resistance to Claudel. His large and heterogeneous œuvre is in very
great part a sustained rejoinder to the affirmations of a mind which
had been made up, once and for all, upon every important question.
What must have seemed in 1900 the grotesque presumption of an
isolated dilettante has since been consecrated by the gratitude of
that vast number of readers whom Gide has endowed with the
image of a world in which Man will have been perfected by his
own efforts. For those, therefore, who may question the stature
of Gide as a purely creative writer, or who may regard Claudel
merely as an irritable old image-factory, these letters will not come
as a conclusive rebuttal; but for those whose interest is in the
movement of thought, or in the struggle between sacred and secular
wisdom, or in the organization of literature, or in the professional
reflections of two great artists at the height of their powers, the
Correspondence will certainly be one of the most curious books to
have come out of France since the end of the war.

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