Paul Claudel , born the August 6th 1868 with Villeneuve-on-Fère in the Aisne and dead the February 23rd 1955 with Paris, is a Diplomate, Poète, Dramaturge and Essayiste French, which was member of the French Academy.

Biography

Paul Claudel discovers Arthur Rimbaud by the Illuminations . He qualified this young poet of “mystic in a wild state”, (he will leave a bright trace of this passage in Tête of gold ).

Paul Claudel, according to his dires, bathed, like all young people of his age, in the bagne materialist of the scientism of the time. He converts himself with Catholicism into assisting of curious with vespers with Notre-Dame de Paris with the Christmas 1886. “I was upright, close to the second pillar, on the right, on the side of the sacristy. The children of the Control were singing what I known later to be the Magnificat. In one moment my heart was touched and I believed. ” Its catholic faith consequently becomes essential in its work which will sing creation: “Just as God said things as they are, the repeated poet that they are. ” This communion of Claudel with God thus gave rise to nearly four thousand pages of texts. It professes there a true partnership between God and his creatures, in its mystery and its dramaturgy, such as for example in the satin Shoe and the made Advertisement with Marie .

Diplomat, it exerts everywhere in the world.

Paul Claudel was elected with the French Academy in 1946, with the armchair 13, succeeding Louis Gillet.

He was the younger brother of the sculptrice Camille Claudel. Of provincial middle-class origin, Paul Claudel was born with Villeneuve-on-Fère, in 1868, on the borders of Champagne and the Ardennes. Of catholic family, the state education makes him lose the faith that it will find, at the age eighteen years, the day of Christmas, on December 25th, 1886, in the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, at the time of a sudden illumination. Its life of diplomat, of 1893 to 1936, the conduit to be remained almost constantly abroad in various countries, French Consul to Prague, Frankfurt, Hamburg, ambassador plenipotentiary in Rio de Janeiro, in Copenhagen, ambassador of France with Tōkyō, in Washington, finally in Brussels, of 1933 to 1935, where its brilliant career will finish.

Its in parallel led literary life will open out glorieusement, at the end of its role of diplomat, in its property of Brangues, with the borders of Savoy and the Dauphine one. Its designs, in close connection with the religious ideas, encourage it to specify the role of the poet whose language must translate the fundamental unit of the world of the things and the spirit, corresponding to a true knowledge abolishing contradiction object-subject. It is to say the undeniable philosophical dimension of its work, which remains to be redécouvrir under this aspect.

It is buried in the park of the castle of Brangues; its tomb carries this curious epitaph: “Here the remainders and the seed of Paul Claudel rest. ”

Its works

; Theater

  • 1890: Head of gold (first version)
  • 1892: the Young girl Violaine (first version)
  • 1893: the City (first version)
  • 1894: the Exchange and Head of Gold (second version)
  • 1901: the Young girl Violaine (second version)
  • 1901: Rest of the seventh day
  • 1911: the Hostage , drama in three acts
  • 1912: made Advertisement with Marie
  • 1917: the Bear and the Moon
  • 1918: Dry bread , drama in three acts
  • 1919: Choéphores d' Eschyle
  • 1920: the Father humiliated , drama in four acts
  • 1920: Euménides d' Eschyle
  • 1920: Protée , satirical drama in two acts (first version)
  • 1929: the Shoe of the satin or worst is not always sure , action Spanish in four days
  • 1933: the Book of Christophe Colomb , lyric drama in two parts
  • 1939: Jeanne d' Arc with roughing-hew
  • 1939: the Wisdom or the Parabola of the destiny
  • 1942: History of Tobie and Sara , morality in three acts
  • 1949: Protée , satirical drama in two acts (second version)
  • 1948: Division of midday , drama (second version)

; Poetry

; Tests

  • 1928: Positions and proposals, volume I
  • 1929: the black Bird in the rising sun
  • 1934: Posirions and proposals, volume II
  • 1935: Conversations in the Loir-et-Cher
  • 1936: Figures and parabolas
  • 1940: Contacts and circumstances
  • 1942: Lord, learn how to us to request
  • 1946: Œoeil listens to
  • 1949: Move
  • 1950: a voice on Israel
  • 1951: the Gospel of Isaïe
  • 1952: Paul Claudel questions the Apocalypse
  • 1954: Paul Claudel questions the Song of Songs
  • 1956: Conversation on Jean Root
  • 1957: Under the sign of the dragon
  • 1958: Which does not suffer… Reflections on the social problem
  • 1958: Presence and prophecy
  • 1959: the Rose and the rosary
  • 1959: Three holy figures for current time

; Memories, newspaper

  • 1954: Memories impromptu. Forty and one discussions with Jean Amrouche
  • 1968: Newspaper. Volume I: 1904-1932
  • 1969: Newspaper. Volume II: 1933-1955

; Correspondence

  • 1949: Correspondence of Paul Claudel and André Gide (1899-1926)
  • 1951: Correspondence of Paul Claudel and Andre Suarès (1904-1938)
  • 1952: Correspondence of Paul Claudel with Gabriel Frizeau and Francis James (1897-1938) , accompanied by letters of Jacques River
  • 1961: Correspondence Paul Claudel and Darius Milhaud (1912-1953)
  • 1964: Correspondence of Paul Claudel and Lugné-Poe (1910-1928). Claudel man of theater
  • 1966: Correspondences with Chip, Dullin, Jouvet. Claudel man of theater
  • 1974: Correspondence of Jean-Louis Barrault and Paul Claudel
  • 1984: Correspondence of Paul Claudel and Jacques River (1907-1924)
  • 1990: Letters of Paul Claudel in Elisabeth Sainte-Marie Perrin and Audrey Parr
  • 1995: diplomatic Correspondence. Tokyo (1921-1927)
  • 1995: Correspondence of Paul Claudel and Gaston Gallimard (1911-1954)
  • 1998: the Poet and the Bible , volume 1,1910-1946, Gallimard, coll “White”
  • 2002: the Poet and the Bible , volume 2,1945-1955, Gallimard, coll “White”
  • 2005: Correspondence of Paul Claudel with the ecclesiastics of his time. Volume I, sacrament of the world and the intention of glory , published by Dominique Millet-Gerard, Paris: Champion, coll “Library of the correspondences, memories and newspapers” n° 19,2005,655 p.
  • 2005 : a lost and found Friendship: correspondence of Paul Claudel and Romain Roland , edition established, annotated and presented by Gerard Antoine and Bernard Duchatelet, Paris: Gallimard, coll “books of the NRF”, 2005,479 p.

Decoration

  • Grand Cross of the Legion of honor

Quotations

  • “the tolerance, there are houses for that”, says it one day to Jules Renard, but this sentence is also allotted to Georges Clémenceau.
  • “the Writing is not the property of the specialists, it is a public garden where all the Christians have the right to walk. ”
  • “… why did I do all that, which God ordered me, all that nobody reads, in what nobody is interested, even less the Christians and the priests that the others? ”
  • On a book of Claudel: “This thing makes me request. ”
  • “If the order is the pleasure of the reason, the disorder is the delight of imagination. ”
  • “do not believe those which say to you that youth is made to have fun, youth is not made for the pleasure, it is made for heroism. ”

Anecdote

  • In 1942, Paul Claudel protests near the archbishop of Paris against the solemnity of funerals of Alfred Baudrillart, given to Notre-Dame with “the follower of Cauchon”.

Random links:Snowpark | District of Bourges | The buckled Woman | Peter Postelmans | Christian Daniel Rauch