REA+12+Bernanos+and+The+Diary+of+a+Country+Priest

Christian Themes in Literature:

An Independent Study

“If you say “our Father” to the One who judges every [person] impartially on the record of his[her] deeds, you must stand in awe of [the Holy One] while you live out your time on earth.” - 1 Peter 1:17
 * Georges Bernanos’ //Diary of a Country Priest// – Amy Welborn Dubriel **

In the late 19th and early 20th century a philosophical perspective called positivism ruled the intellectual climate in France. Positivists like Emile Durkheim and Auguste Comte claimed that all one can know about human life is what can be observed and that the laws of behavior and society discerned from these observations should be used to organize human life. Into this scientifically-based and utterly materialistic mileu stepped, one by one over the decades before and just after the First World War, a group of writers who formed what we now call the French Catholic Literary Revival. Francois Mauriac, Charles Peguy, Julien Green and Leon Bloy rejected positivism and reclaimed a vision of human beings essentially defined, not by scientific law, but rather by our relation to God and struggle with evil. One of the finest writers of this group was George Bernanos, author of [|Diary of a Country Priest.] __ Diary of a Country Priest __, first published in 1936, is just what the title suggests: the fictional journal of a young curate in rural France. The premise may seem simple, but in Bernanos’ hands it emerges as a rich work in which the reader encounters the injustices of French society, the emptiness of an intellectual system that rejects God, the failure of the Church to fully embody Christ’s love for the poor, and above all, the power of a life dedicated to God.

The young priest whose life absorbs us in this novel has come from a background of poverty through seminary into this, his first parish experience, to which he is utterly dedicated. Besides conducting his sacramental duties, he commits himself to visit every family in his parish. He teaches catechism classes and attempts to organize a club for young men. He visits the sick, buries the dead, lives at a subsistence level and is bedeviled by a serious illness that is ultimately diagnosed as stomach cancer, but not before it is mistaken for alcoholism by gossipy villagers. Aside from these daily ministrations and struggles, Bernanos offers us his view of French church and society through the conversations the priest has with a variety of people, ranging from the atheist physician Delbende, the troubled child Seraphita who spreads rumors about the young priest at every opportunity, the more relaxed older priest de Torcy and most powerfully the deeply wounded local countess, who harbors bitter anger at God for death of her son.

What makes __Diary of a Country Priest__ a novel that is read just as much for its spiritual value as well as its literary quality lies in the complex, realistic life of faith Bernanos constructs for his main character, a faith which stumbles in darkness at times, but is on the whole fervent, selfless and Christ-like, even in the hostile reactions it sometimes evokes. The final touch that heightens the personal drama in the priest’s soul is that he believes himself, if not a total failure, at the very least a terribly poor instrument of God’s grace. But what the reader discerns through the unaffected words is that even as he cannot see it himself, the effect of his witness and suffering on others is profound and powerfully embodies the words he speaks on his own deathbed: “Grace is everywhere…”

"God is not a torturer;He wants us to love another." // – Robert Bresson // (director, //Journal d’un curé de champagne,// 1951) Ambricourt represents a world of spiritual drought, in which the mechanics of religion exist without its heart. The locals go to church, catechism, and confession, but these are as much a pretext for humiliating the priest as for religious exercise. His attempts to perform his duties are constantly under siege. His first encounter is with an old man, Fabregard (Léon Arvel), who reviles him for charging anything for the funeral of his wife, disarming the priest with his venom. The priest's best student, a little girl named Seraphita, beguiles him with compliments, while her schoolmates, in on the joke, laugh heartily just beyond the door. When she purposely drops her schoolbag, he retrieves it, trekking through the mud to return it, only to be met by the girl's very ungrateful mother. This is surely the "hell that is other people" that Sartre described.

On the other hand, the priest appears to be on his own slow suicide course. He cuts out meat and vegetables from his diet, subsisting, barely, on cheap wine and stale bread, an obvious symbol of his Christlike martyrdom. Given a rabbit to cook, he demurs, thinking only that it represents an impossible expense as he will have to pay someone to cook it. He knows he is sick — "I am seriously ill," he writes — but his stomach cancer is emblematic of the "sickness unto death" of a world devoid of meaning.

The priest's faith vacillates wildly between reassuring belief and debilitating doubt. He is drawn into the intrigues at the house of the town's richest citizen, the Count, who is having an affair with his daughter's governess. The daughter, Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral), is bitterly angry at her father for having the affair and her mother for seeming to condone it. She also provokes the priest: "I will sin for sin's sake!" she threatens. Convinced he must visit the Countess and try to set things right for the whole family by performing his priestly duties, he goes to the Manor house. His encounter there is the heart of the film and its single most powerful sequence.

The Countess (Marie-Monique Markell) is one of Bresson's great character studies. One event has dominated her life — the death of her beloved young son. The priest comes to return her to the fold, but she eloquently resists. Destroyed by the early tragedy, she responds to his almost taunting "God will break you" with bitter resignation: "He's already broken me!" She represents everything intransigent about the village, and by extension the humanity the priest is supposed to serve and save but cannot. Yet this encounter is perhaps the one success story of his existence in the village. At the end of their riveting confrontation, his seemingly unwavering faith touches her, and he performs an absolution; the next day he receives a letter in which she writes, "I'm happy." Characteristic of the film, though, this apparent resolution of a problem only triggers other ones. That night, the Countess dies, and her daughter, who secretly observed the fateful encounter, spreads the word that the priest's harsh treatment of her mother precipitated her end. Also characteristically, he refuses to defend himself by showing the Countess' absolving letter, ensuring his end as the village priest, if not his death.

The Countess's demise isn't the only sign of death in Ambricourt; the village is consumed by it, from the priest's first encounter with the niggardly Fabregard, quarrelling over funeral expenses; to the (off-screen) suicide of his friend Doctor Delbende (Antoine Belpêtré), whose stoic motto "face up to it!" is ironically played out; to the priest's own decline as he increasingly vomits blood; falls into semi-consciousness; and in one memorable sequence, collapses in the mud, unable to move — a potent symbol indeed of abject humankind, inchoate and groveling. Virginia Woolf's description from //The Waves//, "Death is woven into the violets. Death and again death.", could refer to Ambricourt. The priest's escape in the last part of the film, when he goes to the city of Lille to see a doctor and visit an old friend, is only temporary, though it's perhaps the one moment in the film when he experiences happiness. Bernanos's novel and Bresson's film were lauded by Catholic and other religious commentators at the time, but it's surely significant that the priest's happiest moments are when he's //leaving// Ambricourt and, symbolically, the impossibility of salvation and transcendence that it represents.

On his deathbed at the end of the book the priest confesses, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere."