Cover of Time Magazine(March 21, 1927)

Paul Claudel (August 6, 1868 – February 23, 1955) was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholic faith. August 6 is the 218th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (219th in leap years), with 147 days remaining. ... 1868 (MDCCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Friday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... February 23 is the 54th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The poor poet A poet is a person who writes poetry. ... A dramatist is an author of dramatic compositions, usually plays. ... This page is about negotiations; for the board game, see Diplomacy (game). ... A sculpture is a three-dimensional object, which for the purposes of this article is man-made and selected for special recognition as art. ... Camille Claudel (1864-1943) Camille Claudel (December 8, 1864 – October 19, 1943) was a French sculptor and graphic artist. ... Verse drama is any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama. ...

Life

He was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, into a family of farmers and gentry. His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions. His mother, the former Louise Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. Having spent his first years in Champagne, he studied at the lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1881, when his parents moved to Paris. An unbeliever in his teenage years, he experienced a sudden conversion at the age of eighteen on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He would remain a strong Catholic for the rest of his life. He studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). Villeneuve-sur-Fère is a commune of the Aisne département, in northern France. ... Location of the Champagne province in France Champagne is one of the most traditional provinces of France, a region of France that is best known for the production of the sparkling white wine that bears the regions name. ... In France, secondary education is divided into two schools: the collège (IPA: ) (somewhat comparable to U.S. junior high school) for the first four years directly following primary school; the lycée (IPA: ) (comparable to a U.S. high school) for the next three years. ... Bar-le-Duc is a town in northeastern France, in the Meuse département, of which it is the préfecture (capital). ... The Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in Paris is one of the most famous lycées providing preparatory classes for grandes écoles. ... Year 1881 (MDCCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgies of the canonical hours. ... Notre Dame de Paris: Western Facade For the novel by Victor Hugo, see The Hunchback of Notre Dame. ... The Paris Institute of Political Studies (French: Institut détudes politiques de Paris), often referred to as Sciences-Po (pronounced see-ahns po), is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. ... Sciences Po is a french abbreviation of sciences politiques, or political science, which is a division of the social sciences. ...

The young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York (April 1893), and later in Boston (December 1893). He was French consul in China (1895–1909), including consul in Shanghai (June 1895), and vice-consul in Fuzhou (October 1900), in Prague (December 1909), Frankfurt am Main (October 1911), Hamburg (October 1913), ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro (1916), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1922–1928), Washington, DC (1928–1933) and Brussels (1933-1936). While he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. (His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, later world-famous as a composer.) In 1930, Claudel received a LL.D. from Bates College. Year 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... NY redirects here. ... Nickname: Location in Massachusetts, USA Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Suffolk County Government  - Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D) Area  - City  89. ... A consulate (or consular office) is a form of diplomatic mission in charge of matters related to individual people and businesses, in other words issues outside inter-governmental diplomacy. ... Year 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Year 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ...   (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Fu-chou; BUC: Hók-ciÅ­; EFEO: Fou-Tcheou; also seen as Foochow or Fuchow) is the provincial seat and the largest prefecture-level city of Fujian (福建) province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Year 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, but a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ... Nickname: Motto: Praga Caput Rei publicae Location within the Czech Republic Coordinates: Country Czech Republic Region Capital City of Prague Founded 9th century Government  - Mayor Pavel Bém Area  - City 496 km²  (191. ... Frankfurt am Main [ˈfraŋkfʊrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hessen and the fifth largest city of Germany. ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... Location Coordinates Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE6 First Mayor Ole von Beust (CDU) Governing party CDU Votes in Bundesrat 3 (from 69) Basic statistics Area  755 km² (292 sq mi) Population 1,754,317 (11/2006)[1]  - Density 2,324 /km² (6,018... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Location of Rio de Janeiro Coordinates: Country Brazil Region Southeast State Rio de Janeiro Government  - Mayor Cesar Maia (PFL) Area  - City 1,260 km²  (486. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... For other uses, see Copenhagen (disambiguation). ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ...   , literally Eastern capital) is a unique subnational administrative region of Japan with characteristics of both a prefecture and a city. ... Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... Nickname: Map showing the location of Brussels in Belgium Coordinates: Country Belgium Region Brussels-Capital Region Founded 979 Founded (Region) June 18, 1989 Government  - Mayor (Municipality) Freddy Thielemans Area  - Region 162 km²  (62. ... Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (IPA: ) (September 4, 1892 – June 22, 1974) was a French composer and teacher. ... For other uses, see Bates (disambiguation), Bates (surname) Bates College is a private liberal arts college, founded in 1855 by abolitionists, located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. ...

In 1936 he retired to his château in Brangues (Isère). Château de Chenonceau A rural château in France. ... Isère is a département in the east of France named after the Isère River. ...

Claudel married Sainte-Marie Perrin on March 15, 1906. March 15 is the 74th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (75th in leap years). ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...

Work

In his youth Claudel was heavily influenced by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and the Symbolists. Like them, he was horrified by modern materialist views of life. Unlike most of them, his response was to embrace Catholicism. All his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on God's all-governing grace and love. Rimbaud redirects here. ... La mort du fossoyeur by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of Symbolist motifs. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ...

Claudel wrote in a unique verse style. He rejected traditional metrics in favour of long, luxuriant, unrhymed lines of free verse, the so-called verset claudelien, influenced by the Latin psalms of the Vulgate. His language and imagery was often lush, mystical, exhilarating, consciously 'poetical'; the settings of his plays tended to be romantically distant, medieval France or sixteenth-century Spanish South America, yet spiritually all-encompassing, transcending the level of material realism. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power God's infinite love for humanity. His plays were often extraordinarily long, sometimes stretching to eleven hours, and pressed the realities of material staging to their limits. Yet they were physically staged, at least in part, to rapturous acclaim, and are not merely closet dramas. The most famous of his plays are Le Partage de Midi ("The Break of Noon", 1906), L'Annonce Faite a Marie ("The Tidings Brought to Mary", 1910) focussing on the themes of sacrifice, oblation and sanctification through the tale of a young medieval French peasant woman who contracts leprosy, and Le Soulier de Satin ("The Satin Slipper", 1931), his deepest exploration of human and divine love and longing set in the Spanish empire of the siglo de oro, which was staged at the Comedie Francaise in 1943. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music, most notably "Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher" ("Joan of Arc at the Stake", 1939), an "opera-oratario" with music by Arthur Honegger. The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century version in Latin, partly revised and partly translated by Jerome on the orders of Pope Damasus I in 382. ... A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. ... For the malady found in the Hebrew Bible, see the article Tzaraath. ... The siglo de oro (a Spanish-language phrase meaning century of gold or golden century) is a term that refers to one of the following: The great age of Spanish wealth and power, roughly from the early-to-mid-16th century to early-to-mid-17th century. ... The Com die-Fran aise or Th tre fran ais is the only state theater in France. ... Jeanne dArc au Bûcher is an oratorio by Arthur Honegger originally commissioned by Ida Rubinstein. ... Arthur Honegger in 1921. ...

As well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes, 1907).

Reputation

Claudel was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and remains so today. His devout Catholicism and his right-wing political views, both unfashionable stances among many of his intellectual peers, made him, and continue to make him, unpopular in many circles. His address of a poem ("Paroles au Marechal", "Words to the Marshal") to Marshal Petain after the defeat of France in 1940, commending Petain for picking up and salvaging France's broken, wounded body, has been unflatteringly remembered, though it is less a paean to Petain than a patriotic lament over the condition of France. As a Catholic, he could not avoid a certain sense of bitter satisfaction at the fall of the anti-clerical French Third Republic. However, accusations that he was a collaborationist based on the 1940 poem ignore the fact that support for Marshal Petain and the surrender was, in the catastrophic atmosphere of defeat, emotional collapse and exhaustion in 1940, widespread throughout the French populace (witness the large majority vote in favour of Petain and the dissolution of the Third Republic in the French Parliament in 1940, with support stretching across the political spectrum). Claudel's diaries make clear his consistent contempt to Nazism (condemning it as early as 1930 as "demonic" and "wedded to Satan", and referring to Communism and Nazism as "Gog and Magog"), and his attitude to the Vichy regime quickly hardened into opposition. World War II and Vichy France After the fall of France during World War II, in the spring of 1940, the Chamber of Deputies appointed Pétain as Prime Minister of France and granted him extraordinary powers. ... Anti-clericalism is a movement that opposes religious interference into public and political life and more generally the encroachment of religion in the citizens lives. ... The French Third Republic, (in French, La Troisième République, sometimes written as La IIIe République) (1870/75-10 July 1940) was the governing body of France between the Second French Empire and the Vichy Regime. ... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... The tradition of Gog and Magog begins in the Hebrew Bible with the reference to Magog, son of Japheth, in the Book of Genesis and continues in cryptic prophecies in the Book of Ezekiel, which are echoed in the Book of Revelation and in the Quran. ...

Despite sharing in his earlier years in the old-fashioned anti-semitism of conservative France, his response to the radical racialist Nazi version was unequivocal; he had written an open letter to the World Jewish Conference in 1935 condemning the Nuremberg Laws as "abominable and stupid". The sister of his daughter in law had married a Jew, Paul-Louis Weiller, who was arrested by the Vichy government in October 1940. Claudel went to Vichy to intercede for him, to no avail; luckily Weiller managed to escape (with Claudel's assistance, the authorities suspected) and flee to New York. Claudel made known his anger at the Vichy government's anti-Jewish legislation, courageously writing a published letter to the Chief Rabbi, Israel Schwartz, in 1941 to express ""the disgust, horror, and indignation that all decent Frenchmen and especially Catholics feel in respect of the injustices, the despoiling, all the ill treatment of which our Jewish compatriots are now the victims...Israel is always the eldest son of the promise [of God], as it is today the eldest son of suffering." The Vichy authorities responded by having Claudel's house searched and keeping him under observation. His support for de Gaulle and the Free French forces culminated in his victory ode addressed to de Gaulle when Paris was liberated in 1944. NY redirects here. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Claudel, a conservative of the old school, was clearly not a fascist. The French writers who were attracted by, and collaborated with, the Nazi "New Order" in Europe, much younger men like Celine and Drieu la Rochelle, tended to come from a very different background to Claudel's, nihilists, ex-dadaists, and futurists rather than old-fashioned Catholics (neither of the other two major French Catholic writers, Francois Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, were supporters of the Nazi occupation or the Vichy regime). This article deals with conservatism as a political philosophy. ... Céline Louis_Ferdinand Destouches as Céline (May 27, 1894 - July 1, 1961) was a French writer, physician and nihilist. ... Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle (January 3, 1893 – March 15, 1945) was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris. ... Nihilism, literally, means belief in nothing. ... Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. ... Futurists is a term often used to describe management consultants who advise corporations on a wide range of global trends, risk management and potential market opportunities. ... François Mauriac (October 11, 1885 - September 1, 1970) was a French author. ... Georges Bernanos (February 20, 1888 – July 5, 1948) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to a certain defeatism that led, in his view, to Frances defeat in 1940. ...

An interesting parallel to Claudel, for Anglophones, is T.S. Eliot, whose later political and religious views were similar to Claudel's. As with Eliot, even those (including the majority, no doubt, of the modern and postmodern intelligentsia) who dislike Claudel's religious and political beliefs, have generally admitted his genius as a writer. The British poet W.H. Auden, at that time an agnostic left-winger, acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his famous poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"(1939). Writing about Yeats, Auden says in lines 52-55: "Time that with this strange excuse/Pardoned Kipling and his views,/And will pardon Paul Claudel,/Pardons him for writing well." Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ...

For believing Catholics, in contrast, far from his religious views needing 'pardoning', Claudel must claim to rank as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century in any language, because of the extraordinary artistic power and beauty with which he presents a Catholic worldview.

Paul Claudel was elected at the Académie française on April 4, 1946. The Académie française In the French educational system an académie LAcadémie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. ... April 4 is the 94th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (95th in leap years). ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...

External links

• http://www.paul-claudel.net/ (in French)
• http://www.poorclarestmd.org/claudels.htm (an English translation of some verse by Claudel, giving an impression of the verset claudelien)
• Review of a film version of "Le Soulier de Satin" ("The Satin Slipper"), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6D8153BF937A2575AC0A962958260

Bibliography

• Thody, P.M.W. "Paul Claudel", in The Fontana Biographical Companion to Modern Thought, eds. Bullock, Alan and Woodings, R.B., Oxford, 1983.
• http://www.paul-claudel.net/
• Ashley, Tim "Evil Genius", The Guardian, August 14th, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,1282766,00.html
• Price-Jones, David, "Jews, Arabs and French Diplomacy: A Special Report", Commentary, May 22, 2005, http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/15043
• Britannica Student Encyclopedia, "Paul Claudel", http://0-www.search.eb.com.library.uor.edu/ebi/article-9319794?query=salvation&ct=ebi