Abstract
More than 50 years after his death, the extraordinary diversity and challenge of François Mauriac’s work continue to inspire a range of assessments and interpretations, some revisiting long established positions, others opening ways to new approaches, some by accredited Mauriac specialists, others by those approaching his work perhaps for the first time. Although not a publisher regularly associated with Mauriac and his critics, in recent years the Editions Champion have made a significant contribution to the reception of his writing. In 2014 appeared the excellent François Mauriac. Le prêtre et l’écrivain by Elisabeth Le Corre and five years later the Dictionnaire François Mauriac edited by Jean Touzot and Caroline Casseville. Valuable and important as it is the latter unfortunately suffers from a lack of careful editorial control with the result that there are occasional errors and omissions, some serious. (Reviewed in these page, 2019, Volume 49, Issue 3-4, pp. 499–501). Encouraged by the reception of these works and the enthusiasm of certain colleagues, however, Champion has now produced not only Mauriac, Makine, Berdiaev: roman, ineffable du mot et recherche spirituelle by Margaret Kelly and Le Bloc-notes de François Mauriac. Lecture politique by Jeanyves Guérin, but the first issue of the Revue François Mauriac.
In the first of these publications, Margaret Parry’s ambition is to argue that the finest forms of artistic creation – but her selection is limited to the novel – depend essentially on the artist’s or writer’s ultimate discovery of a form and a language endowing their work with a uniquely spiritual quality that defies precise definition. Her choice of material is highly selective. For Mauriac she draws on his entire œuvre and the allusion to the opening words of the Gospel according to Saint John (‘In the beginning . . .’) are clearly appropriate. For Makine – and she focuses only on his first four novels – it is not, but such is the Russian author’s creative skills that the result is the same.
Kelly’s study opens with the account of a personal and deeply spiritual experience of a visit to the island of Iona and Saint Columba’s monastery and develops into an admiration for the illustrations (enluminures) of the first Christian copistes (of whom Columba was one) in their attempts to illustrate and to inspire others to reflect on the mystery of God’s creation, and through their work to open a way to an understanding of the unfathomable (ineffable) ‘Word’ of Saint John and of the Old Testament. If, for Parry, the most complete solution to this mystery is music, she turns none the less to philosophers and writers (in fact novelists) whose works not only illustrate but, in the case of the last two, suggest a way forward. Thus we move, among others, from the Old Testament Book of Daniel, the Revelation of Saint John, the Confessions of Augustin, several essays by Henri Bergson and the Journal of Charles du Bos and their search for what Kelly calls variously the ‘langue cachée’ (p. 45) ‘langage-signe d’une présence autre’ (p. 55), ‘un language second’ (p. 60), and ‘une langue inédite’ (p. 124). Once discovered, it will lead the reader to ‘pénétrer au-delà de la surface des mots’ (p. 34) and unambiguously ‘affirmer l’indissociabilité de l’expression littéraire et de la foi’ (p. 46). Inevitably, while most writing remains superficial (‘au niveau des signes’ (p. 90)) there are exceptions such as those illustrated in different ways by the works of the three authors in the present study. In the first and principal section on Mauriac, Parry traces his development to illustrate how, by the end of his life, the deep faith that is to be found in all he wrote finds its ideal form in what she describes throughout as an ‘autobiographie spirituelle’ (p. 27), his last completed novel, Un adolescent d’autrefois.
Within its own terms Parry’s interpretation of Mauriac’s writing is impressively tight, written with conviction and passion, and supported by multiple quotations from the Bloc-notes and various essays. She is not of course the first to divide Mauriac’s novels broadly into two periods. To invert the title of Philip Stratford’s book Faith and Fiction (1965) many of those selected from the first reflect a permanent inner conflict, no more tellingly illustrated than by Destins, between reality (‘le réel’) and faith. None the less while these were written during a period in which, as the narrator in Maltaverne would say he was ‘en permission à l’égard de Dieu’, there is a recurrent nostalgia for an ‘enfance délicieusement protégée (et) les douces émotions éveillées par la nature et les observations religieuses’ (p. 54), which he would neatly define in his essay Le Romancier et ses personnages as ‘la source de toute pureté’. For this conflict to be resolved if only fictionally reflects, as Parry rightly reminds us, the influence of the debate on the developments in psychology encouraged by popular translations of Freud’s work in the early 1920s (though she makes virtually nothing of this), the growing interest in Russian literature and in particular the novels of Dostoyevsky, and the impact of Proust, all of which provided rich material for the Décades de Pontigny in which Mauriac participated. But while he was not alone in turning to the novel as the most appropriate form to explore the complexities of human nature, he had first to overcome a personal and religious crisis and undergo what Parry terms a reconversion (p. 61). For years these have been the subject of much critical and even public discussion but both, and especially the latter, given the direction of her essay, are all too quickly put aside. By the 1930s and from a careful selection of the novels from Le Noeud de vipères to La Pharisienne and after the personal agenda of the earlier works, there is, as Parry again rightly argues, the sense that Mauriac’s target is universal and that as a Catholic novelist he had a responsibility; in her terms he moves from ‘soliste’ to ‘symphoniste’. (Curiously in this context there is no mention of La Fin de la nuit and of Sartre’s renowned critique.) With the 1950s he returned to the novel though the three from this period, and notably L’Agneau (1954 but begun in 1947) illustrating what he defined as ‘une confrontation (. . .) d’une humanité jugée moribonde et immonde (. . .) et de la Grâce’, are not mentioned.
Thereafter, and Parry provides numerous supportive quotations principally from the Le Nouveau Bloc-notes from more than a decade and occasional references to essays by Bergson, it is clear that at a time when the influence of the nouveau roman was dominant and when religious faith was nationally at a low ebb, the novel for Mauriac at least remained of major concern. The result was Un adolescent d’autrefois and Maltaverne, the unfinished fragment of what he envisaged as his last novel, in an attempt to discover the ‘ultime vérité de ma vie’. In these he recreates the world and atmosphere of his early years, but more importantly underlines, especially in Maltaverne, not just the role played by Madame Gajac, but in Parry’s phrase, by the ‘femme-mère’ (p. 77), finally acknowledged as the source of divine inspiration. In 1966 Mauriac observed that his vocation had been to ‘faire rayonner la grâce qu’il avait reçue en dépôt’ and Un adolescent d’autrefois is evidence enough for Parry (and as it would have been for Charles du Bos) of his success. It is of course pointless to speculate on how the same autobiographie spirituelle might have continued, especially as it would presumably have covered the crises of the late 1920s but is there not enough already to suggest that another reading is possible. Alain’s reflections on his mother, of ‘la femme’ as ‘le recours et le refuge’ (Maltaverne) and in particular the lake-side scene in Un adolescent d’autrefois, when Alain has a vision of his mother dead in the water, at least invite reflection.
This, the principal section of Parry’s essay, is followed by the shortest on the writing of Nicolas Berdiaev, the Russian philosopher who was one of the founders of Mounier’s Esprit, and forms a bridge between the two novelists of different generations. While Berdiaev wrote directly in French, much of his work was translated and from occasional references in his bloc-notes it is clear that Mauriac had some acquaintance. Berdiaev’s insistence on spirituality and his rejection of bolshevism (p. 91), materialism (p. 85) and computer science (p. 83) and especially his sense that art had a spiritual dimension could not fail to attract the French author. Not without influence either was his conviction in Essai d’autobiographie spirirtuelle (1940) that this was the best form for illustrating such ideas and it is not impossible, as Parry suggests, that the essay was a possible inspiration for Mauriac’s Un adolescent d’autrefois (p. 91). This has to remain a matter for conjecture but there is no doubt that Berdiaev’s search for a language above the ‘niveau des signes’, for the ‘langue inédite’, and his belief in the ultimate divine inspiration of true art not only echoed Mauriac’s but could not but have influenced Andreï Makine.
While Makine has since published more than twenty novels, Parry has selected only the first four to illustrate her case: La Fille d’un héros de l’Union soviétique (1990); Confession d’un porte-drapeau déchu (1992); Au temps du fleuve (1994); Le Testament français (1995), the last of which was awarded the Prix Goncourt. Already prominent in these early works is the aim to show how behind the official version of history, the influence of the West (p. 119) and especially the ‘toile de fond stalinienne’ (p. 110) there lies the enduring spirit of ‘la terre-mère, cette grande Russie’ (p. 113; p. 100); what Mauriac in his bloc-notes on more than one occasion evokes as ‘la vieille Russie’ or ‘la Russie éternelle’. While Mauriac’s search for the values of a distant past is of a different entirely personal kind, Makine is clearly ‘un héritier véritable qui parle la même langue que lui’ (p. 144). Parry’s reading of these early novels, of the fundamental role played by the mother or mother figures and of the language they use to convey or resurrect the past across generations is careful and sensitive (p. 128). (She is particularly good at highlighting the phonetic appropriateness of language in both authors (pp. 62 and 129)). Once found, this language (to quote Charlotte in Le Testament français) ‘nous transport(e) dans un éternel instant de beauté’ (p. 145) not only revitalizing the novel as a literary form but more importantly inspiring the ‘roman unique’ which both Mauriac and Makine sought and which when achieved is, for Parry, evidence of divine intervention.
To pass from such reflections on Mauriac’s creative writing to his journalism and in particular to the bloc-notes directly echoes a major shift in analyses of his work over the last 20 years or so. This is not to say that his journalism had failed to attract attention much earlier of course. Articles appeared over the years notably in the Cahiers François Mauriac and its sequel even from the initial issue (1974) with Jean Touzot’s ‘François Mauriac: Athlète complet du journalisme’, but the first attempt at an overall substantial assessment, Mauriac: The Politics of a Novelist by Malcolm Scott, did not appear until 1980. Others who have produced volumes of essays, sometimes by different hands over the years (notably Jean Touzot with D’un bloc-notes à l’autre (2004) or Bernard Cocula and L’Amitié ce pur feuve (2005)) have also relied, as did Scott, on Mauriac’s reflections on politics in various volumes of memoirs and of his so-called Journal.
The title of Guérin’s entertainingly written volume suggests that this is an in-depth analysis of Mauriac’s political commentaries published in the form of bloc-notes between 1952 and 1970 in La Table ronde, L‘Express and Figaro littéraire. But it is far more. A useful ‘Chronologie’ outlining the major political events at least implicating France during these years and a ten-page bibliography and the thousands of footnotes (though from French sources only unless translated) more than attest to the detail and complexity of this volume. After a short introduction, ‘Un spectateur engagé’, in which Guérin charts Mauriac’s emergence as a politically committed writer there follow eight sharply focused chapters: for example, an often scathing overview of the fourth and fifth republics, key political figures (notably and not surprisingly De Gaulle, ‘le héros providentiel’ (p. 133), but others like Mendes France, Guy Mollet or Raymond Aron), colonialism in general and the Algerian War in particular, the evolution and influence of the Left and the Right from communism to fascism, or the relationship between France and America, Russia and Europe.
However attentive Mauriac was to political events or changes in which France was directly involved there were many about which he had no or showed little interest. In the chapter on colonialism, for example, we learn that there is no allusion in the bloc-notes to the 1947-48 revolution in Madagascar; in the chapter devoted to major political players we have only a handful of pages on the Right and Guérin also claims that he regularly ignored the Centre (p. 175) and that he rarely mentions France’s precise military activities (p. 241). On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Mauriac’s position was either instantly captured, for example over Morocco, or would gradually evolve as it did over Indochina and especially Algeria. Left only with the bloc-notes, however, would result in our having not only an incomplete view of the period but a partial one. Fully aware of this Guérin has to provide historical and contextual information – the evolution of the French Communist Party since the 1930s, for example (pp. 184–185) or important biographical details of political figures who captured Mauriac’s attention. Not unreasonably Guérin has also to resort to speculation or assumption about what Mauriac may have read or discussed and is at pains to spell out the often violent opposition he met especially from the right-wing press, notably Rivarol and Aspects de la France.
Whether such assessments of Mauriac as ‘le plus grand journaliste de son temps’ and ‘le mémorialiste numéro un de notre temps’ as Jean Lacouture and Pierre Brisson made will remain valid is impossible to judge. Guérin’s volume certainly sustains them though not, it has been said, without a degree of personal sympathy. Does his subtitle ‘lecture politique’ not invite the question ‘whose reading’? Is this an exploration of Mauriac’s interpretation of events or of Guérin’s of Mauriac’s? See for example the pages on colonialism and the Maghreb (p. 269, p. 70) or the post-Mauriac evolution of the political Right (p. 374).
Despite Guérin’s focus on the political content of the bloc-notes what this impressive volume also confirms is Mauriac as an intellectual, a man whose values are grounded not simply in his faith but in his belief in social and political justice and (echoing De Gaulle) the sanctity of France and the integrity of anyone who, like Mendes France (pp. 140–154), ‘a sacrifié sa carrière à ses principes’. Not surprisingly comparisons with and references throughout to Péguy and Camus are wholly appropriate.
No doubt on the back of these two volumes the Editions Champion have been persuaded to resuscitate the Cahiers François Mauriac and the Nouveaux cahiers François Mauriac, originally published by Grasset between 1974 and 2019, under the title of Revue François Mauriac. In his introduction Jean-Claude Ragot provides a brief account of the development of the different associations mauriaciennes, but could have made more of the acrimonious and contentious relationship that existed between Bordeaux and Paris, and of the Association Européenne François Mauriac which is not even mentioned. He could also have highlighted the truly international make-up of the Société internationale des Etudes Mauriaciennes from its inception and the number and organization over several years of conferences outside France.
Certainly, more generously printed and attractively presented than its forerunners, the new Revue intends to illustrate and explore the immense range, complexity and frequently the relevance of Mauriac’s work. What Caroline Casseville describes as its ‘plasticité et modernité’. In so doing and if this issue is in any way a foretaste of later ones, it will follow recent trends in Mauriac research and focus more on his journalism and non-imaginative writing than on his novels for which he was, after all, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952. Articles and contributions will follow the same established varied style and pattern; those based on substantial research, conference contributions, personal reflections, inédits including manuscripts and correspondence. In addition, the Revue will usefully include entries on issues and incidents not featured or incompletely covered in the Dictionnaire François Mauriac.
This inaugural issue has four thematically focused major sections followed by a ‘Varia’. The first section, ‘Quand les écrits s’engagent’, contains several pieces illustrating aspects of Mauriac’s role in and relationship with politics and with religion and can be usefully consulted in connection with Guérin’s volume. The opening article indeed by Guérin is on Mauriac and the épuration and the second by Yann Delbrel on the hitherto uncharted complexity of the relationship between Mauriac and Léon Blum. Two more substantial pieces focus specifically on Mauriac and religion. The first by Philippe Dazet-Brun tracing his interest in and sympathy for Islam underlining the absolute link between faith and justice; the second, by Graciane Laussucq-Dhiriart, on Mauriac and the ‘renouveau catholique’ of the early twentieth century and of which her main concern is the relationship between Mauriac and Valléry-Radot and the Amitiés de France. She also considers Mauriac’s relationship with Marc Sangnier and the social-catholic movement Le Sillon but interestingly does not remind her readers of Mauriac’s satirical depiction of him in L’Enfant chargé de chaînes. A final piece in this opening section, again to be read in conjunction with Guérin’s book, examines the relationship between Mauriac and Mitterrand and the former’s mixture of opposition and admiration.
‘Quand les écrits s’illustrent’, the second section, opens with an article by Flavien Filastin substantially on Mauriac and Sagan whose first novel Bonjour Tristesse he much admired. Falantin has uncovered and speculates on a surprisingly large number of similarities of tone, atmosphere and even incident in Sagan’s writing (‘un monde d’interférences’). Of these the most striking has to be that of the accident/suicide of Xavier in L’Agneau and of Anne in Bonjour Tristesse, given that the two novels were published in the same year. Was this a coincidence? As noted earlier Mauriac had begun L’Agneau in 1947. This is followed by a brief illustration (not for the first time even if with new short quotations from diaries and correspondence) by Jean Touzot on Mauriac and Cocteau. A third article returns to Mauriac’s relationship with music but with interesting accounts of his and Jeanne’s participation in soirées musicales, of their tastes and relationships with some of the performers. It is followed by an interesting piece by Caroline Casseville, ‘Les Maisons d’écrivain aujourd’hui: Malagar et les autres’. Unfortunately, given the absence of supplementary and useful details of the numerous bibliographical references cited, this seems to be essentially the text of an article already published elsewhere (Enquête sur les Maisons d’écrivain (2012)?) but with relevant, additional observations about Malagar and its history.
Two articles on the political and linguistic problems, including censorship, of translating and publishing Mauriac’s fiction in Slovakia open the following section, ‘Quand les écrits dialoguent’. A third treating the translation and reception of Mauriac’s work in Italy by Pier Luigi Pinelli reminds us of the historic links between the two literatures and stresses the kinds of themes in Mauriac’s fiction that have long found favour in Italy but here provides two examples of undisguised intellectual plagiarism in two plays by Carlo Terron (Lavinia tra i dannati) and Diego Fabbri (Teresa Desqueyroux). Theatre is also the subject of the last article in this section by Elisabeth Le Corre. She lists systematically articles written and published between 1970 and 2010, but in French only, about Mauriac’s own theatrical works with occasional comparisons with his novels. Not surprisingly she floats the idea that the time is perhaps right for a complete reassessment.
The ‘Varia’ contains a single article which attempts an analysis of Genitrix as a study of the psychological complexities of mourning supported by multiple quotations from and references to a number of clinical and technical studies from the last sixty years. Not surprisingly the novel increasingly focusses, not for the first time, on the ‘aspect incestual’ of the relationship between Ferdinand and Félicité. We learn, and again hardly for the first time, that the role of the mother in Mauriac’s writing is potentially rich.
Apart from its physical appearance it seems unlikely in terms of its content that the Revue will differ in any way substantially from the earlier Cahiers. One small but distinct improvement is the initial list of acronyms of Mauriac’s published work, providing contributors and readers with a common source of reference. The same need for greater editorial control remains; however bibliographical information should be standardized; serious omissions checked, corrected or modified; previously published material, whether in France or elsewhere, properly acknowledged and language, where necessary, carefully monitored. The tradition in the French literary and largely academic world for regular often yearly volumes, the publications of societies devoted to the work of single and mainly modern authors – Camus, Gide, Beauvoir, Colette, for example – has a long history. Such was the series of Cahiers. It will be interesting to see whether the Revue finds new life in the same way.