The Sentiments de l’Academie at last saw the light in the month of December, 1637, and as Chapelain had foreseen, they did not completely satisfy either the cardinal or Scudery, in spite of the thanks which the latter considered himself bound to express to that body, or Corneille, who testified bitter displeasure. “The Academy proceeds against me with so much violence, and employs so supreme an authority to close my mouth, that all the satisfaction I have is to think that this famous production, at which so many fine intellects have been working for six months, may no doubt be esteemed the opinion of the French Academy, but will probably not be the opinion of the rest of Paris. I wrote the Cid for my diversion and that of decent folks who like Comedy. All the favor that the opinion of the Academy can hope for is to make as much way; at any rate, I have had my account settled before them, and I am not at all sure that they can wait for theirs.”
Corneille did not care to carry his resentment higher than the Academy. At the end of December, 1637, when writing to Bois-Robert a letter of thanks for getting him his pension, which he calls “the liberalities of my Lord,” he adds, “As you advise me not to reply to the Sentiments de l’Academie, seeing what personages are concerned therein, there is no need of interpreters to understand that; I am somewhat more of this world than Heliodorus was, who preferred to lose his bishopric rather than his book; and I prefer my master’s good graces to all the reputations on earth. I shall be mum, then, not from disdain, but from respect.”
The great Corneille made no further defence he had become a servitor again; but the public, less docile, persisted in their opinion.
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“In vain against the Cid a minister makes league; All Paris, gazing on Chimene, thinks with Rodrigue; In vain to censure her th’ Academy aspires; The stubborn populace revolts and still admires;” |
said Boileau subsequently.
The dispute was ended, and, in spite of the judgment of the Academy, the cardinal did not come out of it victorious; his anger, however, had ceased: the Duchess of Aiguillon, his niece, accepted the dedication of the Cid; when Horace appeared, in 1639, the dedicatory epistle, addressed to the cardinal, proved that Corneille read his works to him beforehand; the cabal appeared for a while on the point of making head again. “Horace, condemned by the decemvirs, was acquitted by the people,” said Corneille. The same year Cinna came to give the finishing touch to the reputation of the great poet:—
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“To the persecuted Cid the Cinna owed its birth.” |
Corneille had withdrawn to the obscurity which suited the simplicity of his habits; the cardinal, it was said, had helped him to get married; he had no longer to defend his works, their fame was amply sufficient. “Henceforth Corneille walks freely by himself and in the strength of his own powers; the circle of his ideas grows larger, his style grows loftier and stronger, together with his thoughts, and purer, perhaps, without his dreaming of it; a more correct, a more precise expression comes to him, evoked by greater clearness in idea, greater fixity of sentiment; genius, with the mastery of means, seeks new outlets. Corneille writes Polyeucte.” [Corneille et son Temps, by M. Guizot.]
It was a second revolution accomplished for the upsetting of received ideas, at a time when paganism was to such an extent master of the theatre that, in the midst of an allegory of the seventeenth century, alluding to Gustavus Adolphus and the wars of religion, Richelieu and Desmarets, in the heroic comedy of Europe, dared not mention the name of God save in the plural. Corneille read his piece at the Hotel Rambouillet. “It was applauded to the extent demanded by propriety and the reputation already achieved by the author,” says Fontenelle; “but some days afterwards, M. de Voiture went to call upon M. Corneille, and took a very delicate way of telling him that Polyeucte had not been so successful as he supposed, that the Christianism had been extremely displeasing.” “The story is,” adds Voltaire, “that all the Hotel Rambouillet, and especially the Bishop of Vence, Godeau, condemned the attempt of Polyeucte to overthrow idols.” Corneille, in alarm, would have withdrawn the piece from the hands of the comedians who were learning it, and he only left it on the assurance of one of the comedians, who did not play in it because he was too bad an actor. Posterity has justified the poor comedian against the Hotel Rambouillet; amongst so many of Corneille’s masterpieces it has ever given a place apart to Polyeucte; neither the Saint-Genest of Rotrou, nor the Zaire of Voltaire, in spite of their various beauties, have dethroned Polyeucte; in fame as well as in date it remains the first of the few pieces in which Christianism appeared, to gain applause, upon the French classic stage.