A Comparison of the Creative and Critical Achievements of the Catholic Revival in France and Germany

Extract

The preconditions for a truly parallel treatment of the French and German Catholic Revival of the twentieth century do not exist. The main reason is that spiritually minded great authors like Paul Claudel or François Mauriac became fervent Catholics while German religiously minded poets like Rilke and Hofmannsthal used their cultural Catholicism for secular purposes. Of course, we still can single out certain literary productions which are comparable on the basis of their subject matter and general tendency, although they may be found rather in second-class authors. As such common topics and tendencies I am inclined to consider the following: the quasi-mystical experience of the religious conversion as a challenge to a merely para-psychological explanation of spiritual events; or the defense of the Church as the only factor of salvation against any humanistic, humanitarian, or political messages; or the praise of womanhood as inspired by the virginal motherhood of Mary, opposed to modern female emancipation and stressing of sex; or the serious explanation of evil by sin and Satan, open to spiritual cures, versus any theory of the absurdity of the world or the interpretation of evil as maladjustment open only to psychiatric therapy; or along the critical line, the fullness of specific Catholic insights, culminating in charity as a basis of an empathetic understanding of literature versus any formalism or philosophically destructive criticism.