Night and voices in Journal d’un curé de campagne Cover Image

Nuit et voix dans Journal d’un curé de campagne de Georges Bernanos
Night and voices in Journal d’un curé de campagne

Author(s): Éléonore Mermet
Subject(s): Aesthetics, French Literature, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Voice; night; writing; prayer; Bernanos;

Summary/Abstract: How the Journal d’un curé de campagne is written is intimately linked to the night because of the narrator’s insomnia. We will demonstrate that this night is the expression of an inner night, through the carmelite mysticism of John of the Cross. The writing is purified by the silence and anguish of the priest's mystical night: we will see that his writing becomes a prayer, that is to say, the hosting of divine and human voices in silence, based on Jean-Louis Chrétien’s phenomenological approach of prayer. This idea of writing will allow us to understand the relationship of Bernanos himself to his own writing: this nightly writing listens and gives voice to those who have none.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 27
  • Page Range: 9-33
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: French
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