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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
The rationalist is the acknowledged enemy of the spirit. The enmity is notably murderous when the object is the mind that has been scripturalized, the mind that draws its sources of value and discernment and power out of the energy of the Old and New Testaments, the mind that, refusing to show cause or prove or analyze, delivers judgment and damnation with the utmost conviction, the conviction of prophetic vision, of spiritual intuition. The system-maker, inveterately hunting after a coherent method or formulation, will find none; rather he may be expected to find only a violent assertiveness indifferent to all pattern and organization. So he may cry, “Fraud!” or “Fool!” Or if he, in his pure objectivity, has to respect the visionary's evident belief in his task, he may, subsequently, summon the psycho-analyst, who, at a loss for any other explanation, may attribute the whole outpouring of the prophet's soul to a neurotic condition. But this is, I think, a cheap evasion of the responsibility of any serious examiner.
1 I have indicated previously in this REVIEW relationships between Bernanos and Bloy and between Blake and Bloy: “The Evangelism of Georges Bernanos,” vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 403–421. 10, 1944;Google Scholar“The Wasteland of William Blake,” vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 163–204, 04, 1947. Blake and Bloy are notably similar in their sensitiveness to the sufferings of the poor. And Bernanos and Bloy have surely more likeness of mood and voice than Péguy and Bloy. Péguy's temper, close to that of Gill, is much less stormy, much less lacerating, much more homely.Google Scholar
2 From Raina Maritain's excellent selection of Bloy's thought. Pilgrim of the Absolute (New York: Pantheon Books, 1947. Pp. 358. $3.50.) The translation is by John Coleman and Harry Lorin Binsse. All subsequent Bloy citations are from this volume.Google Scholar
3 La Femme pauvre has been translated—a new edition is now available—as The Woman Who Was Poor (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947. Pp. 356. $3.00). This novel, like Le Désespéré, is not especially impressive as a technical work of art. Bloy is not precisely a novelist. Perhaps he is better described as a flame-thrower. Actually, the figures in his novels sometimes verge on the comical-monstrous creatures of caricature, of Gothic deformity-appropriate to the sentimental hovel of Dickens or the nightmare pit of Poe or, more currently, the weird jungle of Faulkner.Google Scholar
4 Léon Bloy—A Study in Impatience. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947. Pp. 274.Google Scholar $2.75.) Translated by Edith M. Riley. Beguin explores very well die chief attitudes of Bloy towards Suffering, Poverty, the Scandal of Money, the Mystery of Israel and the Symbolism of History. The most remarkable earlier study of Bloy is that by Stanislas Fumet: Mission de Léon Bloy. Beguin indicates his indebtedness to this work. A notable virtue of Beguin's book is the lack of ponderous, smothering interference with the thought and utterance of Bloy himself. Submitting intelligently to his subject, Beguin allows the word of Bloy to come forth without obstruction.
5 Wallace Fowlie has written, in Jacob's Night (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947. Pp. 116. $1.50), an essay on Rouault that is direct and illuminative in its pointing up of the unity of theme and style in Bloy and Rouault. In addition, he has discussed—with penetration and without complication—the prophecy of Péguy and the philosophy of Maritain. Altogether Fowlie's study of the religious renascence in France (see also his Clowns and Angels and Rimbaud) is unusually sensitive and sympathetic. I like especially his modesty of approach to his subjects in a world where the critic too commonly indulges the professional vice of arrogance.Google Scholar