Joseph Malègue
Encyclopedia
Joseph Malègue was a French catholic novelist, principally author of Augustin ou le Maître est là (1933) and Pierres noires. Les classes moyennes du Salut.. He was also a theologian and published some theologian surveys, as Pénombres about Faith
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...

 and against Fideism
Fideism
Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths...

.

Life

He took two times (1900 and 1901), the entrance examination for École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

 but he failed because his poor health. He wrote (1902–1912) a Ph.D. of Law about the unemployment among the English dockers (1902–1912) during several stays in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. This Ph.D. was published in 1913: Une forme spéciale de chômage : le travail casuel dans les ports anglais - Google books. It is also during these stays (more accurately, January 1912), he found the whole name of the principal character of Augustin ou le Maître est là : Augustin Méridier. For January 1912, we have the first handwritten pages of Augustin ou le Maître est là. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, once more because of his poor health, he was only able to work in an infirmary, despite his repeated wishes to be engaged in a fighting unity. In 1917 he worked in the International Commission for relief in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Since 1922 until 1927, he taught at the Ecole Normale (educating teatchers for elementary schools) of Savenay
Savenay
Savenay is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France and the Pays de la Loire region. Located on the Sillon de Bretagne , north of the Loire, its landscape is characterized by the hillside overlooking the marshes of the Loire...

. He married Yvonne Pouzin in 1923, a doctor of medicine and they lived in Nantes
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....

. The Malègue's novel Augustin ou le Maître est là was finished in 1930. The French philosopher Jacques Chevalier
Jacques Chevalier
Jacques Chevalier was a French philosopher.Chevalier was born in Cérilly, Allier, and taught at the Faculty of Letters in Grenoble. He was the author of many books, mainly about the history of philosophy....

, a friend of Malègue, helped him to be published to Plon
Plon (publisher)
Plon is a French book publishing company, founded in 1852 by Henri Plon and his two brothers.The Plon family were Walloons coming from Nivelle, France. One of their ancestors is probably the Danish typographer Jehan Plon who lived at the end of the 16th century.-History:The Editions Plon were...

, but that failed. Finally, he was forced to pay himself the 3,000 first copies to Spes publisher. This roman fluvial (roman fleuve : 900 pages), following the French literary critic Claude Barthe in 2004, had immediately a great success. French critics was in majority in favour of the new novelist and his work. Belgian, Walloon critics, Swiss critics, too. And the most important literary critics of other countries in Europe. Both Catholic and Protestant literary critics. Spes published 10,000 copies in the end of 1933, 9,000 in June 1935, 6,000 in March 1940 etc. He was named le Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...

 catholique by many French and Walloon literary critics (Jacques Madaule, Léopold Levaux for instance). He received many letters and among them Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.-Life:...

, Henri Bergson or Maurice Blondel
Maurice Blondel
Maurice Blondel was a French philosopher.Blondel developed a "philosophy of action” that integrated classical Neoplatonic thought with modern Pragmatism in the context of a Christian philosophy of religion...

. With this philosopher, he engaged in a lengthy philosophical correspondence studied by Geneviève Mosseray. He published Pénombres in 1939. In 1940, he had a stomach cancer and died in December. Despite all his efforts, he was unable to finish Pierres noires. Les classes moyennes du Salut. This novel, which was more ambitious (almost 1,000 pages already written for the two first parts of the book and there would have been a third part, the most important), was published after Malègue's death and the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, in 1958.

Writings

Malègue's Augustin ou le Maître est là is unique among Catholic novels, following Victor Brombert, because, instead of writing about sex and sin as François Mauriac
François Mauriac
François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...

 or Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...

, he poses the religious problem from an intellectual (not intellectualist) point of view. The hero is clearly victim of the libido sciendi. But Malègue insists not on his pride, but on the seduction of the mind. He is not against intelligence, on the contrary. On the contrary a writer as Bernanos is in a sense against intellgence. Victorm Brombert citates L'imposture and the statement Yes intelligence can penetrate everything, just a as light can go through the thickness of crystal, but it is incapable of moving, of embracing. It is a sterile contemplation.

The Augustin's return to his faith, in the end of the novel, is not an abdication of the intelligence, but a reconquest through pain and lucidity. This return to faith sharply departs from Jean Barois (of Roger Martin du Gard
Roger Martin du Gard
Roger Martin du Gard was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details...

) because Barois' physical and mental anguish provokes a state of moral depression and a yearning for childhood coziness until in Augustin ou le Maître est là the return to faith (as in Jean Barois) and suffering is an exalting experience which elevates him [Augustin] to the "icy zones of spiritual meditation. Reason or intelligence is not abandoned but only cold reason which is unable to meet the person, both of men and God, in the same sense as the philosophers Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...

 or Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...

, thinking that Jewish or Christian God is not the God of Aristoteles. But, in doing so, the author wrote a long (900 pages in the first edition) and authentic novel 'without loss of either dramatic or psychological intensity'. Following him, the drama of intelligence appears in a different light in other Catholic novels.

If this author is a little forgotten, even in France, some literary critics continue to study his work, and among them William Marceau who wrote in 1987 Henri Bergson and Maurice Malègue, la convergence de deux pensées (French and Italien Studies, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 , 1987), or Claude Barthe in 2004

Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton was a French Catholic philosopher and theologian.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne, Loire, he studied at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and was accepted at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His principal religious and intellectual influence was from a blind priest, Francois Pouget...

 told that a great reader of Malègue was the pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...

  Malègue was also appreciated by unbelievers or atheists as for instance Fernand Vandérem, a Jewish literary critic for Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

, who wrote articles in the most laudatory terms.

Works

  • Une forme spéciale de chômage: le travail casueldans les ports anglais, Rousseau, Paris, 1913.
  • Augustin ou le Maître est là, roman, Spes, Paris 1933.
  • (German translation Augustin by Edwin Maria Landau, Benziger, Einsideln, 1956 and Italien translation, Agostino Méridier Società Editrice Internazionale, Torino, 1960. At that time, no English translation)
  • Pénombres, glanes et approches théologiques, essai, Spes, Paris, 1939
  • Pierres noires. Les classes moyennes du Salut, roman, Spes, Paris,1958
  • Sous la meule de Dieu et autres contes, Spes, Paris, 1965
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