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Paul Claudel (1868-1955) | |
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French poet, playwright, and diplomat, whose work shows the influence of Roman Catholic Mysteries, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. Among Claudel's best known works are the confessional Five Great Odes (1910) and The Satin Slippers (1929). He was a prominent figure in the whole French Catholic Renaissance of the early part of the twentieth century. Car à quoi servent les pieds sinon à se joindre à la course qui les Paul Claudel was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère-en-Tardenois, in Aisne, into a family of farmers and gentry. His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions. Claudel's mother, the former Louise Cerceaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. At the age of 18 Claudel had a vision, which changed totally his view of the world: during a service on Christmas Day in Notre Dame Cathedral, he was suddenly converted to Roman Catholicism on the crest of a spiritual surge. He heard, as a voice from above: "There is a God." In the following years, the Bible became the center of Claudel's world and his inspiration. Claudel saw that God is the supreme architect of the world, and God has chosen man in the central place in the drama of the world. Thereafter everything that Claudel did or wrote was based on this mystic experience. Claudel's sister Camille (1864-1943) was a determined unbeliever. She acquired fame as a sculptor, most of her work she produced in the late 1800s. Over ten years, she was the lover, Auguste Rodin. After their breakup, Camille went insane and she was confined to a mental asylum, where she spent the remaining thirty years of her life. "Paul Claudel appears as the most demanding of contemporary poets. To be understood and followed, he requires from his reader a total spiritual submission and attention. It is not only the ornate and complex part of his work which tyrannizes the reader's intelligence, it is above all the harassing and well-night unbearable unity of his books." (Wallace Fowlie in Clowns and Angels, 1943) Claudel was a brilliant pupil at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris, where he read during his last years Baudelaire and Verlaine. After studies at École des Sciences Politiques, Claudel joined the diplomatic service. In 1900 he stayed for a period at the Abbey of Solosmes and the Benedictine monastery of Ligugé as an oblate. Claudel had in the early 1900s a relationship with a married Polish woman, Rosalie Vetch; she appeared as "Ysé" in his poems and in the drama PARTAGE DE MIDI (Break of Noon), dealing with the theme of adultery. In 1906 Claudel married Sainte-Marie Perrin; they had five children. As a diplomat he spent the years between 1893 and 1934 mostly outside France, in - amongst others countries – America, China, Italy, Rio de Janeiro, and with the rank of ambassador, Tokyo and Washington (1927-1933), and finally in Brussels. In 1935 Claudel retired to his château in Brangues (Isêre). During World War II, Claudel served in the Ministry of Propaganda. Though an opponent of the Nazis, he managed to write a triumphal ode to Pétain in 1940, and then again one to De Gaulle in 1944, yet without being accused of opportunism. In 1947 Claudel was elected to the Académie Française; he had been rejected in 1935. On May 1, 1950, he was honored by the Pope, in an unprecedented public ceremony. Claudel died in Paris on February 23, in 1955. He maintained his full power as a writer until his death. In his youth Claudel read Mallarmé, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. He also attended Mallarme's Tuesday evening gatherings. For his verse, Claudel developed a long line – a cross between Walt Whitman and the King James Bible. Claudel assumed for the poet the godlike prerogative to "possess, his privilege being to give all things a name." Or as he wrote in 'La Ville' (1897): "You explain nothing O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable." As an intellectual pilgrim Claudel could be compared with Dante. Foremost among Claudel's poetic works is his CINQ GRANDES ODES (1910, Five Great Odes), a five-part poem, relating the poet's inspiration and his gift of describing with words the mystery of the universe. "He gives me the impression of a solidified cyclone..." (André Gide on Paul Claudel in Journal, 1905) Claudel's journalism and literary criticism drew also from his strong religious faith. His temperamental attacks on Richard Wagner are often quoted – Claudel admired Wagner's music but he disliked Teutonism and ridiculed the story of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Most of Claudel's criticism dealt with French literature, although he wrote about Chinese poetry and while serving in Tokyo he became acquainted with Japanese literature. Claudel admired Baudelaire, whom he saw as a confessed sinner doing lifelong penance Rimbaud's Les Illuminations had a profound effect on Claudel. He considered Rimbaud "not a poet, not even a man of letters. He is a prophet on whom the spirit has descended, not as on David, but as on Saul." As a playwright Claudel made his debut with TÊTE D'OR (1890), which reflected his own religious struggle. The protagonist, Simon Angel, aspires to conquer the earth, but meets at the Caucasus defeat and death. In 1908 he started his trilogy L'OTAGE (1911), LE PAIN DUR (1918), LE PÉRE HUMILIÉ (1920), in which he traced the degeneration of the formerly noble families. Partage de Midi, written in 1905, was not performed until 1948. LE SOULIER DE SATIN (1930), an epic drama in the Spanish tradition, was about the adventures of Rodrigue and his beloved, Doña Prouhèze. L'ANNONCE FAITE Á MARIE (1912, The Tidings Brought to Mary), set in fifteenth-century Champagne, contrasted two sisters, one dedicated to the flesh and the other to the spirit. For further reading: Die Kunstanschauung Paul Claudels by H. Dieckmann (1931); Le génie de Paul Claudel by J. Madaule (1933); Le drame de Paul Claudel by J. Madaule (1936); Études Claudéliennes by E. Friche (1943); Clowns and Angels by Wallace Fowlie (1943); Paul Claudel, poète musicien by J. Samson (1948); Introduction to Paul Claudel by M. Ryan (1951); Paul Claudel by L. Barjon (1953); The Poetic Drama of Paul Claudel by J. Chiari (1954); Paul Claudel by W. Fowlie (1957); Paul Claudel by S. Flumet (1958); Claudel plus intime by H. Mondoe (1960); The Inner Stage by R. Berchan (1966); Claudel's Immortal Heroes by H. Watson (1971); Claudel by A. Blanc (1973); Lecture psychanalytique de l'œuvre de Claudel by M. Malicet (1978); Paul Claudel by B.L. Knapp (1982); Beauty and Grace by A. Caranfa (1989); The Art Criticism of Paul Claudel by M.-T. Killiam (1990); The Empty Cross by C.J. Lambert (1990) - EUGÈNE IONESCO: "Claudel may perhaps be the least charitable Christian poet, because the comic characters he puts on the stage are too insignificant for anyone to take pity on." (from Cahiers Paul Claudel (1960, vol H, pp-26-27) - See also: Saint-John Perse, Colette Selected works:
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