_PAUL CLAUDEL_ _BY PIERRE CHAVANNES_ _Reprinted from “The New Statesman,” London, by the courtesy of the Editor_ _Claudel worked for more than twenty years in silence in an almost complete obscurity. Nobody ever mentioned him save a few very independent artists--Mirbeau, Barrès, Schwob, Gide, Jammes, Mauclair--who talked about him amongst themselves and sometimes even dared to speak about him in public, without awakening an echo._ _Moreover, Claudel was usually far from France, Consul in various towns of the Far East; he published his earlier works anonymously, lest their Catholic character should damage his career, and for a long time his work was only to be seen in the small literary reviews and in special editions, of which a very small number of copies were printed; and he never attempted to advertise himself. But in time he was saddened by this great solitude. “One grows tired,” he wrote, “of speaking, as it were, in impenetrable cotton-wool.”_ _These latter days Claudel’s glory, which had so long been obscured, has suddenly blazed forth, if not to the great public, at least to the public which reads and is interested in literature. The Théâtre de l’Œuvre has played one of his dramas_--L’Annonce faite à Marie; _the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier is about to play another_--L’Échange. _The ordinary newspaper critics have begun talking about Claudel; generally speaking, they refer to him with admiration, often with astonishment and that kind of reserve which marks men who are not sure that they understand, and, fearing that they are deceiving themselves, do not wish completely to commit themselves. But in many young reviews admiration is carried to a pitch of enthusiasm and almost of worship; and today writers who are by no means young rank Claudel with the small company of the very great: Æschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe._ _Reading Claudel, one can understand this long silence, this admiration, and also this reserve. Claudel is not an easy poet: when one penetrates his work one is transported as though into a foreign country. He has a speech peculiar to himself; he has invented a form which is neither prose, nor regular verse, nor ordinary_ vers libre; _his work, created by a solitary man, is not bound up with our troubles and our daily life; to love Claudel one must be initiated._