Commentary In the introduction to his magisterial “Essays on European Literature” (1950), E.R. Curtius remarked on his good fortune in having been a contemporary and an interpreter of “men like Gide, Claudel, Péguy, Proust, Valéry, Hofmannsthal, Ortega, Joyce, Eliot.” Greatness calls forth greatness, so it is easy to understand Curtius’s gratitude. But what about his list? Joyce and Eliot are self-explanatory. Likewise Proust and Valéry, Ortega and Hofmannsthal. Gide and Claudel are at least plausible, even if their reputations have declined in the years since Curtius wrote. But Péguy? How did that unfamiliar name find its way onto the distinguished critic’s “A-list”? In the English-speaking world, the French poet and intermittently Catholic polemicist Charles Péguy is barely even a name today. He was born in modest circumstances in 1873 in Orléans, where, in 1429, Joan of Arc was instrumental in raising the siege of the city by the English. Péguy’s …
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