‘Que je grandisse dans mon unité,’ cried Goldilocks. But one man alone, however great, is little; and his last words are: ‘Je n’ai été rien.’
This play was written by the unregenerate Claudel; it shows a nature born to mysticism and religion, with as yet no active faith. A few years later, we find our poet the most convinced of Catholics. Like the poet, Cœuvre (in his play, La Ville), we leave him, at the end of the second act, a simple dilettante; and when next the curtain rises we find him resplendent in priestly vestments. Not that Claudel has ever actually taken orders, yet in his own way he is a priest and ordained to a ministry. He, too, has found in thought a second birth—‘dans la profondeur de l’étude, une seconde naissance.’
And now he writes to promulgate his certitude. Man does not live for man but for God; the happiness of self is an illusion; the soul alone exists; the only true order is based on sacrifice and association: such is the lesson that all his plays expound.
La Jeune Fille Violaine is an early study for Claudel’s masterpiece, L’Annonce faite à Marie. It is a modern play, a touching, romantic story, not unlike the work of the modern Irish school. The setting is a large farm near Soissons. The heroine, Violaine, is the elder of the two daughters of the house. Because she is so happy and he so miserable, the young girl bestows an innocent kiss on Pierre de Craon, the hydraulic engineer, who loves her and whom she cannot love; she embraces him ‘en tout bien et tout honneur;’ but, just as her fresh lips are on her lover’s cheek her jealous younger sister, Mara, opens the door and stealthily witnesses their farewell; and Mara thinks that her sister is the man’s mistress.
Their father, Anne Vercors, the master of the farm, is forced to leave his home for America, where his brother has died, to go to the relief of two young nephews. Before setting out on so long a journey, he wishes to marry one of his daughters to a young neighbour, Jacques Hury, an active and honourable man, capable of managing the land. Violaine is the eldest; Violaine shall be the bride, and, having celebrated their betrothal, the farmer sets out consoled.
Violaine loves her promised husband. Alas, the treacherous Mara loves him too! She tells Jacques of her sister’s kiss, and suggests that Violaine’s love is given to Pierre de Craon. She confides her own desperate passion to her mother—vows she will hang herself in the woodshed on the wedding-day.
‘Tell Violaine,’ she says, ‘tell Violaine.’
And Violaine gives up her hope of happiness in order to save her sister.
Mara is not yet satisfied: Mara the practical, Mara the unanswerable,—
‘You cannot stay here now,’ she says to the sad Violaine. ‘And I suppose you will hardly again think of marrying? Every one knew you were betrothed to Jacques.’