BERNANOS (Georges). Set of 2 autograph manuscripts. 1927 and 1929. Both collected in 1956 in the volume Le Crépuscule des vieux. - ["PRESENTATION DE ROBERT VALLERY-RADOT A ROUEN"]. Lecture given in Rouen in 1927: "It's not easy to speak of a friend without speaking of oneself, and even without speaking of him with some complacency, for WHAT A MAN HAS OF BEST IN HIM, IS IN SUM HIS FRIENDSHIPS. I'm not talking, of course, about those unfortunate restless people who never find the time to choose, who go through life like a station concourse, with a certain number of associates or accomplices... Let me introduce you to a friend. And as I introduce him to you, I introduce myself to him, so naturally that I don't even think of apologizing. Our destinies have been linked for a long time now. And long before we knew each other, they were undoubtedly aligned, unbeknownst to us, and even, I dare say, in spite of the logic that seems to govern, and never does govern, the various events of life - fortunately, because then who would want to live? BEFORE THE WAR, some of you may still remember - and what better reason could I have to be sincere?... It's so much safer!... I WASN'T EXACTLY WHAT GOOD FAMILIES CALL A SERIOUS BOY. No sensible man would have dared to predict an advantageous career for me... in the notary's office. TO TELL THE TRUTH, I LOVED NOISE. AND WHAT BETTER EXCUSE FOR A FUSS THAN JOURNALISM? So I was a journalist, at least when my activities as a demonstrator [among the virulent royalist group the Camelots du roi] allowed me the leisure to do so, during those strange, augural years from 1910 to 1914, which saw the first underhand betrayal unmasked, then crushed by a French youth literally drunk with the premonition of its destiny. A law of three years, a service of three years, which was not three years, which for fifteen hundred thousand of us had neither beginning nor end, opening on eternal peace!... [Georges Bernanos then evokes their long relationship, and Robert Vallery-Radot's publications, before concluding:] "And it's not over yet! And there's more to come! For since Providence, whose designs, for once, seem to me more penetrable than one might think, has wanted to make you two years my senior ["too bad, my goodness, too bad!" crossed out]. I do hope you won't refuse to precede me - oh, my God! if only by a quarter of an hour - to the entrance of the gardens of Paradise ["at the threshold of the eternal morning"] to say to whoever it may concern: "Let him through all the same: I know him. He's not as stupid as he looks [variant: "as bad as Abbé Betléhem claims", in reference to Louis Bethléem, the priest who took up the fight against pornography]. And then he wrote a book disparaging the gentleman opposite. YOU DON'T WANT TO SEND THE AUTHOR OF SATAN'S SUN [published in 1926] TO THE DEVIL..." (7 pp. 1/2 in-folio autograph, and one page with mounted press clipping). - "PRIMACY OF FEAR". ASSASSINATED CRITIQUE OF ERICH MARIA'S ROMAN REMARQUE, À L'OUEST RIEN DE NOUVEAU, published as the second article in his series "Primauté de la peur", in L'Action française of December 19, 1929. He found it to be "too poor, too tough", with a "pretentious, comical lyricism, the sublime of a county town", a "perfect insignificance", a "deliberate, irresistible coarseness" of modern advertising, and accused it of "dishonoring war": "... If heroism were to find its place here, by some miracle, it would appear suspect, a kind of sad vice, at once frenetic and icy, such as one imagines the debauchery of a bad priest. But neither does cowardice, its opposite. Neither brave nor cowardly. Nothing but the monotonous rumination of fear, made bearable by hunger, cold and exhaustion. And the strange success of this book lies precisely in this disproportion of tragic circumstances to the barely-thinking beings who suffer them with hideous passivity. Never was a more exhausted animal brought face to face with death under the name of man." GEORGES BERNANOS ATTACKS HENRI BARBUSSE'S FIRE AND LUIS BUÑUEL'S FILM, UN CHIEN ANDALOUQ, and Christian socialists like politician Robert Cornilleau: "If we were to rank sacrifices according to their market value, the sacrifice of the Cross would come last. In the midst of the rise of Christian socialism, it is perhaps dangerous to remind voters of this bitter truth, as they await the triumph of Mr. Cornilleau and the establishment of cooperative sacristies to enjoy a good time.