The Diary of a Country Priest (Paperback)

~ (Author), Pamela Morris (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An idealistic young Catholic priest in an isolated French village keeps a diary describing the unheroic suffering and the petty internal conflicts of his parish. This may sound like a thin plot for a novel, but Diary of a Country Priest, by George Bernanos, remains one of the 20th century's most vivid evocations of saintly life. First published in 1937, Bernanos's Diary describes a faithful man's experience of failure. In his diary, the priest records feelings of inferiority and sadness that he cannot express to his parishioners. And as he approaches death, from cancer, the priest's saintliness remains unclear to him, but becomes undeniable to the reader. "How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity--as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ." --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

Novel by Georges Bernanos, published in French as Journal d'un cure de campagne in 1936. The narrative mainly takes the form of a journal kept by a young parish priest during the last year of his troubled life. He records his spiritual struggle over what he perceives as the ineffectuality of his efforts to improve the lives of his impoverished and misguided parishioners. Physically, he battles a stomach ailment that local gossip attributes to drunkenness. His role in the conversion of a wealthy countess, who suddenly dies, aggravates his moral ambivalence and draws reproof from his superiors, as well as from the woman's family. His stomach condition worsens, and he seeks medical attention too late. In the deathbed ritual of absolution, however, he expresses an abiding faith that transcends his own and his fellows' failures. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

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Product Details

• Paperback: 298 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers (February 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881840130
• ISBN-13: 978-0881840131
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #950,056 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The agony and spiritual ecstasy of the priesthood is here., September 28, 1998

By A Customer

Bernanos's "Diary" represents that rarest of glimses into the clerical world: a view that is utterly convincing and completely enthralling! As the author pursues the early life and career of a French provincial Abbe, he simultaneously reveals the sufferings, triumphs, and struggles of the people that the young priest serves. Parallel to the tribulations of their lives, Bernanos lovingly shows how deeply one man, one priest can empathize with those he serves. While Bernanos never became a priest himself, his early life prepared him to write this, his greatest novel. The poignancy of this small novel is one that builds gradually. The impatient reader may, at first, not "connect" with the story, but the faithful reader will soon find that he/she cannot put it down. The last 30 pages of this work are one of the 20th century's masterpieces of spiritual prosody that I can identify.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars overlooked classic, June 6, 2001

By	Ron Dionne (Westchester, New York) - See all my reviews

I tried to read this book several times since I first heard of it through watching the films of Robert Bresson twenty years ago. Only now have I been able to read it, and I think it is one of those books that you have to be "ready for" before you can appreciate it. It is not easy to read and it is certainly not congenial to contemporary laissez-faire attitudes toward religion, spirituality, sin and redemption. That said, it is one of the most powerful things one can read if one can hear it. And upon reading it a second time, one marvels at how fully thought out it is. The entire book is foreshadowed in the first chapter. It really is a marvelous bit of writing. If you're the sort of person who underlines quotable passages in books, bring an extra highlighter because there's a lot to quote from in this book.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intense touching portait of a country priest's struggles., August 16, 2000

By	"danilabagrov" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

Bernanos' classic is perhaps the most touching novel I've ever read. Its the story of a country priest whose parish is not very interested in religious matters. He deals with this, his personal problems, and Bernanos' descriptions of his struggles are profoundly emotional. I read this book a long time ago, but to this day I remember the impact it had on me. Such feeling and compassion I have never felt for any other fictional character (save Lord Jim). This work is truly a masterpeice. Reading it will change you, forever....