Figures de la liberté dans le théatre de Paul Claudel

Claudel is one of those authors one cannot avoid. Reading Claudel provokes to some a refusal, to some others a sort of enchantment, to others an antipathy that is nevertheless accompagnied to an inexplicable charm. Never can the reading of Claudel's works leave indifferent. In fact, once introduced in that labyrinth of beauty and ugliness that is Claudel's dramatic universe, the reader is little by little fascinated from the magic of his verse and from the amazing actuality of the themes he deals with. Between those ones, freedom holds a so central role, that we are tempted to indicate it as the very heart of Claudel's work. Freedom constitutes the place of the mysterious relation that man choices to begin with God. In such a perspective, in the present volume, Simonetta Valenti analyzes the characters created by Paul Claudel, showing the play of their freedom, in front of the fundamental question of the relationship with the Divine. If the figures of denial put in evidence the different ways in which the human being can deliberately reject to rely on the Divine, the figures of reception vigorously illustrate the problem of adhering to God, and of the various types of "conversion" that such an adhesion demands in every epoch and latitude. Finally, the figures of trust show, by their fidelity to the image of a humble God, the purity and the splendor of a freedom, which attains its height in the sublime act of the offer.