TEXT
This text was written in China between 1895 and 1896. Claudel arrived in Shanghai as substitute consul on 14 July 1895.
Written during the last first months of this stay in the Middle Empire,
THE REST ON THE SEVENTH DAY Read More »
Text
The Exchange is a doubly American play: composed in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, it presents an action that takes place in the same country.
The first version of the play was written in 1892 following the first version of The City.
A peasant drama followed an urban drama and was constructed around the sacrifice of the heroine Violaine.
La Jeune Fille Violaine (Second version) Read More »
Text
The rewriting of La Ville began in late 1894 or early 1895, while Claudel was still at his post in Boston. It continued until 1898 in China,
The City (second version) Read More »
Second version
The text
The second version of Tête d’Or was revised in 1894, as evidenced by the manuscript acquired by the BNF in 1990. The full text was first published in L’Arbre.
The relationship between Claudel and the press was complex and contrasting, but never antagonistic. He condemned only the bad press that visits a curse on the world like the scroll of parchment that the prophet Zechariah sees flying in the air.
Claudel and the press Read More »
I define dance as the proof offered to an audience, beneath the lights of the projectors, of the impossibility for the human being, caressed, carried away, stimulated, scoured by music of escaping from weight as well as from impulse…
Everything is said,
Claudel always wanted to interfere in the production of his plays and so, little by little, he acquired a good understanding of stagecraft. Staging a play, for him, was not simply a routine matter of adapting the text to suit specific material conditions and circumstances.
CLAUDEL AND STAGECRAFT Read More »
A CATHOLIC KNOWLEDGE
An examination of Claudel’s poetic and dramatic works, as well as his numerous critical works (collected notably in Accompagnements), his Correspondance and his Journal,
CLAUDEL AND LITERATURE Read More »
Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher — Japanese Dialogues
Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher
These imaginary conversations, casually organized, four in number, each have the name of a day of the week: Thursday,
Dialogues and conversations Read More »
Book on China
Several fairly recent editions (see Bibliography) make it possible to analyse in detail the progress of the projects for which the diplomat was directly responsible during his diplomatic stay in the Middle Empire (July 1895 –
Book on China – The Black Bird in the Rising Sun Read More »
This very complex text, published in 1907 but whose first idea seems to date back to 1898-1899, is a very strange literary object. Its title must not be misunderstood: it is not a poetic art in the sense of Boileau or Horace,
The publication of A Hundred Phrases for Fans is in reality the final point of a process in which one can distinguish four stages during which the spirit of the collection evolved considerably.
A Hundred Phrases for Fans Read More »
Poetry written after the Five Great Odes is from a man of faith. Catholicism often rhymes with liturgy. The Processional to greet the new century (1907) takes its form in the procession to celebrate the temporal continuity of the Catholic world until the advent of the heavenly Jerusalem.
De la Corona aux Visages radieux Read More »
The Cantata for three voices (June 1911-July 1912) appears to be a total work. The argument is already dramatic. Three women, Laeta, engaged, Fausta, exiled, Beata, widow,
The Cantata for three voices Read More »
On his return to China after renouncing his monastic vocation, Claudel meets Rosalie Vetch—an event he calls a “conflagration” whose turbulent consequences haunt the poems of the period 1901-1905,
(Connaissance de l’Est)
Written at the same time as the Vers d’Exil, but published earlier, in 1900, Connaissance de l’Est is a much larger book.
Little is known about the poems Claudel wrote before 1895. Many have been lost or destroyed. A handful of texts remain , most of them written in regular verses,