Georges BernanosDialogues of the Carmelites.

Translation by JULIA GINZBURG

Dialogues of the Carmelites (1948) were written by the remarkable French Catholic writer Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) a few months before his death. The novelist's only play became not only chronologically his last work, but also a spiritual testament, incorporating the results of many reflections that lasted his entire life. Meanwhile, this work began as an ordinary commissioned work of a professional writer. In 1947, the priest Father Brückberger made a film script based on the short story by the German writer Gertrude von Lefort “The Last on the Scaffold” and asked Bernanos to write dialogue for the future film; the literary source was well known to Bernanos for a long time, and he accepted the offer. The plot for the short story by Gertrude von Lefort, written in 1931, was a genuine historical event. On July 17, 1794, ten days before the end of the Jacobin Terror, sixteen nuns of the Carmelite monastery in Compiegne were sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal and on the same day guillotined in one of the squares of Paris. One of them, Sister Mary of the Incarnation of the Son of God, accidentally escaped arrest and left a story about the fate of her friends. In 1906, Pope Pius X beatified sixteen nuns. The filmmakers, having read the dialogues written by Bernanos, decided that they were not suitable for cinema. Only a year later, Albert Béguin, a researcher of Bernanos's work, his friend and enthusiastic admirer, discovered this manuscript. He gave it a title, divided it into five paintings and wrote several connecting remarks retelling the content of those scenes in which dialogue was not intended. In this form, “Dialogues of the Carmelites” was published, and soon theaters in France and abroad began to stage them with great success. Stage success accompanies the play to this day.