Sunday evening, the Archdiocese of Monaco presented a performance of Charles Peguy’s three-act drama «Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc» (Mystery of Joan of Arc’s Charity) at Castel Gandolfo. The Pope had some remarks:
In this text of great richness, Peguy is able to depict powerfully the passionate cry that Joan raised to God, abjuring Him to put an end to all the misery and the suffering she saw around her, thus expressing man’s uneasiness in this world and his search for happiness.
This remarkable performance of the drama also shows us that Joan’s pitiful cry, which betrayed her sorrow and her dismay, also showed above all her ardent and lucid faith, marked by hope and courage.
Peguy makes us see in his "Mystere…" the Passion of Christ, that which definitively gives a sense to the prayer of that young girl whose strenght of spirit can only move us.
The performance for us tonight seems to me particularly opportune. In the international conext we have today, with the dramatic events in the Middle East, in the face of suffering provoked by violence in many places of the world, the message conveyed by Charles Peguy in this work serves as very productive food for thought.
May God listen to the prayer of the Saint of Domremy and ours, and give our world the peace to which it aspires!
An excellent article by Roger Kimball about Peguy:
In our own day, enthusiasts for Péguy’s work are much rarer. One of them is the French philosopher Pierre Manent. In Charles Péguy: Between Political Faith and Faith (1984), Manent extolled Péguy as “one of the most penetrating critics of the historical and sociological points of view which dominate modern consciousness.” High praise. Manent acknowledges the “violently personal” character of Péguy’s work, his habit of lacing considered arguments with ad hominem attacks, of ending lyrical expostulations with “an insult.” But Manent discerned a “luminous mind, eager to understand and to think,” behind the self-obsession and often bitter polemics. Péguy, Manent argues, continues to be “of capital importance,” above all because of his insights into the distinctive hubris of modernity: the curious modern tendency to substitute faith in technique for the cultivation of wisdom, the belief that a perfect administration of life could somehow relieve the burden, the unpredictable adventure, of living.
Another of Péguy’s recent admirers is the British poet Geoffrey Hill. Hill not only devoted a long poem to Péguy in 1984—The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy evokes the title of Péguy’s most famous poem Le Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc (1909)— but also wrote an enthusiastic appreciation of Péguy, whom he clearly regards as a kindred spirit. Péguy was, Hill admitted, a man of violent emotions (“violent” and “passionate” are words that inevitably turn up whenever Péguy is on the menu), but also “a man of the most exact and exacting probity,” “one of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences, of our century.” Reflecting on Péguy’s return to an unorthodox Catholicism after a period of loudly declared atheism, Hill speaks of Péguy’s having “rediscovered the solitary ardors of faith but not the consolations of religious practice. He remained self-excommunicate but adoring.” Students of Hill’s poetry will recognize the terrain.
And in regard to the work in question:
When François Mauriac was told that someone was translating Le Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc into English, he said “What a pity someone does not translate him into French.” Not entirely fair, but having sampled a bit of Péguy in French I know what he means.
Somewhere along this path of betrayal by the socialists and Dreyfusards, Péguy returned to the Church. A friend stopped in to see Péguy when he was sick in bed at home. After a long conversation, Péguy merely remarked as the friend was leaving, “Wait. I haven’t told you everything. I’ve become a Catholic.” No great explanations were later forthcoming. On the few occasions when he wrote of the conversion, Péguy didn’t even use the word, preferring to speak of the “deepening” of his passion for truth, justice, and brotherhood, which found its fullest scope in Catholicism.
But he did not find that the Catholic parties were doing much better than the others in keeping their politics from overwhelming their mystique. The Catholic Church seemed to have betrayed its mystique by becoming a temporal party in France and elsewhere. Péguy thought that if it dropped clerical politics and returned to its spiritual greatness and concern for the poor, the Church would enter into a period of massive renaissance. Fidelity to the Gospel, which in the realm of mystiques did not exclude what was noble and good in other traditions, now became the overruling passion of his life.
Péguy’s conversion brought with it not only spiritual renewal but fresh literary inspiration as well, including a turn to poetry. In 1909, he wrote his book-length poem The Mystery of the Charity of Jeanne d’Arc, a stunning evocation of Joan’s youth in Péguy’s own Orléans, which shows the peasant roots of her charity and how the story of Christ Himself needs to be seen in its simple, passionate, popular elements. The battles and heresy trial that most writers think are the heart of Joan’s saga have only secondary importance for Péguy. He had always been a facile writer, but his output became greater — in every sense — after the conversion.
Peguy, born in Orleans, was killed by a bullet through the head in 1915, during World War I.
Read Previous Post