11 - BERNANOS, Georges (1888–1948).

BERNANOS, Georges (1888–1948). Autograph manuscript signed “Georges Bernanos,” *The Solitude of Modern Man*, [1931]; 5¼ pages, in-4 format, mounted on tabs with the printed text opposite, in a single in-4 volume, bound in beige half-percaline. A fine essay on man in modern society. Note: This is the first in a series of articles contributed to *Le Figaro*, published on November 13, 1931, and reprinted in the posthumous collection *Le Crépuscule des vieux* (Gallimard, 1956, pp. 269–275). It was preceded in the newspaper by a subheading, added in pencil at the top of the manuscript by an editor: “Under the gaze of the new, sacrificed generation.” The manuscript is carefully written in blue ink. “Modern society is still nothing more than a stopgap. But modern man himself exists. He is a solitary animal. Yet one must be careful not to take the word ‘solitude’ here in the literal sense, but rather as a sort of detestable deception, a dream full of screams and flashes of light, the aura of severe nervous damage that suddenly creates, around the tormented soul, in the full light of noon, beneath the blue shadows, a void wider and darker than Erebus. For modern man is constantly on the move and speaks no less—so ingenious at replacing, with summary, almost abstract accounts, those genuine social exchanges whose benefits the growing poverty of his inner life denies him. Thus, little by little, the awareness of his isolation among other creatures too much like himself—barely distinguishable, and, strictly speaking, his equals—fades away. When this awareness has vanished without return, the universe will experience a new—and this time, probably definitive—form of savagery ”… And Bernanos concludes: “The ever-deepening discord between institutions and customs leaves the individual on the outside and, as it were, on the margins of a society he naively describes as modern, unable as he is to define it otherwise. A society so similar in so many ways to what preceded it that a man from the thirteenth century, miraculously resurrected, would find the old frame of ancient Christendom almost intact. What a strange idea, all the same, to set up your anthill in a cathedral! Strange, strange idea to subject the ruthless disciplines of the modern City—as defined by Mr. FORD—to social forms so bold, so complex, so ill-suited to the elementary rhythm of economic determinism, and, to put it bluntly, in short, conceived by the two kinds of men for whom you have the deepest contempt: the Politician and the Theologian. What purpose do the scholastic distinctions serve today, for example, between the work of ordinary civil servants and the exercise of so-called social priesthoods? What prevents you from merging the judiciary with the police? […] What do you mean by respect for the Law? There is no respect without love, and your laws, stripped of their crown, are nothing more than regulations—and provisional ones at that. To love them would be scarcely less foolish than piously kissing the tax collector’s signature. No! Modern man is alone, utterly alone, in the gigantic, deserted arsenal where the immense shadow of the Cross continues to turn, from morning to night, silently, in vain. Break this solitude, or perish.” Essays and Militant Writings (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), vol. I, pp. 1223–1226.