Georges Bernanos

Georges Bernanos (February 20, 1888, Paris—July 5, 1948, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.

Bernanos was born into a family of craftsmen, and spent much of his childhood in the Pas de Calais region, which became a frequent setting for his novels. He served in the first world war as a soldier, where he witnessed the battles of the Somme and Verdun. He was wounded several times. After the war, he worked in insurance before writing Sous le soleil de Satan. Despite his anti-democratic learnings and his allegiance to the Action Française (he was a member of their youth organization, the Camelots du Roi), he was able to see the danger in Fascism and Nazism (which he described as "disgusting monstrousness") before World War II broke out in Europe, but not after initially celebrating their Catholic allies - Francisco Franco, and the quasi-Fascist Falange - during the Spanish Civil War Bernanos spent part of the conflict in Mallorca, and became disappointed in the Francoist cause, which he grew to criticize in Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune. Most of his important fictional works were written between 1926 and 1937.

He emigrated to South America 1938, and stayed there till 1945, for most of the time in Brazil, where he tried his hand at managing a farm. His three sons returned to France to fight when World War II broke out, while he fulminated at his country's 'spiritual exhaustion' which he saw as the root of its collapse in 1940. From exile he mocked the 'ridiculous' Vichy regime and became a strong supporter of the nationalist Free French Forces led by the conservative Charles de Gaulle.

After the liberation, de Gaulle invited him to return to France, offering him a post in the government. Bernanos did return, but did not participate actively in French political life.

His writings are sharply critical of modern society and its inroads into personal liberty, both through government and through technical development. He was an isolated figure, but maintained a very high reputation among his fellow-writers in France.

Major works

• Sous le soleil de Satan 1926 (published in English as Under the Sun of Satan, made into a film by the same name by Maurice Pialat in 1987, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for it.)
• L'imposture 1927
• La joie 1929 (winner of the Prix Femina)
• La grande peur des bien-pensants 1931
• Jeanne relapse et sainte 1934
• Un crime 1935
• Journal d'un curé de campagne 1936 (winner of the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, published in English as Diary of a Country Priest, made into a film by Robert Bresson in 1951.)
• Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette 1937 (made into the 1967 film Mouchette by Robert Bresson)
• Les grands cimetières sous la lune 1938
• Scandale de la vérité 1939
• Nous autres français 1939
• Monsieur Ouine 1943
• Lettre aux anglais 1946 (originally published in Rio de Janeiro in 1942)
• La France contre les robots 1947 (originally published in Rio de Janeiro in 1946)
• Français, si vous saviez (collection of articles written between 1945–1948) 1961
• Le chemin de la Croix-des-Âmes 1948
• Dialogues des carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites) 1949 — screen and later operatic libretto adaptation of Gertrud von le Fort's Cries from the Scaffold
• Les enfants humiliés 1949
• Un mauvais rêve 1950
• La liberté, pour quoi faire ? 1953
• Combat pour la vérité; Correspondance inédite 1904-1934 1961
• Combat pour la liberté; Correspondance inédite 1934-1948 1961
• La vocation spirituelle de la France (collection of articles assembled by J.-L. Bernanos) 1975
• Les prédestinés (includes "Sainte Dominique" 1926, "Jeanne relapse et sainte," and "Frère Martin" 1943) 1983
• Lettres retrouvées. Correspondance inédite 1904-1948 1983