Raissa Maritain (1883-1960), best known as the wife of the famous French philosopher
Jacques 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 half
of the twentieth century. Her autobiography, We Have Been Friends Together, together with
the second part, Adventures in Grace, were originally published in two volumes in 1941
and 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-an
impressive circle of important French intellectuals, writers, artists, professors, and
influential priests. In luminous prose Raissa recounts her childhood in Russia, her youth
in Paris, and her momentous meeting with Jacques, followed by their conversion to
Catholicism in 1906. She gives a vivid, personal account of the Thomistic Revival they
helped to lead and describes the conversions of key figures in the French Catholic
Renaissance-many of whom were the Maritains’ close friends. However, the underlying
subjects of her autobiography are God’s goodness, the mysterious operation of grace in
the soul, and the way that Raissa and others were transformed by their encounter with
the Divine.
We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in Grace are spiritual autobiographies
written by a mystic with a difference. Raissa was totally God-focused, but, unlike most
mystics, she was not a religious by vocation. She attended the Sorbonne, married, and
associated with the intellectual lights of Paris, New York, and Rome. She wrote a book
for children, and published poetry, works on prayer, translations, and studies of modern
authors. Raissa also played a key role in the conversion of many and knew, often
intimately, intellectuals like Ernest Psichari and Charles Peguy, the playwright Cocteau,
the authors Mauriac, Claudel, and Bloy, and a number of painters, including Georges
Rouault. Readers interested in spiritual biography, in mystics, in modern women
authors, in the psychology of conversion, in twentieth-century French intellectual life,
and in the Thomistic revival will find this book fascinating. Raissa’s autobiography will
also hold a special place in the heart of all those who believe, as did her godfather Leon
Bloy, There is only one misery … not to be saints.
