CHAPTER XVI

THE POETRY OF CORNEILLE

The poetry of Corneille, or what of poetry there is in him, is all to be found in the lyrical quality of the volitional situations, in those debates, remarks, solemn professions of faith, energetic assertions of the will, in that superb admiration for one's own personal, unshakable firmness. Here it is that we must seek it, not in the development of the dramatic action or in the character of the individual personages. For it is only an affection for life, that is to say, penetration of it in all its manifestations, which is capable of generating those beings, so warm with passion, who insinuate themselves into us and take possession of our imagination, who grow in it and eventually become so familiar to us that we seem to have really met them: the creations of Dante, of Shakespeare, or of Goethe. Certainly, Corneille's lyricism, which seems to be exclusive and one-sided, would not be lyricism and poetry, if it were really always exclusive and one-sided and although it cannot give us drama in the sense we have described, owing to its driving away the other passions, yet it does not succeed in doing so in such a complete and radical manner that we fail to perceive their fermentation, however remote, in those severe and vigorous assertions of the will. The loftiness itself of the rhythm indicates the high standard of the vital effort, which it represents and expresses. To continue the illustration above initiated, Corneille's situations may be drawings rather than pictures, or pictures in design rather than in colour; but these pictures also possess their own qualities as pictures, they too are works of love and must not be confounded with drawings directed to intellectual ends, with illustration of real things, or concepts with prosaic designs.

And indeed everyone has always sought and seeks the flower of the spirit of Corneille, the beauty of his work, in single situations, or "places." The commentators who busy themselves with the exposition and the dégustation of his works have but slight material for analysis of the sort that is employed by them in the case of other poets, whose fundamental poetic motive furnishes a basis for the rethinking of the characters and of their actions. Here on the contrary they feel themselves set free from an obstruction, when they pass to the single passages, and at once declare with Faguet, one of the latest _"Il y a de beaux vers à citer"_ The actors too, who attempt to interpret his tragedies in the realistic romantic manner, fail to convince, while those succeed on the other hand who deliver them in a somewhat formal style. In thus listening to the intoned declamations of the monologues, exhortations, invectives, sentiments and _couplets,_ one feels oneself transplanted into a superior sphere, exactly as happens with singing and music.

Corneille's characters are not to be laid hold of in their full and corporate being. It is but rarely that they allow us a glimpse of their human countenance, or permit us to catch some cry of scorn, and then rapidly withdraw themselves into the abstract so completely that we do not succeed in taking hold of even a fold of their fleeting robes, although a long-enduring echo of their lightning-like speech remains in the soul. The old father of the Horatii strengthens his sons in their conflict between family affection and their imperious duty to their country, with the maxim: _"Faites votre devoir et laissez faire aux Dieux."_ The youthful Curiace murmurs with tears in his voice, to the youthful Horace, his friend and brother-in-law _"Je vous connais encore et c'est ce qui: me tue,"_ but Horace is as inflexible as a syllogism, having arrived at the conclusion that the posts assigned to them in the feud between Rome and Alba have made enemies of them, and therefore that they must not know one another in future. Curiace, when at last he has become bitterly resigned to their irremediable separation and hostility, exclaims: _"Telle est nôtre misère_ ..."--Emilia, another being with nerves like steel springs, reveals her proud soul in a single phrase; when Maximus suggests flight to her, she exclaims as she faces him, in a cry that is like a blow: _"Tu oses m'aimer et tu n' oses mourir!"_ She is perhaps more deeply wounded here in her pride as a woman, who fails to receive the tribute of heroism, which she expects, than in her moral sentiment. The noble Suréna holds it an easy thing, a thing of small moment, to give his life for his lady: he wishes "_toujours aimer, toujours souffrir, toujours mourir!_"; and Antiochus, in _Rodogune,_ when he discovers that he is surrounded with ambushes, decides to die and in doing so directs his thought to the sad shade of his brother, who has been slain in a like manner: "_Cher frère, c'est pour moi le chemin du trépas_..."; and Titus feels himself penetrated with the melancholy of the fleeting hour, the sense of human fragility:

Oui, Flavian, c'est affaire à mourir. La vie est pen de chose; et tôt ou tard qu'importe Qu'un traître me l'arrache, ou que l'âge l'emporte? Nous mourrons a toute heure; et dans le plus doux sort Chaque instant de la vie est un pas vers la mort.

Words expressive of death are always those whose accent is clearest and whose resonance is the most profound with Corneille. It is perhaps as well to leave the _Moi_ of Medea and the _Qu'il mourrait_ of the old Horace to the admirative raptures of the rhetoricians; but let us repeat to ourselves those words of the sister of Heraclius (in the _Heraclius_), mortified by fate, ever at the point of death and ever ready to die:

Mais à d'autres pensers il me faut recourir: Il n'est plus temps d'aimer alors qu'il faut mourir.... $/

And again:

Crois-tu que sur la foi de tes fausses promesses Mon âme ose descendre à de telles bassesses? Prends mon sang pour le sien; mais, s'il y faut mon cœur, Périsse Héraclius avec sa triste sœur!

And when she stays the hand of the menacing tyrant suddenly and with a word:

... Ne menace point, je suis prête a mourir.

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?

She thus concedes to human frailty the relief of a lament, such a lament as can issue from her lips, full of strength and charged with resolution in passion, but at the same time noble, measured and dignified. After this, she follows the direction of her will with inexorable firmness. Léon shall not be her spouse, because her choice must be and seem to be dictated by the sole good of the State, and fall upon a man whom she will not love with love, but who will be for Rome an emperor to be feared and respected. A conflict had been engaged between one part of herself and another, between the whole and a part, and she has again subjected the part to the whole and has assigned to it its duty, that of obedience.

Je suis impératrice et j'étais Pulchérie. De ce trône, ennemi de mes plus doux souhaits, Je regarde l'amour comme un de mes sujets; Je veux que le respect qu'il doit à ma couronne Repousse l'attentat qu'il fait sur ma personne; Je veux qu'il m'obéisse, au lieu de me trahir; Je veux qu'il donne à tous l'exemple d'obéir; Et, jalouse déjà de mon pouvoir suprême, Pour l'affermir sur tous, je le prends sur moi-même.

Thus love is subjected to the mind, or as it used to be expressed in the language of the time, which was of Stoic origin, to the "hegemonic potency." She would desire to raise her youthful beloved to the lofty level of her intent, by removing him from the sphere of weak lamentations and assuring his union with herself in a mystic marriage of superior wills. What contempt is hers for sentimentalism, which wishes to insinuate itself where it is not wanted, for "tears," for "the shame of tears"!

La plus ferme couronne est bientôt ébranlée Quand un effort d'amour semble l'avoir volée; Et pour garder un rang si cher à nos désirs Il faut un plus grand art que celui des soupirs. Ne vous abaissez pas à la honte des larmes; Contre un devoir si fort ce sont de faibles armes; Et si de tels secours vous couronnaient ailleurs, J'aurais pitié d'un sceptre acheté par des pleurs.

When we read such verses as these, our breast expands, as it does when we are in the company of men whose gravity of word and deed induce gravity, whose superiority over the crowd makes you forget the existence of the crowd, transporting you to a sphere where the non-accomplishment of duty would appear, not only vile, but incomprehensible. On another occasion our admiration is about to shroud itself in pity, but soon shines forth again and displays itself triumphant, as in the young princess Hiedion of the _Attila,_ who is accorded to the abhorred king of the Huns by a treaty of peace--were she to refuse the union, immeasurable calamities would fall upon her family and people. She too observes a sorrowful attitude but hers is an erect and combative sorrow:

Si je n'étais pas, seigneur, ce que je suis, J'en prendrais quelque droit à finir mes ennuis: Mais l'esclavage fier d'une haute naissance, Où toute autre peut tout, me tient dans l'impuissance; Et, victime d'état, je dois sans reculer Attendre aveuglement qu'on daigne m'immoler.

The heart trembles and restrains itself at the same moment before that _"esclavage fier,"_ that proud and sarcastic _"qu'on daigne m'immoler"_ the victim has already scrutinised the situation in which she finds herself, the duty which is incumbent upon her, the prospect of vengeance which opens itself before her and her race, and has already conceived her terrible design. In like manner with Queen Rodolinde in the _Pertharite,_ when she is solicited and implored by the usurper Grimoalde, who wished to espouse her and promises to declare himself tutor to her son and to make him heir to the throne,--suspecting that in this way he will deprive her of the honour of marriage faith and may then put her son to deatii--she decides upon a horrible course of action, proposing to him that he should put her son to death on the spot:

Puisqu'il faut qu'il périsse, il vaut mieux tôt que tard; Que sa mort soit un crime, et non pas un hazard; Que cette ombre innocente à toute heure m'anime, Me demande à toute heure une grande victime; Que ce jeune monarque, immolé de ta main, Te rende abominable à tout le genre humain; Qu'il t'excite par tout des haines immortelles; Que de tous tes sujets il fasse des rebelles. Je t'épouserai lors, et m'y viens d'obliger, Pour mieux servir ma haine et pour mieux me venger, Pour moins perdre des vœux contre ta barbarie, Pour être à tous moments maîtresse de ta vie, Pour avoir l'accès libre à pousser ma fureur, Et mieux choisir la place où te percer le cœur. Voilà mon désespoir, voilà ses justes causes: A ces conditions, prends ma main, si tu l'oses.

Her husband Pertharite, who had been believed to be dead, is alive: he returns and is made prisoner by Grimoalde, and Rodolinde, fearing ruin, decides to avenge him or to perish with him. But he sees the situation in which he finds himself with his consort in a different light objectively: he sees it as a conquered king, who bows his head to the decision of destiny, recognises the right of the conqueror and holds ever aloft in his soul the idea of regal majesty. So he asserts it with firmness and serenity, going beyond all personal feelings, in order that he may consider only what appertains both to the rights and duties of a king:

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.

Corneille's keenest adversaries have always been compelled to recognise in him a residuum, which withstood their destructive criticism. Vauvenargues said that "he sometimes expressed himself with great energy and no one has more loftly traits, no one has left behind him the idea of a dialogue so closely compacted and so vehement, or has depicted with equal felicity the power and the inflexibility of the soul, which come to it from virtue. There are astonishing flashes that come forth even from the disputes and upon which I commented unfavourably, there are battles that really elevate the heart, and finally, although he frequently removes himself from nature, it must be confessed that he depicts her with great directness and vigour in many places, and only there is he to be admired." Jacobi, in an essay which is an indictment, was however, compelled to excogitate or to beg for the reason of such fame; he found himself obliged to praise the many vivacious scenes, the depth of discourse, the loftiness of expression, to be found scattered here and there in those tragedies. Although Schiller did not care for him at all, he made an exception for "the part that is properly speaking heroic," which was "felicitously treated," although he added that "even this vein, which is not rich in itself, was treated monotonously." Schlegel was struck with certain passages and with the style which is often powerful and concise and De Sanctis observed that Corneille was in his own field, when he portrayed greatness of soul, not in its gradations and struggles, but "as nature and habit, in the security of possession." A German philologist, after he has run down the tragedies of the "quadrilateral," judges Corneille to be "a jurist and a cold man of intellect, although full of nobility and dignity of soul, but without clearness as to his own aptitudes, and without original creative power." This writer declares that "nowhere in his works do we feel the breath of genius that laughs at all restraints," but he goes on to make exception for the splendour of his "language." It seems somewhat difficult to make an exception for the language, precisely when discussing the question of poetical genius!

NOTE. I draw attention to it in this note, because I have never seen it mentioned: it is to be found in the _Charactere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen.... von einer Gesellschaft von Gelehrten_ (Leipzig, 1796), Vol. V, part I, pp. 38-138.

We certainly find monotony present in the figures that he sets before us, repetitions of thoughts and of schemes, analogies in the matter of process. A _concordantia corneliana,_ explicatory of this side of his genius could be constructed and perhaps the sole reason that this has not been done is because it would be too easy. Steinweg, whom we have quoted above, has provided a good instance of this. But even the monotony of Corneille must not be looked upon altogether as a proof of poverty, or a defect, but rather as an intrinsic characteristic of his austere inspiration, which was susceptible of assuming but few forms.

I cannot better close this discussion of Corneille than with the citation of a youthful page of Sainte-Beuve, which contains nothing but a fanciful comparison, but this comparison has much more to say to us, who have now completed the critical examination of his works, than Sainte-Beuve was himself able to say in his various critical writings relative to the poet, for he there shows himself to be at one moment inclined to be uncertain and to oscillate, at another inclined to yield to traditional judgments and conventional enthusiasms. This affords another proof, if such be necessary, that it is one thing to receive the sensible impression aroused by a poem and another to understand and to explain it. "Corneille"--wrote Sainte-Beuve,--"a pure genius, yet an incomplete one, gives me, with his qualities and his defects, the impression of those great trees, so naked, so gnarled, so sad and so monotonous as regards their trunk, and adorned with branches and dark green leaves only at their summits. They are strong, powerful, gigantic, having but little foliage; an abundant sap nourishes them; but you must not expect from them shelter, shade or flowers. They put forth their leaves late, lose them early and live a long while half dismantled. Even when their bald heads have abandoned their leaves to the winds of autumn, their vital nature still throws out here and there stray boughs and green shoots. When they are about to die, their groans and creakings are like that trunk, laden with arms, to which Lucan compared the great Pompey."

INDEX (not retained for this text version)

End of Project Gutenberg's Ariosto, Shakespeare, Corneille, by Benedetto Croce