ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the treatises Connaissance du temps, Trait de la Co-naissance au monde et de soi-mme and Dveloppement de lEglise, which between them constitute Claudel's Art potique. It also describes these three essays by saying they are Claudel's attempt to set forth a sacred poetics suited to those who live out a self-consciously God-derived existence in space and time. In the Treatises, Claudel presents the world as a totality, rather than a chaos or an assembly of atoms. Angers considers four features of cosmic reality named by Claudel in Art potique: difference, movement, form, and universal vibration. Under the general heading of Claudel's cosmology, that both naissance and connaissance involve the incessant breaking forth, closion, of being in duration. The three-aisled church had its own symbolism, which Claudel evokes in terms of the three tents or booths proposed by Peter for the protagonists at the Transfiguration: Jesus in the middle, flanked by Moses and Elijah.
