Article
Claudel, Paul (1868–1955) By Bush, Christopher
Article
Both the power of Paul Claudel’s writing and the controversial character of his politics were so well known in their time that Auden, in the original 1939 version of ‘ In Memory of W.B. Yeats ’ , could assume his readers ’ knowledge of them: ‘ Time that with this strange excuse/ Pardoned Kipling and his views,/ And will pardon Paul Claudel,/ Pardons him [Yeats] for writing well. ’ While still read today and taught, especially in France, Claudel has not entirely been pardoned and indeed is often remembered only for the ways in which the intense devotion to Catholicism that defined his life and work fed conservative, sometimes intensely nationalist, political views, which included support for French imperialism and, in his youth, anti-Semitism.
