Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), the French writer-priest who died almost 20 years ago, is one of the most important Christian spiritual and literary voices in post-Vatican II France. The title of this novel, first published by Gallimard, Paris, in 1966, and the third Sulivan book to appear in a US translation, is from a quotation by Nietzsche: "I have never found the woman by whom I would want to have a child, except this woman that I love - for I love you, eternity, my beloved." Based on true characters and events, as was Sulivan's wont, Eternity, My Beloved recounts the tale of an unusual priest who gets into trouble with both the authorities of the church and those of Nazi-occupied Paris. Jerome Strozzi in the novel was Auguste Rossi in real life; 20 years the author's senior, he passed away one month after Sulivan in March 1980. By befriending the prostitutes and criminals of Pigalle, Strozzi becomes the unofficial chaplain to the underworld, and creates a myth which the narrator sets out to understand.
Strozzi, a marginalised character, is rejected by church and state for different reasons, and he undergoes the interesting psychological and spiritual experience of growing down to reach the essential meaning of his existence. The events of his life do raise questions, but by placing the emphasis on the quest for the absolute, Sulivan both deals with the difficult topic of celibacy/chastity and also avoids prurient sensationalism. The social context is that of Paris in the 1940s, during the war and immediately afterwards, when the French Catholic Church was the scene of a number of theological and pastoral experiments, including the worker-priest movement. These ventures, although initially condemned by Rome, contributed eventually to the calling of the Second Vatican Council.
The novel examines male perceptions of woman - the idol/slave syndrome - but, more importantly, goes on to illustrate how the idolisation of a virtue, in this case celibacy, can be transformed by laws into an obsession with the opposite - namely genital sex. Similarly, a catechism, by proposing seemingly rational answers to impossible questions, can be seen to contribute to a climate of unbelief. Strozzi discovers that the purpose of living is to go beyond that which is possible in thought and in action. For Sulivan, happiness is not found in happiness; it is a consequence of the quest. Having "investigated" the mystery surrounding Strozzi, the novel becomes a meditation on friendship and love and broaches delicately the unavoidable question of whether or not intimacy takes place between Strozzi and any of the women he befriends. The narrator is no prude, but the essential is elsewhere in this novel, which strives to put words on the inexpressible. Strozzi seeks neither approval nor disapproval - he is beyond morality because the love which he expresses is beyond the sexual.
Sulivan has contributed a spiritual, some would say a mystical, dimension to French literature over the past 40 years. Sulivan, incidentally, has no Irish links. His pen-name was inspired by a Preston Sturges movie, Sullivan's Travels - though he dropped one l. By the time Eternity, My Beloved was first published, however, he had already moved away from writing the kind of books which had won literary prizes. . Here, as in later novels, the narration is disjointed, the narrator unsure of when fact becomes fantasy. Hence the reader is called upon to enter actively into reconstituting what is termed reality and into answering the call to inhabit the spiritual space beyond fear and laws, beyond power struggles and ideology. Strozzi's calling is to give, through friendship, the support and love which transforms the life of Elizabeth, a former prostitute. The narrator discovers that it is not to the world of prostitution that Strozzi had most to say, but "to the smooth world of sensible, decent people, of respectable families, to the entrepreneurs of salvation, to those who traded in souls, to all those who prefer money, order and comfort to love."
Strozzi lives what the narrator can only write about; that broaching of the impossible is precisely what makes Sulivan an important writer of Christian inspiration.
Padraig O Gormaile is Professor of French at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has written extensively on the work of Jean Sulivan