Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

Or, finally, those sweetest words of all, spoken by Eurydice in the Suréna:

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, fierce usque 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 (the Cid), 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 otherwise than 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 ardeur
Que 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 ship with 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 haute
A-t-elle un bien égal à celui qu'elle m'ôte?