An unbeliever in his teenage years, Claudel experienced a conversion at age 18 on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed."

He was one of a group of writers enjoying the support and patronage of Philippe Berthelot of the Foreign Ministry, who became a close friend; others were Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand and Saint-John Perse.

[6]:11 In that year, the founding group of the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), and in particular his friend André Gide, were keen to recognise his work.

[6]:12 Claudel also wrote extensively about China, with a definitive version of his Connaissance de l'Est published in 1914 by Georges Crès and Victor Segalen.

[8] Claudel was in Rome (1915–1916), ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro (1917–1918), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1921–1927),[1] Washington, D.C. (1928–1933, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in 1933)[9] and Brussels (1933–1936).

[1] While he served in Brazil during World War I he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France.

His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, who wrote incidental music to a number of Claudel's plays.

He supported the Vichy regime, but disagreed with Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart's policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany.

[13] Close to home, Paul-Louis Weiller, married to Claudel's daughter-in-law's sister, was arrested by the Vichy government in October 1940.

Claudel wrote in December 1941 to Isaïe Schwartz, expressing his opposition to the Statut des Juifs enacted by the regime.

It was within the orbit of experimentation by followers of Walt Whitman, impressive for Claudel, of whom Charles Péguy and André Spire were two others working on a form of verset.

[20] The best known 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, oblation and sanctification through the tale of a young medieval French peasant woman who contracts leprosy, and Le Soulier de Satin ("The Satin Slipper", 1931).

The complexity, structure and scale of the plays meant that a positive reception of Claudel's drama by audiences was long delayed.

[24] Boštjan Marko Turk's doctoral thesis examined the influence of medieval philosophy on Paul Claudel's poetic work, particularly Les Cinq Grandes Odes.

Claudel knew Francis Vetch through his diplomatic work, and had met Rosalie on a sea voyage out from Marseille to Hong Kong in 1900.

She was the daughter of Louis Sainte-Marie Perrin [fr] (1835–1917), an architect from Lyon known for completing the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière.