The Age of Louis XIV

by Will Durant

Son fils peut me ravir le jour que je lui laisse.

  Seigneur, tant de prudence entraîne trop de soin:

  Je ne sais point prévoir les malheurs de si loin.

  Je songe quelle était autrefois cette ville,

  Si superbe en ramparts, en héros si fertile,

  Maîtresse de l’Asie; et je regarde enfin

  Quel fut le sort de Troie et quel est son destin.

  Je ne vois que des tours que la cendre a couvertes,

  Un fleuve teint de sang, des campagnes désertes,

  Un enfant dans les fers; et je ne puis songer

  Que Troie en cet état aspire à se venger.

  Ah! si du fils d’Hector la perte était jurée,

  Pourquoi d’un an entier l’avons-nous differée?

  Dans le sein de Priam n’a-t-on pu l’immoler?

  Sous tant de morts, sous Troie il fallait l’accabler.

  Tout était juste alors: la vieillesse et l’enfance

  En vain sur leur faiblesse appuyaient leur defense;

  La victoire et la nuit, plus cruelles que nous,

  Nous excitaient au meurtre, et confondaient nos coups.

  Mon courroux aux vaincus ne fut que trop sévère.

  Mais que ma cruauté survive à ma colère?

  Que malgré la pitié dont je me sens sàisir,

  Dans le sang d’un enfant je me baigne à loisir?

  Non, Seigneur. Que les Grecs cherchent quelque autre proie;

  Qu’ils poursuivent ailleurs ce qui reste de Troie:

  De mes inimitiés le cours est achevé;

  L’Épire sauvera ce que Troie a sauvé.* 10

  There is one defect here: Pyrrhus, and perhaps Racine, do not recognize how much the conqueror’s pity owes to the fact that he has fallen in love with the child’s mother—even to offering to marry her (whom he might have made his slave), and to adopt Astyanax as his son and heir. She refuses him; she cannot forget Hector, whom Pyrrhus’ father killed. He threatens to abandon the child to the Greeks, and, terrified, she consents to marriage. But Hermione—as powerful a conception as Lady Macbeth—burns with anger at being cast aside; while still loving Pyrrhus, she resolves to kill him; she accepts Orestes’ proffered devotion, on condition that he shall slay Pyrrhus. Reluctantly he agrees. At every step and in every character of this drama there is a conflict of motives mounting to a psychological complex as subtle as any in literature. Greek soldiers, violating sanctuary, kill Pyrrhus at the altar where he is exchanging marriage vows with Andromache. Hermione scorns Orestes, runs to the altar, plunges a knife into the dead Pyrrhus, stabs herself, and dies. This is Racine’s greatest play, worthy to stand comparison with Shakespeare or Euripides: a plot well constructed, characters revealed in depth, feelings studied in their full complexity and intensity,† and poetry of such splendor and harmony as France had not heard since Ronsard.

  Andromaque was at once recognized as a masterpiece, establishing Racine as the successor, and perhaps the superior, of Corneille. He entered now his happiest decade, passing from one triumph to another, and even challenging Molière with a comedy. Les Plaideurs (1668), a burlesque on greedy lawyers, false witnesses, and corrupt judges, echoed Racine’s own experience of the law. He had solicited and obtained a lien on the income of a priory; his claim was disputed by a monk; a long lawsuit followed, which so disgusted Racine that he abandoned the case, and avenged himself with the play. It did not please its first audience; but when it was shown at court Louis XIV laughed so heartily at its sallies that the public changed its mind; and this mediocre comedy played its part in filling Racine’s purse.

  One minor note intervened. On December 11, 1668, his mistress Mile. du Parc died in mysterious circumstances—of which more later on. After due delay he took another actress, Marie Champmeslé. She had an attentive husband but a bewitching voice; Racine eluded the one and surrendered to the other. The liaison lasted from Bérénice to Phèdre, after which, as a wit expressed it, the lady was déracinée—torn from the root—by the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre.

  Racine thought that Britannicus (1669) was his most careful work; and like Phèdre and Athalie it is often ranked above Andromaque. The modern reader, even if steeped in Tacitus, will likely find it distasteful: a termagant Agrippina, a whining Britannicus, a floundering Burrhus, a slimy Narcissus, a Nero all evil—no character here shows us complexity or development, none offers us that strain of nobility which should somewhere redeem any tragedy worthy of a poet’s pen.

  As Britannicus looked into Tacitus’ chamber of horrors, so Bérénice (1670) took an emperor’s love story from a compact line in Suetonius: Berenicem statim ab urbe demisit invitus invitam 12—“He, unwillingly, at once sent the unwilling Berenice from the city.” Titus, besieging Jerusalem (A.D. 70), had fallen in love with the Jewish princess. Though already thrice married, she follows him to Rome as his mistress; but when he inherits the throne he realizes that the Empire would not tolerate an alien queen, and he dismisses her in a royal burst of common sense. The play was warm with sentiment, and succeeded well with both the public and the King, who must have recognized with pleasure his own court and victories in Berenice’s description of the young Emperor’s glory:

  De cette nuit. . . as tu vu la splendeur?

  Tes yeux ne sont-ils pas tout plein de sa grandeur?

  Ces flambeaux, ce bûcher, cette nuit enflaminée,

  Ces aigles, ces faisceaux, ce peuple, cette armée,

  Cette foule de rois, ces consuls, ce sénat,

  Qui tous de mon amant empruntaient leur éclat;

  Cette poupre, cet or, que rehaussait sa gloire,

  Et ces lauriers encore témoins de sa victoire;

  Tous ces yeux qu’on voyait venir de toutes parts

  Confondre sur lui seul leurs avides regards;

  Ce port majestueux, cette douce présence.

  Ciel! avec quel respect et quelle complaisance

  Tous les coeurs en secret l’ assuraient de leur foi!

  Parle: peut-on le voir sans penser comme moi

  Qu’en quelque obscurité que le sort l’eut fait naître,

  Le monde, en le voyant, eut reconnu son maître?* 13

  Is it any wonder that Racine, so skillful in adulation, rose rapidly in favor with the King?

  We pass respectfully by some lesser plays, all of them still holding the French stage: Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), which Louis liked best of all, and Iphigénie (1674), which Voltaire ranked with Athalie as one of the finest poems ever written. 14 Iphigénie had its première in the Versailles gardens, by the light of crystal chandeliers hung in the orange and pomegranate trees; violins played; half the elite audience melted; Racine stepped forward to acknowledge the most cherished plaudits of his career. Produced in Paris, it ran for forty performances in three months. Meanwhile (1673) he had been elected to the French Academy. Nothing seemed lacking to his happiness.

  But it is still not given to poets to be happy, unless beauty proves a joy forever, and praise encounters no discordant voice. “The applause I have met with,” Racine told his son, “has often flattered me a great deal; but the smallest critical censure . . . always caused me more vexation than all the pleasure given me by praise.” 15 He himself was not only thin-skinned, as he had to be, but he was short-tempered, and returned every unkind word. At the height of his success he found half of Paris carping at him, even working for his fall. Corneille had outlived himself, but his followers remembered the heroic tone and topics of his earlier tragedies, the air of nobility in his eloquence, the lofty level on which he raised the calls of honor and the state above the romances of the heart. They accused Racine of debasing the tragic drama with the half-mad passions of ignoble creatures, introducing to the stage the gallantries of courtly love, and drenching it with the tears of his heroines. They were resolved to bring him down.

  When it became known that he was writing Phèdre, a group of his enemies persuaded Nicolas Pradon to write a rival play on the same theme. Both dramas had origina
lly the same title—Phèdre et Hippolyte—and stemmed from the legend that Euripides had told with classic restraint. Phedra, wife of Theseus, developed an uncontrollable passion for Hippolytus, son of Theseus by an earlier marriage; finding him frigid to women, Phedra hanged herself, leaving in revenge a note accusing Hippolytus of an attempt against her virtue; Theseus banished his innocent son, who was soon afterward killed while driving horses along Troezen’s shores. Racine altered the sequence, making Phedra poison herself after hearing of Hippolytus’ death. This version was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne on January 1, 1677; Pradon’s was staged two days later at the Théâtre de Guénégaud. Both for a time had equal success; but Pradon’s play is now forgotten, while Racine’s is usually rated as his masterpiece; the role of Phèdre is the goal of all French actresses, as that of Hamlet lures the tragedians of the English theater.* Racine, model of the classic style, rivaled the romantics in the emotionalism of Phedra’s love, and Hippolytus (quite contrary to the legend) burns for the Princess Aricia. Phedra learns of this passion, and Racine gives us in excited detail a study of a woman scorned. He redeems these romantic ecstasies with a powerful description of how the frightened horses of Hippolytus dragged him to death.

  In the preface to Phèdre (the religious element in him now rising as the sexual subsided) Racine offered an olive branch to Port-Royal:

  I do not dare assure myself that this . . . is the best of my tragedies . . . But I am sure that I have written none in which virtue has been put in a better light. The slightest faults are here severely punished; the mere thought of crime is here regarded with as much horror as the crime itself. The weaknesses of love are here seen as real weaknesses. The passions are brought to view only to show all the disorder of which they are the cause; and vice is here painted throughout in colors that make us see and hate its deformity. This is the proper end that every man who works for the public should propose to himself. . . . It would perhaps be a means of reconciling the tragic drama with many persons famous for their piety and their teaching who have lately condemned it, but who would judge it more favorably if authors thought as much of instructing their spectators as of entertaining them, and if they followed in this the true intention of tragedy. 17

  Arnauld, famous for his piety and his teaching, welcomed this new note, and announced his approval of Phèdre. Perhaps in writing the preface Racine, now thirty-eight, was looking forward to settling down from multiplicity to unity. On June 1 of this year 1677 he took a well-dowered wife. He discovered the comforts of domesticity, and found more delight in his first child than in his most successful play. The jealousies and cabals of competitors had soured his taste for the theater. He put aside the plots and notes that he had made for future dramas, and for twelve years he confined himself to writing occasional verse and prose—chiefly a filial and reverent history of Port-Royal.

  A bitter contretemps disturbed his exemplary peace. In 1679 the special court investigating the charges of poisoning made against Catherine Monvoisin drew from her the accusation that Racine had poisoned his mistress Thérèse du Parc. “La Voisin” gave details, but there was no corroboration. Being confident of death, she had nothing to lose by making false accusations; and it was noted that one of her clients and friends was the Comtesse de Soissons, a member of the clique that had opposed Racine in the affaire Phèdre. 18 Nevertheless Louvois wrote to the commissioner Bazin de Bézons, on January 1, 1680: “The royal warrant for the arrest of the Sieur Racine will be sent to you as soon as you ask for it.” But as the investigation proceeded and seemed to implicate Mme. de Montespan, the King ordered the suppression of the trial record, and no action was taken against Racine. 19

  Louis showed continued faith in the dramatist. In 1664 he assigned him a pension; in 1674 he gave him a sinecure worth 2,400 livres per year, in the department of finance; in 1677 he appointed Racine and Boileau court historiographers; in 1690 the poet became gentleman in ordinary to the King, which brought him an additional two thousand livres annually. In 1696 he was rich enough to buy the office of secretary to the King.

  His active fulfillment of his duties as historiographe royal shared in withdrawing him from the theater. He accompanied the King on campaigns to record the events more faithfully. Otherwise he remained at home, busying himself with the development of his two sons and five daughters, but sometimes, amid their turbulence, wishing that he had become a monk. He might never have written another play had not Mme. de Maintenon appealed to him to compose a religious drama, purified of all love interest, to be played by the young women whom she had gathered into the Academy of St.-Cyr. Andromaque had already been played there, but the virtuous Maintenon noted that the girls enjoyed the passages of amorous passion. To bring them back to piety Racine wrote Esther.

  He had never before taken a theme from the Bible, but he had studied that book for forty years, and knew all the complex history recorded in the Old Testament. He himself coached the young ladies in their parts, and the King contributed 100,000 francs to provide the Persian costumes required. When it was produced (January 25, 1689) Louis was among the few men in the audience. The clergy, then the court, clamored to see it; St.-Cyr gave twelve more performances. Esther did not reach the general public till 1721, six years after the death of the King, and then (religion having lost its royal patronage) it met with indifferent success.

  On January 5, 1691, St.-Cyr produced Racine’s latest play, Athalie. Athaliah was the wicked queen who for six years led many of the Jews into the pagan worship of Baal, until she was deposed by a priestly revolution. 20 Racine made from the story a drama whose power can be felt only by those who come to it familiar with the Bible narrative, and still warm with orthodox Jewish or Christian faith; others will find its long speeches and somber spirit discouraging. The play seemed to applaud the expulsion of the Huguenots and the triumph of the Catholic hierarchy; on the other hand it contained, in the high priest’s warning to the young King Joad, a strong denunciation of absolute rule:

  Brought up far from the throne, you have not felt its poisonous charm; you do not know the drunkenness of absolute power, and the enchantment of cowardly flatterers. Soon they will tell you that the holiest laws . . . should obey the king; that a king has no other restraint than his own will; that he should sacrifice everything to his supreme grandeur . . . Alas! they have misled the wisest of kings. 21

  The lines won much applause during the eighteenth century, and may have moved Voltaire and others 22 to rank Athalie as the greatest of French dramas. Subsequent lines suggest that the highpriest was merely arguing for the subordination of kings to priests.

  Louis, whose piety now exceeded Racine’s, saw no harm in the play, and continued to receive Racine at court despite the poet’s known sympathy with Port-Royal. But in 1698 the royal favor lapsed. At the request of Mme. de Maintenon Racine drew up a statement of the sufferings that were afflicting the people of France in the final years of the reign. The King surprised her reading this document, took it, drew from her the author’s name, and flew into a rage. “Does he think, because he is a perfect master of verse, that he knows everything? And because he is a great poet does he want also to be minister?” Maintenon, all apologies to Racine, assured him that the storm would soon pass. It did; Racine returned to the court and was received graciously, though, he thought, not as warmly as before. 23*

  What killed the poet was not a cold look from the King, but an abscess of the liver. He submitted to an operation, and was for a time relieved; but he was not deceived when he said, “Death has sent in its bill.” 26 Boileau, himself ailing, came to stay at his friend’s bedside. “I rejoice,” said Racine, “to be allowed to die before you.” 27 He drew up a simple will, whose central paragraph was a plea to Port-Royal:

  I desire that my body shall be taken to Port-Royal-des-Champs, and that it shall be buried in the cemetery there . . . I most humbly beg the Mother Abbess and the nuns to grant me this honor, though I know that I am unworthy of it, both by the scandal
s of my past life and by the little use that I have made of the excellent education that I formerly received in that house, and the great examples of piety and penitence that I saw there. . . . But the more I have offended God, the more do I need the prayers of so holy a community. 28

  He died April 21, 1699, aged fifty-nine. The King pensioned the widow and the children till the death of the last survivor.

  France ranks Racine among her greatest poets, as representing, with Corneille, the highest development of the modern classic drama. Under Boileau’s urging he accepted a strict interpretation of the “three unities,” and achieved thereby an unrivaled concentration of feeling and power through a single action transpiring in one place and completed in one day. He avoided the intrusion of secondary plots, and all mingling of tragedy and comedy; he excluded commoners from his tragedies, and dealt usually with princes and princesses, kings and queens. His vocabulary was purged of all words that might have been out of place in the salons or the court, or might have raised an eyebrow in the French Academy. He complained that he did not dare mention, in his plays, so vulgar an operation as eating, though Homer was full of it. 29 The aim was to achieve a style that would reflect in literature the speech and manners of the French aristocracy. These restrictions limited Racine’s range; each of his dramas, before Esther, was like its predecessors, and in each the sentiments were the same.

  Despite the classical idea of intelligence overspreading life and controlling emotion and speech, Racine verged upon romanticism in the character and intensity of the feelings he expressed. Whereas in Corneille the sentiments stressed honor, patriotism, and nobility, in Racine they centered largely about love or passion; we sense in him the influence of the romances of d’Urfé, Mme. de Scudéry, and Mme. de La Fayette. He admired Sophocles most among all dramatists, but he reminds us rather of Euripides, in whom the Sophoclean restraint and dignity of expression passed now and then into an abandon of ardor and feeling; there is more restraint of speech in Hamlet or Macbeth than in Andromaque or Phèdre. Racine frankly stated his view that “the first rule” of drama “is to please and touch the heart.” 30 He did this by dealing with the heart, by taking as his main characters persons—usually women—of emotional intensity, and turning his plays into a psychology of passion.