AMBASSADOR-POET

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18906, 22 January 1927, Page 13

AMBASSADOR-POET

PAUL CLAUDEL GOES TO

WASHINGTON

Tiia creates! French writer since the death of Anatole France, 6»ys the New York "Herald-Tribune." has just hcen nominated French Ambassador "to Washington. By this appointment, it thinks, the French Government signifies its intention to maintain and honour tho traditional intimacy between the arts of diplomacy and literature.

Chateaubriand provided the must famous example of the writer turned diplomat, or the diplomat lurncd writer, but in his ease diplomatic honours were valued more greatly than the celebrity he gained as a man of letters. The reverse is the case with M. Claudcl, who is first and foremost a writer, poet, and philosopher, and on whoso philosophic shoulders tho favours of courts and tho esteem of mon archs rest lightly. The French government's decision should give great satisfaction in both France and the United States, for not only is Paul Claudcl the foremost living representative of letters and the drama in his own country, but a diplomat of skill and experience, a sympathetic and able student of American affairs and a man of great personal charm.

From the Champagne Country. The new Ambassador ivas born some fifty-eight years ago in Picardy, ou those slopes where the apple orchards of the old French province give way gently to the flat vineyards of Champagne. He studied in Paris, with a view to entering the carriere, and before he was twenty had made his mark as a poet of promise among the gifted French youth, the jeunesse dorgo of the 'Bo's. Later the early promise developed into real genius, and this genius is consistently exhibited in .the many poems and plays he has produced during a long and varied career. M. Claudel's debut as a public servant was made in the consular service. He was successively French vice-consul in Boston, where he spent several years in the early part of this century; in China, where he lived for nearly fifteen years, learning the language and becoming acquainted with the arts and the philosophy of the Chinese, and in Germany, where he was consul at Frankfort before the war. In 1918 he was.attached to the French legation in Brazil. In the following year he was sent to Washington as member of the French economic mission. Subsequently lie became Minister to Denmark and finally Ambassador to Japan, and he has lived for' the last three years in Tokio, where lie has just been notified of his translation to the highest diplomatic post the French Government can offer. Since the war, it will be noticed, his promotion has been rapid. To jump from in Bio de Janeiro to Ambassador to the United States in eight years is no light "success for a French diplomat and many elderly French Senators who have eyed the Washington Embassy covetously for some years past will be bitterly disappointed at the preference of a mere writer over a politician. Back to Mysticism. . No living man of letters in France enjoys a greater audience than Paul Claudel. His influence on French thought and French writing is considerable. In an age remarkable for its cynical roturn to the- realism of tho Flaubert and Georges Sand schools, with the current of intellectual interest in France swaying wildly from the preciosity of Marcel Proust to the jazzband-and-cocktail satires of Paul Morand —another writing diplomat now attached to the French Legation in Siam —Claudel is noteworthy as the leader of a return to mysticism. Tho keynote of his personality, of his work v. d hia life lies in his passionate mysticism. Like the lato Alice Meynell, in England, the pure and beautiful poet to whom Meredith devoted a long and platonic passion expressed only in a recently published correspondence, Claudel's attitude to life and its first cause is one of religious adoration. He is a supreme mystic, and as such his succession of that arch cynic and pagan philosopher, Anatole France, as the greatest living French writer, appears, like an ironic instance of natural compensation. His mysticism is not a literary affectation, but tho expression of a real religious preoccupation. A "Revelation" at Eighteen. At the age of eighteen Paul Olaudel had, what was rare enough among the, artificially sentimental, amorous, blas6 and occasionally porverted youth of Franco in the oarly 'Bo's, a religious "revelation." Heal or imaginary, the effect of the phenomenon on his youthful, ardent, and imaginative mind was profound and lasting. From that day to this the new Ambassador to Washington has been a practising Catholic. He attends mass daily and his creed is a living and intellectual belief to him. Tho mysticism of this original and rare writer is apparent in the very titles of his plays. "The Tidings Brought to Mary" had an instant success in France, Gerriiany, and New York, where it was produced by the Theatre Guild not long ago. Other dramatic works, not yet translated into English, carry the %ame curiously ardent message from an old-fashional Catholic writer. "The Town," "The Exchange," which Jacques Copeau first produced at the Vieux Colombier in Paris; "The Hostage," "Dry Bread," and "Rest on the Seventh Day," are among the most interesting products of the intellectual theatre in France for many years past. No Crank. With all this old-fashioned and honest faith in the divine order, this great French poet is neither a crank nor a faddist nor an ascetic. He is a tall, handsome man, his face strongly featured bronzed, and vital, his hair crisping thickly over one temple. He is a powerfully built, muscular athlete, a mountain climber and a lover of outdoor sports. His interest in the arts is omnivorous. He deplores his inability to draw, would give half his talent to bo able to draw or sculp. He plays impatiently and curiously with a pencil and exclaims with mock horror at the crude, childish, and fantastic scrawl 3 he makes. Yet he can inspire and even direct the artistic impulse in others.

During hia recent years in Japan ho employed a Japanese craftsman to ex ; ecute the fancies of his own imagination, and the results are described by a close friend of the Ambassador as highly successful. He induced a Japanese musician to execute his own motives and scheme for the music of two Japanese ballets he wrote —"The Japanese Soul" and "Woman and Her Shadow" —ai.d the costumes and scenery' for the ballets were the products of a real collaboration between the author and his Japanese painter, the writer-ambassador himself" cutting np and colouring little figures in paper to

explain his ideas and indicate his decorative scheme. A Collaborator. - Perhaps tho moat interesting event of T'aul Claude]'s career is his collaborauon with tho young French composer, Darius Milhaud, in the production of ballets and operas. Fourteen years ago Darius Milhaud, himself in the diplomatic service, met Claudel at Frankfort, where the writer was consul. In their first conversation Paul Claudel captured the imagination of the younger man with his project for an opera based on the immortal, tremendous trilogy of /Eschylus, and tho two began immediately to work on tho thomc, Claudel writing his libretto from the Greek and tho composer creating new music themes for the great, tragedies. Later they met again—in the French Legation at Rio de Janeiro, where Milhaud was Claudel's junior. They began to work upon a ballet, "Man and his Desire," which was produced by the Swedish Ballet Company in New Tork three years ago.

Darius Milhaud, now the most successful of the you -ger school of French musicians, said of Claudel in a recent conversation with the present writer: "Tho word genius is often abused, but in the case of Paul Claudel it is incontrovertible. Ho is a man of torrential energy, of immense interests, of magnificent imagination. To know him is to admire him, to be overwhelmed by him. His mysticism may bo explained in two words—he is a devout Catholic. The faith is the man. He has studied the Bible intently, anfl some day I}o may publish his commentaries on it. They will serve to reveal the remarkable versatility and intellectual range of tta'