Abstract:
To study Georges Bernanos is to study the meaning of human anguish—anguish which in its spiritual form becomes the cornerstone of love, hope and grace. Spiritual anguish in its Christian form and love in its Agape, meaning self-giving love, demonstrate the values of a Christian Existentialist of the middle twentieth century. Bernanos tries to answer in his novels the question of whether man will or will not be able to face what surrounds him. Bernanos describes and portrays man as Nothingness. However, he intensely focuses on man as a Being. His novels are full of nihilistic ideas and evil characters who are always in perspective from self-fulfillment to self-destruction. Bernanos uses the philosophy of Nothingness from a Christian existentialist's point of view; for him it is not the biological destruction but the destruction of an identity which preoccupies the spiritual existence of a human being.