Corneille and Racine: Problems of Tragic Form by Gordon Pocock

Abstract

Reviews 275 Gordon Pocock. Corneille and Racine: Problems of Tragic Form. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Pp. 327. $ 16.50. Mr. Pocock's book is not just another parallel between the two rival playwrights: rather than compare or oppose them he examines them in a kind of continuum of which both Corneille and Racine are a part. The continuum is the general trend of French, as well as European, drama towards the naturalism which will find its explicit form in Ibsen, and in the theater at the end of the 1 9th century; and the "problems of tragic form" of his subtitle are those faced by 1 7th-century playwrights in trying to fit the poetic drama inherited from the Renaissance and the Greeks into the "neo-classical" frame elaborated by the doctes of 1 6th-century Italy and 17th-century France. This term of "neo-classical" will irk some critics, especially in France, where it has different connotations and is linked with Souffiot and his Pantheon, David and his Serment des trois Horaces, and the Roman fervor of the Revolution, its Senates, Consuls, and Emperors. But Mr. Pocock's use of it can be justified, I think, when we realize that he wishes to apply it to the pedestrian aesthetics which have for so long passed under the name of "la doctrine classique." For the dramatic rules, far from leading to a poetic stylization of the real, were meant to produce a total illusion of reality, and Chapelain's brand of naturalism or verismo has no right to be hailed as a formulation of true classicism. Any naturalistic play, as Mr. Pocock sees it, must, if it wishes to convey a lesson or a truth higher than its literal message, adopt an extraneous truth, derived in the case of Ibsen and Zola from contemporary science, in the 1 7th century from the religious beliefs of the Counter-Reformation. Poetic drama, on the other hand, does not suggest a direct comparison with real life; it does not depend on the truth of an external system. It appeals to the audience at a deeper level than that of everyday experience, and it con­ veys its message not in the explicit form of a thesis but through its total impact and the "complexity of dramatic form" (p. 1 1 ) . Corneille's preoccupation with historical accuracy, his half apologetic use of verse ( the irregular rhythm of stances making them more like everyday speech! ) , his relatively numerous stage indications, his concern that sentences or maxims should only be used when it is credible that they should be spoken, tend to lead him to an essentially naturalistic drama, from which, in spite of the pressure of contemporary ideas and his own critical principles, he strives to escape. Without entirely neglect­ ing Corneille's other plays the author has concentrated on six of them: Le Cid, Cinna, Polyeucte, Rodogune, Sertorius, Surena. Of these, Cinna seems to him the greatest; it is not a tragedy, but it is an authentic poetic drama. It cares little about the rules, even once leavi:D.g the stage empty (p. 56) ; it does not primarily depict characters; it disdains natural­ istic verisimilitude. Above all, it does not propose a thesis: it creates values. In a careful reading of the play, scene by scene, and sometimes line by line, we are invited to let ourselves be guided by the verse, for it is the quality and resonance of the verse that betrays the hollowness and posturing of the conspirators, the confusion and despair of the Emperor, 276 Comparative Drama as well as his final soaring above himself that allows him to impose a genuine order upon a meaningless, disorderly world. This is a fresh, original reading of the play, even if one may object to some of Mr. Pocock's conclusions: does this glorification of human energy really link the play with the Renaissance? Even if this refers to the virtu of the Italians rather than to the tragedy of pathos of the 16th century, the Counter-Reformation is the age of neo-stoicism, with the Jesuits as its greatest professors of energy and exalters of man's will. In...