PAUL CLAUDELFrench ambassador to Tokyo, Washington, and Brussels, becoming a famous
target of the Surrealists because of his diplomatic roles and religious beliefs. He
later became one of the leading figures in French-Catholic literature, concentrat-
ing on biblical exegesis, especially of the Old Testament. Principal works: Cinq
grandes odes, 1910; La Cantate à trois voix, 1912; L’Oiseau noir dans le soleil levant,
1927; Cent phrases pour évantails, 1927.
October
In vain do I see that the trees are still green.
Whether the year is shrouded in a funereal haze or hidden under a long calm
sky, we are not one day less close to its fatal solstice. The sun does not disappoint
me, or the vast opulence of the landscape, but there is something too calm, a rest
from which there is no awakening. The cricket has no sooner begun to chirp than
it stops for fear of being superfluous in the midst of this plenty that alone takes
away our right to speak; and it seems as though one can only go barefooted into
the solemn fastnesses of these golden fields. No, the sky behind me no longer
casts the same light over the huge harvest; and as the road leads me by the stacks,
whether I go around a pool or come upon a village as I walk away from the sun, I
turn towards the large pale moon you see by day.
It was just as I came out of the dark olive-trees and caught sight of the radiant
plain open before me as far as the mountain barriers, that the initiatory word was
given to me. Oh, the last fruit of a condemned season! At day’s end, the supreme
ripeness of the irrevocable year. It is all over.
Winter’s impatient hands will not come and brutally strip the earth. No winds
tear at her, no frosts cut her, no waters drown her. But more tenderly than May,
or when a thirsty vine clings to the source of life in the thrall of noon, the sky
smiles on the earth with an ine√able love. Here now, like a heart that yields to
constant prompting, is the time of consent: the grain leaves the ear, the fruit
leaves the tree, the earth little by little surrenders to the invincible claimant of all
things, death unclenches a hand too full! The words she hears are holier now
than those of her wedding day—deeper, richer, more bountiful: It is all over. The
birds are sleeping; the tree falls to sleep in the lengthening shade; the sun grazes
the earth, covering it with an even ray. The day is done, the year is at an end. A
loving response is made to heaven’s question: It is all over.
—james lawler