Temporal and Eternal

Temporal and Eternal by Charles Peguy, translated by Alexander Dru, 159 pages

This small book collects two essays by the great French poet Charles Peguy.  In the first, Memories of My Youth, Peguy uses the Dreyfus affair to illustrate and criticize the manner in which mystique, philosophical and theological principle, invariably becomes corrupted by, or into, politique, the prudential application of those principles.  This, he demonstrates, is nothing less than the subordination of the eternal to the temporal, the assertion that "it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not."  In the second essay, Clio I, he takes on the persona of the Muse of History to chide the "ecclesiastical Church" for ignoring the temporal, and the "lay Church" for idolizing it.  The soul of Christianity, Peguy claims, is that the actions of men and women, made in time, extend into eternity, so that the temporal is taken up into the eternal.

As in Peguy's poetry, repetition plays a central, sometimes almost overbearing role in his essays.  His meaning is not always clear, concealed as well as revealed by allusion and metaphor.  Yet, since many of the themes he works with here are also major themes in his poetry, these essays also serve to illuminate much of his larger body of work.