The plays of Paul Claudel are unique. Neither a naturalist nor a realist, Claudel veered away from the kind of theater found in the work of Henri Becque, Eugène Brieux-Georges de Porto-Riche, and Gerard Hauptmann. His plays did not conform to Maurice Maeterlinck's theater of silence, stasis, darkness, and dream or to the Boulevard productions typified by the witty and brash comedies of Georges Feydeau, Henri Meilhac, and Ludovic Halévy. Claudel created his own genre, which was poetic, but unlike the outpourings of Victor Hugo; religious, but with greater amplitude, depth, and vigor than the litanies of Henri Ghéon; symbolic, but reaching more deeply into the elemental world than the plays of Henrik Ibsen or Jean-Marie Mathias Philippe-August Comte de Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Claudel was tormented by sexual problems, but his were different from those plaguing August Strindberg. If comparisons are...