Nouvelle Histoire De Mouchette

One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw

realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with

his celebrated _Diary of a Country Priest_ as the perfection of his singular

art.

“Nothing but a little savage” is how the village school-teacher describes

fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking

local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn’t bother to contradict it; ragged,

foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar, and loser, she knows herself to be, in

the words of the story, “alone, completely alone, against everyone.” Hers is a

tale of “tragic solitude” in which despair and salvation appear to be

inextricably intertwined.

Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery

O’Connor, and _Mouchette_ was the source of a celebrated movie by director

Robert Bresson.