Abstract EN:

This thesis lays emphasis on julian green's genesis of spirituality from 1905 to 1924 as the autobiography sets out to to reveal. First, it analyses the religious feeling during his early childhood, the process by which the young boy sense d god's presence near him and the way his mother awakened him to the invisible. Then it covers his teen-age years which were marked by mrs. Green's death in 1914. His grief was so deep that it had undeniable spiritual consequences : human solitude and suffering were experienced as his being abandoned by god yet, it was in such a torment that in 1916, green converted to catholicism and under father crete's spiritual guidance was turned towards a religious vocation. In 1917 the converted youth's faith was put to the test of worldly attractions and the experience of war. Therefore, the the study attempts to interpret his alternating religious fervour and taste for worldly pleasures, which in 1919 resulted in the renunciation of his vocation. His years of exile in america, from 1919 onwards, confronted the young man with his homosexuality and the ensuing despair, all the more exacerbated by his deep-seated faith, thanks to which, however, in later fife he resolved the conflict. The violence of that period is forcibly expressed in the first tome of the journal : on est si serieux quand on a 19 ans. The writing style of which foreshadows le pamphlet contre les catholiques de france, in fact a veritable spiritual autobiography written in 1924. In it, the writer confirmed his fidelity to his childhood faith.