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The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality
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The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality
Ronald Rolheiser
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Bernanos Probes the dapths
In this fictional "diary of a country priest," living alone in France some years after WW I, we listen to the thoughts of a solitary individual dedicated to the limits and depths of his being to the individuals in the country parish to which he was assigned.

What makes this book so great is is the depths of this poor man's wisdom about his own life, and the lives of those in his parish to whom he is dedicated.

For example, he writes of his plans: "There remains the unforeseen, and the unforeseen is never negligible." (p. 83)He writes of his efforts to dedicate himself more fully: "I believe, in fact, I am certain that many men never give out the whole of themselves, their deepest truth." (p. 109)He writes of the relationship between what we believe and what we do: "Faith is not something we lose.We simply cease to shape our lives by it." (p. 120). He writes of our tendency to judge others: "Who are you to condemn sin.He who condemns sin becomes a part of it." (p. 139)He writes of his youth: "I was never young because I never dared to be young." (p. 235.

I could go on,There's so much depth, so much wisdom, so much to learn and to enjoy in this magnificent book.By all means, read it!

musty
Don't mind old books but this one smelled musty and did not change after 2 weeks airing. Couldn't read it for this reason.Tossed it.

Lucky me, finding this novel
Not sure exactly how I found this book...but how fortunate a find it was! This is a real page-turner: Bernanos narrative draws the reader into the world of our unnamed-country priest; his parish and his mentors: in particular the Cure de Torcy, in such a way that we want to hold his hand, or at least be by his side as he faces each day. A great spiritual read right down to the stunning last lines uttered by our country priest. A book to be kept and re-read every couple years.

Sad, yet beautiful
The loneliness of priesthood in a small village.An ordianry man who lives a saintly life.Wonderful ... Read more

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"Nothing but a little savage" is how the village schoolteacher describes 14-year-old Mouchette, and her view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn’t contradict it; ragged, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be "alone, completely alone, against everyone." George Bernanos characterized this surprising heroine’s tale as one of "tragic solitude," but Mouchette’s resistance to every kind of worldly compromise puts in her touch with truths that must remain unknown to the better sort of people who wring their hands over her character and fate.

A powerful influence on Flannery O’Connor, George Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity, and Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A perfect French Novella
'Mouchette' (literally 'little fly') is the story of a fourteen-year old girl living in impoverished circumstances in rural France. Her father is an alcoholic, everyone drinks gin, she is mistreated and taunted by the school mistress - in short, she is an outsider, both tragic and wild.

It is a book you can read in an afternoon. The prose is haunting and illuminated with a sympathetic, gentle wisdom. Georges Bernanos was a Catholic writer. He survived the ravages of the First World War to become highly critical of the post-war middle class society. He embraced both the extreme right and left throughout his life.

The book feels as if it was wrapped up in rain and twilight. I'm not sure how else to put it. One must read the scene with the poacher during a rain storm. It is poignant, lovely, earthy in its clarity but also disconcerting. Mouchette is drawn to the poacher, drawn to his pain and his brief show of kindness as well as his wild behavior. The man is an epileptic. He suffers from an inner torment, he imagines he has done the worst. There is an element of mirroring here as the two are both outsiders in a society of sadness, where, as Fanny Howe writes in the introduction 'the town drinks gin.'

I am reminded of Victor Hugo and Emile Zola - the compassion inherit in Bernanos's writing is immense. The narrator's presence is so strong and loving in that he views young Mouchette not with disdain but with benediction. If it had been written differently, I doubt it would be memorable.

A beautiful, touching book, especially when you consider how we live in a world of abject poverty, there are most likely many Mouchettes out there like this, searching for hope and a way of life.

Mouchette - Inside/out
Many years ago it was required of English Liturature students to study "the stream of consciousness" method in writing, and Virginia Woolfe's To the Lighthouse was the set text. Perhaps that method of writing has now slid into the far recesses of memory and popularity which might help those reading Georges Bernanos to remember. It seems to me that unless one gets back into this mode Mouchette - and Monsieur Ouine Monsieur Ouine - will puzzle many readers. We are asked to live in Mouchette's mind as it looks out on a short sequence of time. It is easy to get lost, no less than Mouchette is lost and confused. And it is hard anyway as there seems to be "hole" in the sequence between the events of that night and when Mouchette sets off for the village in the morning. Again, the last paragraph of the book seems to betray the promise of the book; it seems to leave too much to the imagination of the reader and too little to the consciousness of Mouchette: flat like the pond into which she sinks. Never-the-less, a beautiful story well, and chillingly, told.

Minor Bernanos
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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Product Description
French journalist, polemicist, and novelist Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) is perhaps best known through Robert Bresson's film adaptation of "Journal d'un cure de campagne" (winner of the Grand prix du roman de l'Academie francaise; published in English as "Diary of a Country Priest"), Francis Poulenc's operatic adaptation of "Dialogues des Carmelites", his first novel "Sous le soleil de Satan", and the essay "Les Grands Cimetieres sous la Lune". Michael Tobin's study is part literary criticism, part biography. Tobin follows Bernanos and his family from France to Spain during the Civil War and then to Brazil and North Africa. He also provides a thematic synthesis of Bernanos' novels and his extensive body of non-fiction, demonstrating that one fundamental theological truth - the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ - was the the unifying factor of Bernanos' entangled political and social criticism and the engine of his creative imagination. Recent English translations of some of Bernanos' novels have sparked renewed interest in his work. Georges Bernanos includes Tobin's translations of essential texts that have never before appeared in English. ... Read more

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La porte de l'uvre de Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) serait impensable sans la grande place accordela femme. A travers une prsentation strictement chronologique du rle de la femme dans les romans et les Dialogues des Carmlites, o sont dcels certains prototypes de femmes, ce livre rvle l'volution importante du rle de la femme dans l'imaginaire de cet crivain chrtien.

BOOK SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISHThe significance of the work of Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), whom Andr Malraux called "the greatest novelist of his time," would be unthinkable without the central place that is given to women.Through a strictly chronological presentation of the role of women in the novels and the Dialogues of the Carmelites, this book reveals the important evolution of the woman's role in the imaginary world of this Christian author. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Bresson (1901-1999), one of the most original film-makers in the history of cinema, adapted two novels by Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), Journal d'un curé de campagne and Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette. The Catholic novelist Bernanos and the spiritual filmmaker Bresson, each in his own way, articulate grace and redemption through the suffering and death of their heroes/heroines. As a result, the reader and the spectator come to sense the presence of God in all four works. Bresson's techniques are presented and analyzed, as well as his later move to films without grace and redemption. ... Read more