Émile Baumann

Émile Baumann

Émile Baumann (24 November 1868 – 24 November 1941) was a French writer.

Biography

Baumann was born in Lyons in 1868. He was descended from a Lutheran family converted to Catholicism. In Algiers he met Saint-Saëns, and devoted his first work to him. He was directly involved in the Catholic Literary Renaissance movement, alongside such people as François Mauriac, Paul Claudel and Pierre Reverdy. Sister Mary Keeler, in her Catholic Literary France says that of all French novelists of the time Baumann was perhaps the most completely Catholic. He was awarded the Prix Balzac in 1922 for his novel Job le Prédestiné. In 1931 he married Elisabeth de Groux, daughter of Belgian painter Henry de Groux.

He died in Vernègues.

Writings

Giovanni Papini and Domenico Giuliotti, in their Dizionario dell'omo salvatico, comment on Baumann's severe religious outlook:

Modern Christians want an easy Christianity, one that fits the century, one that does not demand heroism; the Christianity, in short, of the wide door, through which one can pass in a carriage. Instead, Baumann's Christianity is that of the narrow door, of the eye of the needle; that which does not ignore that one can only ascend to love by the ladder of pain.

Works

• Les Grandes Formes de la Musique, l’œuvre de Camille Saint-Saëns (1905).
• L'Immolé (1909).
• La Fosse aux Lions (1911).
• Trois Villes Saintes: Ars en Dombes, Saint Jacques de Compostelle, Le Mont Saint Michel (1912).
• Le Baptême de Pauline Ardel (1913).
• La Paix du Septième Jour (1917).
• L’Abbé Chevoleau, Caporal au 90e d’Infanterie (1919).
• Le Fer sur l'Enclume (1920).
• Heures d’été au Mont Saint-Michel (1920).
• Job le Prédestiné (1922).
• L’Anneau d’or des Grands Mystiques, de Saint-Augustin à Catherine Emmerich (1924).
• Saint Paul (1925).
• Le Signe sur les Mains (1926).
• Intermèdes (1927).
• Mon Frère Dominicain (1927).
• Les Chartreux (1928).
• Bossuet Moraliste (1929).
• Les Douze Collines (1929).
• Abel et Caïn (1930).
• Marie-Antoinette et Axel Fersen (1931).
• Le Mont Saint-Michel (1932).
• Le Cantique Éternel
  • La Symphonie du Désir (1933).
  • Amour et Sagesse (1934).
• Lyon et le Lyonnais (1934).
• Héloïse, L’Amante et l’Abbesse (1934).
• La Vie Terrible d’Henry de Groux (1936).
• Comment Vivent les Chartreux (1936).
• L'Excommunié (1939).
• Histoire des Pèlerinages de la Sainte Vierge (1941).

Posthumous

• Mémoires (1943).
• Les Nourritures Célestes (1943).
• Shéhérazade (1943).
• Histoire des Pèlerinages de la Chrétienté (1948).
• Pierre Puget, Sculpteur, 1620-1694 (1949).

Articles

• "Toulon et Pierre Puget", La Revue Hebdomadaire, No. 10 (1914).
• "Quand Dieu Parle", La Revue Universelle, No. 15 (1926).
• "Mon frère le Dominicain: Son Enfance et sa Mort", Chroniques, No. 4 (1927).
• "Les Chartreux, les Statuts et le Gouvernement d’un Grand Ordre", La Revue Universelle, (1928).

Works in English translation

• Saint Paul (1929).
• "The Catholic and Supernatural Novel." In: Fiction by its Makers (1928).

Further reading

• Alexander, Calvert (1935). The Catholic Literary Revival. Milwaukee: Bruce Pub.
• Bertrand, Louis (1927). Idées et Portraits. Paris: Plon.
• Calvet, Jean (1958). Visages d'un demi-siècle. Paris: Grasset, pp. 111–38.
• Lawhead, Alice (1941). The Reversibility of Grace in the Novels of Emile Baumann. (M.A.) Thesis: University of Notre Dame.
• Maugendre, Louis Alphonse (1968). La Renaissance Catholique au Début du XXe Siècle. Paris: Beauchesne.
• McMahon, A. (1912). "Catholic Ideals in Modern French Fiction," The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 697–717.
• Seeley, Paul Alan (1995). Virile Pursuits: Youth, Religion, and Bourgeois Family Politics in Lyon on the Eve of the French Third Republic. (M.A.) Thesis: University of Michigan.

External links

• Works by Émile Baumann at JSTOR