le contraire: l’horreur du monde réel m’a chassé de la fiction.3 L [.l.l. I began to move away from fiction, particularly at the time of the Spanish civil war. Up until then, I had been living in a sort of dream or fictitious world, and the Spanish civil war revived the aspiration to Christian piety and social justice that I shared with the Sillon at the age of twenty.l.l.l. I struggled with these questions and then came the Occupation and the Liberation. I found as many escapes from reality as I could in the meantime: the fact remains that, ever since the Spanish civil war, I can no longer turn away from the human condition such as it is imposed on some people by others. Joubert used to say that “the [French] Revolution had driven his mind out of the real world by making the world so horrible.” The opposite is true in my case: the horror of the real world has driven me away from fiction.] Although couching his remarks in the unpretentious terms of personal ethics instead of some full-blown philosophical system, Mauriac traces  I N S E A R C H O F T I M E S P A S T L . Sirinelli,“Mauriac, un intellectuel engagé sous la IVe République,” –. . Led by Marc Sangnier,“Le Sillon” was a movement of young Catholics seeking to regain the focus on social justice and unpretentious spirituality. .“Le Métier d’écrivain,” L’Express,  April , pp. –, p. . a path not at all unlike the one Sartre followed in abandoning his aloof skepticism (moreover maintained throughout the Spanish civil war) in favor of political commitment...