the appearance of a priest

The Diary of a Country Priest begins with the Cure d’Ambricourt’s observation that the world is “eaten up by boredom. . . . It is like dust. You go about and never notice . . . but stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands” (2). His own parish is “bored stiff” and he “can’t do anything about it.” One day while making his rounds he looked out over his village:

What an insignificant thing a village is. And this particular village was my parish? My parish, yes, but what could I do? I stood there glumly watching it sink into the dusk, disappear. . . . In a few minutes I should lose sight of it. I had never been so horribly aware of both my people’s loneliness and mine. I thought of the cattle which I could hear coughing somewhere in the mist, and of the little lad on his way back from school clutching his satchel, who would soon be leading them over sodden fields to a warm sweet-smelling byre. . . . And my parish, my village seemed to be waiting too — without much hope after so many nights in the mud — for a master to follow towards some undreamed-of, improbable shelter. (2-3)

It is one thing to stand still and feel the dust of boredom and insignificance in one’s own nose and throat. And to notice that it is everywhere, that it belongs to one’s age. It is another thing entirely to believe in the responsibilities of the parish priest, to take them seriously, and then to have to say “mine” as you watch your village sink nightly into the mud. This is the main drama of the novel. A parish priest has “admitted once and for all into each moment of [his] puny life the terrifying presence of God.” The question that permeates the Cure d’Ambricourt’s diary, then, is not about the absence of God. God is not a “terrifying presence” because He is disappearing but because His presence on the lips of the parish priest disrupts the weighing of “pros and cons” by which the “worldling” (who can also, simultaneously, be the priest) sums up his chances (5-6). That is not as simple as it sounds. Later in his diary the cure describes how he is received when he makes his rounds:

However cautious I may be, even when my lips avoid the sound of it, still God’s name seems to shine out suddenly in the midst of the thick stifling atmosphere, and faces that were just awakening close in once again. More precisely, they darken, they cloud over. (95)

It is not difficult to hear in these words the voices of Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov. Dostoevsky’s characters often chastise themselves for their failure to present the knowledge they indubitably possess in an appropriate manner according to the situation and interlocutor. But their reflections do not bear the same burden as the priest’s. Myshkin or Alyosha’s interlocutors sometimes dramatically resist finalizing definitions of their own personalities (even if they are not really finalizing) and may suffer as a consequence, but neither Myshkin nor Alyosha have real authority (in the sense I am about to talk about).

The priest’s reflection on his own failure, on the other hand, includes the understanding that his very appearance will, in the end, cause God’s name to “shine out” in some fashion. His position is such that — among both believers and those who have not yet announced their unbelief — he must be heeded even when he is wrong or even when his rightness is poorly presented. Of course this does not mean that every bit of advice received from a priest must be followed. What it means is that even in the midst of a priest’s failure the parishioner still must receive what is most important from his hand. This is at the root of the contagion of boredom. The rich man, the genius, the beautiful woman, the poet, the doctor — these are all the same before the parish priest. No weighing up of success or failure can change that. (The problem is not too far different from Ippolit’s complaint in The Idiot that his illness means that suicide is the only activity he can begin and end in his own time.) But what a burden for the priest as well!

A priest looks at his parish and knows that of old a saint might have roused it. But is the priest not a servant of that same Church? Is the contemporaneity of Christ not as real today as in the past? Is “today” — a markedly different age than “the past” — enough to prevail against the Church and its ancient authority? What is it about today?

I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom; an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay. (3)

The cure’s superiors mark the difference by somehow shifting the “themes which inspire official eloquence.” Some still “teach optimism,” but the force of habit is easily recognized in their “knowing self-deprecating smiles.” Bishops used to end sermons with a “prudent hint — full of conviction, indeed, yet prudent — of coming persecution and the blood of martyrs.” Now they mouth “front-line slogans.” Seminary lecturers offer “telling sallies” extolling the virtues of “monastic obedience and simplicity.” The cure objects to this counsel:

We can all of us manage to peel potatoes and feed pigs, provided we are given the orders to do so. But it is less easy to edify a whole parish with acts of obedience, than a mere community of monks. More especially since the parish would always be unaware of them, and the parish would never understand. (4)

Whether God is present or absent, the priest must still appear in his parish.