down into the rural French earth, into a solid classical culture, and into the deep Christian heritage. And the corners of this building are three: God, man, and the world... God the Creator of all — the earth and all upon it are the work of His hands — and man the voice of God and His conscience, singing nature as an anthem to the glory of God.

And to grasp the essence of Claudel's anthem in the whole of his literary production, we must recall the night of Christmas in

the year 1886, when Claudel was a youth of eighteen, an unbeliever like most of the educated young men of that time. Claudel says that he went that night to the church of "Notre-Dame" in Paris to look on at the religious rites, and suddenly, as he listened to the church hymns, he felt grace fill his heart, and he fell prostrate to the ground "because the Lord had spoken to him," and he came out filled with a spiritual experience that would not leave him all his life long.

As for the painful trials that followed this call, and the many intellectual stages, and the years of searching that Claudel passed through before his anthem burst forth as praise from the depths — there is no room to set them out in detail now. It is enough to say that "Break of Noon" is torn from the noon of his life, casting light on what precedes it and on what follows it of his literary and spiritual heritage, and on his call for the victory of the spirit over the flesh.