Claudel's first play, written 1889 and published 1890. A sprawling Symbolist drama with Shakespearean and Wagnerian overtones, it expresses much of the confusion he felt in this period, through imagery in which a Nietzschean desire for self-fulfilment is accompanied by a good deal of Christian symbolism. The power of Claudel's declamatory verse can already be felt.
The play is in three parts. In Part I, Simon Agnel, who has broken loose from all family ties, is burying the woman who has been his companion. His freedom leaves him with a sense of a great destiny. In Part 2 an old emperor awaits the result of a battle, in which an unknown called Tête d'Or (Simon Agnel) is commanding his army. Tête d'Or returns triumphant, demands the throne, and kills the emperor. In Part 3 he has launched forth on a war of conquest; in the Caucasus, he is mortally wounded in battle. On to this simple base a bewildering range of symbolism, Christian and otherwise, is added, particularly in relation to the mystical figure of the princess, the emperor's daughter. In the second version of the play, published 1901, the Christian elements gain more prominence.
[Richard Griffiths]
