458
PARTISAN REVIEW
editors of
Le canard encha1.ne
wondered whether this feeling was
reciprocal; whether, to put it bluntly, God believed in Franctois Mauriac
and Paul Claude!. The answer, I am happy to report, is unequivocal
(which is more than can be said for some previous utterances emanating
from this same source). "I believe in Mauriac and Claudel," the
article ran, "first, because They exist. And don't let anybody try to
deny it in front of me:
Figaro
once a week and the Comedie Franctaise
once a year take it upon themselves to furnish me irrefutable proofs of
Their existence." And in what is perhaps the first commitment of this
writer to literary criticism, he remarks that Paul Claudel's
Soulier de
Satan
"is stilI the only thing, to this day, which has been able to give
me an idea of the infinite."
Joseph Frank
