1144
PARTISAN REVIEW
out these meanings. To add an existential dimension to Adriana, whose
tragedy is not sickness of life but health, is to diminish and insult her,
to throw up to her the fact that she's a whore.
Both these novels are clear in their ruling metaphors of mind and
body. Neither succeeds in extending the metaphor dramatically to the
point of including the
other-Magister Ludi
is sexless and
The Woman
of Rome
falls under an extraneous philosophy. It is to the achievement
of such a synthesis, one that may be called spirit, that Georges Bernanos
devote~
himself in
Under the Sun of Satan,
the story of a provincial
priest Father Donissan, who attains sainthood. The saint presumably
stands at the height of spirit in virtue of his struggles in and with the
flesh; the intellectual issues are furnished by the tradition of Christianity
with its uneasy equilibrium of faith and reason, set aquiver in each
fresh act of faith. But the issues at either side of spirit, at least in the
context of this novel, are mediocre when not false. Father Donissan's
spirituality reduces itself, rather shamefacedly, to the fact that he needs
a woman-for which we are expected to admire him, and also for the fact
that he mortifies himself, with hairshirt and chain. His intellectual com–
mitments, mostly scraps, are supplied by the author, for Donissan is an
ignorant peasant, and consist in a disdain of "neurophysiology"-which
would call his behavior by its right name-and a belief in the reality
of the devil, who appears to him in the flesh. His struggles are the
usual circular agony of pride: mortification, leading to greater pride,
requiring a greater mortification, etc.,
ad info
This mess Bernanos calls
holiness. I shall forego the obvious psychological objection; the literary
objection is just as strong. There is a vindictive philistinism in this
glorification of perversions and absurdities.
Credo quia absurdum est
has come to mean, to hell with science, to hell with learning, to hell
with truth-I believe! There is no cheaper way of buying saintliness,
but its pride is appalling. Little wonder that one after another, Catholic
novelists are reviving Lucifer-I presume, for moral support.
But here is a paradox.
Magister Ludi
and
The Woman of Rome
are well grounded in reasonable conceptions, their metaphors of mind
and body are controlled with skill, taste, sophistication, both are good
books--Hesse's is even a great book-but they are inferior as novels.
Under the Sun of Satan
is an abuse of intelligence, its issues are stale,
its conception of spirit, perverse-but it is superior as dramatic fiction.
As though a novelist cannot afford to be too sure of his ground. This
may be the case, for Bernanos seems to thrive on a lack of confidence. He
patterns his conflicts after Dostoevsky even to the detail of hoping to
