The Metamorphoses of the Self

The Mystic, the Sensualist, and the Artist in the Works of Julien Green

John M. Dunaway

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813194509
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria francesa

American writer Julien Green's (1900–1998) origins, artistic motivation, and identity was a source of mystery and confusion even for those that most fêted him. The first non-French national to be elected to the Académie française, Green authored several novels ( The Dark Journey, The Closed Garden, Moira, Each Man in His Darkness, and the Dixie trilogy), a four-volume autobiography ( The Green Paradise, The War at Sixteen, Love in America and Restless Youth ), and his famous Diary.

In this study, John. M Dunaway begins with an examination of the autobiographical context of Julien Green's works, in which the duality of mystic and sensualist is quite clearly polarized. He then proceeds through a selected series of Green's fictional works in an attempt to show the birth and nature of the third self as a personal myth of the artist. He then considers the fiction in chronological order with the intention of demonstrating the evolution of the myth of the third self in Green's career.

Chapter One

Journal and Autobiography:
The First Two Selves

The Journal of Julien Green is a work of widely diversified themes. It records Green’s personal impressions of the important literary figures he has known: Mauriac, Malraux, Bernanos, Cocteau, and especially Maritain and Gide. One also finds the author’s reactions to his voluminous reading, which ranges from esoteric religious writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to American and English novelists of the nineteenth century. Among his livres de chevet must be included the Bible, Pascal, Péguy, Keats, Baudelaire. The author touches on music, as well as important ideas on esthetics and the relationship between art and morality. But the dominant theme throughout the Journal is the spiritual odyssey of a soul struggling with the problems of the flesh. “J’ai désiré trop de choses, à la fois la chair et l’esprit . . . . J’ai essayé de retrouver un équilibre de plus en plus menacé par la dualité de ma nature” (J, 171, 540).

Clearly, the fundamental tension of spiritual and erotic realities is all-important throughout the Journal. Green has experienced bitter suffering because of the simple fact of possessing a body. There is a kind of inferno of desire within him that is never extinguished, and at the same time a desperate thirst after the things of the spirit. In the Journal, the spiritual aspect of this polarity is by far the predominant one.

Volume I of the journal begins in 1928, during Green’s extended separation from the Catholic Church. The first part of the Journal, then, was written in the most erotically oriented and spiritually alienated moment of his life. In 1930, for example, he referred in L’Autre sommeil to “la superstition catholique” (AS, 168) and made other allusions that indicate alienation from the Church. It was at this time in Green’s career that André Gide’s influence was of major importance for him. Gide was the universally acclaimed artist whose attentions to the young Green were quite flattering. He made light jest of the vanguard of Catholic writers who were trying to win him to the Church, and Green, who was the object of the same kind of pressure, was clearly on Gide’s side. After Green’s reconversion in 1939 and his return to Paris after the war, Gide never tired of trying to convince Green that he had no place among the Catholics.

In spite of Green’s anti-Catholicism at the beginning of the Journal, the entries of the 1930s began to reveal a slow spiritual development that would culminate in his reconversion to Catholicism in 1939. On one hand, a religious conversion at that stage of his life seemed only a means of escaping from his moral problems. His Puritan’s conscience told him that sexual inversion rendered him unworthy of calling himself Christian. The radical commitment to Christ’s teachings that he required of the French Catholics in his fiery “Pamphlet” of 1924 was the same that he expected of himself, if he was to reconvert. There were also moments, however, at which he was dimly aware that his truancy from the Church would not last.

Relu des pages de ce journal de 1928 à 1935. Je crois que dans le cahier que j’achève en ce moment, on verra les indices d’un changement intérieur, bien que les circonstances de ma vie extérieure restent les mêmes. [J, 191]

One of the most arresting aspects of Green’s Journal is the prominence of what must be called mystical experiences. They occur without warning and are like “un subit retour de toute mon enfance” (J, 122-23). These privileged moments, which appear also in the autobiography and the fiction, are given much attention, as we might expect, in Georges Poulet’s chapter on Green. According to Poulet, the suspension of time and movement in these experiences accomplishes “le remplacement du temps humain par une tranquillité que ne trouble aucun souci temporel.”¹

It is impossible to spend an hour’s tête-à-tête with M. Green without sensing this “other reality” that emanates from the inner life of the man. The atmosphere created by the following passages from the Journal is very much the same atmosphere evoked by private conversation with him.

Cet étrange moment de bonheur que rien n’explique . . . . Il y a des moments où il fond sur nous, sans raison apparente . . . . On se sent tout à coup absurdement heureux . . . si heureux qu’on voudrait mourir, afin de prolonger à l’infini ce moment extraordinaire. [J, 114-15]

Avant-hier en traversant la rue du Bac, j’ai éprouvé pendant une ou deux secondes, pas plus, cette indescriptible sensation de bonheur dont j’ai parlé. Le monde s’est aboli autour de moi et avec le monde, le temps, ce cauchemar. Je me demande quelquefois si ce n’est pas là comme un avant-goût de la vie éternelle, une sorte d’irruption de l’éternité dans le temps. [J, 285]

The nostalgia for sainthood is one of the more poignant motifs in Green’s diary. As an adolescent, his spiritual aspirations were irrepressible. Recalling the time when he wanted to become a religious, he makes it clear that that ambition had an indelible mark on the rest of his life.

J’aurais voulu être un saint. C’est tout. Je ne puis rien ajouter à cette parole. Une grande partie de ma vie ne me ressemble pas. Je sens vivement que je passe sans cesse à côté de celui que j’aurais voulu être, et d’une certaine manière, il existe, il est là et il est triste, et sa tristesse est la mienne. [J, 285]

He recalls his summers in Savannah (1920 and 1921), which were marked by “crises de piété” (J, 4). He fancied himself transported to his own Thebaid where he would enjoy the bizarre happiness of the ascetic hermit, an image that recalls Flaubert’s Tentation de Saint Antoine, with which Green was well acquainted.² He describes the “drames de conscience” of his fifteenth year, when he inscribed his sins on the wall of his room. He was in love with God, with the Church, and with “tout un monde invisible” which held an irresistible attraction for him.

What had intervened between the aspirations of the adolescent and the Julien Green of the 1930s, who was desperately seeking relief from his anxieties and obsessions? The ecstatic dreams of his adolescence had been utterly shattered by his first carnal sins, as he calls them, which brought about “une connaissance plus profonde de moi-même” (J, 104). At the same time, the gradual evolution from the period of doubt brought on by his loss of innocence to the reconversion of 1939 is, in a sense, the plot of the early part of the Journal. It was a kind of truancy period in which Green strayed far from the Church but never lost his faith in God. “L’idée que Dieu pût ne pas être ne m’a jamais seulement effleuré” (J, 316).

In 1932 he explained that he hesitated to speak of religion because there lay in him “un fanatique mal assoupi que je tiens à ne pas réveiller” (J, 62). That fanatic could be called Théophile Delaporte,. the pseudonym under which Green wrote his first work to be published in France, the “Pamphlet contre les Catholiques de France” (1924). The “Pamphlet” reveals the reformer’s zeal of a Calvin, preaching the doctrine of hell and the damnation of all but the few elect. Yet, it was written in the midst of Green’s estrangement from religion.

The indications of Green’s return to Catholicism were increasingly evident during the 1930s. In spite of a professed inability to pray after 1928, he insisted in the spring of 1934 that “dans le fond de mon coeur il y a encore la foi” (J, 160), and less than two weeks later, suddenly stricken with “l’angoisse,” he found himself fervidly praying in the Virgin’s chapel of Saint-Sulpice. In the fall of the same year he wrote: “Je me suis laissé séduire par le monde créé, mais il y a en moi des éléments de résistance” (J, 178).

Two significant developments of the 1930s were Green’s decision to learn Hebrew in order to study the Scriptures more profitably and his growing interest in Buddhism, whose influence was evident in Minuit (1936). He stated that Buddhism had helped him overcome his obsessive fear of death. Much has been made of the importance of Oriental religions in this period,³ and Green admits that the first part of Varouna (1940) was written while he still believed in metempsychosis. The intensity of his spiritual quest is reflected in the frequent discussion of mystical writings which interested him during this period: Saint John of the Cross, Imitatio Christi, Saint Theresa of Avila, for example. On January 29, 1939, Green included a significantly elliptical entry: “D’une pénible crise religieuse que j’ai traversée ce mois-ci il ne reste que quelques notes éparses dans mes petits carnets rouges. J’ai été horriblement secoué” (J, 309). It was the last reference to the spiritual crisis before the year’s interruption in the Journal caused by the outbreak of hostilities that became World War II.

When the Journal resumed in July of 1940, there was an unmistakably new tone in the book. The term quietude could never be applied to Julien Green. Indeed, the tragic events in France that had forced him to live in “exile” during the war left him little security, and his erotic obsessions were never silenced. It is obvious, however, that after 1939 Green had a new source of strength on which he had been unable to rely before the war. The entry of February 28, 1941, offers an important account of the events of April 1939. In the midst of the influence of the Hindu mystics, Green happened upon a short treatise on Purgatory written by Saint Catherine of Genoa which had a profound effect on his thinking. A conversation with Maritain led him to discredit the Hindu mystics’ ideas on metempsychosis. Green stated that his reconversion was “le résultat de ces faits, ainsi que d’autres d’un caractère plus secret” (J, 379). In the last part of Varouna, which he had begun under the influence of Oriental religion, he tried to “lessiver la mêtempsychose dans les eaux du baptême” (J, 379).

From 1939 to the present, Julien Green has remained faithful to the Catholic Church. There have been moments of devastating anxiety and depression that are obliquely referred to in the Journal. “Ces journées affreusement mémorables . . . . La crise religieuse que je traverse a commencé le 30 juin. Je me demande jusqu’où l’on peut aller sans perdre la raison” (J, 718). But the overall impression created by the Journal is one of a man of extraordinary spiritual strength. He stated in 1955 that “depuis 1938, je n’ai jamais eu l’ombre d’un doute, en ce qui concerne la foi” (J, 1021). And less than a year before that statement he wrote that since the age of fifteen he had never felt so close to or in such perfect accord with the Church.

The image of Green the mystic is greatly enhanced in the Journal by his emphasis on the importance of the Bible. Daily reading of the Holy Scriptures was a family ritual instituted by Mrs. Green that her son has continued since his childhood. In his most trying moments the Bible was the refuge to which Green most often turned. There are numerous passages in the Journal similar to the following: “longue lecture de la Bible pour essayer de tout remettre en place” (J, 849). Green has attempted to give some idea of the immense importance of the Scriptures in his life.

Il y a des moments—je ne le dis pas sans hésitation—où je repousse la tentation d’ouvrir la Bible, parce que je sais toute la force d’envoûtement de ce livre. C’est beaucoup plus qu’un livre, pour moi, c’est une voix et une personne. [J, 731]

The allusions to the problems of the sensualist in the diary, on the other hand, are sketchy: “J’ai par moments une révolte contre le plaisir, contre la place qu’il tient dans ma vie . . . . Ce matin, en révolte contre le plaisir dont je ne vois pas comment on se passerait” (J, 56, 65). There are references to the erotic obsessions, but only in vague terms such as “le plaisir . . . le désir . . . la chair.” The problem never receives explicit development, and the homosexual aspect is hardly even mentioned. In fact, the diary’s reticence concerning Green’s psychoerotic dilemma has tended to perpetuate the myth of the Catholic writer. Green is aware of this problem himself.

Si l’on découvrait ce journal, il donnerait de moi une idée fort inexacte, car je n’y mets guère que ma vie extérieure; ce qui se passe en moi, et qui est en contradiction absolue avec ma vie extérieure, je ne puis en parler, ou j’en parle très mal. [J, 231]

He realizes that the Journal treats all too superficially the incessant struggle within him between the spirit and the flesh.

When Green began his Journal in 1928, he wrote:

Ce journal que je me propose de tenir le plus régulièrement qu’il me sera possible, m’aidera, je crois, à voir plus clair en moi-même. C’est ma vie entière que je compte mettre en ces pages, avec une franchise et une exactitude absolues. [J, 1]

The Socratic quest, then, was instrumental in the birth of Green’s diary. Fully aware of the duality of his nature, he wanted to commit himself to the discovery of his true identity. The desire to hide nothing and to be totally honest, perhaps an indication of Gide’s tremendous influence during Green’s separation from the Church, was too ambitious for the author to accomplish until he wrote the autobiography in the 1960s. His hesitation to speak frankly and candidly of his erotic difficulties prevented the sensual aspect of this radically sundered personality from asserting its true importance in the Journal. Appearing before a group of journalists in 1955, Green was asked why he hadn’t revealed everything in his Journal. He replied that one should not confuse a journal with a public confession and that his was composed of selected passages taken from a more intimate journal.

Julien Green’s Journal is first and foremost the spiritual record of his first self, the mystic that has persisted in his personality ever since the saintly aspirations of his childhood. The aspect of the Journal that comes next in importance is the picture of Green the artist that one gets from his reflections on his own writings and on the vocation of the novelist in general. Discussion of this motif I shall defer to Chapter Six, since it involves the conception of the third self, the visionary artist.

It has become a platitude among critics to say that Green has never felt the compulsion to become “engagé.” Still, this statement remains one of the most significant ones that can be applied to him, and its significance is a convenient liaison between Green the mystic and Green the artist in the diary.

Je fuis avec horreur tout ce qui me rappelle que je suis au monde en ces temps détestables . . . . Ma place en 1940 n’est proprement nulle part sinon là où je puis me retirer du monde. [J, 364]

Chaque semaine me voit un peu plus désaccordé avec mon siècle. [J, 370]

Green the mystic has remained “désengagé” because he has lived in a spiritual reality that transcends worldly considerations. But Green the artist has refused to commit himself to a cause or a party for reasons of a different order.

He describes a conversation in which Gide tried to convince him that, sooner or later, he would be forced to choose from among the political factions of the time (J, 212–13). Green, of course, remained unshakable. An earlier entry in the Journal made it clear that his fiction would always remain apolitical:

Tout le monde se mêle de politique, sauf mo...