Children

Why practice man

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Part 1-Children

Bertrand Catry

Hello

Today I am fortunate to be at Francis Delaye, painter-sculptor and runner of God, marathoner of the Lord. It is July 23; we ‘ll have the joy of having several exchanges.

This first interview we wanted to dedicate it to the youth of Francis Delaye, a youth who successively knows several sequences. I remind that you were born in 1923; so, you embrace two centuries, 96 years! Your very first youth, what child were you? What family environment did you grow up in, Mr. Delaye?

Francis Delaye

Bourgeois parents who had a somewhat nominative faith, at last, a bit like one had at the time. I was born with a styling, as they say of some children, and for my baptism my father wanted to call me France. He absolutely wanted to give me that name, but his entourage refused because they thought it was a woman’s name. My father camouflaged it as Francis. I don‘t know if there are Sainte-France, Saint-France, we don’t know. Here is. I had an ordinary youth, nothing special.

The first childhood memory I have is at a feast of the Virgin Mary, in the month of Mary, that we wished at the time, and with the children we made a small altar with candles and a status of the Virgin Mary. It struck me a lot; and from my early childhood that is all I remember.

Then, I was sick a few times quite seriously, especially from the heart, and I had to suffer a little in my childhood. And then, to pounce in adolescence, I had a completely ordinary adolescence, without any complication. And even, as a teenager, I abandoned the religious practice that my parents had instilled in me and I began to seek the aesthetics of nature by focusing on drawing and painting.

At school I was a poor student because I remember that even in my early childhood in kindergarten, where we were taught the ABC, I said to Stanislas’ teacher: “Why is an A done in three sticks? And the mistress who could not answer had made me put in the solitary confinment, as one put at the time, with a donkey cap.

Bertrand Catry

All right!  With the donkey cap!

Then, you have so a smile, Mr. Delaye; we hear the child that you are still today, of course because you are carrying him, and you carry with this malice and jubilation that we see, that we discern in your gaze. In the jokes of your childhood, on the day of your first communion it seems to me that you close your eyes and by closing your eyes you are that player of God to which you are experimenting yourself. You close your eyes to meet the Virgin Mary. And later in the ceremony of this first communion, you gird the crucified with you and, as a child, you kiss him right and then left. You are very player!

Francis Delaye

During my first communion that I had with difficulties, because I was a very bad student and very unruly. And in the High School where I was, I had followed several disciplinary advices, and the chaplain of this high school made his children do long theology duties to allow them to have access to the first communion. And I was telling him:  “But that’s not what Jesus is asking for!” So, he was answering me: “Maybe it’s not that, but you have to obey!” And I had nothing more to say.

Bertrand Catry

You were at attention!

Francis Delaye

But I had the support of my Scout chaplain where I was, who made me make my first communion anyway. And from my first communion the only thing I remember is that I had closed my fist and I was asking to see the Blessed Virgin. And then I had regrets, I said: “Oh no, it’s too good for me, that’s not what you have to ask!” 

Bertrand Catry

So, you grow up, you form yourself, you take the grand tour, you make the trip to Rome. … We are – I remind it for our listeners, you were born in 1923 – at 20 years old we are in 1943, at the end of the Second World War you are 23-24 years old, you make the trip to Rome, you make the trip to Florence, and there happens this conversion in the depths of your heart, while working hard in this workshop in Florence. Your conversion is done in an unusual mode because is not done on a mode sometimes a little commercial or a little on the mode of the fracas. You say, Francis, this conversion, you simply say a word and you engage the conversation in this conversion, in this formula, you say “Father!” 

Francis Delaye

Yes, that’s right.

Bertrand Catry

You say “Father!”

Francis Delaye

But before this conversion one has to understand what was going on. So, I was a bad student and I was finally accepted by the Director of the Montaigne High School, very kindly, who shook me a little, and from that moment I started to work a little; and I was at the Lycée Louis Grand during my studies of rhetoric, etc., and I was very attracted to physics. And I already had some special intuitions of physics, but the physics we were taught at the time – it was during the war – at the Lycée Louis Grand we didn’t talk about nuclear fission, of course. And I skipped a lot of classes at the Lycée Louis Grand to go to the Sorbonne to listen to lectures on the light that I was passionate about. Finally, when I spent my baccalaureate in …

Bertrand Catry

… 1941…

Francis Delaye

I was lucky that during the war we passed it only in writing because of the events, but in the context of the examination there was a word: “light”. And at that time I didn’t read the context itself and I did a paper on the light that earned me 9/20 because it was an off-topic masterful, and I didn’t get my baccalaureate because of it. And when I said to my classmates, “You know I made a very nice subject, I’m going to be received”, they told me but no, that’s not the question! Finally at that time, thanks to the life of the war, where many of my comrades were in the resistance, I chose rather than physics the Fine Arts and it was there that I enrolled in the sculpture workshop of Master Beaumont where there was already one of my comrades who was to become famous and who was called Caesar, and who already in his corner, was beginning to make abstract art, abstract sculpture. I once had a question:  because I was working a lot in sculpture, my classmates said to me: “You are a Christian to work so hard?” So, I answered: “I am a Christian like everyone else.” Indeed, I was like everyone else, but I had not yet been converted. And it was after my trip to Rome, and my visit in Florence and the Saint Mark’s Convent where there was an Annunciation of the Virgin Mary that touched me, that I returned to Paris, and in my daily visit to the Louvre Museum as a student to admire all the great classical masters there was there, I saw The Virgin to the rabbit who showed me all the hesitant and erroneous touches of Master Titian and which brutally showed me that Art was nothing at all, that it was an absolutely ugly essay; and I, who had made Classical Art my religion, that totally upset me. And that’s when I went back to my workshop that my father had bought for me, and that I, indeed, said a word: “Father!” And at that moment I was lifted from the ground without me knowing how long, in a enjoyment which has no name.

Bertrand Catry

Francis Delaye, you say, “Father!”  Your conversion is not trivial! Are you starting a conversation? When you say “Father” you are in the meeting, you are in the relationship, you are in this face to face. You are in something that is not high perched, that is not of an unapproachable mysticism; your conversion makes itself conversation. And you yourself say that it is on the return of the Louvre, that in your father’s workshop, under this canopy – we are here very close to Chartres and we will obviously not fail to think of Notre-Dame de la belle Verrière – but you are to address to him, to the Lord, by engaging the conversation that, it seems to me, locates you, places you on a humility mode already! “Father! And it is this “Father” that will also guide all your work, all your work as a sculptor. I remind it to our listeners, you are engaged by the Historic Monuments in your youthful years as Companion of the Tour as a sculptor and then as a stonemason, in these cathedrals of France bereaved by the bombing of the Allied forces. You go to Beauvais, you work at Nevers, you work in Rouen, this “Father”  of your conversion, this “Father” of your conversation, you cut it in stone, you sculpt it. How is it happen? How is it happen in these cathedrals, in our country where you are involved in the restoration of this famous white mantle of our beautiful churches and cathedrals?

Francis Delaye

Before being hired as a sculptor of Historic Monuments and later as an apprentice stonemason, after my brutal conversion to the workshop and my ecstasy in some way, I fell back to earth and there I was as damned. And for three years I thought myself damned in the midst of enormous inner suffering. My distraught parents took me from clinic to clinic to try to heal me, and the doctors at the time told me that I was sentenced to life. But, after three years of this ordeal, I saw in a bookstore a book called A Call to Love, I read it in one night, and the next morning I was completely healed. And it was from there that I began the work as a sculptor of historic monuments and as a stonemason afterwards, not deeming me worthy to be a sculptor. Indeed, I did not have the talent.

Bertrand Catry

One is going to judge the Francis Delaye’ “little talent”, perhaps; I do say “little talent” in quotes! … I believe that behind you the “little talent” of sculptor that you are has left among others a very beautiful sculpture that represents The Virgin to the Child. We can – in quotes – “smile of your little talent”! It belongs to you, Mr. Delaye!

You are 25, you are hesitating. You hesitate and you are engaged. You have done the Fine Arts of Paris, you have made the trip to Rome, you carve and sculpt in our cathedrals, but you go to the Bec-Hellouin! You go to the Bec-Hellouin, to the Abbey of the Bec near Caen and there you are not far from becoming Benedictine! Tell us that! How is it happen?

Francis Delaye

When I was a sculptor of Historic Monuments, one day on the roof of the Church of Saint-Etienne where I made decorative stone hooks, I had the vision of all the world religions. Because I was already beginning to meditate deeply on Jesus Christ, on the Gospel, etc. I had moreover read several times the ten mystical books that had enlightened me, and I had the vision of all religions. There are seven religions that presented themselves to me. I had authentic faith. A faith but on my heart, I had like the hand of a woman and if I had faith in religion, I had my heart that did not adhere to it. And so, I saw all religions with faith but without adhering with my heart that a woman’s hand protected me. This is an important event that I had during my work to restore churches and cathedrals.

Bertrand Catry

So, you are at the Abbey of the Bec, and then a few years later you go to the forest of Fontainebleau and then you realize that, speaking of heart, you will very quickly adhere to the heart of this person who will become your wife, who is Evelyne Lourdin. And Evelyn Lourdin, with the contribution and the complicity of the Lord, tells you that this may also be here your place rather than being Benedictine; and you will conciliate your status as a husband while obviously leaving your roots and faith guiding your life, guiding the fruitfulness of your works. Your work is prolific, you are on display at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, television comes to you several times, you have a state order, and there, all fire all flames, you leave, you marry Madam your wife, Eveline, you have six children, and you will, beating drum, lead on all fronts your career as a painter,… one is still in the young years, this first interview is about your youth. How do you lead everything head-on? How do you finally lead your two wives, if I may say so, our mother the Church, and your wife Évelyne Lourdin, your six children, the interviews you have to conduct and then, it has to be said, your prolific work as a sculptor and painter? I want a date, a time, you are not 40 years old, all your paintings are bought by a Danish merchant, there is nothing left, everything leaves all of a sudden. These are the years of youth, of your last years of youth. Tell us all this.

Francis Delaye

After my conversion I had given up all art thinking that Art in fact it was not what suited my faith, and it was by marrying after … On the one hand my mother made me do a very important exhibition at the Gallery Creuse – that’s where I got the television and the purchase of one of my works by the state, etc. – and that had some success but I was struck by the commercial side of Art and I said no, that’s not what I need either. And it was when I married Évelyne Lourdin, with the first child she had, she was in bed and she was a little sick, that I began to paint her portrait to keep her company. A passer-by said when he saw my painting: “Oh, that is a professional job.” And maybe it gave me a boost, I don’t know. In any case, I began to look for what I had always sought in my work of art at the Fine Arts, that is to say the secret of the aesthetics of the relief of classical painting; and it was this secret that led me to resume the search for Art. And it is on this subject, moreover, that I had in 1963 the dream …

Bertrand Catry

… This famous dream of one week. A dream of one week!

You are 40 years, you are still young, it is the last years of your youth, we’ll say.

Francis Delaye

Yes, but it was in 1963 that I had this violent and important dream where I saw several definitions of science including the famous engine with ions.

Bertrand Catry

We’ll get back to that, yes.

Francis Delaye

And above all, the fact that I had the revelation that science and religion should unite among themselves under the aegis of Messiah. At that moment a whispering voice said to me: “You are the Messiah.” I said no, there is only one Messiah, it is Jesus Christ. And at that moment I began to pray to the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin Mary showed me that the engine with ions I had seen could be reversed and replaced by an engine with ions that would have destroyed all religion and procured the end of the world. That’s from there my whole family life took place.

Bertrand Catry

Mr. Delaye, this subject of the engine with ions is so important, so major, that we will devote a dedicated interview on this engine with ions as well as on the humility and humiliation that reveal the principle of life.

I would like to go back, it is very importantly, to what you were saying earlier. We only heard you a little on that famous relief. The relief that your palette comes to explore, the relief of classical painting, the relief of your painting, your sculpture, you hold us out the pole. Relief, it is also the relief in the man of faith that you are. Is it not in correspondence with the relief of the people in the book of Exodus? This land of escarpment where the people will come to the promised land? The relief of this road which Jesus leads us, to tell us that he is the way, life and truth? I see in your interest in the relief in the painting and the fact that you devote all your specificity to it, I see a clear correspondence with the relief of the spiritual path, the relief that leads us to this effort, to this asceticism, to this tiredness; and this tiredness is necessary to meet the sweetness of Christ Jesus, of this relief also that led Jesus of course to another mountain in Golgotha, this relief of the mountain being in itself the relief where is located the teaching of our Lord who…

Francis Delaye

… There are two things. What I was looking for was the secret of the aesthetics of beauty created while Jesus teaches the aesthetics of uncreated beauty. And it is this uncreated beauty that God tried to teach the Jewish people with all these setbacks because they could not follow his God; and it is this uncreated beauty, that is, the eternal life that Jesus Christ revealed to us in his teaching after the cross through his resurrection. And I in my search for the secret of the relief of the aesthetics of Art, I am actually looking for a created beauty. And it is this created beauty that must be overcome.

Bertrand Catry

It helps in the knowledge of uncreated beauty.

Francis Delaye

Well, it helped me in a way! Yes.

Bertrand Catry

Well Francis, we have crossed your youth, which also helps us all to bounce back and reflect on the child we remain, that we preserve in our paths.

I propose an upcoming interview, which will therefore take place in the coming weeks, and I invite all our listeners, our Internet users to pass the baton on social networks so that the work, the man and the transmissions of what Francis Delaye confided to us today, are made, and that these transmissions help us to grow ever more joyful and humble.

Thank you Mr. Delaye for giving me these few moments in your quiet house near Chartres.

Francis Delaye

You are welcome.