Charles Peguy

Charles Peguy: A Study in Integrity by Marjorie Villiers, 385 pages

Charles Peguy is best remembered today as the poet of The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc and The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue.  In his own time, he was a journalist, publisher, and activist.  As Marjorie Villiers relates, however, he was above all a man of integrity, a man who rejected propaganda and cant no matter how useful it might be, a man whose hatred of injustice led him to socialism, and whose love for the truth led him to Catholicism.  This painful, sacrificial pilgrimage, costly on both a personal and professional level, came to an abrupt, but not entirely unexpected, end on the battlefields of the First World War, fighting for his beloved France, not the France of the politicians and professors but that of the peasants and poets.

While Villiers certainly considers Peguy's literary works, this is a biography and not primarily a work of literary criticism.  Likewise, while Villiers' admiration for Peguy is apparent, she does not hesitate, in keeping with the theme of integrity, of being critical of him at times, although she generally takes a charitable view of everyone's motivations, even, admirably, Peguy's anti-Dreyfusard opponents.  These traits actually assist in making her book both readable and engaging.