Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.
“SOUS LE SOLEIL DE SATAN” by GEORGES BERNANOS (first published 1926). English version first published in 1940 as “STAR OF SATAN”, translated by Pamela Morris.
There is a strong possibility that English-speaking readers have not come across the works of Georges Bernanos, so please forgive me if I give you a basic idea of who he was… and I’m partly writing this because I am determined to read all his novels and I will be reviewing them all on this blog. So watch out for the next four months.
Georges Bernanos (born 1888 – died 1948) was a devout Catholic. As a young man he fought in both Verdun and the Somme in the First World War. He was appalled by the carnage and like many others he knew the evil of war. He was a Royalist, meaning he was one of those extreme conservatives who wanted to restore the King and abolish the French Republic. In the 1920s he joined Charles Maurras’s Action Francaise, but he left it as soon as Pope XI criticised Action Francaise severely for being too extreme, too involved with politics, and ignoring charity. During the Spanish Civil War, Bernanos at first thought Franco was right in staging his coup and uprising. But Bernanos changed his views radically, especially when one of his sons – who was in Majorca – had seen members of the Falange shooting unarmed civilians. Bernanos looked deeply into the matter, read as much as he could, and concluded that Franco was allowing barbarism to take over. So in 1938 he produced a non-fiction book called Les Grands Cimetieres Sous La Lune [meaning something like Thousands are Buried in Cemeteries Under the Moon]. Only later was it published in English under the name A Diary of My Times. He was strictly opposed to both Fascism and Naziism as well as Communism. Later he was to write essays on the necessity of both freedom and democracy. But of course he was always a devout Catholic. In the late 1930’s, he was so concerned with the rise of Nazism, that he moved from France to Brazil with his whole family – wife, three daughters and three sons - and he lived there until returning to France in 1946 where he lived until he died in 1948. Two of his sons fought in the Second World War. By then, his novels were regarded by many in France as classics. And so to his first novel…. Sous le Soleil de Satan (Star of Satan… which has also been translated as Under the Sun of Satan).
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The novel is divided into three parts, quite distinct in tones. The first is called The Story of Mouchette. It is set in the mid-19th century in Artois, and in a small town. Germaine Malorthy is 16 years old. She seems to be a loner, or at least her parents have not seen her being with other young people. “ Sometimes Madame Malorthy deplored the fact that their daughter had no friends, and seldom went outside the small garden with its dreary, clipped yews.” [Pg. 21] Her father, a brewer, is often an angry man. He discovers that Germaine is pregnant. She refuses to say who had impregnated her but her father guesses it was the wealthy, and raffish, Marquis le Cadignan, and he is right. So he confronts the Marquis saying that he should marry her. The Marquis admits that he had slept with her but it was common knowledge that she had had other bedfellows. The Marquis says he will pay him and surely it would be best for the girl to marry a boy nearer her age – and besides, the Marquis is of a higher class. It was the Marquis who had given Germaine the frivolous nick-name Mouchette. Raging, the father goes home and tells Germaine to stay in her room, for she really is Mouchette, looking for excitement and sex.
But in the night Mouchette runs away, in her night clothes, and she too confronts the Marquis. They have a very long conversation. She does not ask him for pity and does not beg him to marry her, but she – a wild adolescent - does suggest he should give her enough money to go to Paris and set herself up there. With all manner of suave reasoning, the sophisticated Marquis fends her off, but she is remarkably loquacious. And she has at least a spark of honour and self-respect. There is a long tussle between the two. Finally she picks up one of the Marquis’s firearms and shoots him dead. So she is now a murderer. The narrator [Georges Bernanos] remarks “ He who fancies he can follow the capricious trail of passion – passion mightier and more elusive than lightning – and prides himself on his acute observation, often knows nothing of humankind beyond his own solitary contortions in a mirror.” [ Pg. 39]
The night is still dark [where all angry ideas bubble up] and the light of the small town’s only doctor is still shining. Dr. Gallet is a sort of charlatan, claims to know more than he does. She wants his help. Where should she go? Who can help her? He is not much help. At one point the matter of abortion [not that that word is used; and besides, then abortion was both difficult and illegal] but it is not possible. The doctor begins to talk about psychology and asks about her moods and feelings. Mouchette says “ Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, all alone in my room, with that fat old fool snoring away a few yards off, and I get out of bed. Everybody condemns me, and I can’t say why, and I don’t care. I get up and listen, and feel strong and slim , and my breasts just fit into the palms of my hands. I go to the open window as if somebody was calling me from outside, I’m waiting and ready. And there isn’t just one there isn’t just one voice calling, you know. There are hundreds, thousands. Men are just babies, really, full of wickedness, but they are only babbies. You see, I feel the thing calling me – only I don’t know where it is - but somewhere, in the rustling night, there’s another, there’s always another calling me… another enjoying me and feeding his vanity – man or beast. You think I’m mad! I am mad! Is it a man or a beast holding me, holding me tight, you horrible darling?”
After the doctor tells her she has a form of insanity “Terrific rage was beating in her breast, but she stifled it. The flames of her thwarted pride were consuming all that was left in her of wild and pitiless adolescence. In that instant she became aware of the indomitable hearts and cold calculating intelligence of a woman, the tragic counterpart of the child she had once been” [Pg.74] The doctor was able to speak with others, made it clear that Mouchette had committed murder, and because she was both a minor and unbalanced she was sent to a “nursing home”… and “A month later she came out completely cured, after the premature birth of a stillborn child.” [Pg.79]
And that may seem a complete novel… but it’s nothing of the sort and only one third of the novel. The second part is called The Temptation of Despair and we are in a completely different environment. Two aging priests, Father Demange and Father Menou-Segrais are discussing the problem about a young, fragile and naïve priest Father Donissan. He is just out of the seminary and he is not ready to deal with a small congregation, mainly simple people in a rural eria – in other words peasants. He is to be the Cure of Lumbres. Later, speaking to his superior Father Menou-Segrais, Father Donissan says that he is not cut out for “parochial work” declaring “it is beyond me altogether. My superior thought so, and so do you, I know. In a place like this I would do more harm than good. The lowest peasant in the parish would be ashamed of a priest like me, without experience or knowledge or dignity. However hard I try, how can I hope to make up for it?” [Pg. 97] Father Donissan mortifies himself [punishes himself]. He regularly whips himself, leaving blood all over his back. Father Menou-Segrais is appalled when he learns this, saying it is a barbarous thing to do. Father Donissan is humbled, saying he is not worthy of helping and careing people, but Father Menou-Segrais says that he has real and worthy work ahead of him, God’s work. So Father Donissan becomes a hard working priest, doing his rounds in a spread-out area, visiting his mainly peasant congregation. Some of what should be his congregation are sceptical, but even they listen to him with respect. He comes to enjoy his work, even if it means trudging long distances. Yet there is an element of pride in his work. Is his pride a sort of sin? The narrator [Bernanos] notes “Father Donissan let fall by chance, many years later, which shows a strange light on this obscure period of his life. ‘When I was young’ he admitted, ‘ I did not know evil. I only learned to know it from sinners themselves.” [ Pg.114] At the same time he sees himself as a sinner, enjoying his work. And he thought “This causeless joy can only be illusory. Such a secret hope, suddenly born, in the deepest, most intimate part of his being – an indefinite joy without an object – it is all too like the presumption of pride. No! The stirrings or grace have none of this sensual attraction. This joy must be plucked out by the roots.” [Pg. 123]. And he falls back to chastising himself. “ His mind , numbed as it were by the intensity of physical pains, had only one vague thought – to reach and destroy the very principle of evil in his own intolerable flesh.” [Pg. 125]
The great crisis comes when he takes a very long walk, many miles, and then he realises that he will have to walk all the way back and he might be late when he should be saying Mass. He gets lost in the forest and the night is dark. Which road should he take? Suddenly an obliging horse-dealer joins him and tells him which is the right road. At first the horse-dealer speaks with him in an amicable way, suggesting that he can find him bed and warmth in the dark night. But then the horse-dealer begins to ridicule both the Church and God… and the priest realises that the horse-dealer is in fact Satan…. And, dear reader, at this point you are probably thinking that this is a foolish fable. But there is a twist in it. For in one moment Satan presents himself as the Priest … and then he vanishes. Father Donissan realises that there is evil within us.
[And here I break off my synopsis to give an opinion. Bernanos is making it clear that in all of us there is the potential to do evil. This does not mean that we are all cursed and horrible sinners, but it does mean that we are all capable of hurting others, doing negative things, deluding ourselves about what we have done and frankly anything that can be called evil, from murder, rape, torture and genocide; to lying and cheating and things that might seem trivial but belittle other people. We are all the same species. I add that the works of William Golding [nearly all Golding’s novels I have reviewed on this blog] are essentially saying the same thing. We are all flawed – or what Christians would call Original Sin. But I digress… so back to the novel.]
As he continues his journey he meets a quarryman coming home from his work. An ordinary man, not pretentious, obviously one who does hard work. He talks with the priest, talks about his family, and guides the priest to the right road. Father Donissan thanks him and thinks for a moment that he has seen a miracle – the goodness of the ordinary man. But his journey is far from over… for at last he meets Germaine Malorthy, that is Mouchette. She is no longer an adolescent but a woman who has been worn out by her own hedonism and no longer has any purpose in life . Remember, the second part of this novel is called The Temptation of Despair. Father Donissan has gone through moments of despair but has come through them. Mouchette sees the priest and at once says “I hate you” and the priest replies “Don’t be ashamed”. But she is always angry about her life, curses him in many ways, and she says “You’d better pray that you may never have to travel the road I’ve been.” [ Pg. 188]. Mouchette has gone through sanitoriums and has faced doctors who want to analyse her, but she holds her bitter pride. So she passes the priest. She goes back to her parents home. And there she tries to commit suicide by slashing her throat. Complete despair. In a very long conversation, Father Menou-Segrais tries to understand the events that Father Donissan has gone through – his time of despair, his meeting Satan, being shown by the quarryman that there is good in the world, and the despair and pride that sent Mouchette to suicide. When Father Donissan hears of Mouchette’s attempted suicide he at once makes sure that her dying body be taken to the church, where she dies. Had he “saved” her? Maybe not. It is ambiguous. But of course in those days it was common to put those who had committed suicide in an obscure, distant part of a graveyard, ostracized. Mouchette was at least buried ceremoniously; and Father Donissan prays for her. The priest is ordered to enter a monastery for a while to pray and think things over. Five years later, now no longer filled with pride, he becomes the priest in charge of Lumbres.
So to Book Three The Saint of Lumbres. Over many years and up to old age, he has heard thousands of confessions. He knows what evil is. He knows what good is. He knows he is dealing with a mainly peasant congregation, not people who need complex theology. He has heard many voices in his confessional. The congregation regard him as a saint, but he does not see himself that way. Of the priest the narrator says “He knew what man is in reality; a big child full of boredom and violence. Was there anything new the old priest could learn? He who had lived a thousand lives – lives all alike. Nothing would surprise him again. He could die. There were brand new systems of morality, but sin can never be new!” [Pg.235] No. This does not mean despair. It means, once again, that we homo-sapiens-sapiens are flawed… and tragedy is inevitable. With another priest he has a long, complex conversation about the nature of God [very difficult for me to follow]. Sometimes his peasant congregation think he can perform miracles. He knows he cannot do that. Towards the end of his life, a distraught woman has a very sick boy and sends for the old priest, expecting him to cure the boy with his touch. By the time the priest arrives, the boy is dead. The mother wants him to perform a miracle. The priest soothe her a little saying “God will only yield to love.”
Father Donissan lives a very, very frugal life as an old man. A sceptic doctor describes the priest as “Hardly enough to eat, no exercise, a mildewed presbytery, a damp church, no light or air in the confessional, the sort of hygiene that was usual in the thirteenth century… apart from angina pectoris, it needs no more than that to finish off an already overworked constitution.” [Pg. 293] Yet the priest keeps working, and when he is not praying, visiting his flock and hearing confessions, he is meditating in the church. Comes the day when an intellectual atheist comes to see why so many people worship the old man. [Bernanos creates the visitor as somebody like sceptical Emile Zola – an enemy of the Church.] Yet when the visitor enters the church he understands how soothing the quietness is. He also has time to think about the things he has done in his life, and all the wrong things he has done. Somehow it seems good for him, as if he has a sort of interest in evil and good. But he remains an atheist. He wonders where the priest is. He goes over to the confessional, and discovers that the priest is sitting there, dead. And here the novel ends.
There is much, much more in this novel. As always, I have simplified. There is more of theology that I have not explained.
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Some Notes. (1) In France in 1987 a film of Sous le Soleil de Satan was made. It was directed by Maurice Pialat. Pialat was an atheist. He was asked why he chose to make a film which was so Catholic. He replied “I don’t believe in God but I do believe in Georges Bernanos”. I have not seen the film. It won many prizes in France… but I had misgivings when I saw photos which showed that the timid saintly priest was played by beefy Gerard Depardieu. Bad casting I think… but then I haven’t seen the film.
(2) The title Sous le Soleil de Satan can be interpreted in many ways. Under the Sun of Satan is one title, and the most correct. Star of Satan is misleading. Of course the Sun is a star looking down on us, but let us remember that, according to the fable, Satan was the bright angel who rebelled against God. Bernanos pits the Goodness of the Sun against the Evil of Satan. Good and Evil are both temptations in us.
(3) Many people have suggested that the saintly priest Father Donissan was based on the life of Jean Vianney.
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