Jean racine

Jean Racine (22 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon - 21 April 1699 in Paris) was a French poet, playwright and historian. Considered one of the greatest writers of the Great French Century, a master of the Classicism prevailing in 17th century France, today he stands out, along with Pierre Corneille and Molière, as one of the best in universal literature. Racine was primarily a playwright of tragic works, most notably Phaedra, Andromache and Athalia, although he also wrote a comedy, The Disputants, and a children's tragedy called Esther.

Biography

Jansenist training

When he was orphaned at the age of four, his education was left to his grandparents, who entrusted it to the nuns of the Port-Royal schools from 1655 to 1658. There he received a very solid Jansenist and humanist education, studying the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides in their original language, and published his first poems. Under the influence of Malherbe we must situate The promenade of Port-Royal, of a pastoral type. But tragedies attracted him more, which caused a violent break with his former teachers, who considered theater as an instrument of corruption of customs. He later studied philosophy at the D'Harcourt College in Paris. At first, he tried to reconcile his literary aspirations with his family's wishes that he pursue an ecclesiastical career, so he remained in Uzès until 1663. He wrote an interesting ode, The Nymph of the Seine, in 1660, as well as several other plays that he did not get staged.

It should be noted his possible involvement in the so-called poison affair, in which he was suspected of having poisoned Du Parc, one of his actresses and lovers, to recover a jewel that was he wore on one finger. In reality it was a trial for induced abortion.

His literary beginnings

Eventually, he decided to devote himself completely to literature and led a worldly life in Paris between 1664 and 1677. In 1662, he received a pension from the king thanks to a play based on the convalescence of King Louis XIV, The Fame of the Muses. He got Molière's company to perform two of his plays, La Tebaida in 1664, and Alexander the Great in 1665. However, when he was not satisfied with the staging of the second, Racine commissioned it from a rival theater company to Molière's, which made the two of them at odds.

The great tragedies

The success he achieved in 1667 with the tragedy Andromache gave him a great reputation. After writing a comedy, Los Litigantes in 1668, he returned to dedicate himself definitively to tragedy and successively composed Britanico (1669), Berenice (1670), Bayezid (1672), Mithridates (1673), Iphigenia (1674) and Phaedra (1677).

Religious works

Married to an honest lady who bore him seven children, Catherine de Romanet, and a member of the French Academy since 1673, he was appointed historiographer to King Louis XIV, which made him, together with the success of what is now considered his best work, Phaedra, to renounce the theater to dedicate himself entirely to his duties as chronicler. However, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, he still wrote the Biblical tragedies Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691) for the students of the Saint-Cyr boarding school or College.. Despite the persecutions to which the Jansenists were victims, Racine reconciled with them, after a period of disputes, and wrote a Brief History of Port-Royal that was published posthumously.

"That work is the first ordained work that tells the history of the institution and puts in context the different incidences it must have suffered in the course of almost a century of rough complaint with the Society of Jesus. And he says, without concealing pain and indignation, in absolute conformity with what his friends and dear teachers were suffering and without measuring the serious consequences that his words might have: “I do not doubt that posterity will see a day when the great things that the king has done for the advancement of the Catholic religion will be taken on one side, and on the other side will include the great services that Antonio Arnauld has given to the Church, and the extraordinary virtue that has shined in that house, and will not fully understand how under such a full king of piety and justice he could have destroyed such a holy house; and that Arnauld has been forced there. It is not the first time that God allows the greatest saints to be treated as guilty by virtuous princes."

Death

In October 1698 Racine wrote his last will. “I wish,” says the will, “that after my death, my body be taken to Port-Royal de Champs, and that it be buried in the cemetery, at the foot of the grave of Jean Hamon. I very humbly beg that the Mother Abbess and the nuns, if they see fit to grant me this honor, and do not find me too unworthy to deserve it because of the scandals of my past life, and the little use I made of the excellent education I have received in that house, and of the great examples of piety and penance that I have seen, and of which I have been a sterile admirer. But the more I have offended God, the more I need prayers from a holy community to draw mercy upon me. I also ask the mother abbess and the nuns to kindly accept the sum of eight hundred pounds, which I ordered to be delivered to them after my death". His will was fulfilled, and on April 10 of the following year his remains they were buried in the graveyard of the abbey of Port-Royal and later, in 1711, they were transferred together with those of Blaise Pascal to the presbytery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

Characteristics of your theater

The fatality of love

Faced with Corneille's dramaturgy, which exalts the triumph of will and duty over feeling with arguments preferably taken from the history of Rome, Racine's theater shows the power of passion over the human soul as a force fatal that destroys the one who possesses it, and mainly chooses Greek arguments to represent it; also more closely follows the ideals of classical tragedy by presenting a simple and clear action, in which the adventures are born of the passions of the characters.

Racine depicts passion with terrifying violence, especially when it comes to jealousy, and with extraordinary psychological realism; but, despite the passionate and emotional intensity, so unclassical, of his characters, his works conform better than Corneille's to the rules and can be considered a high example of classicism.

Profane tragedies (that is, if we exclude Esther and Atalía) present a couple of innocent young people, united and at the same time separated by an impossible love, because the woman is dominated by the king (Andromache, British, Bayezid, Mithridates) or by belonging to a rival clan (Aricia in Phaedra). This rivalry is often supplemented by a political rivalry, which Racine barely notices.

In this aristocratic painting that, after Bayezid becomes a commonplace that serves as a pretext to unleash a crisis, the characters discover that the king has died or has been defeated: this fact it makes them feel liberated and unleashes their passions. However, the information is soon denied. The return of the king puts all the characters before their own faults and pushes them, depending on their nature, to repent or take their rebellion to the last consequences.

Style

Racine used to write his tragedies in prose, then turn them into sonorous, perfectly rhyming Alexandrian couplets. His style is clear, with a reduced vocabulary, but always elevated; he lacks the rhetorical extravagance of Corneille, and yet reaches a greater degree of lyricism. His language is rich in images.

Main works

Racine wrote a comedy, Les Plaideurs (The Litigants), 1668 and eleven tragedies that can be classified as follows:

Greek Affair Tragedies

• The Tebaida (1664)
• Alexander the Great (1665)
• Andromaca (1667)
• Ifigenia (1674)
• Fedra (1677)

Tragedies inspired by Roman history

• British (1669)
• Berenice (1670)
• Mitrídates (1673)

A piece in which the action takes place in 17th century Turkey

• Bayaceto (1672)

Biblical affair tragedies

• Esther (1689)
• Athaliah (1691)

Racine was more comfortable in those with a Greek theme, and he only cultivated Roman themes to compete with Corneille, who had his main source of inspiration in these subjects. The most Cornelian of his tragedies is precisely one of those with a Roman theme, Mithridates .