The French author and diplomat Paul Louis Charles Claudel (1868-1955) is best known for his plays, in which he explored the relationship between man, the universe, and the divine in a highly poetic and original style.

Paul Claudel was one of a group of celebrated writers, all born about 1870, who gave French literature a new orientation. Though quite different from one another, Paul Valéry, Marcel Proust, André Gide, Charles Péguy, Colette, and Claudel all revolted against 19th-century positivism, as well as against the extremes of symbolism which denied reality to the external world. Each, in his own way, experimented with new ways of using the French language and offered new visions of the world and new views of the function of art.

Claudel was born on Aug. 6, 1868, at Villeneuve-sur-Fère-en-Tardenois on the border between the provinces of Champagne and the Ile-de-France. His...