Jean Racine: biography, creativity, quotes. French playwright Jean Racine: biography, photos, works Life after Phaedra

Early became an orphan.

From 1649 Jean Racine enters school at the monastery of Port-Royal.

Jean Racine often took themes in ancient mythology.

“Now - since it is customary to penetrate into the inner world of selected geniuses whom descendants surround with reverence - let's look into his home life. We will see that molière was a simple, friendly man, always ready to help in trouble and pave the way for talent. It is known that young Racine brought the author of The Misanthrope his first tragedy. The play was unsuitable for staging; however, Molière sensed the power of a nascent genius; he persuaded the young writer to accept a considerable sum from him and advised him on the plot of The Thebaid, in which he himself, as they say, distributed the action into acts and scenes. Who knows, perhaps France is indebted to this kind reception, this noble support of Moliere, by Racine.

Honore Balzac, Molière / Collected Works in 24 volumes, Volume 24, M., Pravda, 1960, p. eight.

“The life and work of this man are of great interest not only for the history of literature, but also for characterizing the relationship between poets and women. Every literature has gone through a period known as false classicism. This is a strange period: adults, as it were, turn into children and begin to show that they are adults.
What is not being done here! From the old family chests, an old dress is pulled out, left over from the time of Ochakov and the conquest of the Crimea; obsolete weapons are removed from the walls, hanging on them for hundreds of years; forgotten words, frozen on the pages of the history of the formula, are fished out from distant times. And when all this is done, adults, suddenly turned into children, begin to put on old-fashioned costumes, rattle obsolete weapons and speak a language that requires an experienced philologist to understand. Everything is stilted, everything is pretentious, not a single word is said in simplicity, but everything with a smirk.
There can be no talk about true feelings, about the real language of passions.
The words are ready in advance, the formulas have been worked out long ago, and in order to express this or that feeling, it is enough to choose only any phrase from the rich collection of ready-made phrases stored under glass in the vast museum of national pseudo-classicism.
together in Corneille Racine was the brightest, most talented exponent of this trend.
Its heroes are, as it were, marble statues, but not those with which the figures of "War and Peace" were compared. Tolstoy while others are lifeless, motionless, dead. They, of course, resembled life, but no more than an artificial pool, enclosed in a granite frame, resembles the sea on its shores.
Everything was mixed up - nature with fiction, the past with the present. When a Frenchman was introduced in a play, it was difficult to say what was more in him, French or ancient Roman; when the Roman was brought out, the same Frenchman was again visible in him.
Achilles gallantly calls Iphigenia "madame" and reads to her a monologue written in strict Alexandrian verse about the heart wounds that she inflicted on him with her eyes.
Isn't that the powdered marquis of the times Louis XIV? In vain even the heroes of Racine bear names: each of them can be called whatever you like, and the matter will not change from this. Emotional unrest was portrayed by stereotyped techniques. Instead of a real feeling, there were words about feelings. And people did not lie, no - there was such a time. The stiffness of the situation, the external gloss, the external grandeur of the era - everything brought up a person on external manifestations. And the lips whispered with fervor: "I love you!", While the heart was empty and silent.
But life was right.
Men and women come together, reading each other enthusiastic monologues, as we have seen in the characteristic example of Charlotte Stein and Goethe; but when the powdered wigs were taken off and the rouge was washed off the cheeks, people found themselves face to face with naked reality. There was no time for monologues when a husband had to give his wife more clothes for outfits than he could afford, or when a child soiled diapers. Poetry disappeared along with the tinsel from which it was woven, and dry prose began with all its unsightly sides. That is why relations between men and women outside the family were so beautiful at that time and so pathetic and sad in a family setting, where the inequality between spouses, which had previously been smoothed out by the sameness of wigs and external receptions, stood out most clearly.
Not escaped this fate and Racine. Who would have thought that stately, pompous, all in curls and curls Racine, whose whole being, apparently, was strictly imbued with three unities, like his works, spent his life with a woman who in many respects resembled Matilda or Christina Goethe?
Like the wife of the great German poet and wit, Racine's wife never read her husband's works and never even saw any of his plays on stage.
Marriage to such a person could only be the result of some special circumstances, some special spiritual mood or confusion of concepts. And indeed, both played a role in the fate of Racine. He experienced a mental break at the time when he met the woman who later became his wife. Having reached the pinnacle of fame, it suddenly occurred to him not to write dramatic works anymore, as they supposedly harm the public. Along with this, he decided to join the stern order of the Carthusians.
The confessor, however, advised him to better marry a serious, pious woman, since the obligations of family life would distract him from his unwanted passion for poetry better than any religious orders.
Racine took good advice and married Catherine de Romana, a girl from a good family, but, as it is said, who had no idea about his works, and was not interested in literature at all. The names of the tragedies that glorified the name of her husband throughout Europe, she learned only from conversations with friends. One day Racine returned home with a thousand louis, which he gave him Louis XIV, and, having met his wife, he wanted to show the money, but she was not in a good mood, since her child had not been preparing lessons for two days in a row.
Pushing her molesting husband away, she began to shower him with reproaches.
Racine exclaimed:
- Listen, we'll talk about this some other time, now it's all down and we'll be happy!
But the wife did not lag behind, demanding that he immediately punish the sloth. Out of patience, Racine exclaimed:
- Hell! But how can you not even look at the purse in which there are a thousand louis?!
However, this stoic indifference to money was not explained by the moral qualities of Racine's wife. She was just stupid. The prayer book and the children were the only subjects of interest to her in the wide world. All this more than once made Racine regret that he did not go to the monastery. He was especially indignant when a child fell ill - a circumstance that did not prevent him, however, from being an excellent father of a family, who gladly took part in the children's games.
If we follow the relationship racina to his wife in connection with the relationship of his heroes to women, an amazing similarity will catch your eye. But otherwise it could not be. The 17th century in France was marked, as we shall see later, by the flowering of sexual relations, but there was not even a hint of true love in them.
A woman was only an object of pleasure, and her happiness depended on how much she knew how to please. On the other hand, the nobility of the origin of the woman played a big role. A noble woman could always count on a large circle of admirers. And literature, which is a true mirror of social life, has left us many monuments testifying to this original period in the history of the women's question.
Racine himself did not hesitate to impose on his heroes ardent feelings, which are based only on the cult of nobility. The ennobling influence of love, the softening of morals, was out of the question. On the contrary, it rather embittered the heart. It is worth, for example, to recall at least his Phaedra, who sends a devoted servant to death just when she is under the spell of a love feeling. Is it any wonder that Racine himself thought little of a sincere feeling when he gave his hand and heart to the empty, but noble Catherine de Romana? Is it also surprising that later he did not find in her not only a true friend of life, but even a reader of his works?

Dubinsky N., A woman in the life of great and famous people, M., "Republic", 1994, p. 132-134.

Jean Baptiste Racine (fr. Jean-Baptiste Racine). Born December 21, 1639 - died April 21, 1699. French playwright, one of the three outstanding playwrights of France of the 17th century, along with Corneille and Moliere, author of the tragedies Andromache, Britannicus, Iphigenia, Phaedra.

Jean Baptiste Racine was born on December 21, 1639 (baptized on December 22, 1639) in the city of La Ferté-Milon, Valois County (now the Department of Ain), in the family of Jean Racine (1615-1643), a tax official.

In 1641, during the birth of the second child (the sister of the future poet, Marie), the mother dies. The father remarries, but dies two years later at the age of twenty-eight. The grandmother raised the children.

In 1649, Jean-Baptiste entered the school in Beauvais at the Port-Royal monastery. In 1655 he was accepted as an apprentice to the abbey itself. The three years spent there had a strong influence on Racine's literary development. He studied with four outstanding classical philologists of the time (Pierre Nicole, Claude Lanslo, Antoine Le Maistre, Jean Gamon), thanks to whom he became an excellent Hellenist. Jean's inspiration came from the conflict between his love of classical literature and Jansenism.

After studying at the Parisian college, Harcourt in 1660 met Lafontaine, Molière, Boileau; writes the court ode "The Nymph of the Seine" (for which he receives a pension from), as well as two plays that have not come down to us.

In 1661, he moved to his uncle, who was a priest in Uzes, to negotiate a beneficiary from the church, which would give him the opportunity to devote himself completely to literary creativity. However, the church refused Racine, and in 1662 (according to another version - in 1663) he returned to Paris.

It is believed that his first plays that have come down to us, The Thebaid, or Brothers-enemies (French La thebaïde, ou les frères ennemis), and Alexander the Great (French Alexandre le grand), were written on the advice of Molière, who installed them in 1664 and 1665, respectively.

In the next two years, Racine acquired connections at the royal court, in particular, he gained the patronage of the royal mistress Madame de Montespan, which opened the way for him to a personal friendship with King Louis XIV.

The playwright died on April 21, 1699. He was buried in the Parisian cemetery near the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

As an heir to the classical tradition, Racine took on themes in history and ancient mythology. The plots of his dramas tell about blind, passionate love. His dramas are usually classified as neoclassical tragedy; they follow the traditional canon of the genre: five actions, the unity of place and time (i.e., the length of the depicted events fits into one day, and they are tied to one place).

The plots of the plays are laconic, everything happens only between the characters, external events remain “behind the scenes” and are reflected only in the minds of the characters, in their stories and memories, they are important not in themselves, but as a psychological prerequisite for their feelings and behavior. The main features of Racine's poetics are simplicity of action and drama, built entirely on internal tension.

The number of words used by Racine in plays is small - about 4,000 (for comparison, Shakespeare used about 30,000 words).

Works by Jean Racine:

1660 - (French Amasie)
1660 - (French Les amours d'Ovide)
1660 - "Ode on the recovery of the king" (French Ode sur la convalescence du roi)
1660 - "Nymph of the Seine" (fr. La Nymphe de la Seine)
1685 - "Idyll of the world" (fr. Idylle sur la paix)
1693 - "A Brief History of Port-Royal" (French Abrégé de l'histoire de Port-Royal)
1694 - "Spiritual Songs" (fr. Cantiques spirituels).

Plays by Jean Racine:

1663 - "Glory to the Muses" (fr. La Renommée aux Muses)
1664 - "Thebaid, or Brothers-enemies" (French La thebaïde, ou les frères ennemis)
1665 - "Alexander the Great" (fr. Alexandre le grand)
1667 - "Andromache"
1668 - "Sutyagi" ("petitioners")
1669 - "Britanic"
1670 - "Berenice"
1672 - "Bayazet"
1673 - "Mithridates"
1674 - "Iphigenia"
1677 - "Phaedra"
1689 - "Esther"
1691 - "Gofoliya" ("Afalia").

Racine Jean (1639-1699)

French playwright, whose work represents the pinnacle of the French theater of the classicism period. Born in Ferte-Milon, the son of a local tax official. His mother died in 1641 while giving birth to her second child, the poet's sister Marie. My father remarried, but two years later he died very young, twenty-eight years old. The children were raised by their grandmother.

At the age of nine, Racine became a boarder at the school in Beauvais, which was associated with the Abbey of Port-Royal. In 1655 he was admitted as an apprentice to the abbey itself. The three years he spent there had a decisive influence on his literary development. He studied with the classical philologists of that era and under their guidance became an excellent Hellenist. The impressionable young man was also directly affected by the powerful and gloomy Jansenist movement. The conflict between Jansenism and a lifelong love of classical literature turned out to be a source of inspiration for Racine and determined the tone of his creations.

Having completed his education at the Parisian College of Harcourt, in 1660 he settled with his cousin N. Vitar, manager of the estate of the Duke de Luyne. Around this time, Racine made contacts in the literary environment, he met La Fontaine. In the same year, the poem "The Nymph of the Seine" was written, for which Racine received a pension from the king, as well as his first two plays, which were never staged and have not survived.

Not experiencing a vocation for a church career, Racine nevertheless moved in 1661 to his uncle, a priest in the southern town of Yuze, in the hope of receiving a benefice from the church that would allow him to devote himself entirely to literary work. Negotiations on this score were unsuccessful, and Racine returned to Paris. The circle of his literary acquaintances expanded, the doors of court salons opened before him. It is believed that the first two surviving plays - "Thebaid" and "Alexander the Great" - he wrote on the advice of Moliere, who staged them in 1664 and 1665.

By nature, Racine was an arrogant, irritable and treacherous person, he was devoured by ambition. All this explains both the violent hostility of his contemporaries and the violent clashes that accompanied Racine throughout his entire creative life.
During the two years that followed the production of Alexander the Great, Racine strengthened ties with the court, opening the way to personal friendship with King Louis XIV, and gained the patronage of the royal mistress Madame de Montespan. Subsequently, he will bring her out in the form of "arrogant Vasti" in the play "Esther", written after Madame de Maintenon took possession of the king's heart. He also encouraged his mistress, the celebrated actress Thérèse Duparc, to leave Molière's troupe and go to the Hôtel de Burgundy, where she played the title role in Andromache, one of his greatest tragedies.

The originality of the play lies in Racine's amazing ability to see the ferocious passions tearing apart the soul of a person, raging under the cover of an assimilated culture. In Andromache, Racine first used the plot scheme that would become common in his later plays: A pursues B, and he loves C. A variant of this model is given in Britannica, where the criminal and innocent couples confront: Agrippina and Nero - Junia and Britannicus . Racine's only comedy, Sutyagi, was staged in 1668. The tragedy Britannica was moderately successful. The next year's production of Berenice was a triumphant success.

Having married the pious and thrifty Catherine de Romanes, who bore him seven children, Racine took the position of royal historiographer along with N. Boileau. His only plays during this period were "Esther" and "Atalia" (Russian translation under the title "Athalia"), written at the request of Madame de Maintenon and performed in 1689 and 1691. students of the school she founded in Saint-Cyr. Racine died on April 21, 1699.

O.Smolitskaya.
Jean Racine

Jean Racine was born in 1639. He came from an humble family: his ancestors received the nobility, and not hereditary, but personal, only in the 16th century. Jean Racine was left an orphan early and passed into the care of his grandmother. Thanks to his grandmother, the teachings of the Jansenists, followers of Cornelius Jansenius, entered his life.

The Jansenists were a distinct branch within the Catholic Church; they were sometimes called a sect, which is not entirely true. The center of the Jansenist teachings was the convent of Port-Royal, located near Paris. In 1638, on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu, the Abbé Saint-Cyran, head of the port-royal Jansenists, was arrested on charges of rebellion. The persecution of the Jansenists began, although formally their teaching was not prohibited. The Jansenists tried to bring Catholicism and Calvinism closer together, their teaching was imbued with a harsh idea of ​​the weakness and sinfulness of a person who is called upon to fight with himself all his life. The Jansenists also defended the idea that a person's fate is predetermined before his birth.

In 1649, Jean Racine entered the college in the town of Beauvais, which was led by the Jansenists, and in 1655 he arrived in Port-Royal and entered the so-called “small school” at the monastery.

Biographers of Racine argue about the role played by Jansenism in his work. Some of them tend to see in the works of Racine a consistent presentation of the concepts of the Jansenists, others speak of the inconsistency of Racine's idea of ​​man and his fate. Be that as it may, the influence of the Jansenist doctrine on Racine can hardly be overestimated - it also manifests itself where the young Racine rebels against the Jansenist rules learned from adolescence and writes quarrelsome treatises and pamphlets against his mentors, not wanting, in particular, to accept their harsh condemnation of the theater as a depraved occupation that distracts a person from thinking about God; and where he creates images of heroes fighting with their passions; and where, aged and wise in life, he writes instructions to his son on how he should behave, and most importantly, stay away from the theater.

This short list already indicates how contradictory and difficult the life and personality of Jean Racine was. Biographers have repeatedly said that two people seemed to coexist in him: a great connoisseur of the theater and a hater of "thoughtless" entertainment; a bold thinker and artist and a courtier devoted to the monarch; a man in whose life passions burned - and a severe moralist. Jean Racine plunged into Parisian life in 1658, when he entered the Parisian college Harcourt.

The life he began to lead was very different from the life in Port-Royal. He enjoys all the possible joys of life in the capital. His mentors and Jansenist relatives write angry letters to him, but Racine pays no attention to them. His career at court also begins: the ode “Nymph of the Seine”, written on the occasion of the marriage of Louis XIV, was rewarded with a hundred louis from the royal treasury. The issue of money and livelihood is not the last for Racine. In 1661, he leaves for the south of France in Languedoc, where there is an opportunity to receive benefices, that is, to become abbot and receive part of the income of a small monastery (such a abbot could be a person who did not take a monastic vow). While Racine is waiting to see if he will receive benefices, he is studying theology, trying to humble his temperamental nature and inspire himself that life in the bosom of nature, far from the capital, also has its own charm. But the benefices fail and Racine returns to Paris in 1663.

He plunges headlong into literary and theatrical life. Molière and Boileau become his friends - in the future, the author of the famous treatise “Poetic Art” (1674) In 1664, Racine wrote his first tragedy, “The Thebaid or Brothers - Enemies”. He gives this tragedy for staging in the troupe of Molière. The tragedy failed. There was a cooling in the friendship of the two playwrights. The final break occurred in 1665, when Racine wrote the tragedy Alexander the Great. He was about to give her back to Molière's troupe, but changed his mind and gave her to Molière's rivals - the theater of the Burgundy Hotel ...

After "Alexander" Racine was noticed and talked about. The critic Saint-Evremont devoted an article to an analysis of the tragedy. In it, he expressed many impartial judgments, but noted, in particular, that now he is not afraid that with the death of the great Corneille, the French tragedy will die. Thus was determined the place of Racine as the successor, but at the same time the rival of Corneille. Even before the production of Alexander, Racine read his tragedy to Corneille. Corneille - a recognized meter of French tragedy - favorably reacted to the poetic gift of the young writer, but noted that he did not have any dramatic data. Corneille advised Racine to turn to some other literary genre. Genuine success and fame came to Racine after the tragedy "Andromache" (1668). They argued about it, criticized it. The young playwright expressed here his own, special understanding of what tragedy is.

"Andromache" is written on a plot from Greek mythology. We are talking about the events that followed the fall of Troy. Andromache, the widow of the Trojan hero Hector, finds herself, together with her young son, a prisoner of King Pyrrhus. Pyrrha is overcome by an irrepressible passion for Andromache, but she is faithful to the memory of her husband. Pyrrhus has a bride, Hermione, who notices that the groom has grown cold towards her. In desperation, she turns to Orestes, who is in love with her, and asks to kill Pyrrhus for the sake of love for her. Orestes kills Pyrrhus, but Hermione commits suicide from grief. Orestes goes crazy. The plot is built around a chain of people who have been captured by a genuine and indestructible passion. She subordinates each of them to herself, deprives them of the opportunity to resist. At the same time, there is not a single happy couple here. All are unhappy.

Classicist tragedy before Racine often turned to the depiction of unhappy love. The famous conflict of duty and feeling, as a rule, was realized as follows: two people love each other, but higher circumstances do not allow them to unite. This is how, for example, the fate of Jimena and Rodrigo, the heroes of Kornel's "Sid", developed. Looking at such ups and downs in the lives of the heroes, the viewer admires both the nobility of their feelings and the selflessness with which they sacrifice their feelings to the duty to the state.

Racine declared in "Andromache" about the possibility of a different construction of the plot .. His characters also struggle with feeling. But this struggle takes place in the soul of each of the heroes. The hero fights with himself, and not with external circumstances. By constructing the tragedy in this way, Racine was able to show the viewer a feeling from the inside, to analyze its influence on the behavior of the hero. And the characters themselves are built in a different way. La Bruyère, the great moralist of the 18th century, remarked: “If Corneille shows people as they should be, then Racine shows them as they should be. as they are." In Andromache, perhaps, there is only the image of the majestic Andromache, who retained her dignity in captivity and defeat, just as she remains faithful to her husband - only this image is close to the heroes of Corneille and Dorasinov's tragedy. But Pyrrhus, Hermione. Orestes - suffering, trying to curb their passion - and suffering defeat in this struggle - cause not admiration, but compassion.

Racine was reproached for the fact that his Pyrrhus was too rude. "What. he hasn't read our novels,” Racine replied. Contrary to the pattern established in the poetry of the troubadours, love does not ennoble Pyrrhus, but only reveals, makes more vivid and sharp, those features of his character that were in his nature before. Hermione - a noble girl of the royal family, noticing her fiancé's passion for another, loses her nobility. Racine puts into her mouth an observation that is magnificent in psychological accuracy: she speaks with Pyrrhus and notices that he, as it were, is not here. as he thinks of that one. whom he loves. And then a painful scream escapes from her chest. She says:

Well, why are you silent? Not a word back to me? Traitor! You are only delirious with your Troyanka, You talk to her with your heart and mark all the minutes, That they go to talk with me in vain. Go! I don't hold... / per. I. Shafarenko and V. Shor /

“Jean Racine was the first in France to dare to look into the face of love passion, the first to tear off that mask. in which love was presented at the theater before him,” writes the French writer François Mauriac about Racine in a biographical essay.

Indeed, starting with Andromache, the main problem that worries Racine is the following: how does passion change a person? What dark depths does she reveal in her soul? Can a person fight it?

It is no coincidence that Racine's skill is most fully manifested in the images of women - they, it seems to him, are more defenseless in the face of passion. Such are Berenice, the heroine of the tragedy of the same name (1670). Iphigenia, the heroine of the tragedy “Iphigenia in Aulis” (1674) Racine also writes a “political” tragedy with a more traditional conflict of “duty and feelings” - “Britanic” (1669), but even there a strong one is depicted. proud Agripina, consumed by one passion - to clear the road to the throne for her son - the future emperor Nero.

Racine's fame is growing. He has many ill-wishers, and among them Corneille and Moliere. In the preface to the Britannicus, Racine defends himself against the attacks of "some old malevolent poet." and clear to all readers. that we are talking about Cornell. Racine, not without success, is trying to prove himself in the field where Molière won fame - he writes the comedy "Strife" (1668).

The fame of Racine as an unsurpassed master of verse is growing. (The beauty of his lines is difficult to convey in any other language other than French, so precisely the place of each word is found in them. In any case, there is no Russian translator of Racine capable of conveying the power of his verse, and those who cannot read Racine in original, you have to take the word of those who read Racine in French). In 1673 Racine became a member of the French Academy. Successful and his court career. In 1674 he received the post of state treasurer at Moulin. and together with this position - hereditary nobility. which until now his family did not have. In 1677, Racine wrote a tragedy that became the peak of his skill. After her, he suddenly abruptly breaks with the theater. This is Phaedra

Studies of the secret power of passion, Jansenist ideas about the sinfulness and weakness of man, as well as about the original predestination of his fate, were superimposed in the plot of Phaedra on the ancient Greek myth, rooted in archaic antiquity. This is a story about a curse imposed on the family by two powerful goddesses - Aphrodite and Artemis. Phaedra's mother Pasiphae angered Aphrodite, and as punishment she was doomed to love a bull. But the same curse weighed on Phaedra, who fell in love with her stepson - the son of her husband Theseus Hippolytus.

Hippolytus was born from the union of Theseus and the queen of the Amazons, who broke the vow given to Artemis and fell in love with a man - Theseus. The curse of Artemis began to weigh on both Theseus and Hippolytus. Phaedra, falling in love with Hippolytus. revealed her love to him. Hippolyte refused her. Then Phaedra told Theseus that her stepson molested her, and the angry Theseus called the wrath of the god Poseidon on Hippolytus's head. A monster came out of the sea, the sight of which frightened the horses harnessed to Hippolytus' chariot. The horses carried, and the young man crashed. Phaedra went mad, committed suicide, but before she died, she told Theseus the truth.

This is the plot of Phaedra. The tragedy “Hippolytus” by the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides and the tragedy “Phaedra” by the Roman tragedian and philosopher Seneca were written on this plot. These works were well known to Racine's contemporaries. The viewers of the tragedy of Racine, therefore, did not so much wait with bated breath for “how everything would end” - this was already known, but they followed the development of feelings that possessed Phaedra, Hippolytus, Theseus. It is the twists and turns, the ups and downs of passion that form the basis of this tragedy.

Its action is concluded, according to the rule, in 24 hours. But this restriction does not become a narrow framework for Racine. On the contrary, in a short period of time, more and more new feelings that take possession of the characters seem especially stormy. At the beginning of the play, Phaedra is a love-tormented woman who hides a forbidden passion under a feigned hatred for her stepson. But then rumors about the death of Theseus reach her. She begins to see a glimmer of hope in her love. reveals himself to the maid, talks to Hippolyte, almost revealing himself to him. The scene of conversation with Hippolyte is still considered one of the best in the French theater. Phaedra tells Hippolytus about how beautiful Theseus was in his youth. She describes him with such love, with such tenderness, and suddenly adds that Ippolit is like him in everything. However, all the same, Racine's direct declaration of love, in changing ancient sources, puts not into the mouth of Phaedra, but into the mouth of Oenone, her maid. And this has a special meaning.

On the one hand, a maid, a confidante, a herald and similar characters are an indispensable attribute of the plot of a classic tragedy. They are necessary to convey to the viewer what is happening behind the scenes or what happened before the start of the tragedy. A similar character in Phaedra is Teramen, the mentor and friend of Hippolytus. But in “Phaedra” Oenon turns out to be necessary in order to shade the character of the main character. Phaedra did not lose heart enough to confess her love to her stepson herself. and then - to slander him in front of her husband. This makes Oenon, who, according to the laws of the classic work, is allowed lower deeds than her mistress. But Phaedra does not have the strength to resist or object to what Enona is doing. She retains her dignity, but she is exhausted in the struggle with herself. In Phaedra's conversation with Oenone, it is Oenone who names the one whom Phaedra is in love with - “you named the name!” Phaedra exclaims. And again here is the main character's avoidance of a too obvious weakness, but also a psychologically accurate trait: the fear of pronouncing the name of a loved one, the very sound of which is filled with a special meaning for the lover.

So Oenone reveals to Hippolyte the secret of Phaedra. And then something turns out that plunges the slightly revived Phaedra into an even greater abyss of despair: it turns out that Hippolytus loves another, the captive Arikia, the daughter of the king defeated by Theseus.

The monologue of Phaedra, who learned about Hippolyte's love for Arikia, is still an unsurpassed masterpiece of French dramaturgy and poetry. It is still read in the artistic studios of France, French actresses demonstrated and demonstrate their skills on it.

The love of Hippolyte and Arikia is a plot twist introduced by Racine. In Euripides and Seneca, Hippolytus was a virgin boy who took a vow of chastity to the goddess Artemis, in atonement for the insult that his mother had once inflicted on the goddess. Racine has Hippolyte and Arikia - a couple whose relationship develops according to traditional tragic laws: here there is a conflict of duty and feelings, because Hippolytus - the heir to the king - loves a girl whom he is not destined to marry.

This is noble and sublime love. But Racine does not just call her, but shows from the inside. There is a certain similarity between the way Phaedra speaks to Oenone and Hippolytus speaks to Teramenes. Hippolyte despises love in real life, wants to run away from his native city, but secretly loves Arikia and fights against this love. The news of Theseus' death, which opens the way for Hippolytus to the throne, and hence the right to decide the fate of Arikia, gives him some hope for a successful outcome of his love. And this hope, like that of Phaedra, is destined to collapse. Against the background of unhappy love, he is forced to listen first to the terrible confession of Enona, and then to no less terrible slander, to endure the wrath of his father. At the same time, if Phaedra is guilty of her love (to the extent that a person has the power to control his feelings), then Hippolytus is a victim of slander, a victim of a family curse, that is, doomed even before his birth. Theseus occupies a special place among the images of tragedy. Theseus is a king, a hero, that is, just such a character who should be at the center of the tragedy. He does not commit ignoble deeds, but becomes a victim of the low deeds of others. This is the outer canvas. But implicitly, another line runs through the image of Theseus: he is a former hero. His wonderful exploits. battle with the Minotaur. the exit of their Labyrinth is in the past. Now he is tired and weak and, therefore, in the grip of a low passion. This passion is uncontrollable anger.

But the fury of Theseus, and the death of Hippolytus that followed him, are all predetermined by the same ancestral curse. For Racine, this curse is in the very essence of a person who is able to feel, but also defenseless against the power of his own feelings. In "Phaedra" Racine revealed the hidden possibilities of classic tragedy, where the plot is based. as a rule, the struggle of feelings and reason is the brighter. and more expressive, the stronger the feelings that have to be fought. But in Phaedra, the classic principle reaches its logical conclusion: Racine does not present the viewer with a role model, and at the same time, he makes the characters feel compassion. Here tragedy and art lose their educational, preaching mission, which is so important for classic art as a whole. After Phaedra, Racine retires from dramaturgy. But first, he experiences a severe shock: the failure of "Phaedra" at the first performance. They say that the failure is rigged, that Racine's ill-wisher, the Duchess of Bouillon, bought the first two rows in the theater, on which, on her orders, "shushing" spectators sat down - then. what would later be called the “theatrical” clack.

Racine begins the life of an exemplary family man, marries Caterina de Romano, a girl from a noble family and well-behaved disposition: she never watched a single play of her husband and believed until the end of her life that the theater, and everything connected with it, was a nest of debauchery.

Racine makes a brilliant court career. From 1677 he was the court historian, and from 1694 he was the king's personal secretary. It is said that the king cannot sleep until it is Racine who reads a few poems to him at night. Simultaneously with official historiography, Racine secretly writes a Brief History of Port-Royal.

In 1689, Racine briefly returns to the dramatic field. He writes the play "Esther" to be staged by the pupils of the girls' school for noble maidens in Saint-Cyr yr. This is a play based on an Old Testament plot and is constructed in a completely different way than Racine's previous tragedies: it has three rather than five acts, the unity of the place is broken, and it ends happily. In 1691, Racine writes a tragedy, where for the last time his genius flashes powerfully and unusually - “Athalia.”, also on a plot from the Old Testament. In 1694, Racine wrote a cycle of "spiritual hymns" - 4 hymns - a paraphrase of biblical texts.

In letters addressed to his son Louis in the last years of his life, Racine blames the theater for the fact that with images of passions he pushes people to debauchery. Once upon a time, the young Racine was told the same thing by his mentors and relatives. Racine's biographers have repeatedly tried to somehow explain the views of the late Racine: fatigue from life, old age, or anything else. However, something else is also obvious: after Racine, French classic tragedy did not know masterpieces of such power. In addition, a new genre was already emerging. who was destined to define French literature in the next century and to glorify French culture in the world, as French dramaturgy glorified it in the 17th century. This is the genre of the novel, where the depiction of the "life of the heart", the analysis of feelings, will become the guiding principle and will conquer more than one generation of European readers.

Racine died in 1699 and was buried in the cemetery at Port-Royal.

Bibliography

Jean Racine. Works in 2 volumes. M, 1984.

N. Zhirmunskaya. prev. to the book: Jean Racine. Tragedy. M. Science. 1982(?)

Francois Mauriac. Life of Jean Racine. per. from fr. V.A. Milchina. - M., .1988