It is an intellectual rather than a purely emotional conflict, and this was to be the case in all Corneille's plays. From the first we are conscious of missing the indubitable accents of the heart, the "nature" of Shakespeare or Racine. When Chimène finds herself first alone after her father's death, it is no outcry of filial anguish that we hear, but the subtle dialectic of a case of conscience,—
"Ma passion s'oppose à mon ressentiment;
Dedans mon ennemi je trouve mon amant;
Et je sens qu'en dépit de toute ma colère
Rodrigue dans mon cœur combat encore mon père:
Il l'attaque, il le presse, Il cède, il se defend
Tantôt fort, tantôt faible, et tantôt triomphant;
Mais en ce dûr combat de colère et de flamme,
Il déchire mon cœur sans partager mon âme:
Et quoique mon amour ait sur moi de pouvoir,
Je ne consulte point pour suivre mon devoir.
Je cours sans balancer où mon honneur m'oblige.
Rodrigue m'est bien cher, son intérêt m'afflige;
Mon cœur prend son parti; mais malgré son effort
Je sais ce que je suis, et que mon père est mort."
The will at war with, but triumphant over, every opposition, was, now and henceforth, for Corneille the centre of dramatic interest, the subject of his greatest achievements, and the source of his farthest aberrations from nature and truth.[1]
- ↑ Corneille's idealisation of the will—which is also Descartes' in the Traité des Passions—has been traced by M. Lanson and other French critics to the influence on French character of the civil wars. This theory, however, hardly allows for the fact that the phenomenon is not confined to France. Corneille's and Descartes' "volonté" is the Italian virtù; and the hero with indomitable will had already appeared on the Elizabethan stage, and was to reappear in Milton's
