With Peguy to Chartres

Extract

The reader taking up this book for the first time may receive a confused impression. To begin with he will find some stanzas of French verse which suggest in their metre the pilgrimage which they describe in detail. It was André Gide who said that the poetry of Charles Péguy was like the repetition of some ancient litany, always similar but never quite the same. He might have said, with equal truth, that it was like the plodding of feet on a hard road, rhythmical and unrelenting; or like the washing of the sea over a shingle beach where no wave is identical but all strike variations of the same theme. Péguy’s verse has a tremendous purpose, and he was never more serious about anything than about this pilgrimage which he made to Chartres. All that he was and knew and felt—his piety and his patriotism and his subtle, involuntary presumption—went into it, and was afterwards translated into the poem he dedicated to our Lady. So much the reader of this book will quickly seize. But then he will examine the photographs, and fresh images will mingle in his mind with the image of Péguy’s pilgrimage.