RACINE
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING
His constant contact with the world of his times favoured the action of his mind upon the minds of his auditors. He exhibited to them their passions, their thoughts, their feelings, their different ways of looking upon social duty, upon politics, and upon the part played, or to be played, by the aristocracy in the general movement. The people of Paris loved the play because it exhibited openly, in different, but always favourable lights, everything in which they had any interest. In it they saw their own life, their aims, their needs, their longing to be great and admirable in all things.[74] They saw depicted all that they had dreamed of being, all that they had wished to be; and something more vital than love of literature animated their transports and lighted the fond glances fixed on the magic mirror reflecting the ideals they so ardently caressed. The people listened to Corneille's plays and trembled as they now tremble at the sound of La Marseillaise. It has been said that they did not understand Racine; if they did not, their lack of comprehension was natural. Racine was of another generation, and he was not in sympathy with his forerunner. Mme. de Sévigné was accused of false judgment in her criticism of Bejazet,[75] but she also was of another school. She had little sympathy for Racine's heroes. She understood Corneille's heroes, and could not listen to his verses without the tremor of the heart which we all feel when something recalls the generous fancies of our youth. The general impression was that Corneille was inspired by the image of Mlle. de Montpensier when he wrote Pulcherie (1672), an heroic comedy in which an empress stifles the cries of her heart that she may listen to the voice of glory.
The throne lifts the soul above all tenderness.
It is not impossible that Corneille had some such thought in his mind. Certainly Mademoiselle was a model close at hand. One day when her bold poltroon of a father told her, in the course of a sharp reproof, that she was compromising her house for the pleasure of "playing the heroine," she answered haughtily and truthfully:
"I do not know what it is to be anything but a heroine! I am of birth so high that no matter what I might do, I never could be anything but great and noble. And they may call it what they like, I call it following my inclination and taking my own road. I was born to take no other!"
Given such inclinations, and living in the Louvre, where Corneille's plays were constantly enacted by Queen Anne's order, Mademoiselle was accustomed to regard certain actions as the reverse of common and ignoble, and to consider certain other actions "illustrious."
The justice of super-exalted sentiments was proclaimed by nobility, and they who were disposed to closely imitate the examples set by the literary leader of the day ran the risk of losing all sense of proportions and of substance. Mademoiselle did lose that sense, nor was she the only one to do so among all the children of quality who were permitted to abuse their right to see the play. Through the imprudent fashion of taking young children to the theatre, the honest Corneille, who taught the heroism of duty, the poetry of sacrifice, the value of strong will and self-control, was not absolutely innocent of the errors in judgment and in moral sense by which the wars of the Fronde were made possible. When he attempted to lift the soul of France above its being, he vitiated a principle in the unformed national brain.
III