This is an excellent point, made with clarity and knowledge. Robert is quite right to draw attention to the importance of Claire Delbos as the the composer's muse, all the more so because she is often forgotten (or at least set aside) next to the importance of Messiaen's second wife, Yvonne Loriod.

It is also important, and right, to draw attention to the fact that the composer's love of the sensual was, in some ways, every bit as important as his devout Catholicism. He, like the rest of us, was complicated!