From Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice

Abstract

From Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice NATHALIE AZOULAI Selected and translated by Benjamin Eldon Stevens Translator’s Preface Nathalie Azoulai’s 2015 novel, Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice, tells three stories, or perhaps, as in the eyes of two of the main characters, three versions of the same story, keeping the personae but changing the players and adding an important action to the drama. The longest story is a life of 17th-century French playwright Jean Racine. Racine’s story is told through its discovery by a 21st-century woman, Bérénice, who assuages her heartbreak from a jilting lover, Titus, by reading Racine’s plays, including the eponymous Bérénice (1670). Struck by the coincidence, 21st-century Bérénice reads back through her 17th-century namesake to ancient Bérénice, 1st-century queen of Roman Judaea and, briefly, beloved of the future emperor Titus (39-81ce). In the Latin of Azoulai’s epigraph, drawn from the Roman historian Suetonius: Titus reginam Berenicem statim ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam, “Titus immediately dismissed queen Bérénice from the City, he unwillingly, she unwilling” (my translation). Thus ancient Roman history, already transformed by Racine into “classical ” French play, is remade by Azoulai into an illuminatingly imperfect mirror for a love-affair in the present day, with one dramatic difference: Bérénice learns that Titus is on his deathbed, a chance to put old ghosts to rest—or, as she puts it, to “let him croak!” Azoulai manages all this beautifully, drawing out parallels—and suggesting departures—through scenes in which modern Bérénice’s experience recalls not her historical namesake’s but that of Racine’s character. Hopeful and despairing, counterfactual and palpably real, such moments coalesce into Bérénice’s attempt to regain authorship of her own story—an authorship echoed in Azoulai’s prose, as images and turns of phrase link 17th and 21st centuries in writing. To try to capture all of that, in this selection I translate three excerpts: Racine’s decision to write Bérénice; modern Bérénice’s visit to Titus on his death-bed; and Racine’s literary success and appointment in the court of Louis XIV, concluding with the central idea that, as arion 29.3 winter 2022 58 from titus n’aimait pas bérénice Azoulai’s Racine puts it, a life “has need of unity,” i.e., classical unity as per Aristotle’s Poetics, so as to be “like a play.” My many thanks to Arion’s editors, from whose comments I benefited greatly, and un grand merci to Jenny Catchings for sensitive suggestions on the final draft. [170–173: In 1670, Jean Racine (1639–1699), starts to write his tragedy Bérénice] Marie lets him know that Corneille is writing the story of Titus and Bérénice. Jean doesn’t hesitate for a second. He drops what he has started, immerses himself in Suetonius. He will mount his own version of the story, to take his measure directly, once and for all. Titus who loved Bérénice passionately , and who, so far as people believed, had even promised to marry her, sent her away from Rome, despite himself and despite her, in the first days of his Empire. Suetonius does not say exactly that. Jean has simplified, erased a whole paragraph about the tumultuous floods that beset the young man, for whom bettering himself would mean separating from Bérénice. Jean wants none of that folderol, none of that moralizing mummery. He wants a separation that is pure and hard, that cuts into the living flesh of love. After several weeks, he has a structure for the whole of it, slow and circular. Everything will lead to the announcement of Titus’ decision, the event both avowed and deferred. Beforehand, a plaintive waiting, then an instant of perfect happiness—furtive, dazzling—a mirage of crystal in the black night. Of this night, Phoenix, have you seen the splendor: the light voice of Bérénice, happy, fulfilled, just a moment, so perfectly fulfilled that she will confuse happiness and credulity, fullness and vertigo...