I read Viper's Tangle years ago. It's a great book. Mauriac was friends with several French Existentialists, including Gabriel Marcel.Just finished 'Le chair et le sang' (Flesh and Blood) by Francois Mauriac.
It was a difficult read, but rewarding towards the end. It captured the ambiguity and uncertainty of human relationships really well.
It felt somewhat Existentialist to me. But it was written in 1926, thus pre-dating Existentialism. — andrewk
Mauriac wrote to Marcel in 1929.Marcel joined the ranks of “Christian existentialists” while working as the drama critic for L’Europe nouvelle. Following a favorable review of a work by François Mauriac, Marcel received a note from the author. “Why are you not one of us?” Mauriac asked. Not long after, Marcel joined the Catholic Church and would remain a defender of faith.
Marcel's philosophy was always preoccupied with the religious dimension of life, but his upbringing had been religiously agnostic (uncertain as to whether one can really know that God exists), and he was not formally a believer. In 1929, however, an open letter from the distinguished French Catholic writer François Mauriac challenged Marcel to admit that his views suggested a belief in God. His subsequent conversion to Catholicism gave a new dimension to certain aspects of his philosophy. But he remained a strikingly independent thinker whose ideas were formed before his conversion—and as such could be regarded as important indicators of certain Godly aspects of the human experience. Marcel became a leader in French Catholic intellectual circles, and his Paris home was the locale for stimulating discussion among leading European intellectuals of all persuasions.
A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism by Lee Braver — darthbarracuda
But is it ethical for you to do so? It seems you likely had to actively search out such a file, as opposed to it falling into your lap. — Thorongil
>:OBelieve it or not it actually did kinda fall into my lap. — darthbarracuda
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