Poet, Playwright, Essayist and Diplomat. He is well-known for his verse dramas which often convey his devout Catholicism. He was nominated six times for the Nobel prize in literature and is considered one of the most important European writers. His sister was the famous sculptor Camille Claudel (see her Find-a-Grave Memorial). An unbeliever in his teenage years, he was converted at the age of eighteen while listening to a choir sing in the Paris Notre Dame cathedral and remained an active Catholic for the rest of his life. He even considered entering a Benedictine monastery but began a long career in the diplomatic corps, starting in 1893 in New York and Boston, then as French Consul in China (1895 - 1909), Prague, Germany, Rome, Rio de Janeiro (1917-1918), Copenhagen (1920), as ambassador in Tokyo (1921-1927), in Washington, D.C. (1928–1933, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in 1933) and Brussels until 1936. When World War II broke out he was given a top job in the French Ministry of Propaganda. Simultaneously, he pursued his literary career. The most famous of his plays are Le Partage de Midi ("The Break of Noon", 1906), L'Annonce faite à Marie ("The Tidings Brought to Mary", 1910) focusing on the themes of sacrifice, and his masterpiece, Le Soulier de Satin (“Satin Slipper”, 1931) which was staged at the Comedie Francaise in 1943. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music including ”Joan of Arc" (1939), an oratorio with music by Arthur Honegger. As well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes, 1907) and “La Vierge a Midi” (“The Virgin at Noon”, 1915). An interesting parallel to Claudel for Anglophones, is T. S Eliot, whose later political and religious views were similar to Claudel's. Many have admitted his genius as a writer. The British poet W.H.Auden acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his famous poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1939). George Steiner, in “The Death of Tragedy” calls him one of the three "masters of drama" in the twentieth century.” He died in Paris but was buried in the gardens of the Chateau de Brangues which was his residence, in the Isère, Auvergne-Rhônes-Alpes region in France.