{"id":6418,"date":"2006-08-21T00:27:18","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T00:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/on-joan-of-arc.html"},"modified":"2006-08-21T00:27:18","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T00:27:18","slug":"on-joan-of-arc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/on-joan-of-arc.html","title":{"rendered":"On Joan of Arc"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday evening, the Archdiocese of Monaco presented a performance of Charles Peguy’s three-act drama \u00abMyst\u00e8re de la Charit\u00e9 de Jeanne d\u2019Arc\u00bb (Mystery of Joan of Arc’s Charity<\/em>) at Castel Gandolfo. The Pope had some remarks:<\/a><\/p>\n

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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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

May God listen to the prayer of the Saint of Domremy and ours, and give our world the peace to which it aspires! <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An excellent article by Roger Kimball about Peguy:<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Peguy\"<\/a> In our own day, enthusiasts for P\u00e9guy\u2019s work are much rarer. One of them is the French philosopher Pierre Manent. In Charles P\u00e9guy: Between Political Faith and Faith<\/em> (1984), Manent extolled P\u00e9guy as \u201cone of the most penetrating critics of the historical and sociological points of view which dominate modern consciousness.\u201d High praise. Manent acknowledges the \u201cviolently personal\u201d character of P\u00e9guy\u2019s work, his habit of lacing considered arguments with ad hominem<\/em> attacks, of ending lyrical expostulations with \u201can insult.\u201d But Manent discerned a \u201cluminous mind, eager to understand and to think,\u201d behind the self-obsession and often bitter polemics. P\u00e9guy, Manent argues, continues to be \u201cof capital importance,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

Another of P\u00e9guy\u2019s recent admirers is the British poet Geoffrey Hill. Hill not only devoted a long poem to P\u00e9guy in 1984\u2014The Mystery of the Charity of Charles P\u00e9guy<\/em> evokes the title of P\u00e9guy\u2019s most famous poem Le Myst\u00e8re de la Charit\u00e9 de Jeanne d\u2019Arc<\/em> (1909)\u2014 but also wrote an enthusiastic appreciation of P\u00e9guy, whom he clearly regards as a kindred spirit. P\u00e9guy was, Hill admitted, a man of violent emotions (\u201cviolent\u201d and \u201cpassionate\u201d are words that inevitably turn up whenever P\u00e9guy is on the menu), but also \u201ca man of the most exact and exacting probity,\u201d \u201cone of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences, of our century.\u201d Reflecting on P\u00e9guy\u2019s return to an unorthodox Catholicism after a period of loudly declared atheism, Hill speaks of P\u00e9guy\u2019s having \u201crediscovered the solitary ardors of faith but not the consolations of religious practice. He remained self-excommunicate but adoring.\u201d Students of Hill\u2019s poetry will recognize the terrain. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And in regard to the work in question:<\/p>\n

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When Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac was told that someone was translating Le Myst\u00e8re de la Charit\u00e9 de Jeanne d\u2019Arc<\/em> into English, he said \u201cWhat a pity someone does not translate him into French.\u201d Not entirely fair, but having sampled a bit of P\u00e9guy in French I know what he means. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another piece that focuses more on Peguy’s faith and his connections with various other Catholics, by Robert Royal in Crisis.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Somewhere along this path of betrayal by the socialists and Dreyfusards, P\u00e9guy returned to the Church. A friend stopped in to see P\u00e9guy when he was sick in bed at home. After a long conversation, P\u00e9guy merely remarked as the friend was leaving, \u201cWait. I haven\u2019t told you everything. I\u2019ve become a Catholic.\u201d No great explanations were later forthcoming. On the few occasions when he wrote of the conversion, P\u00e9guy didn\u2019t even use the word, preferring to speak of the \u201cdeepening\u201d of his passion for truth, justice, and brotherhood, which found its fullest scope in Catholicism. <\/p>\n

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. P\u00e9guy 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. <\/p>\n

P\u00e9guy\u2019s 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\u2019Arc<\/em>, a stunning evocation of Joan\u2019s youth in P\u00e9guy\u2019s own Orl\u00e9ans, 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\u2019s saga have only secondary importance for P\u00e9guy. He had always been a facile writer, but his output became greater \u2014 in every sense \u2014 after the conversion. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Peguy, born in Orleans, was killed by a bullet through the head in 1915, during World War I.<\/p>\n

Image source.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday evening, the Archdiocese of Monaco presented a performance of Charles Peguy’s three-act drama \u00abMyst\u00e8re de la Charit\u00e9 de Jeanne d\u2019Arc\u00bb (Mystery of Joan of Arc’s Charity) at Castel Gandolfo. 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She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}