We Have Been Friends Together & Adventures in Gr – Memoirs

Raïssa Maritain (1883–1960), best known as the wife of the famous French philosopherJacques 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 halfof the twentieth century. Her autobiography, We Have Been Friends Together, together withthe second part, Adventures in Grace, were originally published in two volumes in 1941and 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—animpressive circle of important French intellectuals, writers, artists, professors, andinfluential priests. In luminous prose Raïssa recounts her childhood in Russia, her youthin Paris, and her momentous meeting with Jacques, followed by their conversion toCatholicism in 1906. She gives a vivid, personal account of the Thomistic Revival theyhelped to lead and describes the conversions of key figures in the French CatholicRenaissance—many of whom were the Maritains’ close friends. However, the underlyingsubjects of her autobiography are God’s goodness, the mysterious operation of grace inthe soul, and the way that Raïssa and others were transformed by their encounter withthe Divine.       We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in Grace are spiritual autobiographieswritten by a mystic with a difference. Raïssa was totally God-focused, but, unlike mostmystics, she was not a religious by vocation. She attended the Sorbonne, married, andassociated with the intellectual lights of Paris, New York, and Rome. She wrote a bookfor children, and published poetry, works on prayer, translations, and studies of modernauthors. Raïssa also played a key role in the conversion of many and knew, oftenintimately, intellectuals like Ernest Psichari and Charles Péguy, the playwright Cocteau,the authors Mauriac, Claudel, and Bloy, and a number of painters, including GeorgesRouault. Readers interested in spiritual biography, in mystics, in modern womenauthors, in the psychology of conversion, in twentieth-century French intellectual life,and in the Thomistic revival will find this book fascinating. Raïssa’s autobiography willalso hold a special place in the heart of all those who believe, as did her godfather LéonBloy, “There is only one misery . . . not to be saints.”