Heather King <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), French author and journalist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life”. A lifelong Catholic, Mauriac was born in Bordeaux, the youngest of five. His father died when he was eighteen months old. He was raised by his almost fanatically pious mother\u2014”We went to sleep with our arms crossed and our palms clamped to our bodies, clutching the holy medals and the scapular of Mount Carmel,” he later wrote-and was educated by Marianites.\u00a0
His twenty-three novels, written mostly between 1921 and 1941, explore sin, grace, and redemption, often in conjunction with deep moral struggles. A Kiss for the Leper (1922) made him famous.\u00a0
For the last thirty years of his life, he focused on weekly opinion pieces about politics and culture in the French press: “Bloc-Notes” he called them.\u00a0
He spoke out against the Franco regime, torture, capital punishment (in particular the death sentences of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg), and the Vietnam War. He also quarrelled publicly with Albert Camus, arguing for mercy rather than vengeance after World War II, and Roger Peyrefitte, a diplomat and author who witheringly criticised the Vatican. He won the Nobel in 1952, and in 1958 was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion d’honneur.
The Nobel Prize official website states: “The religious novels of Mauriac have been a puzzle to many critics, for they abound in evidences of the dark side of life, and their religious content is not directly apparent.’\u00a0
They are not puzzles to Catholics, who know that “religious content” and ‘the dark side of life’ are not antithetical: rather one could not exist without the other.\u00a0To that end, two of Mauriac\u2019s lesser-known works may be his deepest contribution.\u00a0
Of Life of Jesus (1936), The New York Times observed:\u00a0It tells, perhaps unconsciously, the story of a sincere man’s struggle to find peace and rest for his tortured soul.”\u00a0
He dedicated The Son of Man (1958) To Elie Wiesel, who was a crucified Jewish child.”\u00a0
He writes from a place of the crucified child in each of us. Ostensibly happily married with five children, he hints at the anguish of unrequited love.\u00a0
It seems to me there is one page of the Gospel for each one of us\/ he observes. “Some weep with Mary Magdalene before the empty tomb…. Others put their fingers in the open wounds with Thomas. For my part, I have walked all my life with the two tired travellers who entered Emmaus in the evening.”\u00a0
Vigils, sleep, agony, death-God shares all of these states of the human condition with us because he was also a man, but a man present everywhere because he was God….He is present first of all in the Church; he is present in the Sacrament of the Altar; he is present where two or three are gathered together in his name as he is present in each one of our brothers.”\u00a0
Mauriac died at his Paris home on 1 September 1970<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Heather King is a contemplative laywoman and author of several books. She blogs at www.heather-king.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heather King Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), French author and journalist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life”. A lifelong Catholic, … Continue reading