Word: mauriac
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...love Germany so much," wrote the French novelist Francois Mauriac, "that I am glad there are two of them." That phrase is cited with increasing frequency these days, but the sentiment is old. Clemenceau expressed it first as he wistfully reflected on the delicate balance of power nurtured in the 19th century by Austria's Prince Metternich. Since World War II the division of Germany has been central both to the tensions of the cold war and to the stability of the cold peace that accompanied...
After the war Wiesel settled in France, where he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, worked as a journalist and came under the influence of Albert Camus and Francois Mauriac. His first novel, Night (1958), was an indelible account of the Nazi atrocities as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy. The hell inside the death camps is described in austere, intense prose that became the author's emblem: "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night . . . Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget...
...refused repatriation and found his way to France, where he worked as a choir director, translator and, eventually, journalist. It was during an interview in 1954 with Roman Catholic Novelist Francois Mauriac that literature took an abrupt turn...
...spoke so much about Christ," says Wiesel. "I was timid, but finally I said, 'You speak of Christ's suffering. What about the children who have suffered not 2,000 years ago, but yesterday? And they never talk about it." Mauriac was to recall the look in the speaker's pained eyes, "as of a Lazarus risen from the dead, yet still a prisoner within the grim confines where he had strayed, stumbling among the shameful corpses . . . I could only embrace him weeping...
Four years later, Night appeared in France with an introduction by Mauriac. The little book set the Wiesel style: austere, tense phrases articulating the unspeakable--the murder and torture of the innocent, the martyrdom of faith itself as a child watches the hanging of another child: " 'Where is God? Where is he?' . . . And I heard a voice within me answer: 'Where is he? Here he is--he is hanging here on this gallows...