_It is impossible in a brief space to analyze dramas so laden with ideas, but one can indicate the size and the unity of the work. The tree that Claudel wants to show us is the tree of life. The roots are in_ Le Repos du Septième Jour; _the sap, the desire, in_ Tête d’Or; _the double-branching--the ideas of the mind in_ La Ville, _and sentiment in_ L’Échange, La Jeune Fille Violaine, _and_ L’Otage. _Claudel himself has formulated the theory and doctrine of his art in three treatises brought together in his_ Art Poetique. _It might be imagined that Claudel was a mere man of books, a thinker in the abstract. He is nothing of the sort. This thinker is at the same time the most concrete of poets. His thought is, as it were, swollen with essential sap. And he expresses it in a flow of images taken directly from things and exhibiting them in their reality. Claudel’s originality lies in this double aspect: the unique blend of the highest intellectuality with the richest realism. The man who meditates over the greatest problems and expounds a profound logical doctrine to justify his work is at the same time a primitive who works with his fresh and eager eyes fixed on Nature. His dramas never lose touch with the earth where men live, love, and suffer. His characters are greater than Nature, and they express themselves quite naturally with a biblical amplitude; but they never ring false and they often move us deeply. For they are powerfully real types which exist and which one often remembers. These two elements do not always mingle in a perfect harmony; Claudel’s art is powerful, but it is not easy: it is like the obscure and painful work of germination. His admirers themselves say that Claudel’s works are like symphonies that one must hear several times before grasping their meaning and their beauties, and that his plays are beyond the capacity of the present-day public._ _Claudel is, finally, one must admit, a great religious poet, and it is in that fact that the deepest unity of his work must be sought. His work, it has been said, is a long pilgrimage towards God; and the road has not been without its grievous strugglings, since the day when in his youth he was suddenly converted and flung himself towards God, but without winning light for his reason. “O my God,” he cries years after:_ _I remember the darkness where we two were face to face, those gloomy winter afternoons in Notre-Dame._ _I, all alone below there, lit up the face of the great bronze Christ with a twopenny-halfpenny taper._ _All men were then against us, science and reason; and I replied nothing._ _Only the faith was in me, and I looked at You in silence like a man who prefers his friend._ _I went down into Your sepulcher with You._