Classic French Course in English

I will tell thee further, but under confidence, the sect of Christians is not what it is thought to be. They are hated, why I know not; and I see Decius unjust only in this regard. From curiosity I have sought to become acquainted with them. They are regarded as sorcerers taught from hell; and, in this supposition, the punishment of death is visited on secret mysteries which we do not understand. But Eleusinian Ceres and the Good Goddess have their secrets, like those at Rome and in Greece; still we freely tolerate everywhere, their god alone excepted, every kind of god; all the monsters of Egypt have their temples in Rome; our fathers, at their will, made a god of a man; and, their blood in our veins preserving their errors, we fill heaven with all our emperors; but, to speak without disguise of deifications so numerous, the effect is very doubtful of such metamorphoses.

Christians have but one God, absolute master of all, whose mere will does whatever he resolves; but, if I may venture to say what seems to me true, our gods very often agree ill together; and, though their wrath crush me before your eyes, we have a good many of them for them to be true gods. Finally, among the Christians, morals are pure, vices are hated, virtues flourish; they offer prayers on behalf of us who persecute them; and, during all the time since we have tormented them, have they ever been seen mutinous? Have they ever been seen rebellious? Have our princes ever had more faithful soldiers? Fierce in war, they submit themselves to our executioners; and, lions in combat, they die like lambs. I pity them too much not to defend them. Come, let us find Felix; let us commune with his son-in-law; and let us thus, with one single action, gratify at once Paulina, and my glory, and my compassion.

Such is the high heroic style in which pagan Severus resolves and speaks. And thus the fourth act ends.

Felix makes a sad contrast with the high-heartedness which the other characters, most of them, display. He is base enough to suspect that Severus is base enough to be false and treacherous in his act of intercession for Polyeuctes. He imagines he detects a plot against himself to undermine him with the emperor. Voltaire criticises Corneille for giving this sordid character to Felix. He thinks the tragedist might better have let Felix be actuated by zeal for the pagan gods. The mean selfishness that animates the governor, Voltaire regards as below the right tragic pitch. It is the poet himself, no doubt, with that high Roman fashion of his, who, unconsciously to the critic, taught him to make the criticism.

Felix summons Polyeuctes to an interview, and adjures him to be a prudent man. Felix at length says, "Adore the gods, or die." "I am a Christian," simply replies the martyr. "Impious! Adore them, I bid you, or renounce life." (Here again Voltaire offers one of his refrigerant criticisms: "Renounce life does not advance upon the meaning of die; when one repeats the thought, the expression should be strengthened.") Paulina meantime has entered to expostulate with Polyeuctes and with her father. Polyeuctes bids her, 'Live with Severus.' He says he has revolved the subject, and he is convinced that another love is the sole remedy for her woe. He proceeds in the calmest manner to point out the advantages of the course recommended. Voltaire remarks,—justly, we are bound to say,—that these maxims are here somewhat revolting; the martyr should have had other things to say. On Felix's final word, "Soldiers, execute the order that I have given," Paulina exclaims, "Whither are you taking him?" "To death," says Felix. "To glory," says Polyeuctes. "Admirable dialogue, and always applauded," is Voltaire's note on this.

The tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of Polyeuctes. Paulina becomes a Christian, but remains pagan enough to call her father "barbarous" in acrimoniously bidding him finish his work by putting his daughter also to death. Severus reproaches Felix for his cruelty, and threatens him with his own enmity. Felix undergoes instantaneous conversion,—a miracle of grace which, under the circumstances provided by Corneille, we may excuse Voltaire for laughing at. Paulina is delighted; and Severus asks, "Who would not be touched by a spectacle so tender?"

The tragedy thus comes near ending happily enough to be called a comedy.

Such as the foregoing exhibits him, is Corneille, the father of French tragedy, where at his best; where at his worst, he is something so different that you would hardly admit him to be the same man. For never was genius more unequal in different manifestations of itself, than Corneille in his different works. Molière is reported to have said that Corneille had a familiar, or a fairy, that came to him at times, and enabled him to write sublimely; but that, when the poet was left to himself, he could write as poorly as another man.

Corneille produced some thirty-three dramatic pieces in all, but of these not more than six or seven retain their place on the French stage.

Besides his plays, there is a translation in verse by him of the "Imitation of Christ;" there are metrical versions of a considerable number of the Psalms; there are odes, madrigals, sonnets, stanzas, addresses to the king. Then there are discourses in prose on dramatic poetry, on tragedy, and on the three unities. Add to these, elaborate appreciations by himself of a considerable number of his own plays, prefaces, epistles, arguments to his pieces, and you have, what with the notes, the introductions, the eulogies, and other such things that the faithful French editor knows so well how to accumulate, matter enough of Corneille to swell out eleven, or, in one edition,—that issued under Napoleon as First Consul,—even twelve, handsome volumes of his works.

Corneille and Bossuet together constitute a kind of rank by themselves among the Dii Majores of the French literary Olympus.

XI.

RACINE.

1639-1699

Jean Racine was Pierre Corneille reduced to rule. The younger was to the elder somewhat as Sophocles or Euripides was to Æschylus, as Virgil was to Lucretius, as Pope was to Dryden. Nature was more in Corneille, art was more in Racine. Corneille was a pathfinder in literature. He led the way, even for Molière, still more for Racine. But Racine was as much before Corneille in perfection of art, as Corneille was before Racine in audacity of genius. Racine, accordingly, is much more even and uniform than Corneille. Smoothness, polish, ease, grace, sweetness,—these, and monotony in these, are the mark of Racine. But if there is, in the latter poet, less to admire, there is also less to forgive. His taste and his judgment were surer than the taste and the judgment of Corneille. He enjoyed, moreover, an inestimable advantage in the life-long friendship of the great critic of his time, Boileau. Boileau was a literary conscience to Racine. He kept Racine constantly spurred to his best endeavors in art. Racine was congratulating himself to his friend on the ease with which he produced his verse. "Let me teach you to produce easy verse with difficulty," was the critic's admirable reply. Racine was a docile pupil. He became as painstaking an artist in verse as Boileau would have him.

It will always be a matter of individual taste, and of changing fashion in criticism, to decide which of the two is, on the whole, to be preferred to the other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter. Corneille's old age was, perhaps, seriously saddened by the consciousness, which he could not but have, of being retired from the place of ascendency once accorded to him over all. His case repeated the fortune of Æschylus in relation to Sophocles. The eighteenth century, taught by Voltaire, established the precedence of Racine. But the nineteenth century has restored the crown to the brow of Corneille. To such mutations is subject the fame of an author.

Jean Racine was early left an orphan. His grandparents put him, after preparatory training at another establishment, to school at Port Royal, where during three years he had the best opportunities of education that the kingdom afforded. His friends wanted to make a clergyman of him; but the preferences of the boy prevailed, and he addicted himself to literature. The Greek tragedists became familiar to him in his youth, and their example in literary art exercised a sovereign influence over Racine's development as author. It pained the good Port-Royalists to see their late gifted pupil, now out of their hands, inclined to write plays. Nicole printed a remonstrance against the theatre, in which Racine discovered something that he took to slant anonymously at himself. He wrote a spirited reply, of which no notice was taken by the Port-Royalists. Somebody, however, on their behalf, rejoined to Racine, whereupon the young author wrote a second letter to the Port-Royalists, which he showed to his friend Boileau. "This may do credit to your head, but it will do none to your heart," was that faithful mentor's comment, in returning the document. Racine suppressed his second letter, and did his best to recall the first. But he went on in his course of writing for the stage.

The "Thebaïd" was Racine's first tragedy,—at least his first that attained to the honor of being represented. Molière brought it out in his theatre, the Palais Royal. His second tragedy, the "Alexander the Great," was also put into the hands of Molière.

This latter play the author took to Corneille to get his judgment on it. Corneille was thirty-three years the senior of Racine, and he was at this time the undisputed master of French tragedy. "You have undoubted talent for poetry—for tragedy, not; try your hand in some other poetical line," was Corneille's sentence on the unrecognized young rival, who was so soon to supplant him in popular favor.

The "Andromache" followed the "Alexander," and then Racine did try his hand in another poetical line; for he wrote a comedy, his only one, "The Suitors," as is loosely translated "Les Plaideurs," a title which has a legal, and not an amorous, meaning. This play, after it had at first failed, Louis XIV. laughed into court favor. It became thenceforward a great success. It still keeps its place on the stage. It is, however, a farce, rather than a comedy.

We pass over now one or two of the subsequent productions of Racine, to mention next a play of his which had a singular history. It was a fancy of the brilliant Princess Henriette (that same daughter of English Charles I., Bossuet's funeral oration on whom, presently to be spoken of, is so celebrated) to engage the two great tragedists, Corneille and Racine, both at once, in labor, without their mutual knowledge, upon the same subject,—a subject which she herself, drawing it from the history of Tacitus, conceived to be eminently fit for tragical treatment. Corneille produced his "Berenice," and Racine his "Titus and Berenice." The princess died before the two plays which she had inspired were produced; but, when they were produced, Racine's work won the palm. The rivalry created a bitterness between the two authors, of which, naturally, the defeated one tasted the more deeply. An ill-considered pleasantry, too, of Racine's, in making, out of one of Corneille's tragic lines in his "Cid," a comic line in "The Suitors," hurt the old man's pride. That pride suffered a worse hurt still. The chief Parisian theatre, completely occupied with the works of his victorious rival, rejected tragedies offered by Corneille.

Still, Racine did not have things all his own way. Some good critics considered the rage for this younger dramatist a mere passing whim of fashion. These—Madame de Sévigné was of them—stood by their "old admiration," and were true to Corneille.

A memorable mortification and chagrin for our poet was now prepared by his enemies—he seems never to have lacked enemies—with lavish and elaborate malice. Racine had produced a play from Euripides, the "Phædra," on which he had unstintingly bestowed his best genius and his best art. It was contrived that another poet, one Pradon, should, at the self-same moment, have a play represented on the self-same subject. At a cost of many thousands of dollars, the best seats at Racine's theatre were all bought by his enemies, and left solidly vacant. The best seats at Pradon's theatre were all bought by the same interested parties, and duly occupied with industrious and zealous applauders. This occurred at six successive representations. The result was the immediate apparent triumph of Pradon over the humiliated Racine. Boileau in vain bade his friend be of good cheer, and await the assured reversal of the verdict. Racine was deeply wounded.

This discomposing experience of the poet's, joined with conscientious misgivings on his part as to the propriety of his course in writing for the stage, led him now, at the early age of thirty-eight, to renounce tragedy altogether. His son Louis, from whose life of Racine we have chiefly drawn our material for the present sketch, conceives this change in his father as a profound and genuine religious conversion. Writers whose spirit inclines them not to relish a condemnation such as seems thus to be reflected on the theatre, take a less charitable view of the change. They account for it as a reaction of mortified pride. Some of them go so far as groundlessly to impute sheer hypocrisy to Racine.

A long interval of silence, on Racine's part, had elapsed, when Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV., asked the unemployed poet to prepare a sacred play for the use of the high-born girls educated under her care at St. Cyr. Racine consented, and produced his "Esther." This achieved a prodigious success; for the court took it up, and an exercise written for a girls' school became the admiration of a kingdom. A second similar play followed, the "Athaliah,"—the last, and, by general agreement, the most perfect, work of its author. We thus reach that tragedy of Racine's which both its fame and its character dictate to us as the one by eminence to be used here in exhibition of the quality of this Virgil among tragedists.

Our readers may, if they please, refresh their recollection of the history on which the drama is founded by perusing Second Kings, chapter eleven, and Second Chronicles, chapters twenty-two and twenty-three. Athaliah, whose name gives its title to the tragedy, was daughter to the wicked king, Ahab. She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the kingdom of Judah. To secure her usurped position, she had sought to kill all the descendants of King David, even her own grandchildren. She had succeeded,—but not quite. Young Joash escaped, to be secretly reared in the temple by the high priest. The final disclosure of this hidden prince, and his coronation as king in place of usurping Athaliah, destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death in his name, afford the action of the play. Action, however, there is almost none in classic French tragedy. The tragic drama is, with the French, as it was with the Greeks, after whom it was framed, merely a succession of scenes in which speeches are made by the actors. Lofty declamation is always the character of the play. In the "Athaliah," as in the "Esther," Racine introduced the feature of the chorus, a restoration which had all the effect of an innovation. The chorus in "Athaliah" consisted of Hebrew virgins, who, at intervals marking the transitions between the acts, chanted the spirit of the piece in its successive stages of progress toward the final catastrophe. The "Athaliah" is almost proof against technical criticism. It is acknowledged to be, after its kind, a nearly ideal product of art.

There is a curious story about the fortune of this piece with the public, that will interest our readers. The first success of "Athaliah" was not great. In fact, it was almost a flat failure. But a company of wits, playing at forfeits somewhere in the country, severely sentenced one of their number to go by himself, and read the first act of "Athaliah." The victim went, and did not return. Sought at length, he was found just commencing a second perusal of the play entire. He reported of it so enthusiastically, that he was asked to read it before the company, which he did, to their delight. This started a reaction in favor of the condemned play, which soon came to be counted the masterpiece of its author.

First, in specimen of the choral feature of the drama, we content ourselves with giving a single chorus from the "Athaliah." This we turn into rhyme, clinging pretty closely all the way to the form of the original. Attentive readers may, in one place of our rendering, observe an instance of identical rhyme. This, in a piece of verse originally written in English, would, of course, be a fault. In a translation from French, it may pass for a merit; since, to judge from the practice of the national poets, the French ear seems to be even better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the close of corresponding lines, than it is with those definite mere resemblances to which, in English versification, rhymes are rigidly limited. Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of feeling represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the leading singer:—

The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash as king, and in the destruction of usurping and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by the way, with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself, for the moment, a certain factitious interest, from the resemblance, meant by the poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the little Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson, then of about the same age with the Hebrew boy, and of high reputation for mental vivacity.

The scene in which the high priest, Jehoiada, for the first time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from David, and his true heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture, interpreted without violence, would make him. The lad has had his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in tears:—

What pity touches you? Is it that in a holocaust to be this day offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by my death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does not belong to his father!

The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high priest, exclaiming, "My father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What preparations, then, are these?" asks Joash. The high priest bids him prepare himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him to pay his debt to God:—

Joash. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my life.

Jehoiada. You have often heard read the history of our kings. Do you remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the crown ought to impose upon himself?

Joash. A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared, puts not his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his God, has ever before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and does not with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren.

Fénelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil, the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fénelon. How could the selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid recognizing his own portrait, suggested by contrast in that description of the good king from the lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way under him, to let him down into the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his king. This not, however, in the present play.

The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final speech in which Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. With this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from Satan in "Paradise Lost," so far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our representation of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of things that assure her of the overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes,—"O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" as follows:—

God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!Ay, it is Joash; all without availSeek I to cheat myself with other thought:I know the wound my weapon on him wrought;I see his father Ahaziah's face;Naught but brings back to me that hated race.David doth triumph, Ahab only fall,—Unpitying God, thou only hast done all!'Tis thou that flattering me to hope in vainFor easy vengeance, o'er and o'er againHast with myself myself embroiled anew,Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few,Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare,Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil,And, so to signalize his new-got spoil,Let him into my bosom plunge the knife,And take with filial hand his mother's life.Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes—Wish? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths,—That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he,Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me,To his grandfather, to his father, like,Abhorrent heir of David, down may strikeThy worship and thy fane, avenger fellOf Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!

With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.

The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no means equal to its fame. One reproaches one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously perusing it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be irreproachably, nay, consummately, good. But fashions in taste change; and we cannot hold ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for enjoying, according to the judgment of other races and of former generations. It is—so, with grave concurrence, we say—It is a great classic, worthy of the praise that it receives. We are glad that we have read it; and, let us be candid, equally glad that we have not to read it again.

As has already been intimated, Racine, after "Athaliah," wrote tragedy no more. He ceased to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His son Louis, in his Life of his father, testifies that he never heard his father speak in the family of the dramas that he had written. His theatrical triumphs seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of them rather than gloried in them.

While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine's for the devotion of his powers to the production of tragedy, was a sincere regret of his conscience, one may properly wish that the regret had been more heroic. The fact is, Racine was somewhat feminine in character as well as in genius. He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against an adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to Racine, from the principal quarter, the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite with his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of an exile from the royal presence. The immediate occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise to the poet.

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had expressed views on the state of France and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which so impressed her mind that she desired him to reduce his observations to writing, and confide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manuscript in her hand. Taking it from her, he read in it, and demanded to know the author. Madame de Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. "Does M. Racine, because he is a great poet, think that he knows every thing?" the despot angrily asked. Louis never spoke to Racine again. The distressed and infatuated poet still made some paltry request of the king, to experience the humiliation that he invoked. His request was not granted. Racine wilted, like a tender plant, under the sultry frown of his monarch. He could not rally. He soon after died, literally killed by the mere displeasure of one man. Such was the measureless power wielded by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff in Racine. A spirit partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop Fénelon, will presently be shown to have had at about the same time a partly similar experience.