Du néant à Dieu, Ernest Hello

by Ernest Hello

Ernest Hello (1828-1885) est un écrivain et critique littéraire français, apologiste chrétien. Il est considéré comme un écrivain mystique, qui consacra son existence à l’écriture et influença des personnalités connues comme Georges Bernanos ou Paul Claudel.
Hello est un méditatif. Il vit en lui-même, mais c’est pour y chercher son Dieu. L’univers créature de Dieu, l’homme créature de Dieu mais à qui Dieu s’est révélé, Dieu ; le néant et l’Être ; l’homme néant comme créature, mais participant à l’Être par l’aveu même de son néant, Dieu, seul principe et seule fin, tel est le cycle des pensées qui occupent continuellement la méditation d’Hello.
Cet ouvrage regroupe de nombreux fragments de manuscrits inédits, mis dans l’ordre même de la pensée d’Hello : de l’étude de l’homme à la contemplation de Dieu, de la contemplation à l’adoration, à la prière. Au demeurant les méditations les plus contemplatives et presque toutes les prières correspondent à l’âge mûr d’Ernest Hello. Les hommes n’ont pas entendu ses appels, mais Dieu lui a répondu. Les hommes lui ont refusé leurs suffrages, mais Dieu lui a entr’ouvert les portes du « lieu où réside sa gloire » près de laquelle toute gloire humaine n’est que néant.

153 pages, Paperback

Published July 20, 2022

About the author

Ernest Hello (4 November 1828 – 14 July 1885) was a French Roman Catholic writer, who produced books and articles on philosophy, theology, and literature.

Frail from infancy, he also suffered from a spinal or bone disease. This struggle probably tinged his prose with a melancholy strain, which is strikingly original as mentioned in J.-K. Huysmans' work (they shared a veneration of the mystic John of Ruysbroeck). Both writers, like Leon Bloy, are almost impossible to translate. In 1857 he married Zoë Berthier, an army officer's daughter and talented writer herself, who was ten years older and a friend for some years before their marriage. She became his devoted nurse, which brought upon herself abuse from gutter journalists of the time for her estimable guardianship.

Hello's work is somewhat varied in form but uniform in spirit. His best-known book, Physionomie de saints (1875), which has been translated into English (1903) as Studies in Saintship, does not display his qualities best. Contes extraordinaires, published not long before his death, is more original, being often cited for its artistic yet lucid prose.

But Ernest Hello is mostly remembered now for a series of philosophical and critical essays, from Renan, l'Allemagne et l'atheisme (1861), which was re-published in an enlarged edition posthumously, through L'Homme (1871) on life, art and science in relation to present-day life (it was in its 7th edition by 1905), and Les Plateaux de la balance (1880) to the posthumously published Le Siècle, probably his master-work.

The peculiarity of his standpoint and the originality and vigour of his approach make his studies, of Shakespeare, Hugo and others, of abiding importance as literary "triangulation," the results of object, subject and point of view.
His interest in the application of philosophy and theology for the modern human condition is an enduring exploration, and indeed steps beyond the stricter parameters of Church thinking to speak to those seeking a way to live as well as fashion a creative perspective.