Lettre [à André Malraux]

Bernanos’s second letter to Malraux, following their first exchange. Malraux’s reply is not known, but it was evidently important to Bernanos, then in the midst of writing La Joie, published in May 1929. The novel continues L’Imposture, which had ended with the death of the abbé Chevance, watched over by the young Chantal de Clergerie, who helped him die in peace, in the joy she had received from God — pages already praised by Malraux.

La Joie would go on to win the Prix Femina. What did Malraux say of the author of this work of “the first magnitude”? That he had “written the finest scenes in modern fiction, for their depth and power.”

Georges Bernanos died on 7 July 1948 at the Hôpital Américain in Neuilly. A few days earlier, he had summoned André Malraux to his bedside; Malraux emerged deeply shaken after a four-hour conversation, the content of which was never disclosed. Malraux attended the funeral, though only in a private capacity, and was the only representative from the worlds of literature and politics present — Bernanos having repeatedly declined public honors, refusing the Legion of Honor three times (1927, 1938 and 1946), as well as a seat at the Académie française and offers of ministerial and ambassadorial posts.