‘Qui a crié? J’entends un cri dans la nuit profonde!
J’entends mon antique sœur des ténèbres qui remonte une autre fois vers moi, L’épouse nocturne qui revient une autre fois vers moi, sans mot dire,
Une autre fois vers moi, avec son cœur, comme un repas qu’on se partage dans les ténèbres,
Son cœur, comme un pain de douleur, et comme un vase plein de larmes.’
It is extraordinary that this great prose-poet, who is known at least to an élite in Italy, who, in the course of the year 1913, has been acted with success in Germany, at Strasburg, at Frankfort, and at Dresden; whose plays, in 1914, have twice excited enthusiasm on the Parisian stage, should have no public in our islands. Is there no translator brave enough to undertake L’Otage, the most accessible of Claudel’s plays, or L’Annonce, so like the poems of our own pre-Raphaelites? The readers who enjoy Thomas Hardy’s Dynasts, or Doughty’s plays of Britain, should not find them impossibly difficult, they might even welcome the fresh source of a singularly noble pleasure.
In order to encourage and enlighten this hypothetical translator, I will run through the plots of the principal of these dramas. It is not an easy task, for no sooner has Claudel accustomed his readers to a set of characters, than he is out with a second version of the same play; and lo! in the twinkling of an eye, all is changed. I do not advise my imaginary translator to begin with the first of these pieces, Tête d’Or, which is really intolerably prolix. Yet there is much that is fine and moving in the sombre, magnificent pictures which show us the folly of individualism. The hero staggers on the stage, like Lear burdened with the dead body of Cordelia, carrying the corpse of his young wife; he is young and strong, but he has not been able to save her; and under the beating rain in the open field, he digs her grave and lays her there:—
‘Va là, entre dans la terre crue! À même! Là où tu n’entends plus et ne vois plus, la bouche contre le sol.
‘Comme quand, sur le ventre, empoignant les oreillers, nous nous ruons vers le sommeil!
‘Et maintenant je te chargerai une charge de terre sur le dos!’
Simon is the man of action, the strong man, the soldier. He becomes a popular general, a sort of Bonaparte, whom his soldiers, on account of his touzled, yellow curls, call Goldilocks: Tête d’Or. And, in the second act, he returns from a brilliant victory having redeemed his country. But he finds his one friend dying. This poor lad implores the hero to save him—or, at least, to console him. And Goldilocks discovers the limits of his power! Finally he himself, though a king triumphant, perishes as miserably.