ABSTRACT
World-shaking events such as France’s occupation of the Ruhr when Germany fell behind in its reparation payments in 1923, Lenin’s return to Russia from exile, and Japanese intervention in the Russian Civil War following the Russian Revolution are juxtaposed with the line “Paul Claudel wrote poetry,” an event less world-rattling. As for the shamisen, in 1926 Claudel published a dialog between a “Poëte” and a “shamisen” in Commerce, a magazine among whose editors was no less a figure than Paul Valery. Whether or not Claudel is considered a denizen of World Literature, his account of how he comes to know the East may serve as a cautionary tale for World Lit’s practitioners. In 1925, when Claudel looks back at his twenty years in the East during a lecture titled Une Promenade a travers la litterature japonaise he contrasts his method of learning about China and Japan with those of scholars.
