by lighted candles...
encircled by the pure flock, to offer me the last provision (1) But the gates of heaven split open, and the army of all the saints, bearing torches in their hands, advance to meet me, surrounding the awesome Lamb!
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Why? Why this woman? Why the woman, suddenly, on this ship? And what could she have come to do among us? Did we have need of her? You alone — You alone, suddenly, at the bursting forth of life.
A light movement... Ysé enters like a specter in her trailing white gown and drifts through the house in the pitch darkness like a moving mist; then she appears on the balcony, pure white, her loosened hair upon her shoulder glittering in the light of the moon...
— So I saw you once before, on the ship... — Mesa! I am Ysé! Here I am!... — Do I dream this? — The dreams are ended; here we are, face to face before the truth... This is the woman... She has come to give back the answer to the man's question... She has left the world and all who are in it, to die with the companion of her soul... The Magdalene atones for her sins by her great love; for what was impossible to love will become possible through sacrifice, and "Ysé" will find that lost thing she was searching for in the man's soul... She believes now in her salvation, for she will offer this beautiful body as incense to the victorious spirit... And Mesa lays his hand upon Ysé's head, completing his hymn of praise:
— And if the veils are torn away, then I am myself the active, unbound flame, the great Male in the glory of God,
Man in the splendor of August, the victorious Spirit in the transfiguration of Noon!
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"Break of Noon" is a verse play which Claudel wrote in 1905, but it did not appear on the stage until 1949, and that by the mighty efforts of "Jean-Louis Barrault" and after violent insistence to persuade the author to allow its production at the "Marigny" theater. The reason is well known: the events of the play are torn from the author's own life; he is "Mesa," and he knew an "Ysé" once in his life, and this love left in his soul wounds that did not heal with the passing of the years; in the days of his old age he could not recall this violent stage of his life without his limbs trembling and his innermost being shaken. He once said to "Barrault": "It is a cry from the depths which I bled forth with my blood; were the multitude to hear it, I should feel as though naked before God's creation." But he finally consented to its production after consulting a Dominican father whom he loved and on whose opinion he relied, for this latter told him that the conversion of many souls had come through the influence of this play...
And Barrault says that when he chose "Edwige Feuillère" to take the role of Ysé, he presented her to Claudel, and the author was astounded at the great resemblance between her and the original. And he would attend the rehearsal with his eyes brimming with tears at certain of the moving scenes. And no wonder, for "Edwige Feuillère" is a singular personality in the world of the French theater, to whom the greatest roles are entrusted; it is enough to mention that she recently took the role of "Phèdre," Racine's immortal heroine. Her greatness defies description, for to the beauty of a fresh body she has joined a living vitality and an artist's power to express conflicting passions: now
the strong and commanding, now the weak and tender; the yielding and self-sacrificing, and the violent rebel. In the role of Ysé she is a blazing torch that illumines and burns at once; she commands the stage and the players, and casts a spell over the listeners, who call her out dozens of times to appear before them after the performance is done...
And "Barrault" himself took the role of Mesa, and with his short stature, his sharp glances, and his head of genius he was an exact copy of the character of "Mesa"... It is he who has worked with Claudel since 1942 on the production of his plays, from "The Satin Slipper" (Le Soulier de Satin) to "Christophe Colomb" to "Break of Noon"... And whoever sees this play in its present form at the "Théâtre des Nations" understands "Barrault's" theatrical greatness and his message of the total theater, of which he has spoken in his articles in the Marigny magazine. The role of De Ciz was given to the well-known actor "Jean Desailly" (Jean De Sailly), and the role of Amalric to Jacques Dacqmine (J. Dacqmine), and each of them won the admiration of the public and the esteem of the critics...
As for the stage setting, it was astonishing; and the form of the white ship speeding through the waves of the deep under the glare of the equatorial sun was the height of artistic mastery, expressing the picture in the author's mind and the central point into which he cast his ship...
"Claudel" is a towering edifice in the heritage of modern French literature, vast in its reaches,
(1) Le viatique — the last receiving of the Holy Sacrament before death.
wide in its balconies; but it is a building of clear lines and firm foundations, whose roots strike