At Bernanos, Dr Delbende inseparable from the priest

There are many doctors in the work of Georges Bernanos. The writer of despair and of faith makes it appear in all his novels and even considered it necessary to slip a last one into Dialogues of the Carmelites . The image of Gérard Depardieu in a cassock, embodying Father Donissan in Sous le soleil de Satan by Maurice Pialat, and that of Claude Laydu, handsome as a child in Journal d'un curé de campagne by Robert Bresson, must not leave to think that his powerful and collected romantic work is entirely organized around the figure of the priest. It is reductive.

Read also: Georges Bernanos: Under the advent sun

Between 1926 and 1943, from Sous le soleil de Satan à Monsieur Ouine , which appeared in French in Brazil during the war, Bernanos published seven novels which make up a supernatural comedy in which doctors also occupy a prominent place.

Georges Bernanos in 1947. STR / © Keystone / Leemage

Bernanos' doctors are like his priests. Among them are impostors and cynics, beings convinced that there is nothing to hope for, Gallet in Sous le

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