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Racine, Poet of Grace

Author(s): Wallace FowlieSource: The French Review, Vol. 12, No. 5 (Mar., 1939), pp. 391-400Published by: American Association of Teachers of FrenchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/380766

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RACINE,POET OF GRACE

RACINE, POET OF GRACEWALLACEFOWLIE

Bennington College

The Perfection of Racine

It is a great pity that the word "perfection" is so over-used

in literary criticism; it should be reserved for Racine alone. A

Shakespeare, a Dante, a Goethe dominate the literature of their

respective countries, but their writings contain tedious portions;a mass of critical and linguistic annotations are indispensable for

a full understanding of their texts. But Racine is as simple and

lucid today as he was in the seventeenth century. The reader who

has discovered in Racine that perfect literary expression, that just

equilibrium between the idea and the form, that transparent vision

of man's destiny, will refrain from explaining the inexplicable.The initiated, the one who loves Racine and who by loving him

has understood his art, knows that no words of his can com-municate to the uninitiated a magic method of participating in this

experience. The very simplicity of Racine is his difficulty. Partic-

ularly by a foreign public he will be the last of the great French

writers whose work will be apprehended.But when the Frenchman

and the foreigner finally behold plenitude and perfection in this

art, they may feel certain that they have attained a communion

with that which, paradoxically, is most ineffable in French litera-

ture. Sincere admiration for Racine will be followed not by ex-egesis but by silence!

Whereas Villon was the mirror of his time, the voice of its

misery and its dolorous aspiration; whereas Dante, in bitter exile,

opposed his time and flayed its vices; Racine was welcomed byhis century which had seemingly matured in order to make pos-sible his advent. An entire society had reached an apogee of cul-ture after having indoctrinated the laws of a great art during two

generations fecund in geniuses. Corneille had founded the classicFrench tragedy on rules which, irksome to himself, were to becomenatural to Racine. Pascal, feverish and ill, echoed a spiritual reno-vation which was to take on its most artistic form in Racine'sfinal tragedy.

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

Racine not only completes his age; he surpasses it. With

theforce

ofa whole nation supporting him, he is

the artist who

remains superior to his work. What a contrasting fate with that

of Villon whose work is the pathetic confession of his life; and

with that of Dante whose work is lesson and reproval to a world

which had banished him and which he still loved. Between 1660

and the end of the century, a few thousand people living in Paris

and Versailles were the public which first listened to the poetryof Racine. It was the time when the French language had reached

its classic form and when the Frenchpeople

haddeveloped

their

national independance.

For this public Racine becomes two characters: Racine the

bourgeois and Racine the playwright. More rigorously than other

contemporary writers, particularly Pascal and Moliere, he sep-arates his life from his art. In his private life he knows no pro-found suffering; as an artist he is concerned solely with the suf-

fering of man. In fact, at the one moment that he does experience

disappointnentand

disillusionment,he renounces his art. No

greatconversion, no great passion, no great sorrow change the course

of a life which in its simplicity seems the representation of his

poetry.The plays, then, of Racine are not the literary expression of

his life; in fact they are not faithful to life itself. Their strangemiracle is that they transmit the sombre horrors of life without in

any way imitating life. During a performance of a Racinian

tragedy,the

spectatoris

duringtwo hours conscious above all of

continuous action. Yet there is no visible action on the stage. The

action is all "said". A battle, a banquet, a sacrifice, a murder in

the art of a Shakespeare would be enacted before the eyes of the

spectator. All these may exist in Racine's play, but they are never

shown; they are related. His art is of such a kind that they are

not necessary pictorially. His art is successful because we are

as truly conscious of them as if we had seen them.

There is nothing in Racine's theatre to assure popularity, no

setting, no action, no surprise, no spectacle. Nothing- exceptthe poetry. No instrument-except language. The event in the

play takes place in the soul of the character. No other action con-

cerns Racine. All materialistic details which are assuming such

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RACINE, POET OF GRACE

importance in the modem theatre are omitted by Racine who is

concerned withplacing

the loverstogether

or the enemiestogetherand by their speech revealing the tragedy of their sentiments.

Was there a force in the seventeenth century, a force more

particularly in Racine's personal experience, a force which, beyondthe mere exigencies of rules, aided in the birth of so chaste andso regular an art? What example and what love might have ma-

tured an innate tendency toward an art denuded of ornamentation,concentrated on the single passion in man which will inexorablylead him to

tragedy? Wasn't Racine

nearlyall his life

closelyasso-

cated with a group of pious men and women, the monastic order

of Port-Royal, who were fighting a losing battle over a great reli-

gious doctrine? And doesn't this doctrine of grace concern the

relationship between man's individual soul and God: the tragedy ofman outside a state of grace; the beatitude of man in grace?

PORT-ROYAL

In the valley Chevreutsenot far from Paris, themonasteryof Port-Royal became the chief center of the men and women who

gave themselves the name Jansenists. Among the Church authorswho had treated the doctrine of grace, there was first St. Paul inhis writings collected in the New Testament. The first ChurchFather to elaborate the doctrine was St. Augustine. The work of

Jansenius which contained the theology dear to the Jansenists wasa treatise on Augustinian grace. At the conclusion of the quarrelwhich this treatise elicited, it was condemned at Rome.

The leaders of the Jansenists wished to bring about a reformin monastic life. Their austerity challenged the wordliness of their

principal enemies, the Jesuits. The retreats of the Jansenists were

governed by rigorous rules; they stressed the contemplative sideof religious life. The striking difference between the simplicityand sobriety of the Jansenists and the elegance and wealth of the

Jesuits can be observed in their churches in Paris of the seventeenth

century. St. Jacques du Haut Pas is the Jansenist church bare and

austere. St. Etienne-du-Mont, on the other hand, represents an-other type, the richly ornamented Catholic church.

The theological issue at stake was the problem of grace.Broadly speaking the Jansenists taught that man when he was

393



THE FRENCH REVIEW

first created by God was free and in a state of grace; that is, he

waswithout sin and was destined

to eternalhappiness

in God.

But through the exercise of his free will, man sinned by disobeyingGod. This blemish, this "original sin" is transmitted to each man.

All his actions are sins because the source of his actions has been

poisoned. The only remedy for this state is what the Church de-

fines as grace, a gift which coming from God effaces the sinful

state. But all do not possess this grace. God gives it to whomever

He choses and those elected ones do not know themselves when

theyhave it.

WhyGod choses some and not others is a

mysteryknown only to Himself. In a word, man is predestined to salva-

tion or damnation.

This harsh doctrine which is essentially that of Calvinism be-

came the great subject of meditation in the schools and monasteries

directed by the Jansenists. They were finally put down at the end

of the century, but not before they had gijven to France two of

her greatest writers: Pascal and Racine.

There were innumerable alliances between Racine'sfamily

and

Port-Royal. Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen he lived

there in company with scholarly priests who gave him his greatlove for Greek literature and who taught him their belief that

man's fate rests completely in God's hands. He is an orphan; the

Jansenists become his family. He is called by them "le petitRacine" and writes his first verses on their kindnesses and on the

sanctified beauty of Port-Royal.Racine is the poet brought up by confessors, men who by their

vocation know the heart of man, its mysteries and its profundities,better than others. He quarrels with them at the beginning of his

career and severs connection with them for several years. But in

disappointmentat the opposition to his Phedre, he returns to them,asks for pardon and in peace with them composes his last two

tragedies.The eleven tragedies of Racine deal with the misery of man

and bear the unmistakable stamp of Jansenist pessimism. It is a

work inspired by the violence of man's fate, of man overcome bya sentiment against which he by himself cannot fight. The very

nudity of a Racinian tragedy, this art that is stripped of eloquenceand lyricism, this poetry that springs from the plight itself of man

394



RACINE, POET OF GRACE

in the throes of a fatal passion, is the perpetual image of Jansenist

severity. The solemnityof Racine's theatre resembles a

religiousritual, resembles a transposition of the fervor young Racine had

witnessed in the "holy desert" of Port-Royal des Champs.

Shakespeare also paints death and doom, but he permits his

characters to dream, to forget themselves ,to laugh, to sing. A

character of Racine never forgets himself. He can never efface

from his mind the sentiment of impending fate which is pushinghim toward the precipice. There is something of the Greek mask,

asuperhuman trait,

added to theordinary visage

of a Racinian

hero which emphasizes the single catastrophe and which gives an

implacableunity to the disaster. Racine opens his play a few hours

before the tragedy takes place. The characters know their fate and

know that its accomplishment is at hand. Nothing will be allowed to

deter the inevitable. There will be no interludes which Shakespeareuses in order to arrest the action or to develop subordinateplots and

sentiments.

From this dramatic art which depicts humansuffering

and

human cruelty, a certain effect of human greatness is disengagedand at times seems flooded by a supernatural light. This comes

from the absolute lucidity of Racine's heroes. They know

themselves, but they know also their adversaries and their lovers.

They are tenacious in their lust or in their love, knowing all the

while that this lust or this love is forcing them to an imminent

death. If there is a key to Racine's poetry (and one hesitates to

define so imponderable a beauty), it is perhaps the revelation of

the irremediable which traverses the five acts. If there is a keyto Jansenist grace, it is the conviction, dramatically transcribed

by Racine, that man's destiny has been ordained before his birth,that in the unfolding of his life, it is not within his power to alter

the ultimate end. The true force in his life is the end toward which

magnetically he is drawn.

PHEDRE

The most violent and the most tragic figure of Racine is

Phedre. Basing his work on Greek mythology and on the tragediesof Euripides and Seneca, Racine paints in the character of Phedre

an all-consuming passion. It is the striking case of love which

has been aroused in the heart of Phedre by Venus for the sake

395



THE FRENCH REVIEW

of vengeance. The horror of this love comes from the fact that

it is incestuous: Phedre loves her step-son, Hippolyte.At Phedre's first entrance in the first act, she not only voices

her calamity and the furies of a love which possess her completely,but she gives every evidence of being the fated woman, the woman

for whom there can exist no help. All i,s a conspiration for her

fall, she says in one of the most beautiful lines of the play:

"Tout m'afflige et me nuit, et conspire a me nuire."

Hers is the fate that has not been elected but that has been im-

posed. Phedre illustrates to an extreme degree the line of Thomas

a Kempis: "Whensoever a man desires anything inordinately, he

is presently disquieted within himself."

Nothing exists for Phedre except a desire which is not only

impossible to satisfy but which is abhorrent in itself. Her desire

is similar to a malignant growth which disgusts her but whose

reality and whose potency she cannot doubt. Her misery has two

sources: first,the

capacity she hasto

understandher

passion andto judge it; and secondly, her incapacity to stifle it. These are

the two themes she develops in her confession to Hippolyte in the

second act:"Connaisdone Ph&dreet toute sa fureur."

and

"Je m'abhorreencor plus que tu ne me detestes."

The very anguish of Phedre's love makes her regret her

periodof

innocence,the calm which

precededthis

tempestof

pas-sion. What enhances her sensuality, for Phedre is predominantlythe heroine motivated by sensual desire, is the absence in her

memories of any satisfaction. This longing which has no previous

happiness makes Phedre the pitiless lover. Her frenzy permits no

relaxation. It is almost a dizziness she seems to be suffering from,which will cause her to fall all the more rapidly to destruction.

The few "coups de theatre" in the tragedy, far from altering the

course of theplay,

addshadings

to thepassion

of Ph&drewhich

serve only to make it more uncontrolled. A cold indifferent Hip-

polyte was tragedy enough for Phedre to bear, but an Hippolytein love with another woman brought forth a paroxysm of jealousy,a new grief for her to experience:

396




"Ah! douleur non encore eprouvee!A quel nouveau tourmentje me suis reservel

Tout ce que j'ai souffert,mes craintes,mes transports,La fureur de mes feux, l'horreur de mes remords,Et d'un cruel refus l'insupportable njureN'etait qu'un faible essai du tourmentque j'endure."

If the tragedy of Phedre represents the life that is not free

and if this marked existence seems to reflect the despotism of Jan-senist grace, there is in the spirit and the color of the play an

indefinable total effect that is not Christian, but Pagan. It would

suffice to read a purely Christian text after reading the lines ofPhedre, to see the difference not so much in the ultimate lesson

but in the spiritual content. Take for example the following sen-

tence from the Imitation of Christ: "It is then by resisting our

passions, that we are to find true peace of heart, and not by beingslaves to them."

The spiritual directors of Port-Royal could with justice see

in Phedre a great moral lesson, the picture of a woman outside

the state of grace, and Chateaubriand could from this view-pointcall her a Christian. If one wishes, there is a spirit of Jansenismin Phedre, but it is above all a work inspired by Greek tragedy.The doctrine of Jansenist grace and Greek fatality meet in such

delicate proportions that one can see in it both a Christian and

Pagan work.

Racine composed it at a moment when he was materially sepa-rated from any influence of Port-Royal. It is Venus and not God

that casts the spell over Phedre and whose curse is the reason forsuch despair. The art of Racine in this play above all others is spentin painting luxury, in describing a relentless sensuality whose

every call voices despair. But this despair of Phedre has not one

instant of repentance. In her character Racine analyzes the force

of passion. It will not be until his last tragedy, Athalie, the crown-

ing achievement of his career, that he will substitute in his poeticmaterial the blind rage of Phedre's lust for the prophetic transeof the

high priest Joad. ATHALIE

The production of Phidre in 1677 ended the ten years of un-

interrupted success and glory Racine had known. The adulationof a rich and powerful court had fostered his genius ever since

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THE FRENCH REVIEW

his Andromaque. But at the time of Phedre a rival appeared with

a tragedy on the same subject. This Pradon, ignored today, at-tracted the public of Racine and as a result of the literary quarrelwhich ensued, was the immediate reason for Racine giving up the

theatre and embarking upon a new life.

Racine even contemplated at this moment the monastic life,

but his confessor wisely deterred him from this choice for which he

had no vocation, and Racine became an exemplary husband and

father. One of his first desires after marriage was to reconcile

himselfwith Port-Royal. Religious practices

took on moresigni-ficance for him as he felt more and more remorse for his harsh

treatment of his earliest spiritual directors and for his estrange-ment from any religious milieu.

The reconciliation was brought about largely through the

effort of Boileau who arranged for the decisive meeting between

Racine and le Grand Arnauld, the spiritual head of the community.When Racine entered the room which was crowded with people,he threw himself on his knees before Arnauld.

Arnauld, greatlymoved by this act of humility, threw himself on his knees before

Racine and the two men embraced in this posture. The Jansenisthistorians have wondered which of the men, Racine or Arnauld,was nobler at this moment.

Henceforth, Racine divides his time quite evenly between his

family duties, his court obligations as royal historiographer with

Boileau and his religious practices. He seems to have renounced

all pursuit of worldliness, all interest in the world of the theatre

where he had spent years if not of dissoluteness, at least of promis-

cuity. The latter part of Racine's life was undoubtedly passed in an

atmosphere of piety. Yet at this time as throughout his life there

was no indication of excess. His adolescence had been studious

but not to an extreme; his early manhood had been worldly and

ardent, but not too indiscreet; his period of maturity was piousbut not mystical. Racine maintained in his life as in his poeticwork, the classic ideal of equilibrium, the measure of harmonious

proportions.Madame de Maintenon, consort of Louis XIV, had founded

the school of Saint Cyr, where 250 girls were being educated. Inthe other girls' schools of the time only primary instruction was

398




offered and lessons in comportment and household management.

The program of Madame de Maintenon was more elaborate. Shesought to form the judgment of her students. If they studied his-

tory, she would encourage discussion on lessons which historical

events might evoke. Those girls who were gifted for music would

be allowed to study music. The school had presented in dramatic

form some of the plays of Racine, but Madame de Maintenon,

particularly at the performance of Andromaque, was worried bythe fervor with which the young actresses interpreted the passionsand the sentiments in the

play.She asked Racine to

composea

play for her students which would not arouse profane passions.Twelve years had elapsed since Ph&dreand Racine had written no

tragedies during that time. But a request from Madame de Main-

tenon was almost an order. He chose the Old Testament subjectof Esther.

The play was a triumph for Racine and Saint Cyr. The first

performance was given before Madame de Maintenon, the king,the dauphin, Bossuet and some courtiers. Five

performances,or-

ganized by the king himself were given during the first winter of

1689. An invitation to one of the performanceswas a markedhonor.

Racine had written choruses for Esther and music was composed

by the court musician Moreau.

Madame de Maintenon asked Racine for a second religiousdrama and within a year he produced Athalie. This time the per-formance of the girls of Saint Cyr harmed the play. They used

nocostumes,

noscenery,

no music.Moreover,

thetragedy

was too

solemn and the poetry too subtle for their sensitivity. All the spec-tators failed to realize the true merit of the work with the ex-

ception of Boileau who acclaimed it Racine's masterpiece.

During the period between his first tragedy and PhNdre Ra-

cine had been concerned with what was most ferocious and fatalin classical mythology. When he turns to Holy Scripture for dram-

atic material he chooses the story of Athalie related in Kings and

Chronicles,one of the

most cruel and most vigorous of the OldTestament. It is a story of wrath and vengeance and murder. Thefatalistic divinities of ancient Greece have become the irate and

all-powerful Jehovah of Israel. Yet if the conception of Greekfate has been replaced by the conception of a single omnipotent

399



THE FRENCH REVIEW

God, Racine's dominant interest in the sweeping uncontrolled pas-

sionsof

man,is still

visible.The scene of Racine's tragedy has changed from PaganGreece to a vestibule in the temple at Jerusalem; what is most

violent in the heart of man will again furnish the action; but there

is in this last tragedy a new element: the sign of a power above

human passions to which these passions must ultimately submit.

Phedre is the poetic vision of what is most human (and therefore

most tragic) in man; Athalie is the poetic vision of God's omni-

science andomnipotence.

From thevery

first two lines with their

beautiful rhyme "Etemel-solennel" to the last lines which apos-

trophize the same Eternal One a,sthe "severe judge of kings", the

Divine Spirit directs the action, speaks in the prophetic voice of

the high priest, troubles the foreign queen in her dreams and finally

places the young child, who is the rightful descendant of David,

upon the usurped throne. The new spirit which appears in Athalie

is a spirit above the individual tragedies of men. It is the intense

drama of a destined race, thematuring

of apromise

and an elec-

tion, the continuity of a line of kings which must not be broken

because of the foreordained mission of the last of those kings.The high priest at the end of the third act enters a transe in

which he is permitted to see the future, to see the coming wicked-

ness of the boy to whom he is consecrating his life and who is

about to be placed on the throne of David. But he sees even beyondthat, to the coming of a new Jerusalem. This is the key to the real

poetry of Athalie: the revelation of the invisible will of God. Gracewill be granted when the Almighty wills it. Athalie, in her Paganpalace, drunk with power and licenciousness, feels the presenceof the exterminating angel.

This last tragedy of Racine would seem to be the poetic ex-

pression of what Port-Royal stood for. His Greek tragedies werethe poetry of carnal desire; Athalie has none of this poetry. It in-habits another sphere, one in which reigns the spirit which has

perhaps been best defined in the Imitation: "From one word are

all things."

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