Péguy, Charles

(1873-1914)

   writer

   Born in orléans of modest origins, Charles Péguy, who is considered one of the foremost modern Roman Catholic writers, lost his father at a young age (1873) but was able to begin studies on scholarship (1894) at the École normale supérieure, where among his instructors was henri bergson. Moved by a fervent humanitarianism, Péguy in this period saw the establishment of "a universal socialist republic" as the "only remedy for universal ills." He sided with jean jaurès during the dreyfus affair (Notre Jeunesse, 1910), but, after 1900, separated from his earlier colleagues as he disapproved of their anticlericalism and antimilitarism. Péguy, in 1900, founded Cahiers de la quinzaine, a journal to publish his works along with those of Romain Rolland, Julien Benda, André Saurès, and others and reveal his evolution away from socialism to a mystical nationalism (Notre Patrie, 1905). Effectively returning to his Catholic faith, he wrote against modernism and certain French intellectual elements. Suspect to the church, whose conservatism he criticized, and to the Socialists for denouncing pacifism, and somewhat ignored at the time by the general public, Péguy, who appealed in all his writings to the "generation of revenge," was killed in action at the front in World War I, on the eve of the Battle of the Marne.