Knowledge of the East

Connaissance of the East (1896) is a collection of prose poems of Paul Claudel, almost made up all in China between July 1895 and October 1899, when Claudel is named temporary consul with Shanghai.

The poems of this collection are grouped in two unequal parts. This collection, published in 1900 at Mercure de France, had as an end to make it possible to the newcomer to learn how to know this Eastern European country where it had been just established, to make knowledge with him. From there these texts on what we would call today the Chinese culture: gardens, theater, ideograms… There too descriptions of trees exotic, animals, or landscapes. August 17th, 1913, Claudel gives to Victor Segalen, which it had met with Beijing, the authorization to republish its prose poems. The pages of this republication printed on only one face, folded into two and were bent with the Eastern way. The two volumes were presented in a covered silk cassette blue and equipped with miters.

Extract

RICE

" It is the tooth which we put at the ground even with iron that we there orderlies, and already our bread eats there with the way in which we will eat it. Sun on our premises in the Northern cold, which it puts the shoulder to the wheel; it is him which matures our field, as it is the fire very with naked which cooks our wafer and which roasts our meat. We open of a strong plowshare in the solid ground the line where is born the crust which we cut of our knife and which we crush between our mâchoires."

Knowledge of the East. Poetic work, Gallimard, Pleiad, p. 115 - D.R.

Bond

: http://www.paul-claudel.net

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