ABSTRACT

At the end of June 1907 Claudel wrote to one of his lifelong correspondents, all of them consist of themes united in various ways a lyrical exhalation of thought, memories of past life, hopes and liberty of a Christian, art and the vocation of the poet, and so forth. The writing of the first Ode, Les Muses, was sparked by a visit to the Louvre where Claudel's attention was captured by a Roman sarcophagus from the Via Ostiense. The second Ode, The Spirit and the Water was finished at Peking in 1906, during Claudel's last China stay, though its gestation will surely have taken some time. Claudel begins the third Ode by recalling that conversion moment, set in the context of a worldly life on the Paris scene. Like Magnificat, Claudel's fourth Ode has a helpfully explanatory preamble to orient the reader. Claudel is reporting on an inrush of poetic inspiration.