Bernanos, Georges
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- required reading for the religious
- A masterpiece of psychology and spirituality
- A true revelation!!!
- Grace is Everywhere
- Tout est Grace: Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest
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The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
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ASIN: 0786709618 |
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An idealistic young Catholic priest in an isolated French village keeps a diary describing the unheroic suffering and the petty internal conflicts of his parish. This may sound like a thin plot for a novel, but Diary of a Country Priest, by George Bernanos, remains one of the 20th century's most vivid evocations of saintly life. First published in 1937, Bernanos's Diary describes a faithful man's experience of failure. In his diary, the priest records feelings of inferiority and sadness that he cannot express to his parishioners. And as he approaches death, from cancer, the priest's saintliness remains unclear to him, but becomes undeniable to the reader. "How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity--as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ." --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews:
required reading for the religious.......2007-01-26
Last year marked the 70th anniversary of Bernanos's powerful tale of a young and earnest parish priest in rural France who feels that he is a total failure. From a merely human perspective he is not mistaken. As is fitting, we never learn his name. The entire novel is a diary in which he confides his doubts and loneliness, his sense of futility, struggles with a sense of vocation ("Keep marching to the end, and try to end up quietly at the roadside without shedding your equipment."), powerlessness in the face of suffering, clashes with clergy colleagues, the history of his own family dysfunction, and even disgust with his own body due to chronic stomach pains and an impoverished diet. He knows he is physically clumsy and socially awkward. He describes his parishioners as bored, boring, and petty. They gossip about him as a "secret drinker" and a womanizer, both of which are laughable. The priest loves his flock; he visits every home every year, and he prays for them. He has a keen sense of history and his own obscure role to play. He is an astute observer of the weakness, frailty and fallenness of human nature, especially his own. By the time he dies of stomach cancer at a young age, Bernanos has painted a portrait of what we realize is a genuine saint. On his deathbed at the end of the book the priest confesses, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere." Every person in ministry ought to read this book, but perhaps not until you turn fifty or so.
A masterpiece of psychology and spirituality.......2005-07-02
I picked this book up on a whim while at a train station. I needed something to read, and being a seminarian/Catholic geek/what have you, the title caught me.
This book struck me both as a psychologist, and as a seminarian. On the psychological level, it is a beautifully written psychological profile, of a passive agressive personality.
However on the spiritual level, it is much much more! We encounter a young country priest, whose soul is so pure, that by contrast, the failings of his parishioners seem enormous. At times he seems to be one that seems the splinter in his brother's eye before seeing the log in his own, but at other times, it becomes clearly evident that despite his flawed techniques, it is the young priest that is on the right track.
This is a beautifully written novel about a soul yearning to love God and draw others into that love but at the same time contending with the effects of a broken and fallen humanity. I highly recommend it.
A true revelation!!!.......2005-06-10
This book is an authentic triumph, an ode to the constancy, lucidity and epic statement; a real epifany and a real cahartic experience. More than a jewel: and a powerful inspiration source for this unforgettable director: Robert Bresson who might lead to secure port this story in Cinema Language,
Grace is Everywhere.......2004-12-19
Rarely, very rarely does a book effect me to such an extent that passages reappear again and again, long after the pages have been turned. Bernanos has written a provocative novel in the form of a diary, where the nameless priest writes his most intimate thoughts.
Each entry reveals the trials of a truly humble man who is troubled by his inability to pray; "...that the wish to pray is a prayer in itself, that God can ask no more than that of us." He struggles with his physical pain and awkwardness, "But I hadn't lost consciousness, I was simply a prey to my suffering, or rather to the menace of it, for the certainty of its return was a greater agony that the pain itself..."; temporal insecurity, "There must be something for my absurd self. The way in which I neglect my appearance, my natural clumsiness against which I no longer struggle, even the morbid pleasure which I feel at the thought of certain injustices...does not all this cloak an illusion whose origin in God's eyes is impure? ...instinctivly I put myself in the wrong; I can see other people's point of view."; spiritual doubt "Am I where Our Lord would have me be? Twenty times a day I ask this question. For the Master whom we serve not only judges our life but shares it, takes it upon himself."; and the emotional anguish brought upon by the parishoners who he serves.
The central character is humility, in the guise of the young priest. A humility that is much more than an absence of pride; it's a gift comprised of compassion and spritual poverty. That gift is grace and Bernanos has given humility the human dimensions that make it alive and observable. With literary brilliance he has raised it to heights that forsake its lowly origin.
Everywhere there is suffering and sacrifice, yet not all is gloom and doom. The final words from his dying lips, "Grace is everywhere" come as no surprising revelation.
Tout est Grace: Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest.......2004-10-28
"The Diary of a Country Priest" by Georges Bernanos is a sad, but hopeful, novel. Set between the two world wars in rural northern France, the story takes place in Ambricourt, a village bored stiff and bereft of spiritual vitality. In spite of this, Bernanos' protagonist grows in faith, because he reaches into his soul and wrestles with some of life's biggest issues. As a priest, he is new to parish life. Suffering from poor health, he was misdiagnosed as consumptive and had spent the previous eighteen months in a sanatorium.
The priest begins his parish work at Ambricourt with sober resolve and some expectation of longevity. He strives diligently to influence his parishioners, yet he makes far more enemies than friends. Some of this he accepts as an occupational hazard, since a good priest "has no friends." He receives some moral support from the parish priest of Torcy, an experienced pastor, and from his first doctor, a suicidal physician named Maxence Delbende.
Although the priest's trials seem rather petty, the reader should not overlook the priest's physical plight and his sensitivity to the malice that lurks in people. Consider Seraphita Dumouchel. Ostensibly a bright young girl, she turns out to be a pre-teen vixen who attacks him behind his back with malicious slander. Loose lips not only sink ships, but they also sink reputations. The priest has to fight an uphill battle against unsubstantiated rumors, including one that he is an alcoholic.
He also has problems with Mademoiselle Chantal. Daughter of a count and countess, she takes over where Seraphita left off, vexing the priest in the spiritual realm. Even when Chantal allows herself to enter the confessional, she stubbornly refuses to confess her sins. The priest warns her of the eternal consequences, but she storms off with a curt, "That's enough!"
His good friend Dr. Delbende having committed suicide with a shotgun, the priest contacts a doctor in the large northern city of Lille. He is bleeding internally. A few days before the appointment, he happens upon an acquaintance named Monsieur Olivier, a cousin of Mademoiselle Chantal. Olivier is riding his prize motorcycle and offers the priest a ride, which he accepts. For a brief, shining moment, the priest enjoys the blessedness of youth. This is a grace that God gives him in order to boost his spirits. Even though it seems as if his life has been an abject failure, the priest gains a higher perspective and sees that he has lived his life by the grace of God. As he says at the end, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere."
Dennis J. Mercieri, Holy Apostles Seminary, Cromwell, CT, USA
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Mouchette (New York Review Books Classics)
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1590171519
Release Date: 2005-11-21 |
Book Description
One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art.
"Nothing but a little savage" is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn't bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, "alone, completely alone, against everyone." Hers is a tale of "tragic solitude" in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined.
Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery O'Connor, and Mouchette was the source of a celebrated movie by Robert Bresson.
Customer Reviews:
Minor Bernanos.......2006-11-26
This short novel allegedly combines "raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity." The raw realism, to be sure, is everywhere evident during this tale of a French countryside teenager and outcast who experiences rape, despair, and finally suicide. The strength of the piece lies, I'd argue, in its wonderful concreteness: the sights, smells and tastes of Mouchette's world are all immaculately rendered. But I don't think that in clarity, coherence or proportion the author's "spiritual focus" is on a level with his writerly genius. Mouchette's story, in other words, is too long on lurid incident and too short on meaning. It's true in the last few pages the author declares that despite cryptic intrusions of grace Mouchette's life had largely been a "strange rebellion against tenderness which made her so solitary." Bernanos also briefly reflects here on the entrance of despair into the lives of poor people. But this, I think, is too little, too late to satisfactorily irradiate Mouchette's story with vision, much less with the capacity to move the reader profoundly.
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The Heroic Face of Innocence : Three Stories by Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0802845657 |
Customer Reviews:
A dangerous read.......2000-10-25
Bernanos is a novelist of the most dangerous sort--he strikes directly at your mind and heart and makes you THINK! A seriously excellent book.
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The Diary Of A Country Priest
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Fontana
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000G7CW6C |
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- Amazing story of a spiritual battle
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Under Satan's Sun
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Bison Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0803261802 |
Book Description
This new translation marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Georges Bernanos's first novel, Under Satan's Sun, a powerful account of intense spiritual struggle that reflects the author's deeply-felt religion. The work develops a theme that persistently inspired Bernanos: the existence of evil as a spiritual force and its dramatic role in human destiny.
This haunting novel follows the fortunes of a young, gauche, and fervent Catholic priest who is a misfit in the world and in his church, creating scandal and disharmony wherever he turns. His insight into the inner lives of others and his perception of the workings of Satan in the everyday are gifts that fatefully come into play in the priest's chance encounter with a young murderess, whose life and emotions he can see with a dreadful clarity, and whose destiny inexorably becomes entangled with his own.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing story of a spiritual battle.......2007-02-23
Bernanos' book is a fringhteningly real account of a priest engaged in great spiritual struggles. The victory over evil shown in the life of this priest, and in the lives of those he is called to serve, is amazing. This book is well worth reading by anyone who takes the struggle for holiness and triumph over evil seriously.
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Joy
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Pantheon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B0006AQWP6 |
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The fearless heart
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: Bodley Head
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006DC8X8 |
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Francais / Si Vous Saviez (1945 1948)
Georges Bernanos
Manufacturer: French & European Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0785906339 |
Authors:
- Bernstein, Charles
- Berry, Iris
- Berry, Wendell
- Berryman, John
- Berssenbrugge, Mei-Mei
- Berton, Pierre
- Bester, Alfred
- Betjeman, John
- Bialosky, Jill
- Bianchi, John
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