Georges BERNANOS (1888-1948). Autograph manuscript,... - Lot 114 - Ader

Lot 114
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Georges BERNANOS (1888-1948). Autograph manuscript,... - Lot 114 - Ader
Georges BERNANOS (1888-1948). Autograph manuscript, [La France devant le monde de demain, 1946]; 31 1/2 pages in-4, on lined sheets torn from a schoolboy notebook, paginated 1-5, then 1-28. Conference on the world of tomorrow and the dangers of Marxism. This manuscript, with corrections and notes for the edition, is that of a conference given in Brussels, at the Grandes Conférences Catholiques on November 23, 1946, under the title La France devant le monde de demain. A note signed by Edmond Limbourg indicates: "This manuscript was offered to me by Madame Georges Bernanos, after the death of her husband, and was given to me by Albert Béguin. In a first draft, Bernanos recalls the warm welcome he received in Brussels in 1927, and praises the attitude and faith of the Christians of Belgium: "You had faith, and this faith in yourselves was rewarded because it was also faith in Europe, in the ever-living, inexhaustible resources of Europe, faith in the man of Europe. Then he resumed his text and insisted on "the faith of a people that is entirely in the present, of a people that has bet on the present, that has bet on its present luck, and thus forced fortune as it had forced misfortune. For the world of tomorrow, he fears "the frightening solidarity that binds certain complacent victims, too cowardly to defend themselves, to the executioner who resembles them like a brother. [Christian resignation is a virile virtue", but it has become "a kind of dazed indifference to this misfortune, especially to the misfortune of others". Same thing for the hope that "Mr. François Mauriac who wants to destine me sometimes, although rarely, some airs of his elegiac bagpipe, boasted one day to hold by the hand". He reproaches "the illustrious academician" for offering "every day in Figaro his worries to everyone" and for breaking hope. He does not "push people to despair, I would like to tear them by force from a resignation where they feel at ease, because it exempts them from choosing". If he is hard on Mauriac, it is because he thinks that "the tortured author of so many books where carnal despair oozes on every page, like muddy water on the walls of an underground, has more merit in being mistaken than I have in seeing clearly"; but one should not confuse optimism and hope; "hope is a risk to be taken". One should neither resign oneself nor hope in the world of tomorrow, but refuse "a failed civilization, which is by no means a stage in the history of mankind, but a deviation, an error, a dead end path [...] France has been betrayed by its elites, and its intellectual elites have betrayed it even more than the others" and will lead it towards Marxism. France does not see this danger, and votes for mediocre parties that do not announce immediate perils. Hence the success of the M.R.P. Bernanos was called a reactionary; but they are, "by reducing the world to servitude, even by making the world an economic prison [...] Communism does not change the mechanism, it makes it turn by force [...The Marxist intellectuals pretend to realize a mechanical terrestrial Paradise", which for Bernanos is inconceivable; in Russia "the Progress according to Marx has already devoured more men than the progress according to Bentham and besides the two monsters are one". About Marxism "everyone knows that this unique and decisive experience is inspired by a certain conception of the Christian man, since it does not take into account the original sin [...] Marxism denies or neglects what there is of divine in the man". For the Marxist, justice is an economic fatality, poverty a social defect that must be eliminated "like the pox or prostitution". And he concludes: "Europe is ravaged by the totalitarian leprosy [...] Will we let it liquidate Europe, or will we have the courage to liquidate it. Shall we leave the task of organizing the peace of men to a system which, making man a machine, can only give him the peace of machines...".
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