THE MYSTERY OF THE MERCY OF JOAN OF ARC

CHARLES PÉGUY

NOTRE JEUNESSE.

LE MYSTERE DE LA CHARITÉ DEJANNE DARC

T. S. Taimanova

CHARLES PÉGUY

The name of Charles Péguy is almost completely unknown to our readers. At present, references to him have begun to appear, but so far not a single study has been published specifically devoted to Péguy, and a wide range of readers has not been able to get acquainted with his work, because Péguy has almost not been translated in Russia. Only small fragments of his poetic heritage have been translated and published, in addition, there is a thin book of excerpts from Péguy's journalism translated into Russian, published in Great Britain. [1] Meanwhile, Charles Péguy, for almost 85 years since his death in 1914, was and remains in France, so to speak, a cult figure. In his homeland and in other countries of Western and Eastern Europe, America, Asia and Australia, interest in the writer's work is extremely great. Indeed, Charles Péguy, a poet, philosopher, publicist, publisher, is one of the most original and significant figures in the history of not only French, but also world literature and political thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Researchers compared him with Pascal and Kierkegaard, with Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Berdyaev, but all agreed that Péguy could not be "classified".

Many of Péguy's contemporaries admired him: "This small man with glowing eyes behind the glasses looked like a raging flame," wrote one of them. [2] Another famous contemporary of Péguy, Romain Rolland, gave a portrait of him, imbued with deep sympathy, in the seventh book of Jean-Christophe: "... he was a writer who possessed iron logic, a strong will, who devoted himself entirely to the service of higher morality, to unselfish service, and who was ready to sacrifice the whole world and himself for its sake; … he vowed to fight for the idea of a pure, heroic and free France, the authority of which would be recognized not only in France, but throughout Europe. He firmly believed that the day would come when everyone would understand that he had written one of the most daring pages in the history of French thought, and he was not mistaken." [3] Péguy continues to be admired even now: "Philosophy, poetry, criticism. Péguy came into this world, lived for 40 years, and revolutionized all these areas," writes Louis Chégne, one of the greatest contemporary historians of French literature. [4] But Péguy had many enemies during his lifetime, and after his death, many critics accused him of all mortal sins: inconsistency, betrayal of the ideals of youth, apostasy, at least contradictory. Yet there were no more faithful friends, comrades-in-arms, and followers than Péguy's friends, associates, and followers. To this day, there is a kind of spiritual brotherhood of pegists in France, apart from the officially existing "Society of Friends of Charles Péguy" in Paris and the Center Charles Péguy in Orléans, scientific institutes that stimulate and coordinate research related to Péguy.

As for the accusations of inconsistency and contradiction of the writer, such a view is certainly very superficial. It is not for nothing that one of the prominent modern researchers of Péguy's work noted: "Never since the time of Pascal in our (French. — T. T.) literature, creativity did not constitute such a single whole with the personality, it was not without any impurities only the voice of conscience and soul." [5]