Georges Bernanos
* * *
DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST
Translated by
HOWARD CURTIS
Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
About the Author
GEORGES BERNANOS was born in Paris, France, in 1888 and spent most of his childhood in the little village of Fressin, which would provide the pastoral backdrop for nearly all his novels. He started out as a Royalist journalist before joining the French army at the outbreak of the First World War. In 1926, following years of financial hardship, Bernanos published his first novel, Sous le soleil de Satan, bringing him instant fame as a writer and thinker. Yet he would say: ‘I am no author. The sight alone of a blank sheet wearies my spirit, and the sheer physical isolation imposed by such work is so distasteful to me that I avoid it as much as I can.’ Despite this admission, he wrote determinedly about the struggles of the soul in the modern world. His following novel, Journal d’un curé de campagne, is a profound meditation on saintliness and self-sacrifice, winning him the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française in 1936. Bernanos’s writing draws its strength from his passionate commitment to Catholicism, most acutely demonstrated in his last important novel, M. Ouine. Despising Fascism and disillusioned with the state of Europe in 1938, he went into self-imposed exile in Brazil with his wife and six children. He died back in Paris in 1948.
I
My parish is a parish like any other. All parishes are alike. Today’s parishes, of course. As I was saying to the curé of Norenfontes yesterday: good and evil are probably in balance there, only the centre of gravity is low, very low. Or, if you prefer, both co-exist without merging, like liquids of different densities. The curé laughed in my face. He’s a good priest, very benevolent, very paternal, and is even considered a slightly dangerous freethinker by the archdiocese. His witticisms are a source of merriment in the presbyteries, and he accompanies them with a look in his eyes that’s meant to be vivacious and which I find, deep down, to be so worn, so weary, that it makes me want to weep.
My parish is consumed with boredom, that’s the word. Like so many parishes! Boredom is consuming them before our very eyes and we can do nothing about it. Some day, perhaps, the contagion will reach us, too, and we will discover this cancer in ourselves. It’s something one can live with for a very long time.
The idea came to me yesterday on the road. One of those fine rains was falling, the kind you breathe in deeply and which go all the way down to your belly. From the Saint-Vaast hill, the village suddenly came into view, so huddled, so wretched beneath the ugly November sky. Water enveloped it on all sides like smoke, and it seemed to be lying there, in the soaked grass, like a poor exhausted animal. How small a village is! And this village was my parish. It was my parish, but I could do nothing for it, I watched sadly as it sank into the darkness and vanished … A few more seconds, and I would cease to see it. I had never before had such a cruel sense of its solitude and mine. I thought of the cattle I could hear lowing in the fog, cattle which the young cowherd, coming back from school with his satchel under his arm, would soon lead across the waterlogged pastures to the warm, fragrant cowshed … And the village, too, after so many nights spent in the mud, seemed to be waiting – without much hope – for a master it could follow to some unlikely, some unimaginable refuge.
Oh, I know perfectly well how insane these ideas are, ideas I can’t even take completely seriously, dreams … Unlike animals, villages don’t get to their feet at the sound of a schoolboy’s voice. No matter! Last night, it might have responded to the call of a saint.
That was when it occurred to me that the world is consumed with boredom. Of course, you have to think about it a little to realize this, it can’t be grasped immediately. It’s a kind of dust. You come and go without seeing it, you breathe it in, you eat it, you drink it, and it’s so fine, so thin, that it doesn’t even crunch between your teeth.
You need only stop for a second and it covers your face, your hands. You have to move constantly to shake off this rain of ashes. And the world moves a lot.
Some may say that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that boredom is the true human condition. It may be that the seed was spread everywhere and has sprouted wherever there is fertile ground. But I wonder if men have ever known this contagion, this scourge of boredom? An abortive despair, a low form of despair, no doubt something like the fermentation of a decaying Christianity.
Obviously, these are thoughts I keep to myself. Not that I am ashamed of them. I even think I would be understood perfectly well, too well perhaps for me be at rest – I mean, for my conscience to be at rest. The optimism of our superiors is quite dead. Those who still profess it teach it out of habit, without believing in it. At the slightest objection, they shower you with knowing smiles and apologize. Old priests are not mistaken. In spite of appearances, even while remaining faithful to a particular vocabulary, which in any case never changes, the themes of official eloquence are not the same, our elders no longer recognize them. In the past, for example, an age-old tradition dictated that an episcopal speech never finished without a cautious allusion – passionate, admittedly, but cautious – to the persecution to come and the blood of the martyrs. Such predictions have become increasingly rare. Probably because they seem less likely to come true.
Alas, there’s a phrase that’s starting to do the rounds of the presbyteries, one of those terrible phrases referred to as ‘soldiers’ talk’, which, I don’t know how or why, seemed amusing to our elders, but which young men my age find so ugly, so sad. (It is surprising how well the slang of the trenches succeeded in expressing sordid ideas in gloomy images, but is it really the slang of the trenches? …) Anyway, it’s common nowadays to say that we must ‘not try to understand’. But, my God, that’s what we’re here for! I realize that we have superiors. Only, who informs the superiors? We do. So when we are told to admire the obedience and simplicity of monks, I’m not very convinced, try as I might …
We are all capable of peeling potatoes or tending to the pigs, provided a master of novices orders us to do so. But a parish is not as easy to lavish with acts of virtue as a community of monks! Especially as they will never know and they wouldn’t understand anyway.
The archpriest of Baillœil, since he retired, has been spending much time with the Carthusians at Verchocq. What I saw at Verchocq is the title of one of those lectures of his which the dean has made it almost a duty for us to attend. There were some very interesting, even fascinating things in it, if you could take the tone: the charming old man has kept the innocent little habits of a former professor of literature, and manicures his words as he might manicure his hands. It is as if he is both expecting and dreading the unlikely presence, among his cassocked listeners, of Monsieur Anatole France, and all his subtle looks and knowing smiles, the wiggling of his little finger, are by way of apologizing for God in the name of humanism. It seems that such ecclesiastical coquettishness was fashionable in 1900, and we tried our best to respond enthusiastically to his sweeping statements even though they didn’t sweep us away at all. (I am probably too coarse, too unpolished by nature, but I confess that I’ve always loathed well-read priests. Rubbing shoulders with the great minds is basically like dining out: you don’t dine out in full view of people dying of hunger.)
Anyway, the archpriest told us lots of anecdotes which were meant to be humorous. I think I understood them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as impressed as I would have wished. Monks are unequalled masters of the inner life, nobody doubts that, but most of these supposedly humorous stories are like local wines: they have to be consumed on the spot and don’t travel well.
Or perhaps … must I say it? … perhaps it’s just that such small groups of men, living side by side day and night, unconsciously create a favourable atmosphere … I, too, have some knowledge of monasteries. I have seen monks lying face down on the ground, humbly and unflinchingly receiving the unjust reprimand of a superior determined to break their pride. But in such houses, undisturbed by any echo from the outside world, the silence attains a truly extraordinary quality, a perfection, the slightest quiver captured by ears that have become unusually sensitive … And there are some silences in chapter rooms that deserve a round of applause.
(Whereas an episcopal reprimand …)
I have felt no pleasure in rereading these first pages of my diary. Of course, I gave it a lot of thought before making up my mind to write it, but that’s not much of a comfort. For anyone who has the habit of prayer, thinking is all too often merely an alibi, a sly way of confirming us in our intentions. Reasoning easily leaves in shadow what we hope to keep hidden. Of course, the layman who thinks calculates his chances. But what chances do we have, we who have accepted, once and for all, the terrifying presence of the divine in every moment of our poor lives? Unless a priest loses his faith – and what does he have left then, since he cannot lose it without denying himself? – it is impossible for him to have the same clear and direct – one might almost say naive and innocent – vision of his chances as anyone outside the Church. So what is the point of calculating our chances? One cannot bet against God.
* * *
Received a reply from my aunt Philomène with two hundred-franc notes – just what I need for my most pressing needs. It’s frightening how money runs through my fingers like sand.
Mind you, I’m not very bright! For instance, the grocer in Heuchin, Monsieur Pamyre, who is a good man (two of his sons are priests), received me warmly right from the start. He is in fact the official supplier of my fellow priests. Whenever he saw me, he would offer me tonic wine and biscuits in the back room of his shop and we would chat for a while. Times are hard for him: one of his daughters is not yet provided for, and his other two boys, who are pupils in the Catholic faculty, are costing him a lot. Anyway, one day, when taking my order, he kindly said, ‘I’ll throw in three bottles of tonic wine, it’ll put colour back in your cheeks.’ I thought, stupidly, that he was giving them to me.
A child of poor parents who goes straight from a deprived house to the seminary at the age of twelve will never know the value of money. I even think it’s hard for us to remain strictly honest in business. It’s best not to gamble, however innocently, with what most lay people consider not a means but an end.
My fellow priest from Verchin, who is not always the most tactful of men, saw fit to make a humorous allusion to this little misunderstanding in front of Monsieur Pamyre. Monsieur Pamyre was genuinely upset. ‘The curé,’ he said, ‘can come as often as he likes, and we’ll have a pleasant drink together. We aren’t short of a bottle or two, thank God! But business is business, and I can’t just give away my merchandise.’ And Madame Pamyre apparently added, ‘We merchants also have our duties to perform.’
* * *
This morning I decided not to extend the experiment past the coming twelve months. Next 25 November, I’ll throw these pages on the fire and try to forget them. This resolution, which I made after Mass, did not put my mind at rest for more than a moment.
It’s not that I have qualms, in the normal sense of the word. I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong in noting down as the days go by, with complete honesty, the very humble, insignificant secrets of a life that is quite without mystery. What I will put down on paper would not be overly revealing to the only friend to whom I still sometimes open my heart, and besides, I am well aware that I will never dare write here what I confess to God almost every morning without any shame. No, these are not really qualms, but rather a kind of irrational fear, as if my instinct is sending me a warning. When I sat down for the first time in front of this school exercise book, I tried to concentrate, to search my conscience. But it wasn’t my conscience I saw with that inner gaze that is usually so calm and penetrating, which ignores details and goes straight to the point. It seemed to glide over the surface of another conscience previously unknown to me, a blurred mirror in which I fear to see a face suddenly emerge – which face? mine, perhaps – a face I have forgotten and rediscovered.
One should be able to talk about oneself with inflexible rigour. So why then, at this first effort to grasp myself, did I feel that pity, that tenderness, that slackening of every fibre of my being, that desire to weep?
Yesterday I went to see the curé of Torcy. He’s a very good, very conscientious priest, although I usually find him a little too down-to-earth. He’s the son of rich peasants, and he knows the value of money. I am always very impressed with his experience of the world. My fellow priests speak of him as a future dean of Heuchin … His manner with me is quite disappointing because he hates confidences and discourages them with a big, artless laugh, but he’s much subtler than he seems. My God, how I would love to be as healthy, brave and well-balanced as he is! But I think he’s indulgent towards what he’s pleased to call my sentimentality because he knows I am not at all proud of it. It’s even been a long time since I last tried to see that childish fear I have of other people’s suffering as being anything like the true pity of the saints, which is strong and gentle.
‘You’re not looking too well, my boy!’
It has to be said that I was still upset by the argument I’d had with old Dumonchel in the sacristy a few hours earlier. God knows I’d like to give up, along with my time and effort, the cotton rugs, the mite-eaten draperies and the tallow candles bought at great expense from His Excellency’s supplier, but which collapse as soon as they are lit, with a noise like a frying pan. Only the going rates are the going rates, so what can I do?
‘You should kick the fellow out,’ he said. And when I objected: ‘No, absolutely, kick him out! Besides, I know him, your Dumonchel: the old man has enough money … His late wife was twice as rich as him – he could have given her a decent burial! You young priests …’
He turned quite red and looked me up and down.
‘I wonder what you have in your veins these days, you young priests! In my day, we trained men of the Church – don’t scowl, you make me want to slap you – yes, men of the Church, make of those words what you wish, leaders of parishes, masters, men who could run things. They could command a region, those men, just by lifting their chins. Oh, I know what you’re going to say: they ate well, drank well, too, and were partial to a game of cards. Agreed! When you take your work in the right spirit, you do it fast and well, and you have leisure time, which is all to the best for everyone. Now the seminaries send us altar boys, little beggars who imagine they work harder than anyone else because they never finish anything. They whine instead of commanding. They read heaps of books and have never understood – understood, mind you! – the parable of the Bridegroom and the Wedding Guests. What is a wife, my boy, a true wife, such as a man may hope to find if he is stupid enough not to follow Saint Paul’s advice? Don’t answer that, you’ll only say something stupid! Well, she’s a sturdy wench who works hard but makes allowances, and knows that everything will always have to be started all over again. However hard the Holy Church tries, she will never change this poor world into an altar of repose for Corpus Christi. I once had – I’m talking about my old parish – an amazing female sacristan, a nun from Bruges secularized in 1908, a fine woman. The first week, with all her polishing, the house of the Lord started to shine like a convent parlour. It had become unrecognizable, word of honour! It was harvest time, mark you, and not a soul came, and yet the blasted little old woman demanded that I take off my shoes and put on slippers, which I hate! I think she actually paid for them out of her own pocket. Every morning, of course, she found a new layer of dust on the pews, one or two brand new fungi on the choir rug, and spider’s webs – oh, my boy, enough s
pider’s webs to make a bride’s trousseau!
‘I thought to myself, “Keep polishing, my girl, you’ll see on Sunday.” And Sunday came. Oh, a very normal Sunday, nothing to write home about, the usual customers, if you know what I mean. Pitiful! Anyway, at midnight, she was still waxing and rubbing, by candlelight. And a few weeks later, for All Saints – a fantastic mission, preached by two strapping Redemptorist fathers – the wretched woman spent her nights on all fours with her bucket and mop – scrubbing and scrubbing until the foam started to climb up the pillars and grass grew between the flagstones. No way of reasoning with her! If I’d listened to her, I would have thrown everyone out so that the Lord could keep his feet dry, can you imagine? I’d say to her, “You’ll ruin me with those potions of yours” – because the poor old woman had a terrible cough! In the end, she took to her bed with an attack of rheumatic fever, her heart gave out, and there was my nun before St Peter. In a way, she was a martyr, let no one say she wasn’t. Her mistake, of course, was not to fight dirt, but to try and wipe it out completely, as if that were possible. A parish is dirty, it has to be. A Christian community is even dirtier. Just wait until the Day of Judgement, you’ll see what the angels will have to remove from the holiest monasteries, by the shovelful – what a cleansing that’ll be! Which all proves, my boy, that the Church has to be a sound housekeeper, sound and reasonable. That nun of mine wasn’t a real housekeeper: a real housekeeper knows that a house isn’t a reliquary. That’s a poet’s notion.’
I was ready for him. As he refilled his pipe, I tried in my clumsy way to point out that his example might not have been very well chosen, that that nun who died in pain had nothing in common with the ‘altar boys’, the ‘beggars’ who ‘whine instead of commanding’.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 1
