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". He won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for "Journal d'un curé de campagne" ("Diary of a Country Priest").

Because of his anti-democratic leanings and his allegiance to the Action Française (he was a member of their youth organization, the Camelots du Roi), from which he finally departed in 1932, 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, despite having initially celebrated their Catholic allies - Francisco Franco, and the quasi-Fascist Falange - during the Spanish Civil War. Bernanos spent part of the conflict in Majorca, 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 in 1938, and stayed there until 1945, for most of the time in Barbacena, 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 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094011/ 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 by Boriswood, London in 1937 as "Diary of a Country Priest", made into a [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042619/ 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
* " _fr. Combat pour la vérité; Correspondance inédite 1904-1934" 1961
* " _fr. 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
* " _fr. Lettres retrouvées. Correspondance inédite 1904-1948" 1983

External links

* [http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france_159/label-france_2554/label-france-issues_2555/label-france-no.-33_3715/literature_4215/bernanos-an-uncompromising-non-conformist_6445.html?var_recherche=bernanos| English language biography]
* (public domain in Canada)