The work as a whole may seem wildly surreal and devilish, much like the works of Catalonian native Salvador Dali, whose work was also touched by the Spanish Civil War under General Franco. Read in that vein, the work perhaps retains some historical importance; afterall, Spain was only a prelude to the horrors and genocides to come as all of Europe descended into the chaos of total war.
When Bernanos is dealing with facts and first-hand accounts of the political purges in Spain he is at his best, and at times feels reminiscent of the diaries of George Orwell or the works of Solzhenitsyn.
At other times the reader will be at pains to recognize anything of the tender and beloved author of Diary of a Country Priest in the pedantic and obsessive screeds and jeremiads of Bernanos contained in this diary. He reminds one of Joseph de Mastre; surely the world was plunging headlong into a kind of madness, if even it’s best and most thoughtful writers were possessed with the general delirium of the times.
