Paul Claudel

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Paul Claudel
Verse drama
SpouseReine Sainte-Marie Perrin
RelativesCamille Claudel (sister)
Signature

Paul Claudel (French:

Catholicism
.

Early life

He was born in

lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
in 1881, when his parents moved to Paris.

Paul Claudel, age sixteen, by his sister, Camille Claudel, modeled in 1884 and cast in 1893

An unbeliever in his teenage years, Claudel experienced a conversion at age 18 on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing

Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He remained an active Catholic for the rest of his life. In addition, he discovered Arthur Rimbaud's book of poetry Illuminations. He worked towards "the revelation through poetry, both lyrical and dramatic, of the grand design of creation".[2]

Claudel studied at the

Paris Institute of Political Studies
.

Diplomat

The young Claudel considered entering a monastery, but instead had a career in the French diplomatic service, in which he served from 1893 to 1936.

Claudel was first vice-consul in New York (April 1893),

Benedictine Order was postponed.[3]

Claudel returned to China as vice-consul in Fuzhou (October 1900). He had a further break in France in 1905–6, when he married. He was one of a group of writers enjoying the support and patronage of Philippe Berthelot of the Foreign Ministry, who became a close friend; others were Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand and Saint-John Perse.[4][5] Because of his position in the Diplomatic Service, at the beginning of his career Claudel published either anonymously or under a pseudonym, "since permission to publish was needed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs".[6]:11

For that reason, Claudel remained rather obscure as an author to 1909, unwilling to ask permission to publish under his own name because the permission might not be granted.[6]:11 In that year, the founding group of the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), and in particular his friend André Gide, were keen to recognise his work. Claudel sent them, for the first issue, the poem Hymne du Sacre-Sacrement, to fulsome praise from Gide, and it was published under his name. He had not sought permission to publish, and there was a furore in which he was criticised. Attacks based on his religious views were in February also affecting the production of one of his plays.[6]:15–17 Berthelot's advice was to ignore the critics.[6]:18 note 42 The affair began a long collaboration of the NRF with Claudel.[6]:12

Claudel also wrote extensively about China, with a definitive version of his Connaissance de l'Est published in 1914 by Georges Crès and Victor Segalen.[7] In his final posting to China, he was consul in Tianjin (1906–1909).

In a series of European postings to the outbreak of

Frankfurt am Main (October 1911), and Hamburg (October 1913). At this period he was interested in the theatre festival at Hellerau, which put on one of his plays, and the ideas of Jacques Copeau.[8]

Claudel was in Rome (1915–1916), ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro (1917–1918), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1921–1927),[1] Washington, D.C. (1928–1933, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in 1933)[9] and Brussels (1933–1936).[1] While he served in Brazil during World War I he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, who wrote incidental music to a number of Claudel's plays.

Cover of Time Magazine (21 March 1927)

Later life

The château of Brangues, 2009 photograph

In 1935 Claudel retired to Brangues in Dauphiné, where he had bought the château in 1927. He still spent winters in Paris.[10][11]

During

Vichy regime, but disagreed with Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart's policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany.[13]

Close to home,

Statut des Juifs enacted by the regime.[14]
The Vichy authorities responded by having Claudel's house searched and keeping him under observation.

Claudel was elected to the

Académie française on 4 April 1946, replacing Louis Gillet. It followed a rejection in 1935, considered somewhat scandalous, when Claude Farrère was preferred.[15] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six different years.[16]

Work

Main article: List of works by Paul Claudel

Claudel often referred to Stéphane Mallarmé as his teacher.[17] His poetic has been seen as Mallarmé's, with the addition of the idea of the world as a revelatory religious text.[18] He rejected traditional prosody, developing the verset claudelien, his own form of free verse. It was within the orbit of experimentation by followers of Walt Whitman, impressive for Claudel, of whom Charles Péguy and André Spire were two others working on a form of verset.[19] The influence of the Latin Vulgate has been disputed by Jean Grosjean.[20]

The best known of his plays are Le Partage de Midi ("The Break of Noon", 1906), L'Annonce faite à Marie ("The Tidings Brought to Mary", 1910) focusing on the themes of sacrifice, oblation and sanctification through the tale of a young medieval French peasant woman who contracts

Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake", 1939) was an oratorio with music by Arthur Honegger.[21] The settings of his plays tended to be romantically distant, medieval France or sixteenth-century Spanish South America. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love. The complexity, structure and scale of the plays meant that a positive reception of Claudel's drama by audiences was long delayed.[22] His final dramatic work, L'Histoire de Tobie et de Sara, was first produced by Jean Vilar for the Festival d'Avignon in 1947.[23]

As well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote lyric poetry. A major example is the Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes, 1907).[24]

Views and reputation

Claudel was a conservative of the old school, sharing the

anti-clerical French Third Republic
.

His diaries make clear his consistent contempt for Nazism (condemning it as early as 1930 as "demonic" and "wedded to Satan," and referring to communism and Nazism as "Gog and Magog"). He wrote an open letter to the World Jewish Conference in 1935, condemning the Nuremberg Laws as "abominable and stupid." His support for Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces culminated in his victory ode addressed to de Gaulle when Paris was liberated in 1944.

The British poet W. H. Auden acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1939). Writing about Yeats, Auden says in lines 52–55 (from the originally published version, then excised by Auden in a later revision):

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well

George Steiner, in The Death of Tragedy, called Claudel one of the three "masters of drama" in the 20th century, with Henry de Montherlant and Bertolt Brecht.[25]

Family

While in China, Claudel had a long affair with Rosalie Vetch née Ścibor-Rylska (1871–1951), wife of Francis Vetch (1862–1944) and granddaughter of Hamilton Vetch. Claudel knew Francis Vetch through his diplomatic work, and had met Rosalie on a sea voyage out from Marseille to Hong Kong in 1900. She had four children, and was pregnant with Claudel's child when the affair ended in February 1905. She married in 1907 Jan Willem Lintner.[26][27][28][29] Louise Marie Agnes Vetch (1905–1996), born in Brussels, was Claudel's daughter by Rosalie.[30] Francis Vetch and Claudel had caught up with Rosalie at a railway station on the German border in 1905, a meeting at which Rosalie signalled that her relationship with Claudel was over.[31]

Claudel married on 15 March 1906 Reine Sainte-Marie Perrin (1880–1973). She was the daughter of Louis Sainte-Marie Perrin [fr] (1835–1917), an architect from Lyon known for completing the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière.[32][33] They had two sons and three daughters.[34]

Treatment of his sister

Camille Claudel

Claudel committed his sister Camille to a psychiatric hospital in March 1913, where she remained for the last 30 years of her life, visiting her seven times in those 30 years.[35] Records show that while she did have mental lapses, she was clear-headed while working on her art. Doctors tried to convince the family that she need not be in the institution, but still they kept her there.

The story forms the subject of a novel by Michèle Desbordes, La Robe bleue, The Blue Dress.[36] Jean-Charles de Castelbajac wrote a song "La soeur de Paul" for Mareva Galanter, 2010.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Paul Claudel, Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  2. ^ "Paul Claudel, French author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  3. ISBN 978-2-913322-48-6
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-7876-8139-5
    .
  5. ISBN 978-3-487-15243-1
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-2-600-03573-6
    .
  7. ISBN 978-1-883479-13-8
    .
  8. ISBN 978-2-600-03573-6
    .
  9. U.S. Department of State
    . 1 March 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
  10. ISBN 978-1-4094-8148-5
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-8146-3551-3
    .
  12. ^ Majault, Joseph (1966). Littérature de notre temps (in French). Vol. I. Casterman. p. 88.
  13. ISBN 978-0-8143-3848-3
    .
  14. ISBN 978-1-4587-3170-8
    .
  15. ^ "Paul Claudel, Académie française". www.academie-francaise.fr.
  16. ^ Nobel Prize.org: "Paul Claudel (Nomination Database)".
  17. JSTOR 26279825
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-19-974139-7
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-4008-5454-7
    .
  20. ISBN 978-2-251-60601-9
    .
  21. ISBN 978-0-8078-3778-8
    .
  22. ISBN 978-0-19-957419-3
    .
  23. ISBN 0192115464
    .
  24. ^ Hellerstein, Nina S. (1990). Mythe et structure dans les Cinq grandes odes de Paul Claudel (in French). Presses Univ. Franche-Comté. p. 27.
  25. ISBN 978-0-300-06916-7
    .
  26. JSTOR 23890010
    .
  27. ISBN 9782957766802
    .
  28. L'Obs. Archived from the original
    on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  29. ISBN 978-88-6780-435-1
    .
  30. JSTOR 23890010
    .
  31. JSTOR 23890010
    .
  32. ^ Ayral-Clause, Odile, Camille Claudel, A Life, pp. 167–168
  33. ISBN 978-2-07-073122-0
    .
  34. ^ Kohler, Sue A. (1978). Sixteenth Street Architecture. Commission of Fine Arts. p. 443.
  35. ^ Ayral-Clause, Odile, p. 217, 222, 225, 242, 245, 250
  36. ^ Jean-Baptiste Harang (1 April 2004). "Folle Claudel". Libération. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 8 May 2021.

Sources

External links
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