Bernanos:An Ecclesial Existence: "Sources of the Self"? (Charles Taylor) and nothingness.
“Doubt concerning oneself is not humility. I even think that at times it could be the grandest, almost delirious form of pride: a kind of ravenous jealousy that makes a wretch turn against himself and devour himself. The secret of hell must lie here.”
Such affirmations are only intended to point to the presence of hell in this world. In order to isolate the essence of hell more plainly, Bernanos sets about excluding the passion and fire of revolt, since these are too intimately bound up with the wholesome and necessary vitality of our temporal existence: “Elemental woe is calm, solemn, like a king on his throne, mute as a shroud”, says Fiodor in Joy. “As for despair: it confers on us an empire equal to God’s.” And, speaking of the child he once was, Bernanos himself says: “I’d rather see him in revolt than jaded by disappointment, because most frequently revolt is but a form of transition, while disappointment of this sort no longer belongs to this world: it is brimming and dense as hell itself.” In the countess the country priest comes up against “all the harshness of hell”. What Bernanos puts in highest relief, however, is the coldness of hell, no doubt echoing Dante unconsciously: “I am cold itself. The essence of my light is unbearable cold”, Satan declares to Donissan. “His masterpiece is a peace that is mute, aloof, frozen, comparable to the thrill of nothingness.” Chevance says to Cénabre: “Alas, Sir, in blasphemy some love of God may still be found. But the hell you inhabit is the coldest of all.” And Chantal says to her father: “The world for which our Lord did not pray, the world you think I know nothing about—pshaw! It’s not so hard to find it: it’s the world that prefers cold to hot.” In his one and only sermon—at the grave of the murdered shepherd—the Curé de Fenouille says to his “dead parish”: “All of you feel chilled to the bone, frozen cold. People always speak of the fires of hell, but no one has ever seen them, my friends. Pure cold is hell!”
Such affirmations are only intended to point to the presence of hell in this world. In order to isolate the essence of hell more plainly, Bernanos sets about excluding the passion and fire of revolt, since these are too intimately bound up with the wholesome and necessary vitality of our temporal existence: “Elemental woe is calm, solemn, like a king on his throne, mute as a shroud”, says Fiodor in Joy. “As for despair: it confers on us an empire equal to God’s.” And, speaking of the child he once was, Bernanos himself says: “I’d rather see him in revolt than jaded by disappointment, because most frequently revolt is but a form of transition, while disappointment of this sort no longer belongs to this world: it is brimming and dense as hell itself.” In the countess the country priest comes up against “all the harshness of hell”. What Bernanos puts in highest relief, however, is the coldness of hell, no doubt echoing Dante unconsciously: “I am cold itself. The essence of my light is unbearable cold”, Satan declares to Donissan. “His masterpiece is a peace that is mute, aloof, frozen, comparable to the thrill of nothingness.” Chevance says to Cénabre: “Alas, Sir, in blasphemy some love of God may still be found. But the hell you inhabit is the coldest of all.” And Chantal says to her father: “The world for which our Lord did not pray, the world you think I know nothing about—pshaw! It’s not so hard to find it: it’s the world that prefers cold to hot.” In his one and only sermon—at the grave of the murdered shepherd—the Curé de Fenouille says to his “dead parish”: “All of you feel chilled to the bone, frozen cold. People always speak of the fires of hell, but no one has ever seen them, my friends. Pure cold is hell!”
posted by martin at June 30, 2015
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