The Poet as Believer: A Theological Study of Paul Claudel by Aidan Nichols, OP (review)

610 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Hopkins' poetry, for its ongoing impact on modern literature, and for its attractiveness for the modern reader. (332) Asthe passagesfrom FlanneryO'Connor and John HenryNewman respectively show,however,the business of the Catholic writer is to depict the world as it is, and the Catholic view of the world can be as grim as anything imagined by a secular existentialist. Finally,holding simultaneously in the imagination an ideal of human flourishing and a darkly tragic apprehension of human reality was the New Critical understanding of the business of poetry six decades ago: Sobolev may well have found firmer intellectual support for his project in Cleanth Brooks' "Irony as a Principle of Structure" than in Paul deMan's "Rhetoric of Temporality:' R.Y. Young North Carolina State University The Poet as Believer:A Theological Study ofPaul Claudel. ByAidan Nichols, OP. Blackfriars, Oxford, UK: Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts, 2011. ISBN9781409426851.Pp. xi + 275. $95.00. Ten years before leaving this world, speaking as artist and thinker, Claudel congratulated himself, somewhat humorously, on having achieved the impossible, to whit, "reconciling incompatible ideas" and harmonizing "discordant colours" (Le Porteet la Bible II, N.R.F. 2004, [P.B.] 264). At the end of his reflections on French verse (Positions et propositions sur le vers francais, Oeuvres en Prose, Pleiade N.R.F 1965 [Pr.], 44) he compares the new, turn-of-the-century Rimbaud-generated poetic style to a tsunami, making no secret of the fact that he takes it as a model. Elsewhere, he praises attention to detail as proof of delicacy, and indeed practices it himself, being known to register the slightest shift in human sensibility at the cost of instant intelligibility, discouraging the reader, and driving spectators of his plays close to despair. Since Claudel is not only a poet but also a prose essayist and dramatist, to tackle so diverse, prolific,contradictory, powerful, subtle-in one word, difficult-a symbolist writer constitutes no mean undertaking. Indeed, it is an astonishing feat. Yet, given that "le cyclope baptise" and "il gorilla cattolico," as Claudel was variously named, turns out to have been the most remarkable lay exponent of the Bible in his century, it is not surprising that a theologian of Father Aidan Nichols' status and wide interests should turn his attention to this exceptional figure. "MyClaudel is above all a poet ofliturgy and the saints-and hence of creation, redemption and consummation, celebrated even when Claudel is not thinking of feastsandsaints," saysthe author in a sentence with an arresting ending (x,emphasis BOOK REVIEWS 611 mine). That the French poet could indeed glorify God outside the span of religious rite is illustrated more than once in his oeuvre. Does he not apprise us, for instance, that even the state of sin did not stop him from loving God (Correspondance lammes-Prizeau, (N.R.F 1952, C. J. Fr. 39)? A thinly disguised autobiographical aside in Un Peete regarde fa Croix, (N.R.E 1935,238) makes it clear that such was for several years his own situation (he is referring to his torrid love affair with a married woman in 1900-04; see Partage de midi). "If there should be among my readers;' writes Claudel, "one unfortunate enough to find himself, while alive, in hell, that is to say, without losing a fraction of his faith, to have transgressed for a long period, fully aware of this in his heart, with an intelligence intact and full of Christ;' this man, he concludes, "will cling with all his being to the Redeemer:' The relationship between the Dominican priest and his subject appears here in its own unusual light. The theologian's work, in his own words, deals with the writings of an "audacious" (174), pious but not pietistic believer (see 86). And perhaps the choice of this term, "believer", for the title of the book, says something about the frontiers of a study which takes account of extreme experience as well asliturgy and doctrine. Fr. Nichols tells us that his "wider aim;' which he calls "something of a theological challenge;' is "the creation of a plenary Catholicism" (x). Aglance at the table ofcontents...