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We Have Been Friends Together & Adventures in Grace: Memoirs
Raïssa Maritain (1883–1960), best known as the wife of the famous French philosopher Jacques Maritain, was a remarkable person in her own right. A poet, philosopher, translator, and mystic, she was at the epicenter of French intellectual life in the first half of the twentieth century. Her autobiography, We Have Been Friends Together, together with the second part, Adventures in Grace, were originally published in two volumes in 1941 and 1944. Both books are combined here and are now being re-issued for the first time.
She chronicles not only her and her husband’s lives but also those of their friends—an impressive circle of important French intellectuals, writers, artists, professors, and influential priests. In luminous prose Raïssa recounts her childhood in Russia, her youth in Paris, and her momentous meeting with Jacques, followed by their conversion to Catholicism in 1906. She gives a vivid, personal account of the Thomistic Revival they helped to lead and describes the conversions of key figures in the French Catholic Renaissance—many of whom were the Maritains’ close friends. However, the underlying subjects of her autobiography are God’s goodness, the mysterious operation of grace in the soul, and the way that Raïssa and others were transformed by their encounter with the Divine.
We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in Grace are spiritual autobiographies written by a mystic with a difference. Raïssa was totally God-focused, but, unlike most mystics, she was not a religious by vocation. She attended the Sorbonne, married, and associated with the intellectual lights of Paris, New York, and Rome. She wrote a book for children, and published poetry, works on prayer, translations, and studies of modern authors. Raïssa also played a key role in the conversion of many and knew, often intimately, intellectuals like Ernest Psichari and Charles Péguy, the playwright Cocteau, the authors Mauriac, Claudel, and Bloy, and a number of painters, including Georges Rouault. Readers interested in spiritual biography, in mystics, in modern women authors, in the psychology of conversion, in twentieth-century French intellectual life, and in the Thomistic revival will find this book fascinating. Raïssa’s autobiography will also hold a special place in the heart of all those who believe, as did her godfather Léon Bloy, “There is only one misery . . . not to be saints.”
She chronicles not only her and her husband’s lives but also those of their friends—an impressive circle of important French intellectuals, writers, artists, professors, and influential priests. In luminous prose Raïssa recounts her childhood in Russia, her youth in Paris, and her momentous meeting with Jacques, followed by their conversion to Catholicism in 1906. She gives a vivid, personal account of the Thomistic Revival they helped to lead and describes the conversions of key figures in the French Catholic Renaissance—many of whom were the Maritains’ close friends. However, the underlying subjects of her autobiography are God’s goodness, the mysterious operation of grace in the soul, and the way that Raïssa and others were transformed by their encounter with the Divine.
We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in Grace are spiritual autobiographies written by a mystic with a difference. Raïssa was totally God-focused, but, unlike most mystics, she was not a religious by vocation. She attended the Sorbonne, married, and associated with the intellectual lights of Paris, New York, and Rome. She wrote a book for children, and published poetry, works on prayer, translations, and studies of modern authors. Raïssa also played a key role in the conversion of many and knew, often intimately, intellectuals like Ernest Psichari and Charles Péguy, the playwright Cocteau, the authors Mauriac, Claudel, and Bloy, and a number of painters, including Georges Rouault. Readers interested in spiritual biography, in mystics, in modern women authors, in the psychology of conversion, in twentieth-century French intellectual life, and in the Thomistic revival will find this book fascinating. Raïssa’s autobiography will also hold a special place in the heart of all those who believe, as did her godfather Léon Bloy, “There is only one misery . . . not to be saints.”
- GenresBiography
448 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 24, 2025
Not too long ago, I reviewed a book I had been reading about American expatriate writers in Paris after the Second World War.
Many of us see those faraway days in an exotic, romantic light - but for me they don’t hold a candle to the turbulent times of Leon Bloy.
It was at the dawn of the twentieth century - that protracted fin-de-siecle sunset before WWI started. Socialists and freethinkers ranted from soapboxes everywhere against Tradition.
But somewhere in the middle of all this - off in his tiny Parisian garret - Leon Bloy was raging against tradition’s collapse, and the end of all values.
Radical Christian or raving lunatic? Young Jacques and Raissa Maritain didn’t know, but they were listening.
And it was because of this ‘dangerous’ man that they rose out of their suicidal depression - for they had made a pact to end their lives if they could find no hope -and so they now became believers.
Back in my university sophomore year, I attended a wonderful semester on the Modern Novel. The lecturer was a sensitive young woman who was afflicted with Spina Bifida.
We had connected, probably because of my excoriation of D.H. Lawrence’s cthonic intentions in his novels which, to me, were related in more ways than one to the rise of Nazism.
But anyway, in her class there was a tall, thin, quiet guy named Hargreaves. That’s the only name he went by. Didn’t say much. He was our gentle catalyst.
He was one of those people who come and go from our life like a Melchizedek, unexplained and inexplicable.
He stood alone.
He spoke bluntly, quietly and unapologetically, when he did speak.
I’ll never forget him.
And he was just like Leon Bloy, in a way. A gentle Force for Reform. Everyone else talked reams of nonsense in a dreamworld of sophisticated plaisanteries. To me his highly individualistic attitude was a Wake Up Call!
It reminds me of a long ago time in Bertrand Russell’s Harvard philosophy seminar.
Russell was speaking of the Greek Presocratic Heraklitos, and the young undergrad T.S. Eliot casually remarked that it was odd, just how similar that iconoclastic ancient was to the medieval rapscallion Jacques Villon.
Well, Eliot was the kind of guy back then that Hargreaves was for me during those years of Vietnam and my soporific college days. A guy you sit up and notice.
Russell also noticed Eliot - and immediately took him under his wing.
And Bloy, in the midst of the intellectual ferment that was pre-WWI Paris, was a catalyst, too. For the Maritains and for so many others. A seed of change.
And he planted a seed that would make the young and previously suicidal Raissa Maritain into a force for gentle charismatic love - and a modern Voice for Hope.
This book by Raissa concentrates on the quiet souls who before the First World War, and during and between that and WWII, led Raissa and Jacques to stand their ground as staunch centrist believers.
They had finally found meaning and hope in their lost lives.
They were two quiet people among a growing circle of friends whose gentle words of Faith were words of Life to those others who were in the process of being born.
And words of anguish to the myopic eyes of those poor people who preached revolution from the soapboxes of London, St Petersburg and Paris, and who sought an end to traditional values.
We know all about the the totalitarian seeds of destruction and violence the revolutionaries sowed.
But we will have to wait out time until Eternity to see the Bountiful Harvest of Life sown by quiet souls like the Maritains and their friends.
Many of us see those faraway days in an exotic, romantic light - but for me they don’t hold a candle to the turbulent times of Leon Bloy.
It was at the dawn of the twentieth century - that protracted fin-de-siecle sunset before WWI started. Socialists and freethinkers ranted from soapboxes everywhere against Tradition.
But somewhere in the middle of all this - off in his tiny Parisian garret - Leon Bloy was raging against tradition’s collapse, and the end of all values.
Radical Christian or raving lunatic? Young Jacques and Raissa Maritain didn’t know, but they were listening.
And it was because of this ‘dangerous’ man that they rose out of their suicidal depression - for they had made a pact to end their lives if they could find no hope -and so they now became believers.
Back in my university sophomore year, I attended a wonderful semester on the Modern Novel. The lecturer was a sensitive young woman who was afflicted with Spina Bifida.
We had connected, probably because of my excoriation of D.H. Lawrence’s cthonic intentions in his novels which, to me, were related in more ways than one to the rise of Nazism.
But anyway, in her class there was a tall, thin, quiet guy named Hargreaves. That’s the only name he went by. Didn’t say much. He was our gentle catalyst.
He was one of those people who come and go from our life like a Melchizedek, unexplained and inexplicable.
He stood alone.
He spoke bluntly, quietly and unapologetically, when he did speak.
I’ll never forget him.
And he was just like Leon Bloy, in a way. A gentle Force for Reform. Everyone else talked reams of nonsense in a dreamworld of sophisticated plaisanteries. To me his highly individualistic attitude was a Wake Up Call!
It reminds me of a long ago time in Bertrand Russell’s Harvard philosophy seminar.
Russell was speaking of the Greek Presocratic Heraklitos, and the young undergrad T.S. Eliot casually remarked that it was odd, just how similar that iconoclastic ancient was to the medieval rapscallion Jacques Villon.
Well, Eliot was the kind of guy back then that Hargreaves was for me during those years of Vietnam and my soporific college days. A guy you sit up and notice.
Russell also noticed Eliot - and immediately took him under his wing.
And Bloy, in the midst of the intellectual ferment that was pre-WWI Paris, was a catalyst, too. For the Maritains and for so many others. A seed of change.
And he planted a seed that would make the young and previously suicidal Raissa Maritain into a force for gentle charismatic love - and a modern Voice for Hope.
This book by Raissa concentrates on the quiet souls who before the First World War, and during and between that and WWII, led Raissa and Jacques to stand their ground as staunch centrist believers.
They had finally found meaning and hope in their lost lives.
They were two quiet people among a growing circle of friends whose gentle words of Faith were words of Life to those others who were in the process of being born.
And words of anguish to the myopic eyes of those poor people who preached revolution from the soapboxes of London, St Petersburg and Paris, and who sought an end to traditional values.
We know all about the the totalitarian seeds of destruction and violence the revolutionaries sowed.
But we will have to wait out time until Eternity to see the Bountiful Harvest of Life sown by quiet souls like the Maritains and their friends.
July 26, 2015
Spiritual journey of a couple of atheists in late 1890's / early 1900's. From nihilism to Catholicism....from Man being the tip of the pyramid (thank you enlightenment) to God being there. Friends lost, live long friends gained. The Truth exists, the Incarnation happened. This courageous couple will lead others to Christ I am sure...as the secular world approaches war and the destruction of anything of value.
September 19, 2022
This story of the spiritual journey of Raissa Maritain, made with her husband Jacques Maritain, is one that started for both in the swamps of atheism and materialism. Their path through the philosophies of that day in the Sorbonne and elsewhere is unique and fascinating. Although I couldn't follow Bergson's philosophy, I found the story of their friendship with Leon Bloy to be compelling and the turning point for them as he became their godfather. Mr. Bloy's poverty seemed so surprising for a man of such genius. His humility and charity carried the day.
November 4, 2025
Extraordinario. Refleja la gran sensibilidad de la autora y su camino interior. Muy útil para conocer el pensamiento de su marido Jacques.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews