Books by Paul Claudel

HAB is happy to re-propose after many years Paul Claudel's play The Tidings Brought to Mary, a play in a translation by Louise Morgan Sill. A significant introduction by Luigi Giussani, founder of the Catholic lay ecclesial movement of Communion and Liberation, helps the reader to be drawn more deeply into the drama of the play and to find described there the drama which faces each of us. Pope Benedict XVI once made the point that world history is a struggle between two kinds of love: "self-love to the point of hatred for God, and love of God to the point of self-renunciation. This second love brings the redemption of the world and the self." This is the claim, the proposal of the play The Tidings Brought to Mary. After nearly a hundred years, as we watch this Infinite Love generate the play's heroic characters, we find ourselves begging in turn: "Please let me meet You. Please let your love take hold of my life. Please let me be embraced by a love that shows me where my place is-that draws everything in my life to Yourself. Please let me obey that love."

Originally published in 1943, this book contains an edited French edition of Paul Claudel's 1910 drama L'annonce faite a Marie. The play, which deals with a young French peasant woman who contracts leprosy in the medieval era, is accompanied by critical notes at the end of the volume and a biographical note on Claudel's life and career.