Chapter 2 - Eve Becomes Mary: L'annonce faite à Marie (The Tidings Brought to Mary)

Summary

An entirely different outlook, profoundly influenced by faith in Christianity and inspired by the Gospels, appears in the dramatic development of the tragic awareness of another great writer of the early twentieth century, Paul Claudel. We can choose The Tidings Brought to Mary to explore the theme we are concerned with here.

Tidings is a key text in twentieth-century dramaturgy. The tragic inspiration, sifted through the religious idea of existence and expressed in the modes of high poetry, modulated in lyrical and liturgical patterns, develops into a positive vision.

The text is based on a philosophy of Christian inspiration, fostered by Maritain's personalism and Thomism. Like the works of other great twentieth-century writers, among them T. S. Eliot and Giovanni Testori, it deals with the question, widely discussed by scholars, of the relation between the tragic consciousness and Christian consciousness, and their compatibility.

The tragic action of the character is presented in a very special way, because she is figura Christi. In Christ the finite and infinite coexist. This is because he embodies in himself the concreteness of the human person, situated in time and space, even experiencing death, and total intimacy, which coincides with the absoluteness of the divine. The height of the tragic therefore verges on the denial of the possibility of the tragic. Violaine, however, like Thomas Becket in Eliot's play, is not Christ but figura Christi.