Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

timothy williams  

The Priest as Vulnerable Hero in the Mauriacian Novel

Email - Profile - Subtheme # 6

ABSTRACT (français)

In the novels of François Mauriac, the priest is almost always a fleeting character who functions in the background. He is so detached from the tableau of passions that agitate and torment the principal characters that it is difficult to recognize in him a heroic figure. Cut off from his community, his speech is reduced to a minimum, his influence on others seemingly negligible. No miracles, few conversions, it is hard to see what would be different were he subtracted from the story. Thus, in critical commentary, especially that which considers itself “catholic,” the notion of a “forgery” takes form. Readers eager for edification discover in Mauriac “a mutilated version of faith. Their reading of Mauriac persuades them that God is always poorly served by his own. One is surprised by the secondary role played by God and religion in the novel.”¹

Even more “professional” literary critics have found little to say about the priest. However, the cleric in the works of Mauriac is a figure or symbol that always assists in deciphering the meaning of the novel. His role is that of witness, most often mute, of a certain vulnerability indispensable for the resolution of the mimetic crisis. Above all, the priest demonstrates his “immunity to mimeticism” – the rarest and most precious of virtues, says René Girard² – and he points to the Gospel as source of this immunity.

No doubt the best example of this is Alain Forcas, the curé of Liogeats in Les anges noirs (The Dark Angels). Because of his radiant sanctity, he is received everywhere “like a dog.”³ Listen to this extraordinary sentence wherein the narrator summarizes the function of the poor curé in his village: “others charged him with all the shameful deeds they themselves committed in secret.”⁴ That says everything there is to say about the scapegoat. Then there is Abbé Ardouin in Le noeud de vipères (The Vipers’ Tangle), the only defender of Dreyfus against the “indivisible family block.” Confronted daily by the irreducible spitefulness of Louis, the little Abbé refuses to utter the slightest unkind word, except concerning himself, saying to the old miser: “You are very good.”⁵ Even in Thérèse Desqueyroux, a novel that has provoked a flood of critical commentary, the fate of Thérèse and the meaning of the novel as a whole are impossible to grasp without understanding the eponymous heroine’s identification with the curé of Saint-Clair, who is himself stricken with the banishment typical of the scapegoat.

Since most professors of literature, especially in America, refuse to pay much attention to mimeticism or to the scapegoat phenomenon – a virtually unanimous refusal, and therefore perfectly mimetic – readings of Mauriac have not advanced in regards to understanding the priest and his place in the novels. I hope to demonstrate that it is necessary to study anew the importance of the clergy in the works of Mauriac, and consequently a major portion of his literary creation.         

¹ Jean Touzot. « Quand Mauriac était scandaleux... », p. 139.

² René Girard, La route antique des hommes pervers, p. 93.

³ François Mauriac, Les anges noirs, in Oeuvres romanesques 3, p. 264.

⁴ ibid.,  p. 330

⁵ François Mauriac, Le noeud de vipères, in Oeuvres romanesques 2, p. 438