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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 Paul 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. The Nine Muses, and in the midst of them Terpsichore! 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. Paul's mother, the former Louise
Cerceaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests.
"Under the middle-class appearance of a civil servant's wife, she was a
peasant and nothing but a peasant, knowing that every life is a cross.
And yet among her ancestors there were aristocrats as well as
commoners. . . . Pride of lineage, taste for service, and attachment to
the honor mingled in her with a certain vulgarity of insticts, worship
of money and material possessions, resourcefulness, lack of undue
scruples, and a certain rustic, stolid and joyous wholesomeness." (Paul Claudel: The Man and the Mystic by Louis Chaigne, translated from the French by Pierre de Fontnouvelle, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1961, p. 21) The family moved in 1870 to Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, and young Paul was
sent for schooling to the Sisters of Chistian Doctrine. Six years later
the family moved to Nogent-sur-Seine. At the age of 18 Paul Claudel had a vision, which changed totally his view of the world: while listening to the church choir on Christmas Day in Notre Dame Cathedral, he was overwhelmed by a sense of the "eternal childhood of God". (The Poet as Believer: A Theological Study of Paul Claudel by Aidan Nichols, London and New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 5) He heard, as a voice from above: "God exists. He is there." In the following years, the Bible became the center of Claudel's spiritual development. Claudel saw that God is the supreme architect of the world, and God has chosen man in the central place in the cosmic drama. 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 of 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: Studies in Modern French Literature, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943, p. 112) 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 (1871-1951), the wife of a crook; she appeared as "Ysé" in his poems and in the drama Partage de midi (Break of Noon), dealing with the theme of adultery. Claudel had met her on board the Ernest-Simmons on his way to his diplomatic post in China. Rosalie became pregnant and went back to France, to give birth to their daughter, Louise. Rosalie was abandoned by her second husband. Claudel, who had nearly abandoned his faith, met her again years later. In 1906 Claudel married Reine Sainte-Marie Perrin; the daughter of a
church architect. Their first child was born in China, where Claudel
worked as a consular representative of France. The great tragédienne
Eleonora Duse was the godmother of their last, fifth child. During WWI
Claudel censured in the war ministry newspapers and telegrams. As a
diplomat he spent the years between 1893 and 1934 mostly outside
France, and with the rank of ambassador, in Tokyo and Washington, D.C,
and finally in Brussels. In 1935 Claudel retired to his
château in Brangues (Isêre). Well known as a conservative minded
Catholic, his support for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War was
no surprise to his colleagues. In La Persecution Religieuse en Espagne (1937) Claudel wrote of the martyrdom of the Spanish priests and nuns during the war. Marshal Pétain voted for Claudel's
election to the Académie Française in 1935, but he was defeated by Claude
Farrère, an admirer of Mussolini. "There are times when disgust turns
to bile and fills your mouth: Lecomte! Bertrand! Prévost! Farrère! What
a crusade against Claudel!" said François Mauriac. (quoted in The French Writers' War, 1940-1953
by Gisèle Sapiro, translated by Vanessa Doriott Anderson and Dorrit
Cohn, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014, p. 176) During World War II, Claudel served in the Ministry of
Propaganda, but he believed that Pétain's policy would ruin France. Basically, his main literary
interest was in a spiritual interpretation of Scripture. As a director of Gnôme et Rhone, which provided plane
engines for the German war effort, he received percentages of the
company's earnings. (The Parisian Stage during the Occupation, 1940-1944: A Theatre of Resistance? by Edward Boothroyd, University of Birmingham, 2009, p. 232) When his play Le Soulier de satin (1929) was staged at the Comédie-Française in 1943, a number of Germans attended the performances and applauded
for Claudel. The reviews were complimentary. "I suppose my piece to be
played, let us say, on a Shrove Tuesday—at four o'clock in the
afternoon. I imagine a great hall, frowsty from a previous audience,
invaded again by the public and filled with the buzz of conversation.
Through the folding doors is heard the dull chatter of a well-fed
orchestra, performing in the foyer. Another little reedy orchestra in
the hall—takes delight in mimicking the noises of the public, leading
them and giving them, little by little, a sort of rhythm and a kind of
form." ('Author's Preface,' in The Satin Slipper,
translated by John O'Connor, Providence, Rhode Island: Cluny Media,
2020, pp. xvii-xviii; originally published by Sheed & Ward,
England, and Yale University Press, U.S.A., 1931) Although an opponent of the Nazis, he managed to write a triumphal ode to Pétain in 1940, describing him as the national savior, and then an ode to De Gaulle, published in the Figaro littéraire in September 1944, yet without being accused of opportunism. Moreover, he protested against the Vichy government's treatment of the Jews and condemned the execution of Communist hostages by the Germans. Claudel's admiration for Pétain was short-lived. "He took me in [Il m'a eu]," Claudel explained after the war. (Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews by David Pryce-Jones, New York: Encounter Books, 2008, p. 58) In 1946 Claudel was elected to the Académie Française; he was 78. On May 1, 1950, he was honored by the Pope, in
an unprecedented public ceremony. Paul Claudel died in Paris on February 23,
in 1955. He maintained his full power as a writer until his death, in
spite of increasing deafness, insomnia and sciatica. His final words
were allegedly: "Docteur, croyez-vous que c'est la saucisson?" (Doctor,
do you think it could have been the sausage?) 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. "As a young man he looked like a nail,
now he looks like a sledge-hammer," wrote André Gide on Claudel in 1905
in his Journal. "He gives me the impression of a solidified cyclone. When
he talks, it is as if something were released within him, he proceeds
by audden affirmations and maintains a hostile tone even when you share
his opinion." (The Journals of Andre Gidé, translated from the French, with an introduction and notes, by Justin O'Brien, London: Secker & Warburg, 1955, p. 159) 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. His artistic criticism was collected in L'œil écoute (1946). 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. 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, Golden Head), 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, The Hostage), Le Pain dur (1918), Le Père humilié (1920, The Humiliation of the Father), in which he traced the degeneration of the formerly noble families. Partage de Midi (Break of Noon), written in 1905, was not performed until 1948. Le Soulier de satin
(The Satin Slipper), an epic drama in the Spanish
tradition, was about the adventures of Rodrigue and his beloved, Doña
Prouhèze. Due to its lenght, the play was considered unproducible, but
in 1942 Jean-Louis Barrault persuaded Claudel
to rewrite the text for stage presentation. The production was a huge
success. Many of Claudel's plays dealt with relationship between the material and spiritual worlds. L'Annonce faite à 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 Herbert Dieckmann (1931); Le génie de Paul Claudel by Jacques Madaule (1933); Le drame de Paul Claudel by Jacques Madaule (1936); Études Claudéliennes by Ernest Friche (1943); 'Paul Claudel: The Metaphysics of a Poet,' in Clowns and Angels: Studies in Modern French Literature by Wallace Fowlie (1943); Paul Claudel, poète musicien: précédé d'un argument et d'un dialogue de Paul Claudel by Joseph Samson (1948); Introduction to Paul Claudel by Mary Ryan (1951); Paul Claudel by Louis Barjon (1953); The Poetic Drama of Paul Claudel by Joseph Chiari (1954); Paul Claudel by Wallace Fowlie (1957); Claudel by Stanislas Flumet (1958); Claudel plus intime by Henri Mondoe (1960); The Inner Stage: An Essay of the Conflict of Vocations in the Early Work of Paul Claudel by Richard Berchan (1966); Claudel's Immortal Heroes: A Choice of Deaths by Harold Watson (1971); Paul Claudel and Saint-John Perse: Parallels and Contrasts by Ruth Naomi Horry (1971); Claudel by André Blanc (1973); Lecture psychanalytique de l'œuvre de Claudel by Michel Malicet (1978); Paul Claudel: The Man and the Mystic by Louis Chaigne (1978); Paul Claudel by Bettina L. Knapp (1982); Claudel: Beauty and Grace by Angelo Caranfa (1989); The Art Criticism of Paul Claudel by Marie-Thérèse Killiam (1990); Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel by Moya Longstaffe (1999); La passion de Claudel: la vie de Rosalie Scibor-Rylska by Thérèse Mourlevat (2001); 'Claudel, Paul (1868-1955)' by Joseph E. Becker, in The Facts on File Companion to World Poetry: 1900 to the Present, ed. by R. Victoria Arana (2008); The Parisian Stage during the Occupation, 1940-1944: A Theatre of Resistance? by Edward Boothroyd (Ph.D. thesis, The University of Birmingham, 2009); The Poet as Believer: A Theological Study of Paul Claudel by Aidan Nichols (2013); Camille et Paul Claudel: lignes de partage by Marie-Victoire Nantet (2020); Paul Claudel: "je suis le contradictoire": biographie by Claude Pérez (2021); Paul Claudel et le Moyen Âge by Jean-François Poisson-Gueffier (2022) - 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." (Cahiers Paul Claudel, 1960, Vol. H, pp. 26-27) Suom.: Paul Claudelin runoja suomeksi, käänt. Tuomo Lahdelma ja Taimi Tanskanen (1985) Selected works:
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