F. Moriak - French writer of the XX century, whom the past inspired more than the future. So it may seem to those who have read at least a couple of his novels. It can even be considered old-fashioned - few contemporaries would agree that Christian morality can withstand the test of numerous cataclysms of the 20th century. He himself admitted that his work seemed to be glued to the past. The action of almost all the works is placed at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, the modern world did not seem to interest the writer at all. Nevertheless, Francois Moriac is a Nobel laureate, a member of the French Academy and one of the most significant writers of the last century.
Geographic coordinates of the life path of François Moriac: Bordeaux
Moriak Francois was born in 1885 in Bordeaux. His father, Jean-Paul Moriak, was a merchant and marketed timber. Mother Margarita Moriak also came from a family of merchants. Francois had three brothers and a sister, and since he was the youngest, he received the most attention. From childhood, he was brought up in strict Catholic traditions, the loyalty to which he carried to the end of his days.
Studied a boy in Koderan, where he acquired a friend for life - Andre Lacase. In 1902, the writer’s grandmother died, leaving behind an inheritance that the family began to share before they could bury her. Watching this family drama was Moriak's first big shock.
At college, Moriak read out the works of Paul Claudel, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Colette and Andre Gide. To such a diet he taught his brother-in-law Andre Gide, a teacher Marcel Drouin. After college, Francois entered the University of Bordeaux at the Faculty of Literature, and graduated in 1905 with a master’s degree.
In the same year, Moriak Francois began attending the Catholic organization of Marc Sagnier. Under the strong influence of philosophy and modernism, its followers regarded Jesus as a historical person and tried to find sources of faith.
First literary experience: Paris
In 1907, Francois Moriac moved to Paris, where he was preparing to enter the École de Chartes. At the same time, he begins to try his hand at writing poetry. The collection "Hands Folded for Prayer" was published in 1909. The poems were rather naive, they too strongly felt the influence of the religious views of the author, but nevertheless they immediately attracted the attention of many writers. The success of the first publication prompted Moriaka to leave school and devote himself completely to literature. Soon the first novel was released - "A Child Under the Burden of Chains." The main idea of all his subsequent novels has already been clearly outlined in it: a young man from the province is forced to struggle with the temptations of the capital and eventually finds harmony in religion.
Activities during the occupation and political views of the writer
Like many other French writers, such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Moriak actively opposed Nazism. During the occupation of France by the Nazis, he wrote a book against collaborationism. However, first of all he preached the principles of humanity, so after the war he called on the French to be merciful to those who collaborated with the Germans.
He also actively opposed colonial policies and torture in Algeria by the French military. Moriak supported de Gaulle, his son became the personal secretary of the general in the late 1940s.
Religious works of Francois Moriac
The writer led an irreconcilable polemic with Roger Peyrefitt, who accused the Vatican of indulging homosexuality and constantly searched for hidden Jews among his servants. In addition to fiction, Moriak left several works on Christian problems: “The Life of Jesus”, “Brief Experiments on Religious Psychology”, “On Several Restless Hearts”. In the book, The Life of Jesus, the writer explains why he remained faithful to the religion in which he was born and raised. According to the author himself, it is not intended for theologians, nor for scientists, nor for philosophers. This is practically the confession of a person who is seeking a guiding thread for moral life.
Francois Moriac: phrases and aphorisms of the great writer
Moriak left many insightful and wise sayings that reveal the very essence of human nature. He devoted all his work to the study of the dark sides of the soul and the search for the sources of vices. The main object of his close observation was marriage, in the unhappy life of the spouses he found irritants that push people to sin. He considered religion a railing, helping to stay above the abyss of human passions. But there are times, he wrote, when even the very best in man rebels against God. Then God shows us our insignificance in order to guide the true path. Religion and literature therefore interact so successfully that both help to better understand a person, said François Moriak. Quotes containing Christian teachings can be found in almost every novel of his.
Sayings about love and marriage
What are the relations between a man and a woman in marriage, the moral aspects of their mutual hostility - this is what Francois Moriak first examined. Quotes about love, of which the writer has a great many, indicate that the writer thought a lot about this topic. Like Leo Tolstoy, he considered marriage a sacred union between two people. Love between spouses, wrote Moriak Francois, passing through many accidents, is the most beautiful, albeit the most ordinary, miracle. In general, he perceived love as “a miracle invisible to others,” he considered it a deeply intimate and sacred affair of two people. Often he called her a meeting of two weaknesses.
In search of the lost God
An old-fashioned writer can only be called a person who cast a cursory glance at his work. In fact, the protagonist of the novels of Francois Moriac, to summarize them all, is a modern bourgeois society. More specifically, a society that has lost God, blindly stepped into reality, revealed to Nietzsche by his postulate that God died. Moriak’s literary heritage is a kind of purification, an attempt to bring humanity back to understanding what is Good and what is Evil. The heroes of his novels frantically rush about in their cooled life and, in search of new warmth, stumble into the cold of the outside world. The 19th century rejected God, but the 20th century brought nothing in return.
Hometown as a source of inspiration
It is enough to read the novel of the writer “A Teenager of the Old Times” to understand who Francois Moriac is. His biography is outlined in this latest work with scrupulous accuracy. The hero of the novel, like Moriak, was born in Bordeaux into a wealthy family, brought up in a conservative atmosphere, read books and worshiped art. Having escaped to Paris, he began to write himself, almost immediately earning fame and respect in literary circles. Hometown firmly settled in the imagination of the writer, moving from work to work. His characters only occasionally travel to Paris, while the main action takes place in Bordeaux or its environs. Moriak said that an artist who neglects a province neglects humanity.
The boiling pot of human passions
In the article "The Novelist and His Characters," Moriak described in detail the scope of his research - this is the psychology of man, the passions that stand in his way to God and to himself. Focusing on family issues, Moriak “wrote life” in all its diverse manifestations. Pulling out the one and only one from the symphony of human passions, placing it under the ruthless microscope of his observation, the writer sometimes exposes the low-lying nature of the human desire for accumulation, the thirst for enrichment and selfishness. But only in this way, with a surgical scalpel, can sinful thoughts be cut out of consciousness. Only by standing face to face with his vices can a person begin to fight them.
Francois Moriak: aphorisms about life and about yourself
Like every person who constantly works with a word, Moriak was able to amazingly succinctly convey his life position in one sentence. His chisel sharply outlines the appearance of an independent person who requires respect for his space when he writes that he stands with one foot in the grave and does not want to be stepped on the other foot. Not without its statements and wit. For example, one of his most famous aphorisms says that unsold women are usually the most expensive. Some of the writer's phrases turn things familiar to us by a completely unexpected side. In the aphorism “addiction is the long-term enjoyment of death”, a dangerous addiction takes on an almost romantic connotation.
The writer lived most of his life in Paris and subtly felt this city. However, the phrase that Paris is a populated loneliness opens the door not so much to its backyard as to the soul of the writer himself. During his long life - Moriak Francois lived 85 years - he experienced more than one disappointment and made an insightful conclusion that building castles in the air does not cost anything, but their destruction can be very expensive.
Afterword
When Francois Moriaku was told that he was a happy person because he believed in his immortality, he always replied that this faith was not based on something obvious. Faith is a virtue, an act of the will, and it requires considerable effort from a person. Religious enlightenment and grace do not condescend to a troubled soul at one fine moment, it must itself strive for a source of peace. This is especially difficult in conditions when nothing around indicates even a small presence of morality and humility. Moriak said that he managed - with an emphasis on this word - to maintain, touch and feel the love that he did not see.