released 7/7/2025

Translator J. C. Whitehouse praises French novelist Georges Bernanos’s profundity in exploring the depths of the human soul through the vehicle of fiction. Bernanos tried to portray the necessity of the pursuit of a true vision of one’s self and one’s life, even in the midst of a debased contemporary society that denies both evil and transcendent reality. His novels, such as The Imposter, The Diary of a Country Priest, and Under Satan’s Sun, involve characters who struggle with — and sometimes succumb to —  despair, unbelief, sin, and loss of innocence. Whitehouse discusses Bernanos’s commitment to asking the most profound questions of life and to seeing in each human life the possibility of holding in tension sadness and despair with dignity and hope. Whitehouse is the author of Vertical Man: The Human Being in the Catholic Novels of Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, and Georges Bernanos (St. Austin Press, 1999). Whitehouse has also translated several of Bernanos’s novels into English. A portion of this interview was originally featured on Volume 55 of the Journal.

58 minutes

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