There is no pleasure in tracing the decadence of a great genius. Corneille wrote for a long while without success, attributing his repeated rebuffs to his old age, the influence of fashion, the capricious taste of the generation for young people; he thought himself neglected, appealing to the king himself, who had ordered Cinna and Pompee to be played at court:—
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“Go on; the latest born have naught degenerate, Naught have they which would stamp them illegitimate They, miserable fate! were smothered at the birth, And one kind glance of yours would bring them back to earth; The people and the court, I grant you, cry them down; I have, or else they think I have, too feeble grown; I’ve written far too long to write so well again; The wrinkles on the brow reach even to the brain; But counter to this vote how many could I raise, If to my latest works you should vouchsafe your praise! How soon so kind a grace, so potent to constrain, Would court and people both win back to me again! ‘So Sophocles of yore at Athens was the rage, So boiled his ancient blood at five-score years of age,’ Would they to Envy cry, ‘when OEdipus at bay Before his judges stood, and bore the votes away.’” |
Posterity has done for Corneille more than Louis XIV. could have done: it has left in oblivion Agesilas, Attila, Titus, and Pulcherie; it preserved the memory of the triumphs only. The poet was accustomed to say with a smile, when he was reproached with his slowness and emptiness in conversation, “I am Peter Corneille all the same.” The world has passed similar judgment on his works; in spite of the rebuffs of his latter years, he has remained “the great Corneille.”
When he died, in 1684, Racine, elected by the Academy in 1673, found himself on the point of becoming its director; he claimed the honor of presiding at the obsequies of Corneille. The latter had not been admitted to the body until 1641, after having undergone two rebuffs. Corneille had died in the night. The Academy decided in favor of Abbe de Lavau, the outgoing director. “Nobody but you could pretend to bury Corneille,” said Benserade to Racine, “yet you have not been able to obtain the chance.” It was only when he received into the Academy Thomas Corneille, in his brother’s place, that Racine could praise to his heart’s content the master and rival who, in old age, had done him the honor to dread him. “My father had not been happy in his speech at his own admission,” says Louis Racine ingenuously; “he was in this, because he spoke out of the abundance of his heart, being inwardly convinced that Corneille was worth much more than he.” Louis XIV. had come in for as great a share as Corneille in Racine’s praises. He, informed of the success of the speech, desired to hear it. The author had the honor of reading it to him, after which the king said to him, “I am very pleased; I would praise you more if you had praised me less.” It was on this occasion that the great Arnauld, still in disgrace and carefully concealed, wrote to Racine: “I have to thank you, sir, for the speech which was sent me from you. There certainly was never anything so eloquent, and the hero whom you praise is so much the more worthy of your praises in that he considered them too great. I have many things that I would say to you about that, if I had the pleasure of seeing you, but it would need the dispersal of a cloud which I dare to say is a spot upon this sun. I assure you that the ideas I have thereupon are not interested, and that what may concern myself affects me very little. A chat with you and your companion would give me much pleasure, but I would not purchase that pleasure by the least poltroonery. You know what I mean by that; and so I abide in peace and wait patiently for God to make known to this perfect prince that he has not in his kingdom a subject more loyal, more zealous for his true glory, and, if I dare say so, loving him with a love more pure and more free from all interest. That is why I should not bring myself to take a single step to obtain liberty to see my friends, unless it were to my prince alone that I could be indebted for it.” Fenelon and the great Arnauld held the same language, independent and submissive, proud and modest, at the same time. Only their conscience spoke louder than their respect for the king.
At the time when Racine was thus praising at the Academy the king and the great Corneille, his own dramatic career was already ended. He was born, in 1639, at La Ferte-Milon; he had made his first appearance on the stage in 1664 with the Freres ennemis, and had taken leave of it in 1673 with Phedre. Esther and Athalie, played in 1689 and 1691 by the young ladies of St. Cyr, were not regarded by their author and his austere friends as any derogation from the pious engagements he had entered into. Racine, left an orphan at four years of age, and brought up at Port-Royal under the influence and the personal care of M. Le Maitre, who called him his son, did not at first answer the expectations of his master. The glowing fancy of which he already gave signs caused dismay to Lancelot, who threw into the fire one after the other two copies of the Greek tale Theayene et Chariclee which the young man was reading. The third time, the latter learnt it off by heart, and, taking the book to his severe censor, “Here,” said he, “you can burn this volume too, as well as the others.”
Racine’s pious friends had fine work to no purpose; nature carried the day, and he wrote verses. “Being unable to consult you, I was prepared, like Malherbe, to consult an old servant at our place,” he wrote to one of his friends, “if I had not discovered that she was a Jansenist like her master, and that she might betray me, which would be my utter ruin, considering that I receive every day letter upon letter, or rather excommunication upon excommunication, all because of a poor sonnet.” To deter the young man from poetry, he was led to expect a benefice, and was sent away to Uzes to his uncle’s, Father Sconin, who set him to study theology. “I pass my time with my uncle, St. Thomas, and Virgil,” he wrote on the 17th of January, 1662, to M. Vitard, steward to the Duke of Luynes; “I make lots of extracts from theology and some from poetry. My uncle has kind intentions towards me, he hopes to get me something; then I shall try to pay my debts. I do not forget the obligations I am under to you. I blush as I write; Erubuit puer, salva res est (the lad has blushed; it is all right). But that conclusion is all wrong; my affairs do not mend.”
Racine had composed at Uzes the Freres ennemis, which was played on his return to Paris in 1664, not without a certain success; Alexandre met with a great deal in 1665; the author had at first intrusted it to Moliere’s company, but he was not satisfied and gave his piece to the comedians of the Hotel de Dourgogne. Moliere was displeased, and quarrelled with Racine, towards whom he had up to that time testified much good will. The disagreement was not destined to disturb the equity of their judgments upon one another. When Racine brought out Les Plaideurs, which was not successful at first, Moliere, as he left, said out loud, “The comedy is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be derided.” One of Racine’s friends, thinking to do him a pleasure, went to him in all haste to tell him of the failure of the Misanthrope at its first representation. “The piece has fallen flat,” said he; “never was there anything so dull; you can believe what I say, for I was there.” “You were there, and I was not,” replied Racine, “and yet I don’t believe it, because it is impossible that Moliere should have written a bad piece. Go again, and pay more attention to it.”
Racine had just brought out Alexandre when he became connected with Boileau, who was three years his senior, and who had already published several of his satires. “I have a surprising facility in writing my verses,” said the young tragic author ingenuously. “I want to teach you to write them with difficulty,” answered Boileau, “and you have talent enough to learn before long.” Andromaque was the result of this novel effort, and was Racine’s real commencement.