The University of Chicago Paul Claudel's Cinq
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PAUL CLAUDEL’S CINQ GRANDES ODES: A TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO! THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY JOHN U. NEF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL THOUGHT BY! LAUREN ELIZABETH BUTLER BERGIER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Butler Bergier All Rights Reserved In memory of Beatrix and Paul. À bientôt. Pessulum ostii mei aperui dilecto meo, at ille declinaverat, atque transierat. Anima mea liquefacta est, ut locutus est; quæsivi, et non inveni illum; vocavi, et non respondit mihi. — Cant. cant. 5:6 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Les Muses ..................................................................................................................... 12 First Ode. The Muses .............................................................................................................................. 12 Commentary on Les Muses ..................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 2. L’Esprit et l’eau ........................................................................................................... 54 Second Ode. The Spirit and the water ..................................................................................................... 54 Commentary on L’Esprit et l’eau ............................................................................................................ 73 Chapter 3. Magnificat .................................................................................................................. 109 Third Ode. Magnificat ........................................................................................................................... 109 Commentary on Magnificat .................................................................................................................. 128 Chapter 4. La Muse qui est la Grâce ........................................................................................... 159 Fourth Ode. The Muse Called Grace .................................................................................................... 159 Commentary on La Muse qui est la Grâce ........................................................................................... 176 Chapter 5. La Maison fermée ...................................................................................................... 205 Fifth Ode. The Closed House ................................................................................................................ 205 Commentary on La Maison fermée ....................................................................................................... 224 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 252 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 261 v Introduction The Odes are Claudel’s first masterpiece. In a 1908 letter to Georges Frizeau, he called them, “the rapture of the poet in full possession of his means of expression, mingled with memories of his past life, in the ecstasy of a freedom that is at last conquered, the contemplation of a now catholic universe.”1 As a poet, Claudel had now fully entered the paradox of poetic expression. He was feeling ecstatic and yet in control, before a world that is overwhelmingly intelligible and beautiful. Enraptured by the possession of his technical talents and ecstatic in his mastered freedom, he had begun to contemplate the depths of meaning in his own life and the beauty of the universe, whose unity he could now see and express. Claudel began writing the first Ode, “The Muses,” in 1900, the year of his second voyage to China. He had recently left the novitiate at Ligugé Abbey, the oldest monastery in Europe, because of serious doubts as to whether he was called to the religious life. Readers of the Odes may hear, in each poem, the rhythms of the many sea voyages Claudel made during this first decade of his diplomatic career: the pull of the ocean swell (la houle); waves breaking; the blowing of winds over the water (souffle). The word souffle, recurrent in the Odes, can describe the blowing of the wind and human breathing. Its corresponding verb is “souffler,” used to translate the phrase from the Gospel of John, “The wind blows where it lists, and you hear its sound, but cannot tell whence it comes, and whither it goes: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”2 This has given the saying, in French as in English, “The Spirit blows where it will,” “l’Esprit souffle où il veut.” To the two primary meanings of souffle, the act of breathing and the blowing of the wind, is joined a third, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Souffle is also used to 1 Œuvre poétique, p. 1064; all translations are mine unless otherwise specified. 2 John 3:8. 1 translate the life God breathes into man in Genesis: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”3 Souffle (and not esprit, whose meaning includes our words mind and ghost), like spiritus in Latin, can be used for the movements of the air, for human breathing, for the breath of life, and finally, for inspiration. In the Five Great Odes, the human body breathes with the same movement as the Earth and the cosmos, as well as the Holy Spirit and the human mind. Paul Claudel's poem unites these forms of breathing, which can be felt and heard but not seen, and orchestrates them into a kind of harmony. This theme will be present in each of the Odes, but it comes to its full development in the Second Ode, L’Esprit et l’eau, beginning with this opening stanza: Après le long silence fumant, Après le grand silence civil de maints jours tout fumant de rumeurs et de fumées, Haleine de la terre en culture et ramage des grandes villes dorées, Soudain l’Esprit de nouveau, soudain le souffle de nouveau, Soudain le coup sourd au cœur, soudain le mot donné, soudain le souffle de l’Esprit, le rapt sec, soudain la possession de l’Esprit ! Comme quand dans le ciel plein de nuit avant que ne claque le premier feu de foudre, Soudain le vent de Zeus dans un tourbillon plein de pailles et de poussières avec la lessive de tout le village ! The image is of the tilled fields in late March, when the earth has been overturned after the fields have lain more or less frozen and dead of vegetation in January and February. From a birds’ eye view, the earth steams under the Spring sun, all the more fragrantly if it has been laid with manure, and the great French cities are like golden foliage sending decorative tendrils into the countryside. All of a sudden, the Spirit, like a strong wind, comes over the valley. There is, evidently, a parallel here between the landscape and the soul of the poet, who is “possessed,” or 3 Genesis 2:7, KJV. 2 enraptured, by the breath of the Spirit, as a valley is overcome by a strong wind. This rapture is brought about by the use of escalating repetition—“après,” “silence,” “fumer,” and, finally, “soudain,” with a complex scansion that escalates, stabilizing in the well-balanced caesura of the third verse, only to accelerate rapidly, in the fourth, with the Spirit’s arrival. The second image is of a village overcome by wind before being illumined by lightning’s fire. Likewise, inspiration stirs the soul of the poet violently before the vision of unity manifests itself. To situate the mystical element in Claudel’s poetry, one would eventually have to take into account a broader context, which would include Augustine of Hippo, Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. The Odes, in particular, are a conversation that involves both God and Claudel’s own soul, in its varied elements. But Claudel’s work is at the same time mystical—which is to say, concerned with the mysterious exchange between God and man—and modern, and as such it doesn’t avoid the profane and the secular. It becomes clearer why the great twentieth-century Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, would have been so interested by the Odes. He translated the Odes several times for publication in German, and oblique and direct references to the Odes can be found throughout his work. Balthasar’s theology is, in fact, one of the greatest aids to understanding the more obscure passages Claudel wrote. The comparison Balthasar once made between the Odes and the Divine Comedy then comes to full light as being, perhaps, the most appropriate of all. Claudel’s inner, spiritual ascension in the Odes is a modern parallel to Dante Alighieri’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and the heavenly spheres; this comparison will be particularly fruitful if one can begin to grasp the radical and fascinating change in popular cosmology from the early Renaissance to the present day. With Dante, Claudel shared a particularly expansive Catholic faith. Like Charles Péguy, François Mauriac, or Georges Bernanos, he could be considered a part of the twentieth-century 3 French Catholic Renaissance, a flourishing of writers and thinkers who were openly Catholic, despite persecution and increasing secularism. Claudel, like the other Catholics of his time, was deeply disturbed by the closing of