SOURCE: “Religion: A Focal Point in French Literature,” in Renascence, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Fall, 1963, pp. 42-7.

In the following excerpt, Cismaru contends that twentieth-century French literature is deeply involved in religious issues, whether its aim is to affirm or deny the existence of God.

The appeal of theological concepts and Christian values to the post-war reading public in France is evident in the widespread acceptance of such writers as Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Simone Weil, Gabriel Marcel, and, of course, Claudel, Bernanos, and Mauriac. The continuing popularity of these authors is also evidence that they have captured the prevalent but often underscribed mood of a contemporary society whose almost Cartesian attachment to rational evidence and relentless logic is accompanied by a constant sense of God's presence in history and in individual human beings. Jacques Maritain's Art and Scholasticism (1920), Frontiers of Poetry (1943) and Creative Intuition in Art and...