Reading Order
Sous le soleil de SatanSous le soleil de Satan Reading Order
Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan, 1926) by Georges Bernanos is the first novel and the most violent of the major Bernanos works — the story of Abbé Donissan, a parish priest in the north of France who is consumed by spiritual ambition and self-hatred, who encounters the devil on a country road in the most direct and literal confrontation with evil in modern French Catholic fiction, and who eventually performs a miracle over a dead girl that destroys him spiritually. Bernanos's first novel was immediately recognized as a major work — Léon Bloy, the fierce Catholic pamphleteer who was the godfather of the French Catholic literary revival, praised it, and it was an immediate popular success. Bernanos's theological radicalism is fully present from the first novel: Donissan's sanctity is inseparable from his pride, his despair, and his desire for spiritual power, and the miracle he performs is as much temptation as gift. The novel was filmed by Maurice Pialat in 1987 with Gérard Depardieu as Donissan and Sandrine Bonnaire as Mouchette — one of the best French films of the decade.
Where to start
Read Sous le soleil de Satan after Le Journal d'un curé de campagne — the earlier novel is more violent and less formally perfect, and the country priest's journal gives a better introduction to Bernanos's world. But Sous le soleil de Satan is where the essential Bernanos vision is first stated in its most extreme form, and the encounter with the devil on the country road is the most memorable episode in his work.
Complete Sous le soleil de Satan Book List
- 1Buy
Sous le soleil de Satan
Georges Bernanos·1926·Under the Sun of Satan — the first novel; Donissan and the devil on the road; violent and extraordinary; read after Le Journal d'un curé de campagne - 2Buy
Le Journal d'un curé de campagne
Georges Bernanos·1936·The masterpiece — start here before Sous le soleil de Satan; the country priest who dies with grace; Grand Prix roman Académie française - 3Buy
L'Imposture
Georges Bernanos·1927·The Imposture — the direct sequel to Sous le soleil de Satan; the Abbé Cénabre and the loss of faith; a more psychological but equally powerful Bernanos - 4Buy
La Joie
Georges Bernanos·1929·Joy — the sequel to L'Imposture; the Prix Femina; Chantal de Clergerie and spiritual joy; read after L'Imposture - 5Buy
Mouchette
Georges Bernanos·1937·The short novel — a different Mouchette from the one in Sous le soleil de Satan; a teenage girl destroyed by poverty and indifference; Bresson filmed it in 1967
Sous le soleil de Satan — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mouchette in Sous le soleil de Satan?
Mouchette is a young peasant woman who has killed her lover (or possibly been killed by him — the novel is ambiguous) and is the occasion for Donissan's first spiritual encounter: he sees into her soul, tells her the truth about her sin, and drives her to a second suicide attempt. Mouchette is not the protagonist of the novel — Donissan is — but she is the figure who reveals what Donissan's spiritual power costs: his knowledge of her soul is genuine and destroys her. The later short novel Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette (1937) returns to a different Mouchette — a contemporary teenage girl destroyed by different forms of poverty — and was filmed by Bresson (1967) in one of his masterpieces.
What is the devil in Sous le soleil de Satan?
The encounter with the devil on the country road is the most famous episode in Bernanos and one of the most remarkable in modern fiction: Donissan encounters an apparently ordinary horse-dealer who is gradually revealed to be the devil, and the encounter takes place on a real country road at night, with no allegorical distance. Bernanos's devil is not the medieval horned figure or the Miltonic rebel angel — he is small, cunning, banal, and contemptuous; his power is the power of mockery. The encounter reveals to Donissan both his spiritual gifts and his spiritual dangers: he can see into souls, but this gift comes with the temptation to pride that the devil exploits.
What is the miracle of the dead girl?
Near the end of Sous le soleil de Satan, Donissan performs what appears to be a miracle over the body of a dead girl: he holds her and appears to bring her briefly back to life. But the miracle is immediately surrounded by theological and psychological uncertainty — was the girl actually dead? Is Donissan's action grace or presumption? Does the miracle actually help the girl's soul or destroy her? Bernanos refuses to resolve these questions, and Donissan's subsequent spiritual history — his increasing isolation, his self-hatred, his eventual despair — suggests that the miracle was as much temptation as gift. The episode is the most concentrated statement of Bernanos's theological vision: sanctity and destruction are inextricably linked.
What was Léon Bloy's influence on Bernanos?
Léon Bloy (1846–1917) was the fierce, impoverished Catholic pamphleteer and novelist whose La Femme pauvre (1897) and Le Désespéré (1886) established a tradition of violent, uncompromising Catholic writing that Bernanos inherited. Bloy's Catholicism was explicitly anti-bourgeois, anti-comfortable, anti-sentimental: faith was warfare, the comfortable Catholic was an abomination, and the Church's mission was not social respectability but absolute fidelity to the gospel at whatever cost. Bernanos absorbed this vision from Bloy and transmuted it into fiction; the acknowledgment in Sous le soleil de Satan is explicit — Bernanos dedicated the novel to Bloy's memory.
How does the Pialat film compare to the novel?
Maurice Pialat's Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and is one of the best French films of the decade. Pialat's approach is very different from Bresson's Journal: where Bresson sought transcendence through formal renunciation (minimal acting, long takes, natural light), Pialat sought rawness and physical immediacy — Gérard Depardieu's Donissan is a large, struggling, sweating man, and the encounter with the devil is filmed with a physical intensity that has no Bressonian equivalent. The comparison between the two films and the two novels gives one of the best introductions to different approaches to the problem of filming Catholic spiritual experience.
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