Who knew that a famous French author, Maxence Van der Meersch, wrote a novel about the YCW of the 1930s in the northern French city of Roubaix?
The winner of the 1936 Prix Goncourt for “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year,” Van der Meersch was himself a native of Roubaix, an industrial textile city that now forms part of the Lille metropolis, bordering Belgium.
Although he was from a middle class family and a lawyer by training, Van der Meersch married a woman from neighbouring Wasquehal, Thérèze Denis, who was herself a factory worker, who inspired much of his writing.
By late 1924, JOC groups and federations already existed in parishes along the Belgian-French border close to Roubaix and Tourcoing. At that time, many workers crossed the border from Belgium to work in the factories. Priests too were keenly aware of the rapidly expanding JOC movement.
Thus, some of the earliest JOC groups in France began in the Diocese of Lille by 1927 when Cardijn and Fernand Tonnet visited the city. Indeed, Cardijn had links with Lille going back to at least 1907 when he had visited the Sillon and Christian trade union groups there.
Maxence Van der Meersch tells the story of this new and dynamic movement for young workers of the working class in his 1939 novel, Pêcheurs d’homme, written in autobiographical form through the fictional character of Pierre Mardyck, recruited to the JOC after hearing a speech by the equally fictional Jules Douthulst.
As Van der Meersch himself acknowledged, Mardyck’s character was based on that of a local YCW leader, Robert Gautier.
Cardijn himself recognised the authenticity of the novel’s description of the YCW as did many others YCW leaders and chaplains of the time, including Marguerite Fiévez, who later praised its characterisation of the genuine YCW as “contagious friendship from one young worker to another.”
In her and Jacques Meert’s biography of Cardijn, they also approvingly quote Van der Meersch’s description of the YCW founder:
All my life long I shall see the strange figure of this little priest, abruptly jumping to his feet on the platform, coming, going, shouting, throwing himself about, waving his arms, making sudden gestures with his hands. He seemed so thin, so spare, so austere, as he threw out unfinished phrases, blowing, panting, gesticulating, almost comic in his very violence.
At first some girls near us were inclined to smile, but gradually his very enthusiasm, his fire, his sincerity, his indignation, his eagerness, his tenderness, and his pity had the effect of moving the whole place, stirring the whole crowd to its depths, making it gasp, thrill, grow excited and weep, caught at its very heart by the sight of this man giving himself absolutely, to the depths of his soul, nay almost to blood, for the cause of the unfortunate and the oppressed for whom his Master had died.
In this priest’s tears, his passion, his despair, his dreams, his immense love for the wretched, the great High Priest himself was incarnate; in him we were beholding Christ; through his voice unmistakably once again was explaining to people their duty.
As a young YCW leader in the late 1970s, I first read the book in its 1947 English translation as “Fishers of Men” with an introduction by the English YCW chaplain, Fr John Fitzsimons, who was probably the (uncredited) translator.
Today, the English text seems a little dated and the working class industrial world of 1930s France has largely disappeared into history. Nevertheless, Van der Meersch captures very well the missionary spirit of the early YCW that translated into such a dynamic movement.
Reading it again, it’s easy to understand how the JOC spread so rapidly first from Belgium to France in 1927 and to nearly 50 countries on every continent, including far off Australia and New Zealand by 1939.
Now that the original work and the English translation have fallen into the public domain, I’ve scanned the original texts in French and English and reproduced them as pdfs and in online format.
I’ve changed the title of the English translation to “Fishers of People” which in today’s language better reflects the ancient Greek text of the Gospel on which it is based, ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων (halieis anthrōpōn), anthrōpos designating a human being generically (humanity, mankind, person), as opposed to anēr, which specifically denotes an adult male.
Read or download the novel here:
English translation, Fishers of People
https://fishers.josephcardijn.com
Original French version, Pêcheurs d’homme
https://pecheurs.josephcardijn.com
I know that other translations exist into Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish, I believe.
Hopefully, one day we’ll be able to republish those too!
Stefan Gigacz