Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
RACINE, JEAN (1639-1699)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: PYR-RAY
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:RACINE, See also:JEAN (1639-1699) , See also:French tragic dramatist, was See also:born at La Ferte Milon in the old duchy of See also:Valois on an uncertain date in See also:December 1639. He was certainly christened on the 22nd, and the ceremony was at that See also:time often, though not invariably, performed on the See also:clay of See also:birth. Racine belonged to a See also:family of the upper bourgeoisie, which had indeed been technically ennobled some generations earlier, and See also:bore the punning arms of a See also:rat and a See also:swan (rat, cygne). The poet himself subsequently dropped the rat. His family were connected with others of the same or a slightly higher station in La Ferte and its neighbourhood—the See also:Desmoulins, the Sconins, the Vitarts, all of whom appear in Racine's See also:life. His See also:mother was Jeanne Sconin. His See also:father, of the same name as himself, was only four-and-twenty at the time of the poet's birth. He seems to have been a See also:solicitor (procureur) by profession, and held, as his father, the grandfather of the dramatist, had done, the See also:office of controleur au grenier d se/. Racine was the eldest See also:child. Little more than a See also:year afterwards his See also:sister See also:Marie was born and his mother died. Jean Racine the See also:elder married again, but three months later he himself died, and the stepmother is never heard of in connexion with the poet or his sister. They were See also:left without any See also:provision, but their grandparents, Jean Racine the eldest and Marie Desmoulins, were still living, and took See also:charge of them. These grandparents had a daughter, See also:Agnes, who figures in Racine's See also:history. She was a See also:nun and later See also:abbess of See also:Port Royal under the See also:style of See also:Mere de Sainte Thecle, and the whole family had strong Jansenist k@anings. Jean Racine the eldest died in 1649, and the poet was sent to the See also:College de See also:Beauvais. This (which was the See also:grammar-school of the See also:town of that name, and not the famous College de Beauvais at See also:Paris) was intimately connected with Port Royal, and to this See also:place Racine was transferred in See also:November 1655. His See also:special masters there were See also:Nicole and Le Maitre. The latter, in an extant See also:letter written to his See also:pupil, speaks of himself as " votre papa." It is evident from documents that he was a very diligent student both at Beauvais and Port Royal. He wrote See also:verse both in Latin and French, and his Port Royal odes, which it has been the See also:fashion with the more fanatical admirers of his later See also:poetry to ridicule, are far from despicable. Racine stayed at Port Royal for three years, and left it, when nearly nineteen, in See also:October 1658. He was then entered at the College d'See also:Harcourt and boarded with his second See also:cousin, See also:Nicolas Vitart, steward of the See also:duke of See also:Luynes. Later, if not at first, he lived in the Hotel de Luynes itself. It is to be observed that his Jansenist surroundings continued with him here, for the duke of Luynes was a severe Port Royalist. It is, however, clear from Racine's See also:correspondence, which, as we have it, begins in 166o and is for some years very abundant and interesting, that he was not at all of an austere disposition at this time. Occasionally the liveliness of the letters passes the See also:bounds of strict decency, though there is nothing very shocking in them, and those to Madame (or, as the See also:habit of the time called her, Mademoiselle) Vitart are See also:free from anything of this See also:kind. It does not appear that Racine read much See also:philosophy, as he should have done, but he occasionally did some business in superintending See also:building operations at Chevreuse, the duke's See also:country See also:house. He would seem, however, to have been already given up irrevocably to literature. This by no means suited the views of his devout relations at Port Royal, and he complains in one of his letters that an unlucky See also:sonnet on See also:Mazarin had brought down on him "excommunications sur excommunications." The See also:marriage of See also: His letters from Uzes to La Fontaine, to Le Vasseur, and others are in much the same See also:strain as before, but there is here and there a marked See also:tone of cynicism in them. He also attempted a little courtiership. An ode on the recovery of Louis XIV. from a slight illness probably secured him the promise of a See also:pension, of which he speaks to his sister in the summer of 1664. It is uncertain whether this pension is identical with " gratifications " which we know that Racine for some years received, and which were sometimes eight and sometimes six See also:hundred livres. It would seem not, as one of these gratifications had been allotted to him the year before he so wrote to his sister. The ode in which he thanked the See also: Some editors assert that Moliere himself acted in it, but the earliest account of the See also:cast we have, and that is sixty years after date, omits his name, though those of Madeleine Bejard and Mademoiselle de See also:Brie occur. There is also a tradition that Moliere suggested the subject; but Louis Racine distinctly says that his father wrote most of the See also:play at Uzes before he knew Moliere. From Racine's own earlier letters it appears that the play was de-signed for the See also:rival theatre, and that " La Dehanchee," Racine's See also:familiar name for Mademoiselle de Beauchateau, with whom he was intimate, was to play See also:Antigone. The play itself is by far the weakest of Racine's See also:works. He has borrowed much from See also:Euripides and not a little from Jean de See also:Rotrou; and in his general style and See also:plan he has as yet struck out no See also:great variation, from See also:Corneille. It was acted twelve times during the first See also:month, and was occasionally revived during the year following. This is apparently the date of the pleasant picture of the four See also:friends which La Fontaine draws in his See also:Psyche, Racine figuring as Acante, "qui aimait extremement les jardins, les fleurs, les ombrages," in which surroundings he helped to compose the See also:lampoon of C/zapelain decoiffe on a writer who had helped him with See also:criticism, obtained royal gifts for him, and, in a fashion, started him in the See also:literary career. We have no definite details as to Racine's doings during the year 1664, but in See also:February 1665 he read at the Hotel de See also:Nevers before La Rochefoucauld, Madame de la Fayette, Madame de See also:Sevigne, and other scarcely less redoubtable See also:judges the greater See also:part of his second acted play, See also:Alexandre le See also:Grand, or, as Pomponne (who tells the fact) calls it, See also:Porus. It was anxiously expected by the public, and Moliere's company played it on the 4th of December—See also:Monsieur, his wife Henrietta of See also:England, and many other distinguished persons being See also:present. The gazetteer, Adrien Perdou de Subligny vouches for its success, and the receipts were good and steady. But a fortnight afterwards Alexandre was played, " de complot avec M. Racine," says La See also:Grange, by the rival actors (who had four days before performed it in private) at the Hotel de Bourgogne. A vast amount of See also:ink has been spilt on this question, but no one has produced any valid See also:justification for Racine. That the piece failed at the Palais Royal, as is stated in the earliest See also:attempt to excuse Racine, and the only one made in his lifetime, is not true. His son simply says that he was " mecontent See also:des acteurs," which indeed is self-evident. It is certain that Moliere and he ceased to be friends in consequence of this proceeding; and that Moliere was in See also:fault no one who has studied the character of the two men will easily believe. If, however, Alexandre was the occasion of showing the defects of Racine's character as a man, it raised him vastly in public estimation as a poet. He was now for the first time proposed as a serious rival to Corneille. There is a See also:story that he read the piece to the author of the See also:Cid and asked his See also:verdict. Corneille praised the piece highly, but not as a See also:drama, " Il l'assurait qu'il n'etait pas propre a la poesie dramatique." There is no See also:reason for disbelieving this, for the character of See also: The Port Royalists, as has been said, detested the theatre, and in See also:January 1666 Nicole, their chief writer, spoke in one of his Leltres sur les visionnaires, directed against Desmurets de Saint-Sulin, of dramatic poets as " empoisonneurs publics." Racine immediately published a letter to the author. It is very smartly written, and if Racine had contented himself with protesting against the exaggeration of the decriers of the See also:stage there would have been little harm done. But he filled the piece with personalities, telling an absurd story of Mere Angelique See also:Arnauld's supposed intolerance, See also:drawing a ridiculous picture of Le Maitre (a dead man and his own special teacher and friend), and sneering savagely at Nicole himself. The latter made no reply, but two See also:lay adherents of Port Royal took up the See also:quarrel with more zeal than discretion or ability. Racine wrote a second pamphlet as See also:bitter and See also:personal as the first, but less amusing, and was about to publish it when fortunately Boileau, who had been absent from Paris, returned and protested against the publication. It remained accordingly unprinted till after the author's See also:death, as well as a pre-See also:face to both which he had prepared with a view to See also:publishing them together and so discharging the accumulated resentment arising from a See also:long course of " excommunications.".
After this disagreeable See also:episode Racine's life, for ten years and more, becomes simply the history of his plays, if we excepthis liaisons with the actresses Mademoiselle du Parc and Mademoiselle de See also:Champmesle, and his See also:election to the See also:Academy on the 17th of See also:July 1673. Mademoiselle du Parc (marquise de Gorla) was no very great actress, but was very beautiful, and she had previously captivated Moliere. Racine induced her to leave the Palais Royal company and join the Hotel. She died in 1668, and long afterwards the infamous See also:Catherine Voisin accused Racine of having poisoned her. Mademoiselle de Champmesle was See also:plain, but an admirable actress, and apparently very attractive in some way, for not merely Racine but See also: The See also:series of his unquestioned dramatic triumphs began with Andromaque, and this play may perhaps dispute with Phedre and Athalie the See also:title of his masterpiece. It is much more uniformly good than Phedre, and the character of Hermione is the most personally interesting on the French tragic stage. It is said that the first See also:representation of Andromaque was on loth November 1667, in public and by the actors of the Hotel de Bourgogne, but the first contemporary mention of it by the gazettes, See also:prose and verse, is on the 17th, as performed in the See also:queen's apartment. See also:Perrault, by no means a friendly critic as far as Racine is concerned, says that it made as much See also:noise as the Cid, and so it ought to have done. Whatever may be thought of the tragedie pathetique (a less favourable criticism might See also:call it the " sentimental tragedy "), it could hardly be better exemplified than in this admirable play. A ferocious See also:epigram of Racine's own tells us that some critics thought See also:Pyrrhus too fond of his See also:mistress, and See also:Andromache too fond of her See also:husband, but in the contemporary depreciations is to be found the avowal of its real merit. Pyrrhus was taken by See also:Floridor, the best tragic actor by See also:common consent of his time, and See also:Orestes by See also:Montfleury, also an accomplished player. But Mademoiselle du Pak, who played Andromache, had generally been thought below, not above , her parts, and Mademoiselle des Oeillets, who played the difficult role of Hermione, was old and had few See also:physical advantages. No one who reads Andromaque without See also:prejudice is likely to See also:mistake the See also:secret of its success, which is, in few words, the application of the most delicate See also:art to the conception of really tragic See also:passion. Before leaving the play it may be mentioned that it is said to have been in the part of Hermione, three years later, that Mademoiselle de Champmesle captivated the author. Andromaque was succeeded, at the distance of not more than a year, by the charming comedietta of Les Plaideurs. We do not know exactly when it was played, but it was printed on the 5th of December 1668. Many anecdotes are told about its origin and See also:composition. The Wasps of See also:Aristophanes, and the known fact that Racine originally destined it, not for a French company, but for the See also:Italian troupe which was then playing the Commedia dell' arte in Paris, dispense us from enumerating them. The result is a piece admirably dramatic, but sufficiently literary to shock the profanum vulgus, which too frequently gives the tone at theatres. It failed completely, the chief favouring See also:voice being, according to a story sufficiently well attested and worthy of belief even without See also:attestation, that of the man who was best qualified to praise and who might have been most tempted to blame of any man then living. Moliere, says Valincourt, the special friend of Racine, said in leaving the house, " Que ceux qui se moquoient de See also:cette piece meritoient qu'on se moquoient d'eux." But the piece was suddenly played at See also:court a month later; the king laughed, and its fortunes were restored. It need only be added that, if Louis XIV. admired Les Plaideurs, See also:Napoleon did not, and excluded it from his travelling library. It was followed by a very different See also:work, See also:Britannicus, which appeared on 13th December 1669. This was much less successful than Andremaque, and seems to have held its own but a very few nights. Afterwards it became very popular, and even from the first the exquisite versification was not denied. But there is no doubt that in Britannicus the defects of Racine display themselves pretty clearly to any competent critic. The See also:complete nullity of Britannicus himself and of Junie, and the insufficient attempt to display the complex and dangerous character of See also:Nero are not redeemed by See also:Agrippina, who is really good, and Burrhus, who is solidly painted as a secondary character. See also:Voltaire calls it " la piece des connaisseurs," a See also:double-edged compliment. The next play of Racine has, except Phedre, the most curious I history 'of all. " See also:Berenice," says See also:Fontenelle succinctly, " fut un See also:duel," and he acknowledges that his uncle was not the conqueror. Henrietta of See also: It succeeded brilliantly and deservedly, but, oddly enough, the date of its See also:appearance is very uncertain. It was acted at court on the 18th of See also:August 1674, but it does not seem to have been given to the public till the early See also:spring of 1675. The last and finest of the series of tragedies proper was the most unlucky. Phedre was represented for the first time on New Year's Day 1677, at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Within a See also:week the opposition company or troupe du roi launched an opposition Phedre by Nicolas Pradon. This singular competition, which had momentous results for Racine, and in which he to some extent paid the See also:penalty of the lex talionis for his own rivalry with Corneille, had long been foreseen. Racine had from the first been bitterly opposed, and his enemies at this time had the powerful support of the duchess of See also:Bouillon, one of Mazarin's nieces, together with her See also:brother the duke of Nevers and See also:divers other personages of high position. These persons of quality, guided, it is said, by Madame See also:Deshoulieres, selected Pradon, a *dramatist of little See also:talent but of much facility, to compose a Phedre in competition with that which it was known that Racine had been elaborating. The partisans on both sides did not neglect means for correcting See also:fortune. On her See also:side the duchess of Bouillon is accused of having bought up the front places in both theatres for the first six nights; on his, Racine is said to have prevailed on the best actresses of the company that played Pradon's piece to refuse the title part. There is even some ground for believing that he endeavoured to prevent the opposition play from being played at all. It was of no value, but the See also:measures of the See also:cabal had been so well taken that the finest tragedyof the French classical school was all but driven from the stage, while Pradon's was a See also:positive success. A See also:war of sonnets and epigrams followed, during which it is said that the duke of Nevers menaced Racine and Boileau with the same treatment which See also:Dryden and Voltaire actually received, and was only deterred by the See also:protection which See also:Conde extended to them. The unjust cabal against his piece no doubt made a deep impression on Racine. But it is impossible to decide exactly how much See also:influence this had on the subsequent See also:change in his life. For thirteen years he had been constantly employed on a series of brilliant dramas. He now See also:broke off his dramatic work entirely and in the remaining twenty years of his life wrote but two more plays, and those under special circumstances and of quite a different kind. He had been during his early manhood a libertine in morals and See also:religion; he now married, became irreproachably domestic, and almost ostentatiously devout. No authentic account of this change exists; for that of Louis Racine, which attributes the whole to a sudden religious impulse, is manifestly little more than the theory of a son, pious in both senses of the word. Probably all, the motives which friends and foes have attributed entered more or less into his See also:action. At any rate, what is certain is that he reconciled himself with Arnauld and Port Royal generally, accepted, with whatever sincerity, their See also:doctrine of the incompatibility of the stage and the See also:Christian life, and on the 1st of June married Catherine de Romanet and definitely settled down to a quiet domestic life, alternated with the duties of a courtier. For his repentance was by no means a repentance in sackcloth and ashes. The drama was not then very profitable to dramatists, but Louis Racine tells us that his father had been able to furnish a house, collect a library of some value, and save 6000 livres. His wife had See also:money, and he had possessed for some time (it is not certain how long) the See also:honourable and valuable See also:post of treasurer of See also:France at See also:Moulins. His See also:annual " gratification " had been increased from 800 to 1500 livres, then to 2000, and in the October of the year of his marriage he and Boileau were made historiographers-royal with a See also:salary of 2000 crowns. Besides all this he had, though a layman, one or two benefices. It would have been pleasanter if Louis Racine had not told us that his father regarded His See also:Majesty's choice as " an See also:act of the See also:grace of See also:God to detach him entirely from poetry." For the historiographer of Louis XIV. was simply his chief flatterer. However, little came of this historiography. The See also:joint incumbents of the office made some See also:campaigns with the king, sketched plans of histories and left a certain number of materials and See also:memoirs; but they executed no substantive work. Racine, whether this be set down to his See also:credit or not, was certainly a fortunate and apparently an adroit courtier. His very relapse into See also:Jansenism coincided with his rise at court, where Jansenism was in no favour, and the fact that he had been in the good See also:graces of Madame de See also:Montespan did not deprive .him of those of Madame de See also:Maintenon. Neither in Esther did he hesitate to reflect upon his former patroness. But a reported sneer of the king, who was See also:sharp-eyed enough, "Cavoie avec Racine se croit See also:bel esprit; Racine avec Cavoie se croit courtisan," makes it appear that his comparatively See also:low birth was not forgotten at See also:Versailles. Racine's first See also:campaign was at the See also:siege of See also:Ypres in 1678, where some See also:practical jokes are said to have been played on the two civilians who acted this early and See also:peculiar variety of the part of special correspondent. Again in 1683, in 1687 and in each year from 1691 to 1693 Racine accompanied the king on similar expeditions. The literary results of these have been spoken of. His labours brought him, in addition to his other gains, frequent special presents from the king, one of which was as much as r000 pistoles. In 1690 he further received the office of " gentilhomme ordinaire du roi," which afterwards passed to his son. Thus during the later years of his life he was more prosperous than is usual with poets. His domestic life appears to have been a happy one.
Louis Racine tells us that his mother " did not know what a verse was," but Racine certainly knew enough about verses for both. They had seven See also:children. The eldest, Jean Baptiste, was born in 1678; the youngest, Louis, in 1692. It has been said that he was thus too See also:young to have many personal memories of his father, but he tells one or two stories which show Racine to have been at any rate a man of strong family See also:affection, as, moreover, his letters prove. Between the two sons came five daughters, Marie, See also:Anne, See also: The most honourable of these was the reception of See also: The beauty of the See also:chorus, which Racine had restored more probably from a study of the Pleiade tragedy than from classical suggestions, the perfection of the characters and the wonderful art of the whole piece need no praise. Almost immediately the poet was at work on another and a still finer piece of the same kind, and he had probably finished Athalie before the end of 169o. The See also:fate of the play, however, was very different from that of Esther. Some fuss had been made about the worldliness of great court fetes at Saint Cyr, and the new play, with settings as before by Moreau, was acted both at Versailles and at Saint Cyr with much less pomp and ceremony than Esther. It was printed in See also: At last, however, there seems to have come a change, and it is even probable that royal displeasure had some effect on his See also:health. Disease of the See also:liver appears to have been the immediate cause of his death, which took place on 12th See also:April 1699. The king seems to have, at any rate, forgiven him after his death, and he gave the family a pension 'of 2000 livres. Racine was buried at Port Royal, but even this transaction was not the last of his relations with that famous See also:home of religion and learning. After the destruction of the See also:abbey in 1711 his body was exhumed and transferred to Saint See also:Etienne du Mont, his gravestone being left behind and only restored to his ashes a hundred years later, in 1818. His eldest son was never married; his eldest daughter and Louis Racine have left descendants to the present day. Racine may be considered from two very different points of view,—(1) as a playwright and poetical artificer, and (2) as a dramatist and a poet. From the first point of view there is hardly any praise too high for him. He did not invent the form he practised, and those who, from want of See also:attention to the See also:historical facts, assume that he did are unskilful as well as ignorant. When he came upon the See also:scene the form of French plays was settled, partly by the energetic efforts of the Pleiade and their successors, partly by the reluctant acquiescence of Corneille. It is barely possible that the latter might, if he had chosen, have altered the course of French tragedy; it is nearly certain that Racine could not. But Corneille, though he was himself more responsible than any one else for the See also:acceptance of the single-situation tragedy, never frankly gave himself up to it, and the inequality of his work is due to this. His See also:heart was, though not to his knowledge, elsewhere, and with See also:Shakespeare. Racine, in whom the craftsman dominated the man of See also:genius, worked with a will and without any misgivings. Every See also:advantage of which the Senecan tragedy adapted to modern times was capable he gave it. He perfected its versification; he subordinated its See also:scheme entirely to the one See also:motive which could have free play in it,—the display of a conventionally intense passion, hampered by this or that obstacle; he set him-self to produce in verse a kind of Ciceronian correctness. The grammar-criticisms of See also:Vaugelas and the See also:taste-criticisms of Boileau produced in him no feeling of revolt, but only a determination to play the See also:game according to these new rules with triumphant accuracy. And he did so play it. He had supremely the same See also:faculty which enabled the rhetoriqueurs of the 15th See also:century to execute apparently impossible See also:tours de force in ballades couronnees, • and similar tricks. He had besides a real and saving vein of truth to natftre, which preserved him from tricks pure and See also:simple. He would be, and he was, as much a poet as prevalent taste would let him be. The result is that such plays as Padre and Andromaque are supreme in their own way. If the critic will only abstain from thrusting in tierce, when according to the particular rules he ought to thrust in quart, Racine is sure to See also:beat him. But there is a higher game of criticism than this, and this game Racine does not attempt to play. He does not even attempt the highest poetry at all. His greatest achievements in pure passion—the foiled desires of Hermione and the jealous frenzy of Phedre—are See also:cold, not merely beside the crossed love of Ophelia and the remorse of See also:Lady See also:Macbeth, but beside the sincerer if less perfectly expressed passion of Corneille's Cleopatre and Camille. In men's parts he fails still more completely. As the decency of his stage would not allow him to make his heroes frankly heroic, so it would not allow him to make them utterly passionate. He had, moreover, cut away from himself, by the See also:adoption of the Senecan See also:model, all the opportunities which would have been offered to his remarkably varied talent on a freer stage. It is indeed tolerably certain that he never could have achieved the purely poetical See also:comedy of As You Like It or the See also:Vida es Sueno, but the admirable success of Les Plaideurs makes it at least probable that he might have done something in a See also:lower and a more conventional style. From all this, however, he deliberately cut himself off. Of the whole See also:world which is subject to the poet he took only a narrow artificial and conventional fraction. Within these narrow bounds he did work which no admirer of literary craftsmanship can regard without admiration. It would be unnecessary to contrast his performances with his limitations so sharply if those limitations had not been denied. But they have been and are still denied by persons whose See also:sentence carries See also:weight, and therefore it is still necessary to point out the fact of their existence. As for criticism on him, a bibliography of it would be nearly a bibliography of French See also:critical literature. The chief See also:recent instance of substantive work is G. Larroumet's monograph in the Grands ecrivains See also:francais (1898), but F. Brunetiere, Emile See also:Faguet, and other critics have constantly and in various ways endeavoured to'apply the general reaction from Romanticism to a semi-classical attitude to this greatest of French " See also:classics." The conclusions above given remain unaffected by this temporary set of See also:opinion. Racine will never be enfonci—" put to rout "—as the extravagant Romantics thought him to be for a time. But, on the other hand, his limitations will remain, and no ingenious but arbitrary and extemporized theories of drama as to " conflicts of will" and the like can suffice to veil his defect in universality, his comparative shallowness, and his inadequate appreciation, or at least representation, of the richness, the intricacy and the unconventionality of nature. (G. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] RACINE |
[next] RACINE, LOUIS (1692-1763) |