GEORGES BERNANOS (1888-1948) was a novelist and polemicist whose masterpiece, THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, established him as one of the most original and independent Roman Catholic writers of his time.  His books draw their strength from his passionate sense of commitment and refusal to compromise with complacent bourgeois attitudes.  As a novelist he made his theme the struggle between the forces of good and evil for the soul of man, a conflict particularly exemplified in his studies of priests.  His characters, representing extremes of human behaviour from saintliness to utter depravity, are powerfully imagined and realistically drawn.

Bernanos' first novel, UNDER THE SUN OF SATAN (1926, also translated as The Star of Satan), depicted the struggles of a priest against the evil and temptation in the world around him and against his conviction of his own inadequacy.  His best known work, THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1936), recounts the life of a young, sickly French priest who is assigned to a sleepy provincial parish.  Though his faith is devout, he finds nothing but indifference and mockery.  The children laugh at his teachings, his parishioners are consumed by boredom, rumours are spread about him and he is tormented by stomach pains.  Yet somehow, despite his suffering, he tries to find love for his fellow humans, and even a state of grace.  The novel was awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by l'Académie française and adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson.

In July 1938 Bernanos went into self-imposed exile with his family and began an unsuccessful farming venture in Brazil.  From there he mocked the Vichy regime and became a strong supporter of the nationalist Free French Forces led by Charles de Gaulle.  His broadcast messages and his PLEA FOR LIBERTY (1942) influenced his compatriots during World War II.  His last important novel, MONSIEUR OUINE (1943), relates the story of a retired teacher who settles in a village in northern France, where he becomes surrounded by mysterious deaths and other unexplained events.  The book had its origin in a spiritual crisis Bernanos went through in the early 1930s, when he contemplated how nihilism and despair lead to evil.

A return to France in 1945 brought disillusionment with his country's lack of spiritual renewal.  Shortly before his death Bernanos completed Dialogue des Carmélites (1949, here translated as THE FEARLESS HEART), a film script dealing with 16 nuns martyred during the French Revolution, a subject in which Bernanos found perhaps the main preoccupation of his spiritual life and work.

LAST ESSAYS, prepared shortly before his death, is a final reckoning with the modern world.  These five essays confront the central problems facing the world, Europe, France, each man and woman: the advent of the atomic age, the devolution of democracy, the threat of totalitarianism, the loss of true liberty, and the drastic despiritualization of society.  Yet, notwithstanding the blind complacency and grave evils of his time, Bernanos helds aloft the still-intact thread of hope: the possibility of sanctity springing eternal because "it is always the era of the saints."


The following books are in PDF, courtesy of Mohamed5438, unless otherwise noted:

* Diary of a Country Priest (Penguin Classics, 2019).  Howard Curtis, trans. -- ePUB
* Diary of a Country Priest (Macmillan, 1937).  Pamela Morris, trans.
* Fearless Heart, The (Newman, 1952).  Michael Legat, trans. (WB)
* Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories (Eerdmans, 1999).  Multiple trans.
* Joy (Pantheon, 1946).  Louise Varèse, trans.
* Last Essays (Regnery, 1955).  Joan and Barry Ulanov, trans.
* Monsieur Ouine (Nebraska, 2000).  William S. Bush, trans.
* Plea for Liberty (Pantheon, 1944).  Harry L. Binsse, trans.
* Sanctity Will Out (Sheed & Ward, 1947).  R. Batchelor, trans.
* Star of Satan, The (Macmillan, 1940).  Pamela Morris, trans. (WB)
* Under the Sun of Satan (Pantheon, 1949).  Harry L. Binsse, trans.

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