Word: grosjean
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Like that of most Frenchmen, Father Grosjean's political geography is confused: Socialist New Zealand is one of the last places in the world where his philosophy would have a chance...
Reverend Anarchist. The 100,000 franc ($830) Pléiade Prize went to a 33-year-old Catholic priest, Jean Natal Grosjean for his metaphysical poem Terre du Temps. Father Grosjean sings: "Anarchy is order between persons. All the rest is merely commerce." He scorns the church's philosophic mainstays, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and dislikes Catholic poets Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel. Instead, anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and pagan poet Arthur Rimbaud are Father Grosjean's favorites. He says: "I have no political ideas, but if political practice reflected the purity of theory...
Asked what his ecclesiastical superiors think of his notions, Father Grosjean made a most unecclesiastical reply: "They aren't all imbeciles." He gave an example: "At Mass, when I was ordained, I lauded the father of one of my friends. He was an old anarchist. My anarchist pals had asked me to do it. The bishop of Strasbourg was delighted...
Terre du Temps (whose subject matter is biblical lore) is heavily tinged with gloomy Existentialism (TIME, Jan. 28), like much else in contemporary French thinking. Father Grosjean sighs: "Despair is necessary for success...
...GROSJEAN...