Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille (6 June 1606 in Rouen - 1 October 1684 in Paris) was a French poet, theorist and playwright. He is considered one of the best writers in the French language and universal literature.

The richness and diversity of his work close to the Baroque aesthetic, full of theatrical inventiveness, which he knew how to endow with emotional and reflective power, marked the rules of French Classicism of the 17th century. His theater echoes the concerns and questions of his time, the Great French Century, whose issues range from power, civil life, war, death or the fight for the throne. Today he is one of the most interpreted and world-renowned authors along with Molière and Racine.

Biography

With this and his following works (Clitandro, The Widow, The Palace Gallery, The Following, The Royal Square, Medea and Comic Illusion), Corneille creates a new theatrical style, in which tragic sentiments are staged for the first time in a plausible universe: that of contemporary society.

Corneille, official author by appointment of Cardinal Richelieu, breaks with his status as poet of the regime and with the controversial policy of the cardinal, to write works that exalt feelings of nobility (El Cid), that remind us that politicians are not above the law (Horacio), or that they present a monarch who tries to recover power without exercising repression (Cinna).

In 1647 he was elected to the French Academy; he occupies the 14th seat of the round table until his death, when his brother Thomas will succeed him.

After Richelieu's death, between 1643 and 1651, and during the period of La Fronde, the identity crisis suffered by France is reflected in Corneille's work: he settles scores with Richelieu in The Death of Pompey, writes Rodugone, a tragedy about the civil war, and develops the theme of the hidden king in Héraclius, Don Sancho de Aragón and Andromeda, questioning themselves about the very nature of the king, subordinated to the vicissitudes of history, which is why he gains in humanity. It was precisely the machinery necessary for the staging of Andromeda , presented as his masterpiece, that justified the construction of the Petit-Bourbon Theater in 1650.

From 1650 onwards, his works enjoyed fewer successes, and after the failure of Pertharite, Corneille stopped writing for several years.

The rising star of French theater is now Jean Racine, in whose plays intrigue prevails over sentiment, appearing less heroic and more human. The old poet is not resigned and renews the theater with the tragedy Oedipus.

Pierre continued to innovate the French theater until his death, creating what he calls a «Room of machines», that is, he favors staging and special effects ( The Golden Fleece), and try musical theater (Agésilas, Psyché); he shows the incompatibility of the royal office with the right to happiness ( Sertorius , Suréna ). The comparison with Racine turned against him, since both authors almost simultaneously created two works on the same subject, Corneille Tito and Bérénice and Racine Berenice.

At the end of his life, Pierre's situation is very bad and he requests a royal pension, which Louis XIV grants him. Pierre dies in Paris on October 1, 1684.

The extent and richness of his work has led to the development of the Cornellian adjective in France, which today is quite extensive, since it means both will and heroism, strength and literary density, greatness of soul and integrity, and an irreducible opposition in points of view.

Works

1912 edition The Cid.

• Melita (1630)
• Clitandro or Persecuted innocence (1631)
• The widow (1632)
• The Gallery of the Palace (1633)
• Next (1634)
• The Plaza Real (1634)
• Medea (1635)
• The comic illusion (1636)
• The Cid (1636)
• Horatio (1640)
• Cinna or the Clement of Augustus (1641)
• Polyeucto (1643)
• The Death of Pompey (1644)
• The Liar (1644)
• Rodogune (1644)
• Théodore (1646)
• Héraclius (1647)
• Andromeda (1650)
• Don Sancho de Aragón (1650)
• Nicomedes (1651)
• Pertharite (1652)
• Edipo (1659)
• Sertory (1662)
• Oton (1664)
• Agésilas (1666)
• Attila (1667)
• Tito and Berenice (1670)
• Psiqué (1671)
• Pulqueria (1672)
• Surena (1674)

Legacy

The playwright, writer, and philosopher Voltaire created, with the support of the French Academy, a twelve-volume annotated set of Corneille's dramatic works, the Commentaires sur Corneille. This work is Voltaire's largest in the area of literary criticism. Voltaire's nomination to the Academy described Corneille as doing what Homer had done for the Greek: showing the world that it could be a medium for great art. Voltaire was moved to defend classical French literature against increasingly popular foreign influences such as William Shakespeare. This is reflected in the first edition of the Commentaires, published in 1764, which focused on Corneille's best works and contained relatively muted reviews. In the second edition, published ten years later, Voltaire had come to a more negative assessment of Corneille and a stronger view of the need for objective criticism. He added five hundred critical notes, covering more works and adopting a more negative tone.Critics' opinions of Corneille were already highly polarized. Voltaire's intervention further polarized the debate, with some critics considering his criticisms pedantic and envy-driven. In the 19th century , the tide of opinion turned against Voltaire. Napoleon expressed his preference for Corneille over Voltaire, which revived the former's reputation as a dramatist and diminished that of the latter.

In episode 31 of the 1989 video conference series 'The Western Tradition,' UCLA professor Eugen Weber offers further comments on Corneille's work:

"But it must be remembered that Corneille's works were addressed to an aristocracy that could not be reached by sermons, morality, sentimentality. So he played them showing the greatness of self-discipline and self-sacrifice, of not doing what you want, but what must be done. And note that Corneille did not say, as a Christian would, that doing your duty makes you good, he said that doing your duty makes you great. When Corneille presented the struggle between passion and duty, it was not a new invention. What was new in Corneille was that he displayed a legitimate passion as opposed to another equally legitimate passion. It was important to elevate the debate from a contest between good and evil to a contest between two rights. Because a gentleman who got into a fight couldn't admit he was wrong, but if you started by stipulating that his motives were honorable, he would at least stop to consider your argument, which is what Corneille achieved by elevating the debate to a higher plane.. And the seventeenth-century people who loved their adventure stories felt vaguely that they were receiving something in them that they had not known before. And they were right. They hadn't met him before for the simple reason that he had dated the Greeks. Roman thought was too legalistic, Christian thought was too simplistic to tolerate the idea that there could be two rights, that there could be two sides in a conflict. This is a very sophisticated view, and it is only suitable for very sophisticated minds. And the small minority of seventeenth-century society who read Corneille, who saw Corneille's works, were hardly very sophisticated, but at least they were beginning to try.