Violaine and the Ambassador

As the new Italian edition of The Tidings Brought to Mary appears in the series, “Books of the Christian Spirit,” published by Rizzoli, an interview with the great French writer’s third son, discussing Paul Claudel as a family man, diplomat, and playwright

Edited by SILVIO GUERRA

We met Henri Claudel, the third of Paul Claudel’s five children, in his house near Saint Sulpice. The occasion was the appearance in Italy of a new edition of The Tidings Brought to Mary in the Rizzoli series, “I libri dello Spirito cristiano”–“Books of the Christian Spirit”–directed by Father Giussani. A striking feature of the 89-year-old Henri is his alert gaze, ready to grasp the depths of what he encounters. His face lit up when we told him of the wide distribution in the world–promoted by the Movement–of his father’s works, due principally to the value given them from the beginning by Father Giussani.
We asked Claudel fils some questions about The Tidings Brought to Mary, and about his father’s personality.
Speaking about the play, Henri Claudel said, “I am particularly fond of The Tidings Brought to Mary because we’re the same age. I was in fact born within a few days of the first performance [in December 1912]. Today, it is not performed as much as a few decades ago. The younger generations are less interested in it. But many other works by Paul Claudel have been rediscovered, besides Break of Noon; for examples, The Hostage, Crusts, The City, and even Tête d’or, which he never wanted to have performed while he was alive. His theater has been rediscovered above all in the leftist intellectual milieu more than among Catholics. I still don’t know how to explain this fact. It seems to me that the same thing happened for the performance of The Tidings at the Meeting [for Friendship Among Peoples] in Rimini. It is a work that was born out of his conversion (Christmas 1886, during Vespers in Notre Dame Cathedral); at the same time, it expresses the mentality of people today, who no longer believe in anything, as was the case with my father during his early youth.

Why is it, still today, worth the trouble to read The Tidings Brought to Mary?
This is a work with a very interesting poetic character. And too, the situation it develops is much more contemporary than it appears. This is the story of the breaking up of a family. Alongside this motif, there are the probings and dialogues that express the Grace which touched my father during the Magnificat on Christmas in 1886. Who knows how many people were there in Notre Dame that day, and yet Grace touched him, and he came out of the cathedral converted. Without knowing this fact, it is harder to understand the character of the father, Anne Vercors, and his decision to leave on a pilgrimage for Jerusalem, leaving his daughters and wife to fend for themselves. He is just like my father, who would often go away on work and leave my mother alone with five children. He said that he had other things to do, other things that interested him. Then there is the figure of Violaine, whose character is certainly not an easy one, but her profound faith enables her to accept reality “naturally.” The miracle she accomplishes is born out of her passion, which transmits faith to the dead child. Mara is, on the contrary, an “earthly” character; she demonstrates human limitations. And finally, there is Pierre de Craon, a “perfect man.”

How was the play received when it appeared just before the Great War?
For many young people, it was a fundamental work. The basic problem it always encounters is the lack of religious training. For example, some theater directors won’t stage it because they feel the audience has trouble accepting the idea of a miracle, of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or the desire to build a cathedral. People no longer believe in all these things. Thus I prefer to put on The Exchange or Break of Noon, that is, works that are thought to be more “human” because they touch more directly on the problems of people today.

What inspired Claudel to write this play?
He never told us; he didn’t want us to talk about it in the family. He never recited even one line of his works. He would write little stories for us children or his grandchildren. But he never spoke about his works. We would go often to the theater, especially if his works were being performed. The Tidings Brought to Mary was the work he loved most. He suffered for a long time because it was badly performed. He was furious because no one ever staged it in a simple way. In fact, he rewrote it twice, just as he did with The Young Girl Violaine.

However, he often changed his works. In the final version of The Tidings, Mara becomes a nicer person and Pierre de Craon disappears at the end…
There are two versions of the fourth act, because he wanted to simplify it. He often changed his mind; he always wanted to add something. He said that after all, a character might have acted also in another way. And too, he liked to write and many times recopied his works.

What do you remember about your father in everyday life?
He was a man who was passionate about whatever he did. He devoted the morning hours until 9 o’clock to writing, then went to work at the embassy. In the evening, he would keep up with his correspondences. He wrote thousands of letters. Despite all this work, I never heard him complain or say he was tired. He was always in a good mood. He had a great diplomatic career, in Boston, China, Washington, Rio de Janeiro. In all the places he went, he was always happy; he always found something that interested him. He should have been happy with being a mediocre diplomat in order to devote his energy completely to his writing, but he had a deep interest in economic affairs, especially in the United States. In New York, he knew J.P. Morgan and was received on Wall Street by all the big investors. He sent the French ministry of foreign affairs very important information in which he foresaw the Great Crisis of 1929. He, a man of letters, was the creator of the economic peace pact between French President Briand and American Secretary of State Kellogg in 1928. His passion for work arose as a result of his conversion. He made the decision to find a job for two reasons. First, working for the ministry enabled him to be freer to live his true passion, which was writing, as it freed him from economic problems. Just think that until the age of 75, he never received a cent for his plays. The second reason was more existential. After his conversion, he was afraid of becoming mentally unbalanced like my aunt Camille or of losing his reason like Rimbaud or Veraline. He felt this danger and was terrorized by this possibility. Therefore, he looked for a job and got married, establishing a family, precisely to ward off a sort of “madness” and self-abandonment.

What was Paul Claudel’s faith like? Did he ever talk to you about his conversion?
He never wanted to talk with us about it. Elsewhere, in some interviews or writings, he told about what happened. However, he was always very discreet on this point. It was his personal business. He didn’t talk about it even with my grandparents, who, despite the anticlerical times in which they lived, always tried at least to be faithful to the sacraments, without however going into things too deeply. He was afraid of not being understood or, even worse, of being laughed at. He was very strict with us about faith, especially concerning the sacraments and the Holy Mass in particular. He would go every morning early, because it was often celebrated in Latin and also because it only lasted half an hour. He liked to listen to Gregorian chant and to recite the prayers in Latin. He was surprised when the Mass began to be celebrated “backwards,” as he put it. He thought it was a “French fantasy” and even wrote this in an article. Later, when he realized that it was a decision made by the Council, he gave in out of respect and obedience to the Church. With us children, he was very attentive and gave us spiritual guidance.

Creative Spark. Face-to-Face with Claudel
We offer here some passages from Mémoires improvisés (Improvised Memoirs) by Jean Ambrouche (Gallimard, 1954). The book is a collection of radio interviews given by Paul Claudel in the early 1950s

I would like to ask you what caused you to choose a miracle as the subject–we can even say as the creative spark–of The Tidings Brought to Mary?
This was the result of a chance reading of some medieval German mystics. I was very interested in mysticism at a certain point. I found in a medieval German legend a passage that struck me deeply: that of a mystic whose breasts suddenly gave milk. I don’t remember now what was the occasion, if it was a child she wanted to heal, or if it was the Baby Jesus Himself, whom the Blessed Virgin gave her to nurse.

You present an organically organized text in which it is very clear that your concern was not to juxtapose the supernatural with the natural world, but to show that they penetrate each other and that they are–to a certain degree–similar, in the geometric sense of the word. This sort of division which separates the two sisters is easy to see: Violaine, who is all Spirit, because the Spirit has taken her over, and Mara, who is all flesh, all earth. Yet the two sisters are indissolubly bound to each other, to the point that (at the end of the play), the daughter they have, they have in common: Mara has given birth to her, but Mara’s love has in some way killed her daughter. So that the child may live, Violaine has to intervene, but also the Grace, for which Violaine is the instrument.
This is what makes the figure of Mara so important. I wanted Mara to be in some way absolutely bound, by an absolute necessity (a necessity that was innate in her), to turn to her sister to ask her for an unheard-of miracle–the miracle of the resurrection of her daughter. There is a ruthless necessity governing Mara and Violaine; it is absolutely necessary that Violaine become a saint, it is necessary that her sainthood serve in some way, and that it serve this mother who demands her daughter’s life. The Gospel says, “Your faith has made you whole;” it is necessary that Mara’s brutal, fierce faith serve in some way, that it serve to make a saint and to obligate God, in a manner of speaking, to grant a miracle.
This is the source of the powerful, vehement element that gives all the strength and intensity of The Tidings Brought to Mary, which is in reality, I believe, both a human and a superhuman drama.

You speak of Mara’s vehemence. To be sure, Mara’s vehemence is very sensitive, like the necessity which binds her to the character of her sister, since without Mara Violaine would perhaps not be a saint; or rather, we could say that another instrument of necessity, of predestination would block her access to the human path in order to leave open to her the narrow way that leads to sainthood.
It is not at all like this: rather, she would be a saint, because we are saints when we submit to the will of God, but it is necessary that her sainthood serve in some way, that it serve mankind.
Mara could be wrong about various things, but there is one thing that she will not admit and about which she thinks she is right: that faith is believing that God can do good things. And from this point of view she is justified, at least to my way of seeing it.