THE WORKS of the French Catholic writer François Mauriac (1885-1970) have always enjoyed a loyal readership in Ireland, mainly in English translation. Born into a well-to-do family with extensive property around Bordeaux, Mauriac's relationship with the Catholic Church was often as fractious as his exchanges with other French writers such as André Gide and Jean-Paul Sartre – the latter was scathing of how Mauriac played God with his characters, something that did not sit easily with Sartre, writes EAMON MAHER
Although a person of deep faith, Mauriac’s novels were merciless in their exposition of avarice and hypocrisy among the class and religion to which he belonged. There is a tinge of lasciviousness and evil palpable in some of his favourite fictional creations which caused French Catholics to question how one of their own could write novels that portrayed sin in such an attractive light.
The first tome of a new biography by Jean-Luc Barré, François Mauriac: Biographie intime 1885-1940(Fayard), attempts to cast fresh light on what caused Mauriac to write and behave in a somewhat paradoxical manner. Barré's thesis is that the 1952 Nobel Laureate for Literature was conscious from an early stage of homosexual longings which he had difficulty reconciling with his religious beliefs. It has long been rumoured that Mauriac had a homosexual relationship during the latter half of the 1920s that pushed his marriage and mental stability to the brink. Apparently, he fell in love with the handsome Swiss cultural attaché, Bernard Barbey, who regularly visited the Mauriac residences in Paris and Malagar (near Bordeaux), sometimes alone, at other times accompanied by his wife Andrée. (There is no concrete evidence that the passion between the men was ever consummated).
In Barré’s view, the attraction Mauriac felt for other men did not suddenly reveal itself when he met Barbey. There were several other male acquaintances for whom he displayed feelings that went beyond simple friendship – Jean Cocteau and Daniel Guérin are just two of the names mentioned in this context.
His mother, Claire, a fervent Catholic who was widowed at a young age, imbued a puritanical distrust of the flesh in her offspring. This left an indelible mark on François, who came to believe that sexual desire was sinful. Suffering from what he considered a charm deficit, and hampered by his frail physique that rendered sport problematic, literature was where he would find his niche. His first poetry collection,
Les Mains Jointes, received a glowing review from no less a figure than Maurice Barrès, who prophetically announced to the young writer in 1909: “You will have a glorious career!”
Mauriac’s depiction of middle-class families in thrall with their pine trees and material possessions and who display no moral compunction about using religion for worldly motives, inevitably caused readers to equate some of the fictional creations with real people.
Like many other novelists, Mauriac drew heavily on his youth and the main figures from this period who influenced him. Some of the controlling matriarchs, especially the one portrayed in Genitrix, are ruthless operators who will stop at nothing to preserve the family reputation and wealth. This does not mean that Claire Mauriac was the inspiration for such a portrayal, but her mother, Irma Coiffard, had a lot in common with some of the matriarchs depicted.
Sexuality is rarely, if ever, portrayed in a positive light in Mauriac’s writing. Here is how Thérèse Desqueyroux describes her husband’s love-making: “I always saw Bernard as a man who charged head-down at pleasure, while I lay like a corpse, motionless, as though fearing that, at the slightest gesture on my part, this madman, this epileptic, might strangle me”. Similarly, there are certain male characters whose homoerotic desires can find no outlet, which leads to a life of frustrated sequestration in the cage represented by family and society.
When asked by Julien Green why he omitted so much from his writings, Mauriac explained: “I am not just responsible for myself: I have a family”. He clearly suffered from having to hide his deepest longings in order to protect his family. Had he been in a position to follow his natural instincts, however, one wonders if he would have managed to produce the work he did, with its twisted, calculating array of characters and sun-drenched, erotically-charged landscapes. As he once remarked: “Fiction alone does not lie; it shines a light into a writer’s soul that reveals things that he does not even recognise in himself”.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Jean-Luc Barré for his sensitive probing of an essential part of François Mauriac’s personality and psyche and for bringing into the open what many critics have privately thought without ever discussing it overtly: his homosexuality.