Paul Claudel, a reader of the bible

Paul Claudel is a French writer of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, known in Russia for his poetic works of the early period and dramaturgy. His short prose and poetic commentaries on the Bible are practically unknown in the Russian-speaking scientific field. Most of his prose heritage consists of translations and commentaries on biblical books, including the apex text Paul Claudel inquires the Song of Songs (Paul Claudel interroge le Cantique des Cantiques). The purpose of this article is to introduce into scientific circulation the topic ‘Claudel as a prose writer, author of literary commentaries on the Bible’. It is this part of Claudel’s heritage that needs to be studied so that it would become possible to understand and assess the place of Claudel in the world culture of the 20th century. First of all, the paper deals with the method of Claudel’s work with the Bible (daily reading, reference to the works of the Church Fathers and concordances), which forms the poetological foundations of the style. These books shape a creative laboratory from which a method of literary commentary on biblical texts grows. This is how Claudel’s biblical style is born. It can be defined as an attitude to the Scripture not as to a series of messages, but as to images. The preservation of the centuries-old tradition of the Church in the interpretation of the Word leads the writer to a poetic commentary, a ‘Claudelian novel’ with the biblical characters and plot. Claudel makes the drama of the Holy Scripture the center of the reader’s interest, uniting the sacred and the profane, ennobling hypocrisy, directing mimesis to biblical reality, the existence of which Claudel does not doubt. The writer emphasized that his works were exclusively literary. The understanding of the Claudel’s text as literary is deepened not only by the text itself, but by the reader’s experience and readiness to perceive it. Thus, Claudel turns out to be the creator of a new dialogical novel word.