[1]"Est-ce que la critique moderne n'a pas abandonné l'art pour l'histoire? La valeur intrinsèque d'un livre n'est rien dans l'école Sainte-Beuve-Taine. On y prend tout en considération, sauf le talent." (Flaubert,Correspondence,IV, 81.)
[1]"Est-ce que la critique moderne n'a pas abandonné l'art pour l'histoire? La valeur intrinsèque d'un livre n'est rien dans l'école Sainte-Beuve-Taine. On y prend tout en considération, sauf le talent." (Flaubert,Correspondence,IV, 81.)
Nevertheless, when all this has been said and the conclusion drawn, there remains the general impression of the work, which has in it something of the grandiose, and brings back to the lips the homage that the next generations rendered to the author, when they called him "the great Corneille." It is to be hoped that no one has been deceived as to the intention of our discourse up to this point, which has been directed not against Corneille, but against his critics, nor among them against those who have written many other things both true and beautiful on the subject; we have but to refer to the acute Lemaître among the most recent, to the diligent and loving Dorchain, and to the most solid of all, Lanson. We shall avail ourselves of them in what follows, but shall oppose their particular theories and presuppositions, which are misrepresentations of the subject of their judgments itself. For the negative criticism, whichwe have recapitulated, does not win our confidence, but rather shows itself to be erroneous or (which amounts to the same thing) incomplete, exaggerated and one-sided, for the very reason that it does not account for that impression of the grandiose. Conducted as it has been, it would very well suit a writer who was a rhetorician with an appearance of warmth, a writer able to make a good show before the public and in the theatre, while remaining internally unmoved himself, superficial and frivolous. But Corneille looks upon us and upon those critics with so serious and severe a countenance, that we lose the courage to treat him in so unceremonious and so expeditious a manner.
Whence comes that air of severity, which we find not only in his portraits but in every page of his tragedies, even in those and in those parts of them, in which he fails to hit the mark, or appears to be tired, to have lost his way, and to be making efforts?
From this fact alone: that Corneille had an ideal, an ideal in which he believed, and to which he clung with all the strength of his soul, of which he never lost sight and which he always tended to realise in situations, rhythms,and words, seeking and finding his own intimate satisfaction, the incarnation of his ideal, in those brave and solemn scenes and sounds.
His contemporaries felt this, and it was for this reason that Racine wrote that above all, "what was peculiar to Corneille consisted of a certain force, a certain elevation, which astonishes and carries us away, and renders even his defects, if there be found some to reprove him for them, more estimable than the virtues of others"; and La Bruyère also summed it up in the phrase that "what Corneille possessed of most eminent was his soul, which was sublime."
The most recent interpreters have found Corneille's ideal to reside in will for its own sake, the "pure will," superior or anterior to good and evil, in the energy of the will as such, which does not pay attention to particular ends. Thus the false conception of him as animated with the ideal of moral duty or with that of the triumph of duty over the passions has been eliminated, and agreement has been reached, not only with the reality of the tragedies, but also with what Corneille himself laid down in hisDiscoursas to the dramatic personage. Such a personage may indeed be plunged in all sorts of crimes, like Cleopatra in theRodogune,butin the words of the author, "all his actions are accompanied with so lofty a greatness of soul that we admire the source whence his actions flow, while we detest those actions themselves."
On the other hand, the concept of the pure will runs some risk of being perverted at the hands of those who proceed to interpret it by identification with that other "will for power" of Nietzsche, who understood the French poet in this hyperbolical manner and referred to him with fervent admiration on account of this fancy of his. The ideal of the will for power has an altogether modern origin, in the protoromantic and romantic superman, in over-excited and abstract individualism. It did not exist at the time of Corneille, or in the heart of the poet, who was very healthy and simple. The figures of Corneille's tragedies must be looked at through coloured and deforming glasses, as supplied by fashionable literature, in order to see in them such attitudes and gestures.
The further definition, which, while it renders the first conception more exact and more appropriate, at the same time shuts the door on these new fancies, is this: that Corneille's ideal does not express the pure will at the moment of violent onrush and actuation, but ofponderation and reflection, that is to say, asdeliberative will.This was what Corneille truly loved: the spirit which deliberates calmly and serenely and having formed its resolution, adheres to it with unshakeable firmness, as to a position that has been won with difficulty and with difficulty strengthened. This represented for him the most lofty form of strength, the highest dignity of man."Laissez-moi mieux consulter mon âme,"says one of Corneille's personages, and all of them think and act in the same way. "Voyons," says the king of the Gepidi to the king of the Goths in theAttila, "—voyons qui se doit vaincre, et s' il faut que mon âme. A votre ambition immole cette flamme. Ou s'il n'est point plus beau que votre ambition. Elle-même s'immole a cette passion."
Augustus hesitates a long while, and gives vent to anguished lamentations, when he has discovered that Cinna is plotting against his life, as though to clear his soul and to make it better capable of the deliberation, which begins at once under the influence of passion, in the midst of anguish and with anguish. Has he the right to lament and to become wrathful? Has he not also made rivers of blood to flow? Does he then resign himself in his turn? Doeshe forsake himself as the victim of his own past? Far from it: he has a throne and is bound to defend it, and therefore will punish the assassin. Yes, but when he has caused more blood to flow, he will find new and greater hatreds surrounding him, new and more dangerous plots. It is better, then, to die? But wherefore die? Why should he not enjoy revenge and triumph once again? This is the tumult of irresolution, which, while felt as a hard, a desperate torment, and although it seems to hold the will in suspense, in reality sets it in motion, insensibly guiding it to its end."O rigoureux combat d'un cœur irrésolu!..."The more properly deliberative process enters his breast with the appearance upon the scene of Livia, to whose advice he is opposed, for he disputes and combats it, yet listens and weighs it, seeming finally to remain still irresolute, yet he has already formed hi:; resolve, he has decided in his heart to perform an act of political clemency, so thunderous, so lightning-like in quality, as to bewilder his enemy and to hurl him vanquished at his feet.
The two brother princes inRodoguneare conversing, while they await the announcement as to which is the legitimate heir to the throne.Upon this announcement also depends which shall become the happy husband of Rodogune, whom they both love with an equal ardour. How will they face and support the decision of fate? One of the two, uncertain and anxious about the future, proposes to renounce the throne in favour of his brother, provided the latter renounces Rodogune; but he is met with the same proposal by the other. Thus the satisfaction of both, by means of mutual renunciation, is precluded. But the other course is also precluded, that of strife and conflict, for their brotherly affection is firm, and so is the sentiment of moral duty in both. This also forbids the one sacrificing himself for the other, because neither would accept the sacrifice. What can be saved from a collision, from which it seems that, nothing can be saved? One of the two brothers, after these various and equally vain attempts at finding a solution, returns upon himself, descends to the bottom of his soul, finds there a better motive and is the first to formulate the unique resolution: "Malgré l'éclat du trône et l'amour d'une femme, Faisons si bien régner l'amitié sur notre âme, Qu'étouffant dans leur perte un regret suborneur, Dans le bonheur d'un frère on trouve son bonheur...." And theother, who has not been the first to see and to follow this path asks: "Le pourriez, vous mon frère?" The first replies: "Ah; que vous me pressez! Je le voudrais du moins, mon frère, et c'est assez; Et ma raison sur moi gardera tant d'empire, Que je désavoûrai mon cœur, s'il en soupire."The other, firm in his turn replies: "J'embrasse comme vous ces nobles sentiments...."
Loving as he did, in this way, the work of the deliberative will (we have recorded two only of the situations in his tragedies, and we could cite hundreds), Corneille did not love love, a thing that withdraws itself from deliberation, a severe illness, which man discovers in his body, like fire in his house, without having willed it and without knowing how it got there. Sometimes the deliberative will is affected by it and for the moment at least upset, and then we hear the cry of Attila: "Quel nouveau coup de foudre! O raison confondue, orgueil presque étouffé...." as he struggles against its enchantments:"cruel poison de l'âme et doux charme des yeux."But as a general rule, he promptly drives it away from him, coldly and scornfully; or he subdues it and employs it as a means and an assistance in far graver matters,such as ambition, politics, the State; or he accepts it for what it contains of useful and worthy, which as such is the object and the fruit of deliberation. "Ce ne sont pas les sens que mon amour consulte: Il hait des passions l'impétueux tumulte...." Certainly, this attitude is intransigent, ascetic and severe: but what of it? "Un peu de dureté sied bien aux grandes âmes." Certainly love comes out of it diminished and humiliated: "D'Amour n'est pas le maître alors qu'on délibère;" love deserves its fate and almost deserves the gibe: "La seule politique est ce qui nous émeut; On la suit et l'amour s'y mêle comme il peut: S'il vient on l'applaudit; s'il manque on s'en console...." It manages as best it can and becomes less powerful and wonderfully ductile beneath this pressure, ready to bend in whatever direction it is commanded to bend by the reason. Sometimes it remains suspended between two persons, like a balance, which awaits the addition of a weight in order to lean over: "...Ce cœur des deux parts engagé, Se donnant à vous deux ne s'est point partagé, Toujours prêt d'embrasser son service et le vôtre, Toujours prêt à mourir et pour l'un et pour l'autre. Pour n'en adorer qu'une, il eût fallu choisir; Et ce choixeût été au moins quelque désir, Quelque espoir outrageux d'être mieux reçu d'elle ...." On another occasion, although there might be some inclination or desire, rather toward the one than the other side, it is yet kept secret, beneath the resolve to suffocate it altogether, should reason ordain that love must flow into a contrary channel. Not only are Corneille's personages told to their face:"Il ne faut plus aimer,"an act of renunciation to be asked of a saint, but they are also bidden thus: "Il faut aimer ailleurs," an act worthy of a martyr.
He did not love love, not because it is love, but because it is passion, which carries one away and which, if it be allowed to do so, will not consent to state the terms of the debate clearly, and engage in deliberation. His dislike for the inebriation of hatred and of anger, which blind or confound the vision, and which, as passion, is also foreign to his ideal, also appears in confirmation of this view. "Qui hait brutalement permet tout à sa haine, Il s'emporte où sa fureur l'entraîne.... Mais qui hait par devoir ne s'aveugle jamais; c'est sa raison qui hait ...." His ideal personages sometimes declare, when face to face with their enemy: "je te dois estimer, mais je te dois haïr."On the other hand, we perceive clearly why Corneille was led to admire the will, even when without moral illumination, even indeed when it is actively opposed to or without morality; for it has the power of not yielding to and of dominating the passions, of not being violent weakness, but strength, or as it was called during the Renaissance, "virtú." In that sphere of deliberation there existed a common ground of mutual understanding between the honest and dishonest man, between the hero of evil and the hero of good, for each pursued a course of duty, in his own way and both agreed in withstanding and despising the madness of the passions.
And we also see why the domain towards which Corneille directed his gaze and for which he had a special predilection, was bound to be that of politics, where "virtú," in the sense that it possessed during the period of the Renaissance, found ample opportunity for free expansion and for self-realisation. In politics, we find ourselves continuously in difficult and contradictory situations, where acuteness and long views are of importance and where it is necessary to make calculations as to the interests and passions of men, to act energetically uponwhat has been decided after nice weighing in the balance, to be firm as well as prudent. It has been jocosely observed by William Schlegel that Corneille, the most upright and honest of men, was more Machiavellian than any Machiavelli in his treatment and representation of politics, that he boasted of the art of deceiving, and that he had no notion of true politics, which are less complicated and far more adroit and adaptable. Lemaître too admits that in this respect he was"fort candide."But who is not excessive in the things that he loves? Who is not sometimes too candid regarding them, with that candour and simplicity which is born of faith and enthusiasm? His very lack of experience in real politics, his simplicism and exaggeration in conceiving them, is there to confirm the vigour of his affection for the ideal of the politician, as supremely expressed by the man who ponders and deliberates. He always hasla raison d'étatandles maximes d'étatupon his lips. We feel that these words and phrases move, edify and arouse in him an ecstasy of admiration.
It was free determination and complete submission to reason, duty, objective utility, to what was fitting—and not a spirit of courtlyadulation—that led him to look with an equal ecstasy of admiration upon personages in high positions and upon monarchs, the summit of the pyramid. He did not therefore admit them because they can do everything, still less because they can enjoy everything, but on the contrary, because, owing to their office, their discipline and tradition, they are accustomed to sacrifice their private affections and to conduct themselves in obedience to motives superior to the individual. Kings too have a heart, they too are exposed to the soft snares of love; but better than all others they know what is becoming behaviour: "Je suis reine et dois régner sur moi: Je rang que nous tenons, jaloux de notre gloire, Souvent dans un tel choix nous défend de nous croire, Jette sur nos désirs un joug impérieux, Et dédaigne l'avis et du cœur et des yeux." And elsewhere: "Les princes out cela de leur haute naissance, Leur âme dans leur rang prend des impressions Qui dessous leur vertu rangent leurs passions; Leur générosité soumet tout à leur gloire ...." They love, certainly, as it happens to all to love, but they do not on that account yield to the attractions of the senses. "Je ne le cèle point, j'aime, Carlos, oui, j'aime; Mais l'amour de l'état plusfort que de moi-même, Cherche, au lieu de l'objet le plus doux à mes yeux, Le plus digne héros de régner en ces lieux." His predilection for history, especially for Roman history, has the same root, and had long been elaborated as an ideal—even in the Rome of the Empire, yet more so at the time of the Renaissance and during the post-Renaissance, and even in the schools of the Jesuits. It was thus transformed into a history that afforded examples of civic virtues, such as self-sacrifice, heroism, and greatness of resolve. We spare the reader the demonstration that this tendency was altogether different from, and indeed opposed to historical knowledge and to the so-called "historical sense," because questions of this sort and the accompanying eulogies accorded to Corneille as a historian, are now to be looked upon as antiquated.
The historical relations of Corneille's ideal are clearly indicated or at any rate adumbrated in these references and explanations, as also its incipience and genesis, which is to be found, as we have stated, in the theory and practice of the Renaissance, concerning politics and the office of the sovereign or prince, and for the rest in the ethics of stoicism, which was so widely diffused in the second half of the sixteenthcentury, and not less in France than elsewhere. The image of Corneille is surrounded in our imagination with all those volumes, containing baroque frontispieces illustrative of historical scenes, which at that time saw the light every day in all parts of Europe. They were the works of the moralists, of the Machiavellians, of the Taciteans, of the councillors in the art of adroit behaviour at court, of the Jesuit casuists Botero and Ribadeneyra, Sanchez and Mariana, Valeriano Castiglione and Matteo Pellegrini, Gracian and Amelot de la Houssaye, Balzac and Naudée, Scioppio and Justus Lipsius. They might be described as comprizing a complete and conspicuous section of the Library of the Manzonian Don Ferrante, the "intellectual" of the seventeenth century.
Such literature as this and the history of the time itself have been more than once given as the source of the poetical inspiration proper to Corneille, and indeed they appear spontaneously in the mind of anyone acquainted with the particular mode of thought and of manners that have prevailed during the various epochs of modern society. It is therefore unpleasant to find critics intent on fishing out other origins for it, in an obscure determinism of race andreligion, almost as if disgusted with the obvious explanation, which is certainly the only true one in this case, pointing out for instance in Corneille "an energy that comes from the north," that is to say from the Germany that produced Luther and Kant, or from the country that was occupied for a time by their forefathers the Normans, those Scandinavian pirates who disembarked under the leadership of Rollo (if this fancy originated with Lemaître, they all repeat it); or they discover the characteristic of his poetry in the subtlety and litigious spirit of the Norman, and in the lawyer and magistrate whose functions he fulfilled.
The customary association of his ideal with the theory of Descartes is also without much truth. Chronological incompatibility would in any case preclude derivation or repercussion from this source, the utmost that could be admitted being that both possessed common elements, since they were both descended from a common patrimony of culture, namely the stoical morality already mentioned, and from the cult of wisdom in general. In Descartes, as later in Spinoza, the tendency was towards the domination of the passions by means of the intellect or the pure intelligence, which dissipatesthem by knowing and thinking them, while with Corneille the domination was all to be effected by means of an effort of the will.
The historical element in the ideal of Corneille does not mean that its value was restricted to the times of the author and should be looked upon as having disappeared with the disappearance of those customs and doctrines, because every time expresses human eternal truth in its forms that are historically determined, laying in each case especial stress upon particular aspects or moments of the spirit. The idea of the deliberative will has been removed in our day to the second rank, indeed it has almost been lost in the background, under the pressure of other forces and of other more urgent aspects of reality. Yet it possesses eternal vigour and is perpetually returning to the mind and soul, through the poets and philosophers and through the complexities of life itself, which make us feel its beauty and importance. The history of the manners, of the patriotism, of the moral spirit, of the military spirit of France, bears witness to this, for one of its mainstays in the past as in the present has been the tragedies of Corneille. The heroic, the tragic Charlotte Corday gave reality in her ownperson to one of Corneille's characters, so full of will power and ready for any enterprise: she was one of thoseaimables furies,nourished like the tyrannicides of the Renaissance on theLivesof Plutarch, whom her great forefather had set on paper with such delight.
It is inconceivable that such heroines as she, sublime in their meditated volitional act, should have been audaciously classed and confounded with those weak and impulsive beings extolled by the philosophers and artists of the will for power, from Stendhal to Nietzsche, who freely sought their models among the degenerates of the criminal prisons.
The whole life of Corneille, the whole of his long activity, was dominated by the ideal that we have described, with a constancy and a coherence which leaps to the eye of anyone who examines the particulars. As a young man, he touched various strings of the lyre, the tragedy of horrors in the manner of Seneca (Médée,) eccentric comedy inL'Illusion comique,the romantic drama of adventures and incidents inClitandre,the comedies of love; but we already find many signs in these works and especially in the comedies, of the tendency to fix the will in certain situations, as will for a purpose andchoice. After his novitiate (in which period is to be comprehended theCid,which is rather an attempt than a realisation, rather a beginning than an end) he proceeded in a straight line and with over increasing resolution and self-consciousness. It is due to a prejudice, born of extrinsic or certainly but little acute considerations, that an interval should be placed between theCidand the later works, though this was done by Schlegel, by Sainte-Beuve and by many others, both foreigners and French. They deplored that Corneille should have abandoned the Spanish mediaeval and knightly style, so in harmony with his generous, grandiose and imaginative inclinations, so full of promise for the romantic future, and should have restricted himself to the Graeco-Roman world and to political tragedy. It is impossible (as we have shown in passing), to assert the originality and the beauty of theCid,when it is compared with and set in opposition to the model offered to Corneille by Guillen de Castro. Now if there is not to be found beauty, there is certainly to be found a sort of originality in the personality of Corneille, who eats into the popular epicity of the model and substitutes for it the study of deliberative situations. Theharmonious versification of these explains in great part the success which the play met with in a society accustomed to debate "questions of love" (as they had been called since the period of the troubadours at the Renaissance), and those of honour and knighthood, of challenges and duels. But on the other hand, the reason of its success was also to be found in what persisted scattered here and there of the ardour and tenderness of the original play, which moved the spectators and made them love Chimène: "Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue." Yet these words of tenderness and strong expressions, though beautiful in themselves, show themselves to be rather foreign to the new form of the drama, and there is some truth in the strange remark of Klein: that "there is not enough Cidian electricity, enough material for electro-dramatic shocks in that atmosphere full of the exhalations of theantichambre,to produce a slap in the face of equally pathetic force and consequence" with thebofetadawhich Count Lozano applied to the countenance of the decrepit Diego Laynez in the Spanish drama. And there is truth also in the judgment of the Academy, that the subject of theCidis "defectivein the essential part" and "lacking in verisimilitude"; of course not because it was so with Guillen de Castro, or that a subject, that is to say, mere material, can be of itself good or bad, verisimilar or the reverse, poetic or unpoetic, but because it had become defective and discordant in the hands of Corneille, who elaborated and refined it. Rodrigue, Jimena the lady Urraca, are simple, spontaneous, almost childlike souls, in the mould of popular heroes. Chimène and Rodrigue and the Infanta are reflective and dialectical spirits, and since their novel psychological attitude does not chime well with the old-fashioned manner of behaviour, Rodrigue and the father sometimes appear to be charlatans, Chimène sometimes even a hypocrite, the Infanta insipid and superfluous. Also, when Corneille returned to the "Spanish style," inDon Sanche d'Aragon,he charged it with reflections and ponderations and deliberative resolutions, without aiming at the picturesque, as the romantics did later, but at dialectic and subtlety. It must however be admitted that all this represents a superiority, if viewed from another angle: but this superiority does not reside in the artistic effect obtained;it is rather mental and cultural and represents a more complex and advanced humanity.
Thus theCidis to be looked upon as really a work of transition, a transition to theHorace,which has seemed to a learned German, to be substantially the same as theCid,theCidreconstructed after the censures passed upon it by his adversaries and in the Academy, which Corneille inwardly felt to be, in a certain measure at any rate, just. But another prejudice creates a gap between what are called the four principal tragedies, theCid,theHorace,theChinaand thePolyeucte—"the great Cornelian quadrilateral" eulogised by Péguy in rambling prose,—and the later tragedies, as though Corneille had changed his method in these and begun to pursue another ideal, "political tragedy." Setting aside for the time being the question of greater or lesser artistic value, it is certain that he never really changed his method. In theHorace,there is no suggestion of the ferocious national sanctity of a primitive society, in theCinna,there is no trace of the imagined tragedy of satiety or of thelassitude,which the sanguinary Augustus is supposed to have experienced. ThePolyeuctedoes not contain a shadow of the fervour, the delirium, the fanaticism, of a religion in the act of birth, but as Schlegel well expressed it, "a firm and constant faith rather than a true religious enthusiasm." In the four tragedies above mentioned,le cœuris not supreme, any more thanl'espritis supreme in the later tragedies, but "political tragedy" is present more or less in all of them, in the intrinsic sense of a representation of calculations, ponderations and resolutions, and often too in the more evident sense of State affairs. He pursues these and suchlike forms of representation, heedless, firm and obstinate, notwithstanding the disfavour of the public and of the critics, who asked for other things. They divest themselves of extraneous elements and attain to the perfection at which they aimed. This may be observed in one of the very latest, thePulchérie.The author congratulated himself upon its half-success or shadow of success, declaring that "it is not always necessary to follow the fashion of the time, in order to be successful on the stage." Just previously, he was pleased with Saint-Évremond for his approbation of the secondary place to be assigned to love in tragedy, "for it is a passion too surcharged with weaknesses tobe dominant in a heroic drama." Voltaire was struck with this constancy to the original line of development, for he felt bound to remark at the conclusion of his commentary, not without astonishment and in opposition to the current opinion, that "he wrote very unequally, but I do not know that he had an unequal genius, as is maintained by some; because I always see him intent, alike in his best and in his inferior works, upon the force and the profundity of the ideas. He is always more disposed to debate than to move, and he reveals himself rich in finding expedients to support the most ungrateful of arguments, though these are but little tragic, since he makes a bad choice of his subjects from theOedipeonwards, where he certainly does devise intrigues, but these are of small account and lack both warmth and life. In his last works he is trying to delude himself." But Corneille did not delude himself; rather he knew himself, and he himself the author was a personage who had deliberated and had made up his mind, once and for all.
The vigour of this resolution and the compactness of the work which resulted from it, are not diminished, but are rather stressed by the fact that Corneille possessed other aptitudesand sources of inspiration, which he neglected and of which he made little or no use. Certainly, the poet who versified the deliciousPsyche,in collaboration with Molière, would have been able, had he so desired, to enter into the graces of those "doucereux" and "enjoués," whom he despised. There are witty, tender and melancholy poems among his miscellaneous works, and in certain parts of the paraphrase of theImitationand other sacred compositions, there is a religious fervour that is to seek in thePolyeucte.His youthful comedies contain a power of observation of life, replete with passionate sympathy, which foreshadows the coming social drama. We refer especially to certain personages and scenes of theGalerie du Palais,of theVeuveand of theSuivante;to certain studies of marriageable girls, obedient to the resolve of their parents, and to mothers, who still carry in their heart how much that submission cost them in the past and do not wish to abuse the power which they possess over their daughters. There are also certain tremulous meetings of lovers, who had been separated and are annoyingly interrupted by the irruption of prosaic reality in the shape of their relations and friends ("Ah! mère, sœur, ami,comme vous m'importunez!") and certain odious and painful psychological cases, like that of Amaranthe, the poor girl of good family, who is made companion of the richer girl, not superior to her either in attractiveness, or spirit, or grace, or blood. She envies and intrigues against her, attempts to carry off her lover and being finally vanquished, hurls bitter words at society and distils venomous maledictions.
"Curieux," "étonnant," "étrange," "paradoxal," "déconcertant,"are the epithets that the critics alternately apply to the personage of Alidor, in thePlace Royale,and Corneille himself calls him "extravagant" in the examination of his work that he wrote later. All too have held that uncompromising lover of his own liberty to be very "Cornelian" or "pure Cornelian," who although in love, is afraid of love, because it threatens to deprive him of his internal freedom. He therefore tries to throw the woman he loves and who adores him, into the arms of others, by stratagem. Failing in this endeavour, and being finally abandoned by the lady herself, who decides to enter a convent, instead of sorrowing or at least being mortified at this, he rejoices at his good fortune. Indeed, Corneille, despite the tardy epithet of"extravagant,"which he affixes to this personage, does not turn him to ridicule in the comedy, nor does he condemn or criticise him. On the contrary, in the dedicatory epistle, addressed to an anonymous gentleman, who might be the very character in question, he approves of the theory, which Alidor illustrates. "I have learned from you"—he writes—"that the love of an honest man must always be voluntary; that he must never love in one way what he cannot but love; that if he should find himself reduced to this extremity, it amounts to a tyranny and the yoke must be shaken off. Finally, the loved one must have by so much the more claim to our love, in so far as it is the result of our choice and of the loved one's merit and does not derive from blind inclination imposed upon us by a heredity which we are unable to resist." But the disconcertion and perplexity caused by the play in question, have their origin in this; that Corneille had not yet succeeded in repressing and suppressing the spontaneous emotions, and therefore throws his ideal creation into the midst of a throng of beings, whose limbs are softer, their blood warmer and more tumultuous, who love and suffer and despair, like Angélique. This would renderthat ideal personage comic, ironical and extravagant, if the poet did not for his part think and feel it to be altogether serious. A subtle flaw, therefore, permeates every part of the play, which lacks fusion and unity of fundamental motive. This is doubtless a grave defect, but a defect which adds weight to the psychological document that it contains, proving the absolute power which the ideal of the deliberative will was acquiring in Corneille.
The ideal of the deliberative will, then, formed the real, livingpassionof this man devoid of passions; for no one that lives can withhold himself from passion: he is only able to change its object by passing from one to the other. The judgment that holds Corneille to be an intrinsically prosaic, ratiocinatory and casuistical genius is therefore to be looked upon as lacking of penetration. Had he been a casuist, it seems clear that he would have composed casuistical works. Nor did he lack of requests and encouragement in that direction in the literature that was admired and sought after in his time. Instead, however, of acceding to them, he dwelt ever in the world of poetry and was occupied throughout his life, up to his seventieth year, with the composition of tragedies. He was not a casuist, although he loved casuistry: these two things are asdifferent as the love for warlike representations and accounts of wars and the being actually a soldier, the perpetual dwelling of the imagination upon matters of business, commerce and speculation (like Honoré de Balzac for instance), and being really a man of business. Nor can his gift be described as merely that of a didactic poet, although he often gives a dissertation in verse, because he was not inspired with the wish to teach, but rather to admire and to present the power and the triumphs of the free will for admiration. Those philologists who have patiently set to work to reconstruct Corneille's conception of the State into aStaatsideehave not understood this. Corneille's conception of the State, of absolute monarchy, of the king, of legitimacy, of ministers, of subjects, and so on, were not by any means in him political doctrine, but just forms and symbols of an attitude of mind, which he caressed and idolised.
The enquiry as to the nature and degree and tone of that passion differs altogether from the fact of Corneille's powerful passionality, as to which there can be no doubt. The problem, that is to say, is, whether passion, which is certainly a necessary condition for poetry, was soshaped and found in him such compensations and restraints as to yield itself with docility to poetry and to give it a fair field for expression. It is well known that the sovereign passion, the pain that renders mute, the love that leads to raving, impede the dream of the poet, they impede artistic treatment, the cult of perfect form and the joy in beauty. There is too a form of passion, which has in it something of the practical: it is more occupied with embodying its favourite dreams, in order to obtain from them stimulus and incentive, than with fathoming them poetically and idealising them in contemplation.
It seems impossible to deny that something of this sort existed in the case of Corneille, for as we read his works, while we constantly receive the already mentioned impression of seriousness and severity, there is another impression that is sometimes mingled with these and suggests the disquieting presence of men firmly fixed and rooted in an ideal. When faced with his predilection for deliberation and resolution, the figure of the Aristophanic Philocleon sometimes returns to the memory. This Philocleon was a "philoheliast," that is to say he was the victim of a mania for judging, τοὔ δικάζειν. Hisson locked him up, but he climbed out of window, in order to hasten to the tribunal and satisfy his vital need of administering justice!
The consequences of this excess of practical passionality in the case of Corneille, of its exclusive domination in him, was that he either did not love or refused to allow himself to love anything else in the world, and lost interest in all the rest of life. He did not surpass it ideally, in which case he would have remained trembling and living in its presence, although it was combated and suppressed, but he drove it out or cut it off altogether. He acted as one, who for the love of the human body, should eliminate from his picture, landscape, sky, air, the background of the picture, upon and from which the figure rises and with which it is conj nected, although separated from it in relief, and should limit himself to the delineation of bodies and attitudes of bodies. Corneille, having abolished all other forms of life, found nothing before him but a series of situations for deliberation, vigorously felt, warmly expressed, sung with full voice, and illustrated with energetic yet becoming gestures.
What tragedy, what drama, what representation, could emerge from such a limitation ofvolitional attitudes? How could the various tonalities and affections and so the various personages, unite and harmonise among themselves with all their shades and gradations? The bridge that should give passage to this full and complete representation was wanting or had been destroyed. All that was possible was a suite of deliberative lyrics, of magnificent perorations, of lofty sentiments, sometimes standing alone, sometimes also taking the form of a duet or a dialogue, a theory of statues, draped in solemn attitudes, of enormous figures, rigid and similar as Byzantine mosaics. Here and there a writer such as Lanson has to some extent had an inkling of this intrinsic impossibility when, writing about theNicomède,he remarked that Corneille "in his pride at having founded a new kind of tragedy, without pity or terror, and having admiration as its motive, did not perceive that he was founding it upon a void; because the tragedy will be the less dramatic, the purer is the will, since it is defeats or semi-defeats that are dramatic, the slow, difficult victories of the will, incessant combats." But he held on the other hand that Corneille had once constructed, inNicomède,a perfect tragedy, on the single datum of the pure will,par un coup de génie; but this was the only one that ever could be written, the reason that it could not be repeated being "that all the works of Corneille are dramatic, precisely to the extent that the will falls short in them of perfection and in virtue of the elements that separate it from them." The beauty, he says, of theCid,ofPolyeucteand ofCinna, "consists in what they contain of passion, cooperating with and striving against the will of the heroes." But "strokes of genius" are not miracles and they do not make the impossible possible and the other dramas of Corneille that we have mentioned do not differ substantially from theNicomède,for in them passionate elements are intruded and felt to be out of harmony (as in theCid), or they are apparent and conventional.
Apparent and conventional: because the lack of the bridge for crossing over forbade Corneille to construct poetically out of volitional situations representations of life, to which they did not of themselves lead. It did not however prevent another kind of construction, which may be called intellectualistic or practical. He deduced other situations and other antitheses from the volitional situations andtheir antitheses that he had conceived, and thus he formed a sort of semblance of the representation of life. At the same time he reduced it to the dimensions of the drama that he was originating mentally, partly through study of the ancients and above all Seneca, partly from the Italian writers of tragedy of the sixteenth century, partly from that of the Spanish writers and of his French predecessors, but not without consulting, following or modifying the French and Italian casuists and regulating the whole with his own sense for theatrical effect and for the forms of it likely to suit the taste of the French public of his day.
This structure of tragedy, with its antitheses and parallelisms, its expedients for accelerating and arresting and terminating the action has been qualified with praise or blame as possessing great "logical" perfection. Logic, however, which is the life of thought, has nothing to do with the balancing and counter-balancing of mechanical weights, whose life lies outside them, in the head and in the hand that has constructed and set them in motion. It has been also compared to architecture and to the admirable proportions of the Italian art of the Renaissance. But here too, we must suspectthat the true meaning of the works thus characterised escapes us, for attention is paid only to the external appearance of things, in so far as it can be expressed in mathematical terms. We have said exactly the same thing, without having recourse to logic or to architecture, when we noted that the structure of Corneille's tragedies did not derive from within, that is, from his true poetical inspiration, but rose up beside it, and was due to the unconscious practical need of making a canvas or a frame upon which to stretch the series of volitional situations desired by the imagination of the poet. Thus it was poetically a cold, incoherent, absurd thing, but practically rational and coherent, like every "mechanism." This word is not pronounced here for the first time owing to our irreverence, but is to be found among those who have written about Corneille and have felt themselves unable to refrain from referring to his"mécanique théâtrale"and to the "système fermé" of his tragedies, where"s'opère par un jeu visible de forces, la production d'un état définitif appelé dénouement."
When this has been stated, it is easy to see that anyone who examines this assemblage of thoughts and phrases with the expectation offinding there a soft, rich, sensuous and passionate representation of life, full of throbs, bedewed with tears, shot through with troubles and enjoyments, such as are to be found in Shakespearean drama and also in Sophoclean tragedy, is disappointed, and thereupon describes Corneille's art as false, whereas he should perhaps describe his own expectation as false. But it is strange to find, as counterpoise to that delusion, the attempt to demonstrate that the apparatus is not an apparatus, but flesh and blood, that the frame is not a frame but a picture, like one of Titian's or Rembrandt's, and now setting comparisons aside, that the pseudo-tragedy and the pseudo-drama of Corneille is pure drama or tragedy, that his intellectualistic deductions, his practical devices, are lyrical motives and express the truth of the human heart. Such, however, is the wrong-headedness of the criticisms that we have reviewed above. The mode of procedure is to deny what is evident, for example that Corneille argues through the mouths of his characters, instead of expressing and setting in action his own mode of feeling, in such a way as the situations would require, were they poetically treated. Faguet answers Voltaire'sremarks upon the famous couplet of Rodogune:"Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies..."to the effect that "the poet is always himself talking and that passion does not thus express itself," by saying that people are accustomed to express themselves in this way, that is to say, in the form of general ideas, when they are calm, as though the question could be settled with an appeal to the reality of ordinary life, whereas on the contrary it is a question of poeticity, that is to say, of the tragic situation, which by its own nature, excludescoupletsin certain cases, however well turned they be.
Yet the very same critics, who are thus guilty of sophistry in their attempts to defend Corneille, are capable of observing on another occasion that if not all, at any rate many or several of Corneille's tragedies are "melodramas," and that the author tended more and more to melodrama, in the course of his development or decadence, as we may like to call it. Perhaps in so saying, they are making a careless use of the word "melodrama," and mean by it a drama of intrigue, of surprises, of shocks and of recognitions. If on the contrary they have employed it in its true sense, or if theirtongue has been instinctively more correct than their thought, since "melodrama" means precisely a melodrama, that does not exist for itself, but for the music, and is a canvas or frame, they have again declared the extrinsic character of the Cornelian tragedy.
Another confirmation of this character of the tragedies is to be found in that suspicion of I comicality, which lurks so frequently in the background as we read them, and occasionally makes itself clearly audible in the course of development of their pseudo-tragic action. It has been asked whether theCidwere a tragedy or a comedy and inquiry has resulted in no satisfactory answer being arrived at, because involuntary comicality is present there, akin to what is to be found in certain of the pompous and emphatic melodramas of Metastasio. It is true that Don Diego's reply to the king has been cited as sublime, when he does not wish the new duel to take place at once, in order that the Cid may have a little rest, after the great battle that he has won against the Moors, which he has described triumphantly and at great length: "Rodrigue a pris haleine en vous la racontant!" But are we then to regard as sinful the smile that gradually dawns upon the lips ofthose who are not pledged to admire at all costs? And consider the case of the furious Emilia, who at the end of theCinnagets rid in the twinkling of an eye, of all the convictions anchored in her breast, of that hatred that burned her up, much in the same manner as a stomach-ache disappears upon the use of a sedative, and declares that she has all of a sudden become the exact opposite of what she was previously?"Ma haine va mourir, que j'ai cru immortelle; elle est morte et ce cœur devient sujet fidèle, Et prenant désormais cette haine en horreur, L'ardeur de vous servir succède à sa fureur."And Curiace, who finds himself in such a situation as to deliver the following madrigal to his betrothed: "D'Albe avec mon amour j'accordais la querelle; je soupirais pour vous, en combattant pour elle; Et s'il fallait encor que l'on en vint aux coups, Je combattrais pour elle en soupirant pour vous."?But we will not insist upon this descent into the comic, for it is not always to be avoided, being a natural effect of the "mechanicity" of the Cornelian drama and is for the rest in conformity with the theory which explains the comic as"l'automatisme installé dans la vie et imitant la vie"(Bergson).
Another form of the comic, discoverable in him, must also be insisted upon; but this is not involuntary and blameworthy, but coherent and praiseworthy. The form in question is that which led to the comedy of character and of costume, to psychological and political comedy. Brunetière even said between jest and earnest: "TheCid, Horace, CinnaandPolyeucte,give me much trouble. Were it not for these four, I should say that Corneille is fundamentally and above all a comic poet, and an excellent comic poet; and this is perfectly true; but how are we to say it, when theCid, Horace, CinnaandPolyeucteare there? These four tragedies embarrass me exceedingly!" And he proceeds to note and illustrate the "family scenes" scattered among his tragedies, the prosaic and conversational phraseology, which so displeased Voltaire, and the complete absence in some of them of tragic quality, even of the external sort, that is, scenes of blood and death, and the prevalence of the ethical over the pathetic representation, in the manner of the comedy of Menander and of Terence. Despite all this, his definition of Corneille as a comic poet will be admired as acute and ingenious, but will never carry conviction as beingtrue: none of those tragedies is a comedy, because none is accentuated in that manner. For the same reason that Corneille could not attain to the poetical representation of life, because he was not able to pass beyond the one-sidedness of his ideal, by merging it in the fulness of things, he was unable to present the comic or ethical side of them, because he did not pass beyond the spectacle of life and so of his ideal, by viewing itsub specie intellectus,in its external and internal limitations. The attempt to do so in the Alidor of thePlace Royalehad not been successful, and it never was successful, even assuming that he attempted it. He did not indeed attempt it, and the ethos that so often took the place of the pathos in the structure of his tragedies, was itself a natural consequence of their mechanicity. Owing to this, when they had lost the guidance of the initial poetic motive, they often fluctuated between emphasis and cold observation, between eloquence and prose, between stylisation of the characters and certain realistic determinations.
This hybridism, which has sometimes led to the belittling of Corneille to the level of a poet of observation and of comicality, has more often led, from another point of view, to hisbeing increased in stature and importance, to his being belauded and acclaimed as possessing "romantic tendencies," or as a "French Shakespeare," although but "a Shakespeare in trammels." There is really nothing whatever in him of the romantic, in the conception, that is to say, and in the sentiment of life; and there is less than nothing in him of Shakespeare, whose work had its origins in a far wider and certainly a very different sphere of spiritual interests. But since "romanticism" and "Shakespeare" perhaps stand here simply for poetry, it must be admitted that he is a poet, who does not explain himself fully, or explains himself badly, without the liberty, the sympathy, the abandonment of self necessary for poetry. He harnesses his inspiration to an apparatus of actions and reactions, of parallelisms and of conventions, which may be well described as "trammels," when compared with poetry.
But they are in any case trammels which he sets in his own way, trammels which he creates and fixes in his soul and are not imposed upon him by the rules, conventions and usages, which were in vogue at the time he wrote, as is erroneously maintained, coupled with lamentationsas to the unfavorable period for the writing of poetry, which fell to his lot. What poet can be trammeled from without? The poet sets such obstacles aside, or he passes through them, or he goes round them, or he feigns to bow to them, or he does bow to them, but only in secondary matters that are almost indifferent. For this reason, disputes and doctrines as to the three unities, as to the characters of tragedy, as to the manner of obtaining the catharsis or purgation, have considerable importance for anyone investigating the history of aesthetic and critical ideas, of their formation, growth and progress, by means of struggles that seem to us now to be ridiculous, though they were once serious; but they have no importance whatever as an element in the judgment of a poem. Corneille did not rebel against the so-called rules, because he did not feel any need for rebellion; he accepted or accustomed himself to them, because, having treated tragedy mechanically, it suited him, or did him no harm, to take heed of the mechanical rules, laid down by custom and literary and theatrical precepts.
For this reason, his method of theatrical composition was not only susceptible of beingtolerated, but even of pleasing and receiving the praise, the applause and the admiration of the contemporary public, which did not seek in them the joy of poetic rapture, but a different and more or less refined pleasure, answering to its spiritual needs and aspirations. It could later and can now prove insupportable, because the delight of a certain period in dexterity, expedients and clever devices, in the fine phrases of the courtier, in certain actions that were the fashion, in the gallantries of pastoral and heroic romance, in epigrams, antitheses and madrigals, are no longer our delights. Passionate or realistic art, as it is called, flourishes everywhere, in place of the old scholastic, academic and court models. But for us, everything that concerns Corneille's composition and the technique of his work is indifferent, since we are viewing the problem from the point of view of poetry. We shall not therefore busy ourselves with discriminating those parts of it that are well from those that are ill put together, nor his clever from his unsuccessful expedients, his well-constructed "scenes" from those that suffer from padding, his "acts" that run smoothly from those that drag, the more from the less happy "endings," as is the habit of thosecritics, who nourish a superstitious admiration for what Flaubert would have called"l'arcane théâtral."We care nothing for the canvas, but only for what of embroidery in the shape of poetry there is upon it.
The poetry of Corneille, or what of poetry there is in him, is all to be found in the lyrical quality of the volitional situations, in those debates, remarks, solemn professions of faith, energetic assertions of the will, in that superb admiration for one's own personal, unshakable firmness. Here it is that we must seek it, not in the development of the dramatic action or in the character of the individual personages. For it is only an affection for life, that is to say, penetration of it in all its manifestations, which is capable of generating those beings, so warm with passion, who insinuate themselves into us and take possession of our imagination, who grow in it and eventually become so familiar to us that we seem to have really met them: the creations of Dante, of Shakespeare, or of Goethe. Certainly, Corneille's lyricism, which seems to be exclusive and one-sided, would not be lyricism and poetry, if it were really alwaysexclusive and one-sided and although it cannot give us drama in the sense we have described, owing to its driving away the other passions, yet it does not succeed in doing so in such a complete and radical manner that we fail to perceive their fermentation, however remote, in those severe and vigorous assertions of the will. The loftiness itself of the rhythm indicates the high standard of the vital effort, which it represents and expresses. To continue the illustration above initiated, Corneille's situations may be drawings rather than pictures, or pictures in design rather than in colour; but these pictures also possess their own qualities as pictures, they too are works of love and must not be confounded with drawings directed to intellectual ends, with illustration of real things, or concepts with prosaic designs.
And indeed everyone has always sought and seeks the flower of the spirit of Corneille, the beauty of his work, in single situations, or "places." The commentators who busy themselves with the exposition and the dégustation of his works have but slight material for analysis of the sort that is employed by them in the case of other poets, whose fundamental poetic motive furnishes a basis for the rethinking ofthe characters and of their actions. Here on the contrary they feel themselves set free from an obstruction, when they pass to the single passages, and at once declare with Faguet, one of the latest"Il y a de beaux vers à citer"The actors too, who attempt to interpret his tragedies in the realistic romantic manner, fail to convince, while those succeed on the other hand who deliver them in a somewhat formal style. In thus listening to the intoned declamations of the monologues, exhortations, invectives, sentiments andcouplets,one feels oneself transplanted into a superior sphere, exactly as happens with singing and music.
Corneille's characters are not to be laid hold of in their full and corporate being. It is but rarely that they allow us a glimpse of their human countenance, or permit us to catch some cry of scorn, and then rapidly withdraw themselves into the abstract so completely that we do not succeed in taking hold of even a fold of their fleeting robes, although a long-enduring echo of their lightning-like speech remains in the soul. The old father of the Horatii strengthens his sons in their conflict between family affection and their imperious duty to their country, with the maxim:"Faites votredevoir et laissez faire aux Dieux."The youthful Curiace murmurs with tears in his voice, to the youthful Horace, his friend and brother-in-law"Je vous connais encore et c'est ce qui: me tue,"but Horace is as inflexible as a syllogism, having arrived at the conclusion that the posts assigned to them in the feud between Rome and Alba have made enemies of them, and therefore that they must not know one another in future. Curiace, when at last he has become bitterly resigned to their irremediable separation and hostility, exclaims:"Telle est nôtre misère..."—Emilia, another being with nerves like steel springs, reveals her proud soul in a single phrase; when Maximus suggests flight to her, she exclaims as she faces him, in a cry that is like a blow:"Tu oses m'aimer et tu n' oses mourir!"She is perhaps more deeply wounded here in her pride as a woman, who fails to receive the tribute of heroism, which she expects, than in her moral sentiment. The noble Suréna holds it an easy thing, a thing of small moment, to give his life for his lady: he wishes "toujours aimer, toujours souffrir, toujours mourir!"; and Antiochus, inRodogune,when he discovers that he is surrounded with ambushes, decides to die andin doing so directs his thought to the sad shade of his brother, who has been slain in a like manner: "Cher frère, c'est pour moi le chemin du trépas..."; and Titus feels himself penetrated with the melancholy of the fleeting hour, the sense of human fragility:
Oui, Flavian, c'est affaire à mourir.La vie est pen de chose; et tôt ou tard qu'importeQu'un traître me l'arrache, ou que l'âge l'emporte?Nous mourrons a toute heure; et dans le plus doux sortChaque instant de la vie est un pas vers la mort.
Words expressive of death are always those whose accent is clearest and whose resonance is the most profound with Corneille. It is perhaps as well to leave theMoiof Medea and theQu'il mourraitof the old Horace to the admirative raptures of the rhetoricians; but let us repeat to ourselves those words of the sister of Heraclius (in theHeraclius), mortified by fate, ever at the point of death and ever ready to die:
Mais à d'autres pensers il me faut recourir:Il n'est plus temps d'aimer alors qu'il faut mourir....
And again:
Crois-tu que sur la foi de tes fausses promessesMon âme ose descendre à de telles bassesses?Prends mon sang pour le sien; mais, s'il y faut mon cœur,Périsse Héraclius avec sa triste sœur!
And when she stays the hand of the menacing tyrant suddenly and with a word:
... Ne menace point, je suis prête a mourir.
Or, finally, those sweetest words of all, spoken by Eurydice in theSuréna:
Non, je ne pleure pas, madame, mais je meurs.
These dying words form as it were the extreme points of the resolute will, of the will, fierceusque ad mortem.But the others, in which the volitional situations are fixed and developed and determination to pursue a certain course is asserted, are, as we have said, the proper and normal expression of the poetry of Corneille, which can be fully enjoyed, provided that we do not insist upon asking whether they are appropriate in the mouths of the personages, who should act and not analyse and define themselves, or whether they are or are not necessary for the development of the drama. Their poetry consists of just that analysis, that passionate self-definition, that arranging of the folds of their own decorous robes, that sculpturing of their own statues.
Let us examine a few examples of it, taking them from the least known and the least praised tragedies of Corneille, for it is perhaps time to have done with the so-called decadence or exhaustion of Corneille, with his second-childhood (according to which, some would maintain that he returned to his boyish, pre-Cidian period in his maturity), and with the excessive and to no small extent affected and conventional exaltation of the famous square block of stone representing the four faces of honour (theCid), of patriotism(Horace), of generosity(Cinna)and of sanctity(Polyeucte).There is often in those four most popular tragedies a certain pomposity, an emphasis, an apparatus, a rhetorical colouring, which Corneille gradually did away with in himself, in order to make himself ever more nude, with the austere nudity of the spirit. It was perhaps not only constancy and coherence of logical development, but progress of art on the road to its own perfection, which counselled him to abandon too pathetic subjects. In any case, unless we wish to turn the traditional judgment upside down, we must insist that those four tragedies, like those that followed them, are not to be read by the lover of poetry otherwisethan in an anthological manner, that is to say, selecting the fine passages where they are to be found, and these occur in no less number and in beauty at least equal in the other tragedies also, some of which are more and some less theatrically effective.
Pulchérie is the last and one of the most marvellous Cornelian condensations of force in deliberation. She thus manifests her mode of feeling to the youthful Léon whom she loves:
Je vous aime, Léon, et n'en fais point mystère:Des feux tels que les miens n'out rien qu'il faille taire.Je vous aime, et non point de cette folle ardeurQue les yeux éblouis font maîtresse du cœur;Non d'un amour conçu par les sens en tumulte,A qui l'âme applaudit sans qu'elle se consulte,Et qui, ne concevant que d'aveugles désires,Languit dans les faveurs et meurt dans les plaisirs:Ma passion pour vous généreuse et solide,A la vertu pour âme et la raison pour guide,La gloire pour objet et veut, sous votre loi,Mettre en ce jour illustre et l'univers et moi.
Here we have clearly the lyricism of a soul which has achieved complete possession of itself, of a soul overflowing with affections, but knowing which among them are superior and which inferior, and has learned how to administer and how to rule itself, steering the shipwith a steady and experienced hand through treacherous seas, and feeling its own nobility to lie in just what others would call coldness and lack of humanity. Note the expressions"folle ardeur"and"sens en tumulte"and the contempt, not to say the disgust, with which they are uttered and the hell that is pointed out as lying in that soul which allows itself to be carried away"sans qu' elle se consulte."Note too the vision of the sad effeminacy of those affections, so blind and so egotistic, which consume and corrupt themselves in themselves, and how he enhances it by contrast with her own rational passion, so"généreuse et solide,"with those solemn words of"vertu,"of"raison,"of"gloire,"and the final apotheosis, which lays at the feet of the man she loves and loves worthily, her person and the whole world.
And Pulchérie, when she has been elected empress, again takes counsel with herself and recognises that this love of hers for Léon is still inferior, not yet sufficiently pure, and decides to slay it, in order that it may live again as something different, as something purely rational:
Léon seul est ma joie, il est mon seul désir;Je n'en puis choisir d'autre, et je n'ose le choisir:Depuis trois ans unie à cette chère idée,J'en ai l'âme à toute heure en tous lieux obsédée;Rien n'en détachera mon cœur que le trépas,Encore après ma mort n'en répondrai-je pas,Et si dans le tombeau le ciel permet qu'on aime,Dans le fond du tombeau je l'aimerai de même.Trône qui m'éblouis, titres qui me flattez,Pourriez-vous me valoir ce que vous me coûtez?Et de tout votre orgueil la pompe la plus hauteA-t-elle un bien égal à celui qu'elle m'ôte?
She thus concedes to human frailty the relief of a lament, such a lament as can issue from her lips, full of strength and charged with resolution in passion, but at the same time noble, measured and dignified. After this, she follows the direction of her will with inexorable firmness. Léon shall not be her spouse, because her choice must be and seem to be dictated by the sole good of the State, and fall upon a man whom she will not love with love, but who will be for Rome an emperor to be feared and respected. A conflict had been engaged between one part of herself and another, between the whole and a part, and she has again subjected the part to the whole and has assigned to it its duty, that of obedience.
Je suis impératrice et j'étais Pulchérie.De ce trône, ennemi de mes plus doux souhaits,Je regarde l'amour comme un de mes sujets;Je veux que le respect qu'il doit à ma couronneRepousse l'attentat qu'il fait sur ma personne;Je veux qu'il m'obéisse, au lieu de me trahir;Je veux qu'il donne à tous l'exemple d'obéir;Et, jalouse déjà de mon pouvoir suprême,Pour l'affermir sur tous, je le prends sur moi-même.
Thus love is subjected to the mind, or as it used to be expressed in the language of the time, which was of Stoic origin, to the "hegemonic potency." She would desire to raise her youthful beloved to the lofty level of her intent, by removing him from the sphere of weak lamentations and assuring his union with herself in a mystic marriage of superior wills. What contempt is hers for sentimentalism, which wishes to insinuate itself where it is not wanted, for "tears," for "the shame of tears"!
La plus ferme couronne est bientôt ébranléeQuand un effort d'amour semble l'avoir volée;Et pour garder un rang si cher à nos désirsIl faut un plus grand art que celui des soupirs.Ne vous abaissez pas à la honte des larmes;Contre un devoir si fort ce sont de faibles armes;Et si de tels secours vous couronnaient ailleurs,J'aurais pitié d'un sceptre acheté par des pleurs.
When we read such verses as these, our breast expands, as it does when we are in the company of men whose gravity of word and deed induce gravity, whose superiority over the crowd makes you forget the existence of the crowd, transporting you to a sphere where the non-accomplishment of duty would appear, not only vile, but incomprehensible. On another occasion our admiration is about to shroud itself in pity, but soon shines forth again and displays itself triumphant, as in the young princess Hiedion of theAttila,who is accorded to the abhorred king of the Huns by a treaty of peace—were she to refuse the union, immeasurable calamities would fall upon her family and people. She too observes a sorrowful attitude but hers is an erect and combative sorrow:
Si je n'étais pas, seigneur, ce que je suis,J'en prendrais quelque droit à finir mes ennuis:Mais l'esclavage fier d'une haute naissance,Où toute autre peut tout, me tient dans l'impuissance;Et, victime d'état, je dois sans reculerAttendre aveuglement qu'on daigne m'immoler.
The heart trembles and restrains itself at the same moment before that"esclavage fier,"that proud and sarcastic"qu'on daigne m'immoler"the victim has already scrutinised the situation in which she finds herself, the duty which is incumbent upon her, the prospect of vengeance which opens itself before her and her race, and has already conceived her terrible design. In like manner with Queen Rodolinde in thePertharite,when she is solicited and implored by the usurper Grimoalde, who wished to espouse her and promises to declare himself tutor to her son and to make him heir to the throne,—suspecting that in this way he will deprive her of the honour of marriage faith and may then put her son to deatii—she decides upon a horrible course of action, proposing to him that he should put her son to death on the spot:
Puisqu'il faut qu'il périsse, il vaut mieux tôt que tard;Que sa mort soit un crime, et non pas un hazard;Que cette ombre innocente à toute heure m'anime,Me demande à toute heure une grande victime;Que ce jeune monarque, immolé de ta main,Te rende abominable à tout le genre humain;Qu'il t'excite par tout des haines immortelles;Que de tous tes sujets il fasse des rebelles.Je t'épouserai lors, et m'y viens d'obliger,Pour mieux servir ma haine et pour mieux me venger,Pour moins perdre des vœux contre ta barbarie,Pour être à tous moments maîtresse de ta vie,Pour avoir l'accès libre à pousser ma fureur,Et mieux choisir la place où te percer le cœur.Voilà mon désespoir, voilà ses justes causes:A ces conditions, prends ma main, si tu l'oses.