PEGUY, CHARLES (1873-1914), French author and poet, born at Orleans in 1873, came of a family which had been vine growers for generations, and was proud of his peasant origin. He was educated at the Ecole Normale and at the Sorbonne. The object of his life is perfectly indicated in the dedication of his first book, Jeanne d'Arc (1897), "a toutes celles et a tons ceux qui auront vecu . . . pour l'etablissement de la Republique socialiste universelle." His works from that time until his death in Sept. 1914 are devoted to the glory of France. He was a de termined republican; at the same time he was a devout Catholic. A mystical lover of France, and yet a strong socialist, he puzzled anti-clerical socialists and Catholic nationalists equally. His Notre Patrie, in which his views of what was necessary for the regenera tion of the republic were set out, was written in 1905, but his most important prose works and the majority of his poems were written between 1910 and 1914. Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, founded by him in 1900, were devoted to the expression of truth without regard to party, and in them Peguy's development, and the development of the "new France" he did so much to inspire, may be traced for over a decade. They were primarily imbued
with his spirit, though in their pages many now well-known writers first came into public notice. For him truth was not to be found in compromise, and his extreme views were pronounced even at the risk of a subsequent volte-face. At the Ecole Normale he came under the influence of Bergson, to whom he has done homage in his Note sur M. Bergson (1914). He kept his own little shop in the shadow of the Sorbonne, where he was continually amending his works. There he sold the Cahiers. He lived in the country, walked into Paris every morning, and brought with him something of the province. When war came in 1914 he refused a captaincy, because he wished to go on foot with his men. He fell leading e company on the first day of the battle of the Marne. The first volumes of his collected works were published in 1916.
See R. Johannet, Peguy et ses Cahiers (1914) ; J. E. Roberty, Charles Peguy (1916) ; A. Suares, Peguy (1916) ; D. Halevy, Charles Peguy et les Cahiers (1918) ; M. Peguy, La Vocation de C. Peguy (1926).