Bio Ernest Psichari. 1883 -1914. a French writer of Symbolist poems. Charles Péguy and Jacques Maritain, were his friends and contemporaries. Engaged in the artillery at the age of twenty years, he served first in Congo, Then MauritaniaThis inspires him stories of travel (Land of sun and sleep 1908). Sub-lieutenant in the 2e Colonial Artillery Regiment, he is killed at Saint Vincent Rossignol in Belgium in August 1914.

Review of Ernest Psichari, Mon frère by Henriette Psichari (Plon.) 13fr. 50. net

Catholic propagandists in France have made rather too much fuss about the conversion of Renan's grandson. Mlle. Psichari's tender portrait of her brother reveals him as one of those appealing but disturbing [p.524] young men whom Stendhal, under the influence of the Italian painters of the Renaissance, introduced into French literature. Armance was the first of them. Meaulnes was another, Proust's St. Loup another. These were fictitious characters however. It is a tribute to Mlle. Psichari's art that her biographical sketch of Ernest Psichari makes him seem as real as any of them.

When Psichari was twenty, he fell in love with a cousin who did not at first reciprocate his passion. Jacques Maritain was his greatest friend and set out to cure him. 'Il harcèle Ernest d'exhortations.' He went even so far as to write, 'elle n'est pas comme tu te l'imagines'. Apparently Maritain was mistaken, for according to Mlle. Psichari, the bien aimée was a touchingly attractive character. However she married someone else and only discovered she loved Psichari when it was too late. The immediate result was that the distracted Psichari took to vicious ways, tried to commit suicide and finally joined the colonial army. While he was in Africa, writing l'Appel des armes, his friend Maritain became a convert to Catholicism and set out to make a convert of Psichari as well. He succeeded. But though Psichari became an ardent convert, he did not find peace. 'Il est naturel qu'un chrétien soit joyeux, mais cette joie est pesante, c'est une joie triste.'

These enthusiastic neophytes seldom realise that since God is Wisdom and Love He must have a sense of humour. Psichari had been a tenderly affectionate son and brother but now his mother who would have had him, 'croîte et pratiquer dans la candeur de son âme' felt an occult force rising in him 'contre les frères et soeurs, contre le milieu d'autrefois, un peu contre elle-même, mais surtout contre l'ombre de son père'. His friends had helped him to realize in part the Gospel injunction to leave father and mother, husband and wife. But 'un souci perpétuel barre son front.' They had not quite so much success about the not less important injunction not to be of sad counternance, etc. Surely Catholicism, which is par excellence the religion of hope, should not, if properly understood, lead to such an effect. The besetting sin of converts is religious priggishness and they ought to be warned against it.

Psichari was killed fighting on the 22nd of August, 1914. In politics he was not only a nationalist but an imperialist. Why is Catholicism in England and France becoming identified with those two dubious isms? The second is never excusable, the first only when defending a people against the depredations of imperialists. Spiritual advisers should note a recent pronouncement of the present Pope on the sub- [p.525] ject. After all, Pierre Corneille, who was a magnificent Catholic, abhorred imperialisms of every age, and yet never let down the splendour of the French tradition of the French mind.
Thomas MacGreevy
Original Source: The Criterion. April 1934. pp.523-525.

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