Camille Claudel

From the letters that Camille Claudel wrote from her seclusion, and more than forty years after her death, Anne Delbée reconstructs the tragic life of this artist .

Camille faced her family and her time to give herself to her passion for sculpting and join the man she had fallen in love with, her teacher, Auguste Rodin. His sculpture, initially influenced by Rodin, ended up powerfully impregnating that of his master, with all its strength and sensuality, deep and dazzling. But Rodin feared that Camille would overshadow him and never helped her get ahead . He also did not know how to reciprocate his fidelity and ended up marrying another woman, Rose Beuret.

For Paul Claudel, poet, playwright, and French ambassador to the United States, Camille had been the adored sister who illuminated his childhood. Paul couldn't resist her abandoning him for Rodin and walked away from her forever.

Alone and without resources, Camille plunged into a depressive crisis and began systematically destroying all her works . One day, by order of the Claudel family signed by Paul himself, the nurses broke into her sculptor's workshop to take her to the sanatorium where she lived for thirty years, until her death. Lucid and desperate, Camille wrote numerous letters, telling her family about the cold, the promiscuity and the horror, asking them to get her out of there. But despite her heartbreaking complaints and the opinion of the doctors, the family never agreed to her pleas. Camille remained alone, away from her work and the world until her death.

Author: Anne Delbee