保罗·克洛岱尔（Paul Claudel，1868-1955年），是法国著名的诗人、剧作家和外交官。保罗·克洛岱尔作为法国天主教文艺复兴时期的重要人物，大部分作品都带有浓厚的宗教色彩和神秘感，创作了许多诗剧、诗歌和宗教与文学的评论。

保罗·克洛岱尔（Paul Claudel，1868-1955年），全名保罗-路易-夏尔-马里·克洛岱尔，也翻译为克洛代尔。法国诗人、剧作家、外交家。法国天主教文艺复兴运动（发生在一战之前的）中的一个重要人物。大部分作品带有浓厚的宗教色彩和神秘感。克洛岱尔撰写诗剧、诗歌、宗教和文学评论。1946年，他入选法兰西学院。　1886年，他在读阿尔蒂尔·兰波（Arthur Rimbaud）的诗作时，重新激起对天主教的信仰。1892年，他成为一名外交官，在巴西、丹麦、日本和比利时等地任职。1900年经历一场宗教危机，他决心放弃外交生涯而进本迪修道会，但他对神职的失望是他再一次离开法国而出任驻中国领事，途中结识一位波兰有夫之妇，以后4年一直同他来往，后来他断绝了这段感情，1906年同另一个法国女人结婚，这一非法的爱情成了以后几部作品的主题，他始终徘徊在人间之爱和上帝之爱之间，1927年到1933年，他担任法国驻美大使。他却始终不懈地用诗歌，主要是诗剧，来抒发自己的宗教热情。他的作品主角都是勇敢的实干家，如将军、征服者、天生的大地主人、他们傲慢、贪婪、充满野心、疯狂的情欲，但在这种种火一般的欲望之后，必然走向赎罪之路。他的历史三部曲，以法国大革命为背景，描写教皇所代表的信仰受到侮辱，1955年 2月23日于巴黎去世 [1]  。

 

生平

 

早年

保罗·克洛岱尔于1868年8月6日生于法国皮卡第大区埃纳省Villeneuve-sur-Fère。父亲Louis-Prosper是政府公务员，处理抵押和银行交易事务；母亲Louise Cerveaux来自香槟行省，家庭成员都是农夫或牧师。被诅咒的天才雕刻家，罗丹的情人卡米耶·克洛岱尔就是他的姐姐。1881年，他一家移居巴黎，他在当地的路易大帝高中读高中，后于巴黎政治学院读大学。他本来没有信仰，但于1886年（18岁）圣诞节在巴黎圣母院听大弥撒，大风琴奏乐，圣歌合唱，深受震动，决心以歌颂天主教信仰为自己终生的神圣事业。

 

外交官

保罗·克洛岱尔经考试录取为法国外交部青年见习人员。后来成为职业外交家，在1893－1936年期间当上法国的外交人员。他在中国（清朝）逗留14年，是逗留时间最长的国家。

1893年4月－11月：美国纽约市

1893年12月－1895年5月：美国波士顿

1895年6月－1900年9月：中国（清朝）上海

1900年10月－1909年11月：中国（清朝）福州

1909年12月－1911年9月：捷克布拉格

1911年10月－1913年9月：德国美因河畔法兰克福

1913年10月－1916年：德国汉堡

1916年－1920年：巴西里约热内卢

1920年－1922年：丹麦哥本哈根

1922年－1928年：日本东京

1928年－1933年：美国华盛顿哥伦比亚特区

1933年－1936年：比利时布鲁塞尔

1895年末，保罗·克洛岱尔在中国（清朝）上海写信给法国诗人斯特凡娜·马拉美（Stephane Mallarme）：

“ 中国是一个古老国家，错综复杂，令人目眩。这里的生活还没有遭到精神上的现代病的感染……我厌恶现代文明，而且对它总感到十分陌生。相反，这里的一切似乎都很自然、正常。 ”

之后，他在《巴黎杂志》写了很多散文诗，讲述中国风情。

保罗·克洛岱尔在巴西里约热内卢时正值第一次世界大战，他负责监督由南美洲运往法国的食物供应。当时他的秘书达吕斯·米约（Darius Milhaud）后来成为著名作曲家。

 

作品

克洛代尔的文学活动是从写诗开始，后来虽然发表了许多剧本，也都是诗剧，诗意的抒情的剧本，而不是反映现实生活的剧本。诗歌代表作有《五大颂歌》(1910)和《三重唱歌词》(1914)。戏剧代表作有：《城市》(1890)、《给圣母报信》(1891)、《少女维奥兰》(1892)、《金头》(1893)、《交换》(1901)、《正午的分界》(1906)， 《给玛丽报信》(1912)、三部曲《人质》、《硬面包》、《受辱的神父》(1909，1914，1916)和《缎子鞋》(1929)。

保罗·克洛岱尔受法国象征主义诗人阿蒂尔·兰波的影响很深远。 克洛代尔和瓦莱里都是一度盛行于19世纪末叶的象征主义诗歌的后继者。瓦莱里在艺术上师宗马拉梅，而克洛代尔则师宗兰波。他和瓦莱里在文学史上都被认为是后期象征主义的最重要的诗人。克洛代尔的诗和戏剧往往取材于《圣经》，充满基督教的玄想与炽烈的宗教信仰热情。他的诗歌激情奔放，表达方式大刀阔斧，接近兰波的风格。他的作品的主题思想主要是世俗的情欲和罪恶与上帝的“神恩”之间的矛盾，官能享受的魔障与“神灵的召唤”之间的冲突，实质上是唯心的遐想和资本主义世界残酷的现实之间的矛盾。戏剧的主题几乎全是基督教精神的胜利。《城市》反映的是社会秩序与反抗力量的矛盾，答案是人类社会最终应靠向天主。《少女维奥兰》以及根据该剧重新写成的《给圣母报信》体现了罪恶与神恩的对立、肉欲与灵魂的冲突，最后傲慢与贪婪遭到失败，而容忍则产生了奇迹。《缎子鞋》以全世界为舞台，呈现了16世纪末以西班牙为中心的殖民主义帝国的巨型画卷。剧的中心线索是朝廷重臣堂·罗德里克与贵族太太堂娜·多尼娅·普鲁艾丝的爱情纠葛，他们经过一番曲折经历，都为了“神圣”的宗教事业而压制了肉欲的奔放。该剧剧情跌宕起伏，地点、时间跨度极大，舞台色彩斑斓，人物众多，是克洛代尔最长也是最著名的剧本。

克洛代尔的主要剧作，几乎都经数次改写，因此发表时都有几种不同的文本。有的剧本从开始创作到最后定稿，甚至经过几十年时间。 同他的诗歌作品一样，他的剧本采用自由诗体，没有韵律的约束，近似于分行的散文，但节奏感十分强烈明快，这就使得戏剧在表达他的宗教热情时具有一种感人的效果。

克洛代尔诗歌的艺术形式富于独创性。他自始至终写自由诗，不写格律诗。他的诗句近似分行的散文，类乎宗教典籍中的经文。据他自己说，强有力的节奏，是配合人的呼吸的。这种有节奏的散文诗，在朗读时产生强烈的艺术感染力和魅力。在20世纪的法国抒情诗人中，受克洛代尔影响最明显的主要有贝玑、茹弗、埃马努埃尔等。

克洛代尔在中国任职期间(1894～1899)，曾写成散文诗集《东方的认识》(1896)。他学过汉文，曾翻译和改写一些中国的诗。 [2] 

参考资料

• 1.  美国不列颠百科全书编委会．《不列颠百科全书·国际中文版》：中国大百科全书出版社，1999年：第4册第257页
• 2.  余中先．《中国大百科全书 戏剧》 克洛代尔：中国大百科全书出版社 ，1989-11-1：第222页

　　Paul Claudel (French: [pɔl klɔdɛl]; 6 August 1868 – 23 February 1955) was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism. Claudel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six different years.[1]
　　Biography
　　He was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère (Aisne), into a family of farmers and government officials.[2] His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions. His mother, the former Louise Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. Having spent his first years in Champagne, he studied at the lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1881, when his parents moved to Paris. An unbeliever in his teenage years, he experienced a sudden conversion at the age of eighteen on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He would remain an active Catholic for the rest of his life. He studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po).
　　
　　
　　Paul Claudel, age sixteen, by his sister, Camille Claudel, modeled in 1884 and cast in 1893
　　The young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York (April 1893),[2] and later in Boston (December 1893). He was French consul in China (1895–1909), including consul in Shanghai (June 1895), and vice-consul in Fuzhou (October 1900), consul in Tianjin (Tientsin) (1906–1909), in Prague (December 1909), Frankfurt am Main (October 1911), Hamburg (October 1913), Rome (1915–1916), ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro (1917–1918), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1921-1927),[2] Washington, D.C. (1928–1933, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in 1933)[3] and Brussels (1933–1936).[2] While he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. (His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, later world-famous as a composer, who wrote incidental music to a number of Claudel's plays.)
　　
　　Due to his position in the Diplomatic Corps, at the beginning of his career Claudel published either anonymously or under a pseudonym, 'since permission to publish was needed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs'[4]:11 This led to him remaining 'an obscure author' until the editors of the Nouvelle Revue Française recognised his work and began a long collaboration with him.'[4]:12
　　
　　In 1936 he retired to his château in Brangues (Isère).[citation needed]
　　
　　After a long affair with Rosalie Vetch, a married woman with four children and pregnant with Claudel's child, ended in February 1905 (Vetch left him for another man), Claudel married Reine Sainte-Marie-Perrin on 15 March 1906.[5]
　　
　　Work
　　Main article: List of works by Paul Claudel
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　　At the age of 18 Claudel discovered Arthur Rimbaud's book of poetry, Illuminations, and underwent a sudden conversion to Catholicism. Together these two events would have a profound effect on him, leading to work towards 'the revelation through poetry, both lyrical and dramatic, of the grand design of creation'[6] All his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on God's all-governing grace and love.[citation needed]
　　
　　Claudel wrote in a unique verse style. He rejected traditional metrics in favour of long, luxuriant, unrhymed lines of free verse, the so-called verset claudelien, influenced by the Latin psalms of the Vulgate. His language and imagery was often lush, mystical, exhilarating, consciously 'poetical'; the settings of his plays tended to be romantically distant, medieval France or sixteenth-century Spanish South America, yet spiritually all-encompassing, transcending the level of material realism. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power God's infinite love for humanity. His plays were often extraordinarily long, sometimes stretching to eleven hours, and pressed the realities of material staging to their limits. Yet they were physically staged, at least in part, to rapturous acclaim, and are not merely closet dramas.[citation needed]
　　
　　The most famous of his plays are Le Partage de Midi ("The Break of Noon", 1906), L'Annonce faite à Marie ("The Tidings Brought to Mary", 1910) focusing on the themes of sacrifice, oblation and sanctification through the tale of a young medieval French peasant woman who contracts leprosy, and Le Soulier de Satin ("The Satin Slipper", 1931), his deepest exploration of human and divine love and longing set in the Spanish empire of the siglo de oro, which was staged at the Comédie-Française in 1943. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music, most notably Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake", 1939), an "opera-oratorio" with music by Arthur Honegger.[citation needed]
　　
　　As well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes, 1907).[citation needed]
　　
　　Reputation
　　
　　Cover of Time Magazine (21 March 1927)
　　
　　Camille Claudel
　　Claudel was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and remains so today. His devout Catholicism and his right-wing political views, both slightly unusual stances among his intellectual peers, made him, and continue to make him, unpopular in many circles.[citation needed]
　　
　　His address of a poem ("Paroles au Maréchal," "Words to the Marshal") to Marshal Philippe Pétain after the defeat of France in 1940, commending Petain for picking up and salvaging France's broken, wounded body, has been unflatteringly remembered, though it is less a paean to Pétain than a patriotic lament over the condition of France. As a Catholic, he could not avoid a sense of satisfaction at the fall of the anti-clerical French Third Republic. However, accusations that he was a collaborationist based on the 1941 poem ignore the fact that support for Marshal Pétain and the surrender was, in the catastrophic atmosphere of defeat, emotional collapse and exhaustion in 1941, widespread throughout the French populace (witness the large majority vote in favour of Pétain and the dissolution of the Third Republic in the French Parliament in 1940, with support stretching across the political spectrum). Claudel's diaries make clear his consistent contempt for Nazism (condemning it as early as 1930 as "demonic" and "wedded to Satan," and referring to communism and Nazism as "Gog and Magog"), and his attitude to the Vichy regime quickly hardened into opposition.[citation needed]
　　
　　He also committed his sister Camille Claudel to a psychiatric hospital in March 1913, where she remained for the last 30 years of her life, visiting her seven times in those 30 years.[7] Records show that while she did have mental lapses, she was clear-headed while working on her art. An exhibition of her bronzes in the Swiss Foundation Gianadda from 16 November 1990 until February 1991 shows clearly what can be considered only a small proof of the timeless beauty of her sculptures, inspired by a genuine talent. Doctors tried to convince the family that she need not be in the institution, but still they kept her there. (The story forms the subject of a novel by Michèle Desbordes, La Robe bleue, The Blue Dress.)
　　
　　Despite in his earlier years sharing the old-fashioned antisemitism of conservative France, Claudel's response to the radical racialist Nazi kind was unequivocal, writing an open letter to the World Jewish Conference in 1935 condemning the Nuremberg Laws as "abominable and stupid." His daughter-in-law's sister married a Jew, Paul-Louis Weiller, who was arrested by the Vichy government in October 1940. Claudel went to Vichy to intercede for him, to no avail; luckily Weiller managed to escape (with Claudel's assistance, the authorities suspected) and flee to New York. Claudel made known his anger at the Vichy government's anti-Jewish legislation, courageously writing a published letter to the Chief Rabbi, Israel Schwartz, in 1941 to express "the disgust, horror, and indignation that all decent Frenchmen and especially Catholics feel in respect of the injustices, the despoiling, all the ill treatment of which our Jewish compatriots are now the victims... Israel is always the eldest son of the promise [of God], as it is today the eldest son of suffering." The Vichy authorities responded by having Claudel's house searched and keeping him under observation. His support for Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces culminated in his victory ode addressed to de Gaulle when Paris was liberated in 1944.
　　
　　Claudel, a conservative of the old school, was clearly not a fascist. The French writers who were attracted by, and collaborated with, the Nazi "New Order" in Europe, much younger men like Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, tended to come from a very different background to Claudel's: they were nihilists, ex-dadaists, and futurists rather than old-fashioned Catholics (neither of the other two major French Catholic writers, François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, were supporters of the Nazi occupation or the Vichy regime).
　　
　　An interesting parallel to Claudel, for Anglophones, is T. S. Eliot, whose later political and religious views were similar to Claudel's. As with Eliot, even those who dislike Claudel's religious and political beliefs, have generally admitted his genius as a writer. The British poet W. H. Auden, at that time a left-leaning agnostic, acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his famous poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1939). Writing about Yeats, Auden says in lines 52–55:
　　
　　Time that with this strange excuse/Pardoned Kipling and his views,/And will pardon Paul Claudel,/Pardons him for writing well. (These lines are from the originally published version; they were excised by Auden in a later revision.)
　　
　　Jean-Charles de Castelbajac wrote a song "La soeur de Paul" pour Mareva Galanter/2010. George Steiner, in The Death of Tragedy, calls him one of the three "masters of drama" in the twentieth century.
　　
　　Paul Claudel was elected to the Académie française on 4 April 1946.
　　
　　The chapter of the French National Honors Society at Syosset High School is named after Paul Claudel.
　　
　　See also
　　L'Histoire de Tobie et de Sara
　　L'Annonce faite à Marie, film adaptation
　　Lycée Claudel, a French language high school in Ottawa, Canada, named after him
　　Camille Claudel, 1988 film
　　Camille Claudel 1915, 2013 film
　　References
　　 Nobel Prize.org: "Paul Claudel (Nomination Database)".
　　 "Paul Claudel | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
　　 "Deans of the Diplomatic Corps". Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State. 1 March 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
　　 Vagianos, Sylvia Caides (1979). Paul Claudel and La Nouvelle Revue Française (1909-1918). Librairie Droz. ISBN 978-2-600-03573-6.
　　 Ayral-Clause, Odile, Camille Claudel, A Life, pp. 167–168
　　 "Paul Claudel | French author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
　　 Ayral-Clause, Odile, p. 217, 222, 225, 242, 245, 250
　　Sources
　　Thody, P.M.W. "Paul Claudel", in The Fontana Biographical Companion to Modern Thought, eds. Bullock, Alan and Woodings, R.B., Oxford, 1983.
　　Ayral-Clause, Odile, Camille Claudel, A Life, 2002.
　　Ashley, Tim: "Evil Genius", The Guardian, 14 August 2004.
　　Price-Jones, David, "Jews, Arabs and French Diplomacy: A Special Report", Commentary, 22 May 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20051218141558/http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/15043
　　Britannica Student Encyclopedia, "Paul Claudel", http://0-www.search.eb.com.library.uor.edu/ebi/article-9319794?query=salvation&ct=ebi[permanent dead link]
　　Album Claudel. Iconographie choisie et annotée par Guy Goffette. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Éditions Gallimard, 2011. ISBN 9782070123759. (Illustrated biography.)
　　External links
　　Paul-claudel.net (in French)
　　Walled in light, English translation of some verse by Claudel, giving an impression of the verset claudelien dedicated to the Franciscan saint, his sister's namesake, Colette)
　　Review of a film version of Le Soulier de Satin ("The Satin Slipper"), https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6D8153BF937A2575AC0A962958260