452
PARTISAN REVIEW
Again the connection is curiously inexplicit. But in some mys–
terious way the Mouchette of
Sous
le
Soleil de Satan
is redeemed
by the struggles of a clumsy young priest both with his own stubborn
(caprine?) soul and with an exterior devil who causes
him
to lose
himself at night (in the wilderness?) and to walk round in circles.
The young priest in
Sous le Soleil de Satan
flagellates and wears about
his middle a rope so tight that it eats into
his
flesh.
Let us be quite frank and admit that an element of Bernanos'
appeal to
his
reader is pornographic. Flagellation, transvestism, the
seduction of fourteen-year-aids by middle-aged rakes, the sadistic
murder of ptl're girls of good family by proletarian debauchees who
are foreigners and peeping Toms into the bargain, ... these are the
familiar ingredients of rubber-shop literature, with or without the
shutters of the confessional, the priestly robe, the candle-lit study and
the clouds of incense.
1
Yet Bernanos is a serious and at times an ex–
quisite artist. He is a superb rhetorician, a profound judge of motive,
a man tender and generous (as only a Frenchman seems able to be)
in
his
attitude to public affairs
2
and a considerable scholar. His nar–
rative technique is possibly unequalled in our time. The prose is mas–
sive and simple in its weight, fluid and direct in its address. There is
no other writer who could make a spasm of conscience last fifty pages
and be neither dull nor unconvincing, nor yet fantastic and buzzing
with conceits.
The type of Christian faith which M. Bernanos exemplifies is
dignified, modest and quite free from either sensationism or hysteria.
From his polemical writing, he must be judged to be a liberal moralist
disinclined to debate points of theology with his religious superiors
but of a resolute independence in his casuistry. He derives the man-
1. Let us also be scrupulously fair and admit that Bernanos is sparing of
his incense. Perhaps no other Catholic writer has so little of it blowing about his "
pages. Indeed, he rarely takes us inside a church at all. The candle-lit study, hall
and passage5 of the presbytery are his favourite
mise en scene.
It is also as well
to point out that the appeal of pornography is by no means a superficial one.
The evil of pornography is like the evil of public oratory and lies in the fact that
it appeals too directly and with insufficient control to the deepest instincts, and
this is the level attacked also by mythology.
2. What other Catholic came so well out of the Spanish affair? Only Mari–
tain. At the same time, it should be noted that there was a rough division by
orders. Where Jesuit influence prevailed (and this appeared to include the rank
and file of secular priests), Franco's disgusting crusade was taken at its face
value. On the whole, and notably in this country, the Dominicans and those
whom they directed were more judicious.
