Mauriac's testimony

François Mauriac was known for being très catholique, very conservative, and with a very ferocious relationship with Sartre. Sartre really attacked him in print in 1939 (I think it was), ending his article "God is not an artist, and neither is François Mauriac". Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! We had to read the article and discuss it in Séminaire de Littérature, and what Sartre was really attacking was the whole idea of any limit on human freedom whatsoever. Even character. To be free one must be utterly unpredictable. Random. Chaotic.

Well, anyone who attracts the vitriol of Sartre must be a good fellow, so I bought a copy of Mauriac's newspaper columns ("Bloc-notes") for 1958 - 1960, because I wanted to know what he had written about the May 1968 riots. (Yes, I know. When I got it out at home I realised I'd got the decade wrong... And they think I am good with technical things...)

Anyway, I flicked through it yesterday evening and lit on an article written on Good Friday 1958, which was really a personal testimony.

He spoke of how his faith rested on history, not myth, and of how history cannot be discarded simply with a word like that.

He spoke of his certainty in the truth of the Bible, though that truth had been attacked in his youth to such an extent that for some time he had not read John's gospel - until he worked through the attack and his confidence in the word was restored.

He went on to quote John's gospel and spoke of how Jesus had said that his sheep would know his voice and would follow him.

The article resounded with a straightfoward gospel Christian faith. It was good to read it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's amazing - you find Christian testimony in the most unexpected places at times. I had been a Christian for years before I was told that my paternal grandmother had been a Christian. I expect that we will have some surprises when we get to heaven. I wonder if we will be disappointed at those who are not there. Maybe that's why God will need to wipe away our tears.
12:15 am
Alan said…
A friend e-mailed these remarks on François Mauriac:

Mauriac has driven me to the keyboard. I studied one of his books - Noeud de vipères - for A level and was really impressed by it. The eponymous noeud de vipères is the heart of the protagonist, though it takes him most of the novel to recognise this and to come to the
conclusion that the only one who can deal with it is God. It might not have been the language I would have used at 18, but I recognised that it was a graphic account of coming to faith. The fact that I can still remember it is a recommendation.
6:24 am
Anonymous said…
If you are interested Alan, (and I accept that you may not be), if you have access to a copy of John Blanchard's book, 'Does God believe in atheists?', he deals quite comprtehensively with Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly on pages 130-136. That's the hard backed version - just in case there's a paper backed.
11:35 pm
Alan said…
Oh yes! And that book is in the garage with me as I type - poking its head out of a box somewhere. I must find it and read the relevant pages. Francis Schaeffer "Escape from reason" is published in French, and I am thinking of giving it to our seminar of literature teacher as a thank you for the course.
7:11 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more