The Nobel Prize in Literature 1952
François Mauriac
Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy
The student of François Mauriac's
works will be struck from the very first by the insistence with
which Mauriac devotes himself to describing a precise milieu, a
corner of land one can point to on a map of France. The action of
his novels nearly always unfolds in the Gironde, the Bordeaux
region, that old vine-growing country where chateaux and small
farms have taken possession of the earth, or in the Landes, the
country of pine trees and sheep pastures where the song of the
cicadas vibrates in the lonely spaces, and where the Atlantic
sounds its far-off thunder. This is Mauriac's native country. He
considers it his calling to describe this singular region and its
people, especially those who own the land; and it can be said
that his personal style partakes of the restrained energy which
twists the branches of the grape vines and of the pitiless
clarity of the light which falls from a torrid sky. In that
sense, this writer, who is read the world over, is undeniably and
markedly a man of the province, but his provincialism does not
exclude the great human problems of universal scope. If one wants
to dig deep one must first and always have a ground to thrust
one's pick into.
Mauriac had a more than usually restricted childhood; he grew up
in the shelter of a milieu in which the maternal influence made
itself strongly felt, an influence which did not cease to act on
his adolescent sensitivity. There is reason to believe that he
had painful surprises later when he made contact with the outside
world. Guided until then by pious advice, he had not suspected
that evil dominated reality to such an extent as it appears in
all the monotony and indifference of everyday life. Catholic by
birth, brought up in a Catholic atmosphere which became his
spiritual country, he has, in short, never had to decide for or
against the Church. But he has on several occasions re-examined
and publicly specified his Christian position, above all in order
to question whether the demands a realist's position made on the
writer could be reconciled with the commandments and prohibitions
of the Church. Apart from these inevitable and insoluble
antinomies, Mauriac, as a writer, uses the novel to expound a
particular aspect of human life in which Catholic thought and
sensitivity are at the same time background and keystone. Hence,
his non-Catholic readers may to a certain extent feel that they
are looking at a world foreign to them; but to understand
Mauriac, one must remember the one fact without which no account
of him can be complete: he does not belong to the group of
writers who are converts. He himself is conscious of the force
that gives him those roots which permit him to cite a great and
stern tradition when he probes souls overwhelmed by the weight of
their faults and scrutinizes their secret intentions.
Mauriac has been assured a central position in modern literature
for so long and so unquestionably that the denominational
barriers have almost lost all importance. Whereas many writers of
his generation who had a fleeting glory are almost forgotten
today, his profile stands out more and more distinctly with the
years. In his case it is not a question of fame achieved at the
price of compromise, for his sombre and austere vision of the
world is scarcely made to please his contemporaries. He has
always aimed high. With all the power and all the consistency of
which he is capable, he has tried to continue in his realistic
novels the tradition of such great French moralists as Pascal, La
Broyére, and Bossuet. To this let us add that he represents
a tendency toward religious inspiration which, particularly in
France, has always been an extremely important element of
spiritual formation. If I may in this context say a few words
about Mauriac as a distinguished journalist, we must not forget,
in the interest of European thought, his work in that field, his
commentaries on daily events, the entire side of his literary
activity which deserves public esteem.
But if he is today the laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature,
it is obviously above all because of his admirable novels.
Suffice it to name a few masterpieces such as Le Désert
de l'amour (1925) [The Desert of Love],
Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927)
[Thérèse], and its sequel La Fin de la
nuit (1935) [The End of the Night], La Pharisienne
(1941) [A Woman of the Pharisees], and Le Noeud de
vipères (1932) [The Knot of Vipers], without intending
to say how far the artistic qualities of these works place them
in a class apart; for everywhere, in the whole series of
Mauriac's novels, are found unforgettable scenes, dialogues, and
situations, so mysteriously and so cruelly revealing. The
repetition of the same themes could create a certain monotony,
but his acute analyses and sure touch awaken the same admiration
with each new encounter. Mauriac remains unequalled in
conciseness and expressive force of language; his prose can in a
few suggestive lines shed light on the most complex and difficult
things. His most remarkable works are characterized by a purity
of logic and classic economy of expression that recall the
tragedies of Racine.
The voiceless anxiety of youth, the abysses of evil and the
perpetual menace of their presence, the deceitful temptations of
the flesh, the ascendancy of avarice in the life of material
goods, the havoc of self-satisfaction and pharisaism - these are
the motifs that constantly reappear under Mauriac's pen. Small
wonder that in his wielding of such a palette, he has been
accused of blackening his subjects without cause, of writing as a
misanthrope. But the response he gives is that, on the contrary,
a writer who bases his whole concept of the world on grace and
sees man's supreme recourse in God's love has the feeling of
working in a spirit of hope and confidence. We have no right to
doubt the sincerity of this declaration, but it is evident that
in practice sin attracts him more than innocence. He detests what
is edifying, and while he never grows tired of portraying the
soul that persists in evil and is on its way to damnation, he
generally prefers to bring down the curtain at the moment when
the consciousness of its misery is about to push the soul toward
repentance and salvation. This writer limits himself to the role
of witness to the negative phase of this evolution, leaving all
the positive side to the priest, who does not have to write a
novel.
Mauriac himself once said that everyone is free to seek
satisfaction in a literature that beautifies life and permits us
to escape from reality, but the predilection which most people
have for this kind of literature should not make us unjust toward
the writers whose vocation is to know man. It is not we who hate
life. Those alone hate life who, not being able to bear the sight
of it, falsify it. The true lovers of life love it as it is. They
have stripped it of its masks, one by one, and have given their
hearts to this monster at last laid bare. In one of his
controversies with Andre Gidé, he returned to the cardinal
point of his thought in affirming that the most complete
sincerity is the form of honour which is linked to the writer's
craft. Most often Tartuffe is made to appear under the
ecclesiastical costume, but Mauriac assures us that this
personage is found much more frequently in the midst of those
supporting the theory of materialistic progress. It is easy to
deride the principles of morality, but Mauriac objects to such
derision; as he has stated quite simply, «Each of us knows
he could become less evil than he is.»
This simple phrase is perhaps the key that opens the secret of
good in the chapters of Mauriac's work, the secret of their
sombre ardour and their subtle disharmony. His plunges into the
midst of man's weaknesses and vices are more than the effect of a
mania pushed to virtuosity. Even when he analyzes reality without
pity, Mauriac preserves a last certainty, that there is a charity
which passes understanding. He does not lay claim to the
absolute; he knows that it does not exist with virtue in the pure
state, and he views without indulgence those who call themselves
pious. Faithful to the truth which he has made his, he strives to
describe his characters in such a way that, seeing themselves as
they are, they would be stricken with repentance and the desire
to become, if not better, at least a little less evil. His novels
can be compared to narrow but deep wells at the bottom of which a
mysterious water is seen glistening in the darkness.
Dear Sir and colleague - In the few moments at my disposal I
could speak about your work only in a sketchy manner. I know how
much it deserves admiration; I also know how difficult it is to
do it justice, to make general statements without ignoring the
specific characteristics of your work. The Swedish Academy has
awarded you this year's Nobel Prize in Literature «for the
deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which you
have in your novels penetrated the drama of human
life».
There remains for me to extend to you the most heartfelt
congratulations of the Swedish Academy, this younger sister of
your venerable Académie Française, and to ask you to
receive the Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1952
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