Review
A Novel Invitation
Joy by Georges Bernanos,
tr. Louise Varèse
Cluny Media, 2017
(328 pages, $17.95, paperback)
reviewed by Norm Klassen
A fine new edition of Georges Bernanos's novel Joy (1929) in English translation is now available. It looks set to introduce a generation of readers to Bernanos's fiction, if not to his writings as a whole. Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) is not nearly as popular as some other European writers such as Feodor Dostoevsky, with whom he has much in common. In his excellent accompanying theological introduction, Andrew Kaethler suggests two reasons for this: Bernanos's works are permeated by a belief in original sin rather than a modernist commitment to progress, and, more importantly, he presents the spiritual challenge of sanctity to his readers (Introduction, iv).
The novelist explicitly emphasizes good priests. Such a focus can be found in Bernanos's best-known novel, The Diary of a Country Priest, as well as in his first novel, The Star of Satan. There is a good priest in Joy, too: Abbé Chevance, though he is already dead when the story begins. In this novel, a continuation of The Impostor, the main clerical figure, Abbé Cénabre, has apostatized and only regains his faith in the dénouement. The real heroic figure is the young woman Chantal.
For Chantal in Joy, sanctity has become a matter of day-to-day life. It has both active and passive dimensions. The materialist psychologist in the novel, Dr. La Pérouse, is increasingly astonished at her spirit of equanimity in the face of death. Chantal says, "How wonderful, some day, to be lying stretched out on one's back in the earth, with one's arms crossed like everyone else, one's miserable bones a little dilapidated but nicely arranged in order!" (209).
To this, the doctor blurts out, "How can you—it's a miracle. . . ." While Chantal's remark may sound like heroic resignation, her response to La Pérouse's exclamation puts weight on the activity of Christians: "You see, Dr. La Pérouse, a good Christian doesn't care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after his own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him." God can intervene in his creation, but he prefers to work through people responding freely to his call to them to be a blessing to the whole of creation.
Chantal fully acknowledges the importance of resignation in the Christian's progress toward and in holiness. In this characteristic she especially contrasts with her unstable grandmother, who is always clutching a set of keys that serve no purpose. In her last encounter with her grandmother, Chantal displays a wonderful ability to calm her. Afterwards, she grapples with the ever-growing realization of her own insignificance: "We too, Dr. La Pérouse, we too must give up our keys" (205).
Through Chantal, the author puts the world of the novel under some sort of question. Joy amounts to an invitation to enter into an alternative frame of reference; it creates the conditions that make it possible for the reader to inhabit a different reality.
Art & Freedom
Flannery O'Connor once reflected, "When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist" (Mystery and Manners [1972], 146). O'Connor implies that artistry entails freedom. The Catholic novelist cannot attempt to prove the existence of God or the meaningfulness of sanctity. He or she can only invite the reader to inhabit a world, one that has more veridicality the more the characters themselves indwell it freely.
Part of Bernanos's achievement is his capacity, which grew as his mastery of novel-writing grew, to afford the reader and his characters freedom. The Christian artist pursues the imitation of a God who creates in freedom, and in so doing contributes to the meaning and the possibility of what art can be.
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