Paul Claudel

Paul Claudel (1927)

Paul Claudel (born August 6, 1868 in Villeneuve-sur-Fère , † February 23, 1955 in Paris ) was a French writer , poet and diplomat .

life and work

Paul Louis Charles Marie Claudel grew up in rural Picardy as the son of an enlightened , positivist -thinking cadastral official and the younger brother of the later sculptor Camille Claudel, and spent his last school years at the traditional Parisian high school Louis-le-Grand . At the age of 18 he had a religious awakening at Christmas Day Vespers in Paris ' Notre-Dame Cathedral (when the boys' choir sang the Magnificat ) and was henceforth a devout Catholic and became a Benedictine oblate .

After completing his studies at the École libre des Sciences politiques ( Sciences po ), during which he wrote poetry and belonged to the Mallarmé circle , he thought of studying Far Eastern languages. However, he then applied for training as a diplomat in the consular service, in which he worked diligently until his retirement. From 1893 to 1895 he was a diplomat in the USA, from 1895 to 1909 in China ( Shanghai , Fuzhou , Peking , Tientsin ) and then in Prague , each for a shorter time in Germany, Brazil and Denmark. 1921–27 he worked in Japan, then again in the USA (1927–33) and finally in Belgium.

Despite his eventful existence, Claudel's very extensive literary oeuvre, for which he reserved the first few hours of his working day, includes poetry, philosophical-essayistic subjects - heavily influenced by his stays in the Far East - and above all plays. He wrote this in a pathetic-lyrical language and renounced an exciting plot. The focus is mostly on the motif of self-sacrifice in the sense of a religiously inspired morality .

The best known and most performed piece is the 1911-12 wrote, in the Middle Ages, playing L'Annonce faite à Marie (Annunciation). The trilogy L'Otage (Die Geisel) 1909, Le Pain dur (The hard bread) 1914 and Le Père humilié (The humiliated father) in 1916, spanning almost six decades (from 1812 to 1869), is also considered to be somewhat famous the play Le Soulier de satin (The silk shoe) 1925, set in the Spanish 16th century , an immensely long drama presenting the sum of Claudel's thinking, which was only released in 1943 in a version that he and the director Jean-Louis Barrault did Performance came. Claudel appeared as a librettist in the dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honegger and with several operatic texts for Darius Milhaud .

His works were influenced by the work of the philosopher and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Henri Bergson .

Claudel is counted to the Renouveau catholique . From the 1920s to the 1940s he was highly valued in the Catholic milieu, but also highly valued by other readers and by literary criticism and was rewarded in 1946 with admission to the Académie Française . He was also the bearer of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor . In 1932 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . After the Second World War it was gradually forgotten.

Works

• 1886 Pour la messe des hommes
• 1887 L'Endormie
• 1887 Le sombre may
• 1888 Une mort prématurée
• 1889 Dans l'île de Wight
• 1890 Tête d'or (1st version)
• 1893 La Ville (1st version)
• 1895 verse l'exil
• 1900 Connaissance de l'Est (1st partie)
• 1900 L'Échange (1st version)
• 1901 L'Arbre
• 1901 Tête d'or (2nd version)
• 1901 La jeune fille Violaine (1ère version)
• 1901 La Ville (2nd version)
• 1901 Le repos du septième jour
• 1903 Développement de l'Église
• 1904 Connaissance du temps
• 1905 Poèmes de la Sexagésime
• 1906 Partage de Midi
• 1907 L'Art poétique
• 1907 Processionnal pour saluer le siècle nouveau
• 1910 Cinq grandes odes
• 1911 L'Otage
• 1911 Sous le signe du dragon
• 1912 L'annonce faite à Marie
• 1913 Trois poèmes de guerre
• 1913 Corona benignitatis anni Dei
• 1913 La jolie foi de mon enfance
• 1913 Ma conversion
• 1913 Protée
• 1914 L'offrande au temps
• 1915 La nuit de Noël 1914
• 1916 Autres poèmes pendant la guerre
• 1917 L'homme et son désir
• 1918 Le pain major
• 1919 La messe là-bas
• 1919 L'Ours et la Lune
• 1920 Le Père humilié
• 1921 L'ode jubilaire
• 1922 La femme et son ombre (1st version)
• 1925 Feuilles de Saints
• 1926 La parabole du festin
• 1926 Protée (2nd version)
• 1926 Idéogrammes occidentaux
• 1926 La femme et son ombre (2nd version)
• 1926 La jeune fille Violaine (2nd version)
• 1927 Cent phrases pour éventail
• 1927 Deux farces lyriques
• 1927 L'oiseau noir dans le soleil couchant
• 1928 Positions et propositions I.
• 1928 Sous le rempart d'Athènes
• 1929 Le livre de Christophe Colomb (set to music by Darius Milhaud as Christophe Colomb )
• 1929 Le soulier de satin
• 1931 Le symbolisme de La Salette
• 1931 La cantate à trois voix
• 1932 Religion et poésie
• 1934 La légende de Prakriti
• 1934 Le festin de la sagesse
• 1934 Positions et propositions II.
• 1935 Introduction à la peinture hollandaise
• 1935 Le livre de Tobie
• 1935 Un poète regarde la Croix
• 1935 Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher
• 1936 Toi, qui es-tu?
• 1936 Dodoitzu
• 1936 Figures et paraboles
• 1937 Aegri somnia
• 1937 Les aventures de Sophie
• 1937 Vitraux
• 1938 La danse des morts
• 1938 La mystique des pierres précieuses
• 1938 Une Saison en enfer
• 1938 Jeanne au bûcher
• 1939 La prophétie des oiseaux
• 1939 L'Épée et le Miroir
• 1939 Sur la peinture espagnole
• 1940 Contacts et circonstances
• 1941 Présence et prophétie
• 1942 Seigneur, apprenez-nous à prier
• 1945 Visages radieux
• 1946 L'œil écoute
• 1946 La Rose et le Rosaire
• 1946 Le livre de Job
• 1947 Discours et remerciements
• 1947 La lune à la recherche d'elle-même
• 1948 Paul Claudel interroge le Cantique des Cantiques
• 1948 Quatre-vingts ans
• 1949 Emmaüs
• 1949 Le bestiaire spirituel
• 1949 Le ravissement de Scapin
• 1949 Partage de midi (2nd version)
• 1949 Accompagnements
• 1951 L'Échange (2nd version)
• 1951 L'Évangile d'Isaïe
• 1951 Camille Claudel
• 1952 Paul Claudel interroge l'Apocalypse
• 1954 Mémoires improvisés (entretiens avec J. Amrouche)
• 1955 J'aime la Bible
• 1968 Journal I (1904–1932) (posthumous)
• 1969 Journal II (1933–1955) (posthumous)

Translations into German (selection)

• Scream from below. A selection from Paul Claudel's early poems . The poems were transcribed by Franz Fassbinder , the prose pieces by Klara Fassbinder . Text drawing by Kurt Pohle. Paderborn 1948, Schöningh-Verlag
• Paul Claudel's Mass . Transferred and introduced by Klara Maria Faßbinder. Leipzig 1956, St. Benno publishing house
• The seven psalms of repentance with an examination of conscience. Transferred freely from Paul Claudel. Translated into German by Klara Marie Fassbinder and Robert Kohlstadt . Paderborn 1956, Schöningh-Verlag
• The Way of the Cross, by Paul Claudel. Transl. And notes KM Faßbinder. Thomas-Verlag, Zurich and Schöningh , Paderborn, 14th edition 1960 (imprimatur 1938)

Aftermath

• A cycle of 14 watercolors by the artist Ervin Bossányi on Claudel's Annunciation is in the possession of the St. Anne's Museum in Lübeck .
• In December 2004, the Claudel Society La Société Paul Claudel honored the painter Götz von Seckendorff (1889–1914), who had illustrated some of Claudel's works, in Bulletin No 176: Hommage à Götz von Seckendorff.
• Claudel's play Mittagswende (1905) plays an important role in Harald Ecker's novel Schmählich (2015).

literature

• Stefan Zweig : Triumph of the Cathedral. (Notes on Paul Claudel's “Annunciation”) , in: Reviews 1902–1939. Encounters with books . 1983 ( E-Text )
• Ernst Robert Curtius : PC in dsb .: The literary trailblazers of the new France. Gide , Rolland , Claudel, Suarès , Proust , Maritain . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1923 (5th - 7th thousand)
  • again in: French Spirit in the Twentieth Century. ..., Péguy , Valéry , Larbaud , Bremond Franke, Bern 1952 (The 3rd edition of the book from 1923, supplemented by these 4 authors) 4th edition Francke, Tübingen 1994 ISBN 3-7720-1377-5 Dalp collection o. no.
    • Spanish edition, part 1: El espíritu francès en siglo XX. Gide, Rolland, Claudel, Suarès, Péguy Visor, Madrid 1992 ISBN 84-7774-545-5 series La balsa de la Medusa vol. 45
• Herbert Dieckmann : The art view of Paul Claudels Bonn, Cohen 1931. Zugl. Diss. Phil. 1930 (published as such by Kolbermoor, Munich 1931)
  • dsb .: The dramatic work of P. C. in: Zs. Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Volume 24, March 1931, no. 3. Girsberger, Zurich, pp. 212–223, and the following issue.
• Impossible de ne pas mentionner l'ouvrage d'Anatoly Livry, enseignant à l'Université de Nice - Sophia Antipolis et enseignant de Claudel, sur Tête d'Or
• Gudula Biedermann: The influence of Rimbaud and Mallarmé on the poetic work of Paul Claudels. Diss., Univ. Tübingen 1956.
• Gudula Biedermann: Return to the magical-religious origins of language in Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud and Claudel . In: German-French Institute Ludwigsburg (ed.): Germany - France. Ludwigsburg Contributions to the Problem of Franco-German Relations , Vol. 2 (= Publications of the German-French Institute Ludwigsburg eV Volume 2), Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1957, pp. 180–188.
• Louis Chaigne : Paul Claudel. Life and work . Translated from French into German by Klara Marie Fassbinder. Foreword by Robert Grosche. Heidelberg 1963, Kerle-Verlag, 299 pp.
• Jens Rosteck : Darius Milhaud's Claudel operas "Christophe Colomb" and "L'Orestie d'Eschyle". Studies on creation, aesthetics, structure and reception. Laaber, Laaber 1995
• Album Claudel . Iconography choisie et annotée by Guy Goffette. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Editions Gallimard, 2011. ISBN 9782070123759 . (Illustrated biography.)

Web links

Commons : Paul Claudel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Paul Claudel  in the German Digital Library
• The Catholic as a rebel. Stefan Bachmann on Paul Claudel , in: Gorki Planet, March 30, 2007.
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ OBLATES of St. Benedict ( Memento from October 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ http://d-nb.info/450796957
3. ↑ http://d-nb.info/572614683
4. ↑ http://d-nb.info/450797503
5. ↑ further Claudel translations by KMF in these publishers: Die Messe; Selection from the early poems; The seven penitential psalms . Morceaux choisis.
6. ↑ www.enquete-debat.fr/archives/ ( Memento from January 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ http://d-nb.info/450766969

predecessor	Office	successor
	French Consul in Shanghai June 1895
	French consul in Prague December 1909
	French consul in Hamburg October 1913
	French agent in Rio de Janeiro in 1916
	French agent in Denmark 1920
Edmond Bapst	French ambassador to Japan 1921–1927	Robert de Billy
Henry Berenger	French Ambassador to the United States 1926–1933	André Louis Lefebvre de Laboulaye
Charles Corbin	French ambassador to Belgium 1933–1936	Jules Laroche