Pierre Corneille

Corneille, Pierre 

Born June 6, 1606, in Rouen; died Oct. 1, 1684, in Paris. French dramatist. Member of the French Academy from 1647.

The son of a lawyer, Corneille began his literary career writing verse. The plays that followed, notably the comedy Méelite, or the Spurious Letters (performed 1629, published 1633), the tragicomedy Clitandre, or Liberated Innocence (performed 1630–31, published 1632), and the tragedy Médée (performed 1635, published 1639), represented efforts to develop a genre form. His tragicomedy Le Cid, performed and published in 1637, marked the beginning of French classical tragedy. The play’s central conflict, the struggle between duty and passion, reflected the great contradiction of the time—the individual’s relation to the national state that was evolving in the form of absolute monarchy. Although in Le Cid there was a strong spirit of liberty, the chief cause of the play’s condemnation by the French Academy, it also presented the state as the highest principle of life, a theme subsequently developed in the tragedies Horace (performed 1640, published 1641) and Cinna, or Augustus’Clemency (performed 1640–41, published 1643).

The plays written in the early 1640’s are imbued with the triumph of reason over emotion and of civic valor over individual passions and with the victory of heroic will. These characteristics are reflected in the classically austere and clearcut form of the plays, in which the dramatist’s organizing artistic will is constantly present. Corneille also sought to apply the principles of classical poetics to comedy in Le Menteur (performed 1643, published 1644).

Beginning with the tragedy Rodogune (performed 1644–45, published 1647), new motifs appeared, resulting from disillusionment with the absolutist state. These motifs defined the character of the plays of the late 1640’s, which were later called the trage-dies of Corneille’s “second style.” The plays dealt not with the destinies of nations but with dynastic struggles for the throne and palace intrigues and crimes. The monarch, a tyrant motivated by personal ambition, was the central figure. Without a rational social purpose, the will of his heroes became an irrational, perverted, criminal force. The moving force of these dramas was blind chance, and the principle of simplicity and clarity, inherent in classical poetics, gave way to deliberately intricate intrigue. Corneille attempted to depart from the canons of classicism and to create genre forms intermediate between tragedy and comedy, such as Don Sanche d’Aragon (performed 1649, published 1650). The play’s democratic tendency, echoing the social upheaval brought about by the revival of forces opposed to absolutism, was developed in the best of Corneille’s later tragedies, Nicomède (performed and published in 1651), which ended with a popular uprising.

After the failure of Pertharite (performed, 1651; published, 1653), Corneille retired from the theater, not to return to dramatic work until 1659. Corneille’s tragedies of the 1660’s, including Sertorius (performed and published in 1662) and Othon (performed 1664, published 1665), show the dramatist’s declining power. Corneille stood aside from the new problems of the age. The play Suréna (performed 1674, published 1675) was his farewell to the theater. In his last years he wrote almost nothing and died poor and forgotten.

Corneille achieved new fame in the period of the Enlightenment and the Great French Revolution. In Russia, Corneille’s tragedies were translated and performed as early as the 18th century. He was especially popular in the years of struggle against the despotism of Catherine II and at the time of the Decembrist movement. New translations of Corneille’s tragedies appeared in the late 19th century and in the Soviet period (by M. L. Lozinskii).

WORKS

Oeuvres, vols. 1–2. Paris, 1862–68.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannye tragedii. Moscow, 1956.
Teatr frantsuzskogo klassitsizma: P. KorneV, Zh. Rasin. Moscow, 1970.

REFERENCES

Batiushkov, F. D. Korneliev “Sid “St. Petersburg, 1895.
Balashov, N. I. P. KorneV. Moscow, 1956.
Sigal, N. A. P. KorneV, 1606–1684. Leningrad-Moscow, 1957.
Klemperer, V. P. Corneille. Munich, 1933.
Dort, B. P. Corneille dramaturge. [Paris, 1957.]
Descotes, M. Les Grands Roles du théâtre de Corneille.…. Paris, 1962. (With bibliography.)

V. IA. BAKHMUTSKII