Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

Quand ces devoirs communs out d'importunes lois,
La majesté du trône en dispense les rois;
Leur gloire est au-dessus des règles ordinaires,
Et cet honneur n'est beau que pour les cœurs vulgaires.
Sitôt qu'un roi vaincu tombe aux mains du vainqueur,
Il a trop mérité la dernière rigueur.
Ma mort pour Grimoald ne peut avoir de crime:
Le soin de s'affermir lui rend tout légitime.
Quand j'aurai dans ses fers cessé de respirer,
Donnez-lui votre main sans rien considérer;
Epargnez les efforts d'une impuissante haine,
Et permettez au Ciel de vous faire encor reine.

The courageous and sagacious Nicomède speaks kingly words of a different sort, well calculated to arouse him and make him lift up his head, to the vacillating father, who wishes to content both Rome and the queen, establish agreement between love and nature, be father and husband:

—Seigneur, voulez-vous bien vous en fier à moi?
Ne soyez l'un ni l'autre.—Et que dois-je être?—Roi.
Reprenez hautement ce noble caractère.
Un véritable roi n'est ni mari ni père;
Il regarde son trône, et rien de plus. Régnez;
Rome vous craindra plus que vous ne la craignez.
Malgré cette puissance et si vaste et si grande,
Vous pouvez déjà voir comme elle m'appréhende,
Combien en me perdant elle espère gagner,
Parce qu'elle prévoit que je saurai régner.

Let us listen also for a moment to the Christian Theodora, who has been granted the time to choose between offering incense to the gods and being abandoned to the soldiery in the public brothel:

Quelles sont vos rigueurs, si vous les nommez grâce!
Et que choix voulez-vous qu'une chrétienne fasse,
Réduite à balancer son esprit agité
Entre l'idolâtrie et l'impudicité?
Le choix est inutile où les maux sont extrêmes.
Reprenez votre grâce, et choisissez vous-mêmes:
Quiconque peut choisir consent à l'un des deux,
Et le consentement est seul lâche et honteux.
Dieu, tout juste et tout bon, qui lit dans nos pensées,
N'impute point de crime aux actions forcées;
Soit que vous contraigniez pour vos dieux impuissans
Mon corps à l'infamie ou ma main à l'encens,
Je saurai conserver d'une âme résolue
À l'époux sans macule une épouse impollue.

She really does balance herself mentally at the parting of the ways placed before her, analyses it and formulates her determination, rejecting as cowardly both the choice of the sacrilege and of the shameful punishment and casting it in the teeth of her unworthy oppressors. It is the only answer that befits the Christian virgin, firm in her determination of saving her constancy in the faith and modesty, which resides not only in the will, but also in desire itself. The expression of her intention has just such a tone and adopts just the formulae of a theologian speaking by her mouth—"le consentment," "l'époux sans macule," "l'épouse impollue."

In Theseus of the Oedipe the poet himself protests against a conception that menaces the foundation of his spirit itself, because it offends the idea of free choice and makes unsteady the consciousness that man has of being able to determine upon a line of conduct according to reason. He is protesting against the ancient idea of fate, or rather against its revival in modern form, as the Jansenist doctrine of grace:

Quoi! la nécessité des vertus et des vices
D'un astre impérieux doit suivre les caprices,
Et Delphes, malgré nous, conduit nos actions
Au plus bizarre effet de ses prédictions?
L'âme est donc toute esclave: une loi souveraine
Vers le bien ou le mal incessamment l'entraîne;
Et nous ne recevons ni crainte ni désir
De cette liberté qui n'a rien à choisir,
Attachés sans relâche à cet ordre sublime,
Vertueux sans mérite et vicieux sans crime.
Qu'on massacre les rois, qu'on brise les autels,
C'est la faute des dieux et non pas des mortels:
De toute la vertu sur la terre épandue
Tout le prix à ces dieux, toute la gloire est due:
Ils agissent en nous quand nous pensons agir;
Alors qu'on délibère, on ne fait qu'obéir;
Et notre volonté n'aime, hait, cherche, évite,
Que suivant que d'en haut leur bras la précipite!
D'un tel aveuglement daignez me dispenser.
Le Ciel, juste à punir, juste à récompenser,
Peur rendre aux actions leur perte ou leur salare,
Doit nous offrir son aide et puis nous laisser faire....

What indignation, what a revolt of the whole being against the thought that "quand on délibère, on ne fait qu' obéir"! How he defends the liberty, not only of the "virtus," but also of the "vices," the liberty "de nous laisser faire!" This eloquence of the will and of liberty, this singing declamation, is the true lyricism of Corneille, intimate and substantial, and not the so-called "lyrical pieces," which he inserted into his tragedies here and there. These are lyrical in the formal and restricted scholastic sense of the term, but they are often as affected as the monologue of Rodrigue, which is accompanied by a refrain. Others have demonstrated in an accurately analytical manner that he lacks lyricism or poetry of style; that the construction of his phrase is logical, with its "because," its "but," its "then," that he over-abounds in maxims and altogether ignores metaphor, the picturesque and musicality. But the same writer who has maintained this, has also declared that his poetry is to be found, if not in the coloured image and in the musical sound, then certainly "in the rhythm, in the wide or rapid vibration of the strophe, which extends or transports the thought" (Lanson): that is to say, in making this admission, he has confuted his previous mean and narrow theory concerning poetry and lyricism. The other judgment is to the effect that Corneille is not a poet by style, but by the conception and meaning of his works—that he is a latent poet or one who dressed up his thought in prose. But it is unthinkable that there should exist latent poets, who do not manifest themselves in poetic form. The truth of the matter is that where Corneille felt as a poet, he expressed himself as a poet, without many-coloured metaphors, without musical trills and softnesses of expression, but with many maxims, many conjunctive particles, declaratory and expressive of opposition. He employed the latter rather than the former, because he had need of the latter and not of the former. His rhythm too, which has been so much praised and owing to which his alexandrine rings out so differently from the mechanical alexandrines of his imitators, the rhetoricians, is nothing but his spirit itself, noble and solemn, debating and deliberating, resolute, unafraid and firm in its rational determinations.