The Catholic poet Paul Claudel (1868-1955) first came to what was then known as the Far East in 1895 and at once began writing down his impressions. In 1900 he gathered them into the collection "Connaissance de l'Est," but kept adding to them until the "canonical" text was published in 1914, seen through the press by another enthusiastic resident of the "Orient," Victor Segalen.
Claudel was 32 when he began writing these prose-poems, but the ardor is that of someone much younger. Of the coconut palm, first glimpsed in the "East," he wrote that it "bent over the sea and planet like a being overcome with love, made the sign of bringing its heart to the heavenly fire."
Besides being anthropomorphic, such effusions are also specifically poetic in the style then in vogue -- that of the Symbolists, a group of like-minded writers who sought to achieve in poetry the effects of music, using images and metaphors to suggest or symbolize the idea or emotion behind each utterance.