_Claudel’s whole life has been a struggle for the faith, for he is one of those men for whom there is no life save in God, and who see nothing outside faith in Him save despair, death, and annihilation. A somber sadness burdens those first dramas which tell of man’s great struggle to dispense with God and his check; but this gives way to joy in proportion as Claudel’s faith strengthens and grow bright. That pilgrimage towards God is also a pilgrimage towards joy; and that joy breaks into great song, now austere, now delirious, in Claudel’s properly lyrical work--the_ Hymnes _and the_ Cinq Grandes Odes. _Here one hears only the most distant echoes of the great struggle; here are only cries of joy and certitude._ _Blessed be Thou, my God, Who hast delivered me from death.... ... He who believes not in God, believes not in Being, and he Who hates being, hates his own existence. Lord, I have found Thee. Who finds Thee has no more tolerance of death._ _A strange phenomenon, this Christian poet, passionately, uncompromisingly, almost fanatically Catholic, in the country where Anatole France, the bantering and disillusioned master, holds sway, where Renan and Voltaire reigned, and with them hard reason, distrustful of the supernatural._ _France, as Kipling has justly said, is the country most faithful to old things and most wildly enthusiastic about new ones. The present fashion for Roman Catholicism counts for something in Claudel’s sudden vogue, just as Claudel has done something to bring about the fashion. Various writers, tired of wandering far from safe harbors, have “been converted” by Claudel’s appeal; and the young men who reproached France for withering life up, and for lacking the “sense of the divine” have found in Claudel one of their masters. It is the perpetual oscillation of the human spirit from pure reason to exalted sentiment. Claudel stands head and shoulders above the little crowd which surrounds him, and he will outlast them and their ways of thought. Most of us must say to him, in the words of one of his own characters, “I cannot give you my soul.” But we love the poet in him and admire the passionate believer who compels us to question ourselves in the inner silence, the man who made for himself this prayer:_ _Make me as one who sows solitude, and may he who hears my speech Return home troubled and heavy._ 1895-1900 THE EAST I KNOW THE COCOA PALM Our trees stand upright like men, but motionless; thrusting their roots deep in earth, they flourish with outstretched arms. But here the sacred banyan does not rise as a single stem; for the pendent threads, through which it returns seeking the fruitful soil, make it seem a marvelous temple self-created. Observe only the cocoa palm. It has no branches. At the apex of the trunk it raises a tuft of fronds.