Translator's Introduction

translator’s introduction: taking up the gauntlet

Poor Racine! Martin Turnell begins his Jean Racine: Dramatist by quoting François Mauriac: “Of all our authors, Racine is one of the least accessible to the peoples of other countries” (Turnell, 3). Rob- ert Lowell’s preface to his translation of Phèdre opens with this dis- heartening pronouncement: “Racine’s plays are generally and cor- rectly thought to be untranslatable” (Lowell, 7). Patrick J. Smith, in a New York Times article of January 3, 1999, occasioned by the imminent importation of the Almeida Theater Company’s produc- tions of Phaedra and Britannicus, accurately reports that “it has long been an axiom of Racinian criticism that his works are untenable in translation.” So pervasive is this view, and so often is it resorted to by translators as a preemptive apology, as it were, for the inevitable inadequacy of their versions, that they seem to be offering up not so much the tragedies of Racine as the tragedy of Racine. Strange, if not shocking, to say, I have not found Racine to be untranslatable. Perhaps this is because I have made use of a ready- to-hand verse form that, for reasons explained below, is ideally designed to translate Racine’s poetic and dramatic style into Eng- lish, namely, the “heroic couplet” (or “English couplet,” as I prefer to call it). My decision to translate Racine into rhymed, end-stopped iambic pentameter couplets was prompted by several consider- ations. Let me introduce the first by quoting from C. H. Sisson’s xxii s translator’s introduction introduction to his Racine translations. He begins, of course, with the usual despondent disclaimer:

Nothing can adequately represent in English the movement of the French alexandrine, the rhymed couplets which are the classic French form, and the form used by Racine. To offer as an equivalent some crude version of English heroic couplets — in pentameters — as more than one modern translator has done, is frankly absurd. Even the classic couplets of the real performers in this field, of Dryden or of Pope, would not entirely fill the bill, though they would of course have been the best available form for those two poets, had either attempted a version. A poet-translator has always to start from the forms of his own time, as he has to start from his own language. (Sisson, xvi)

In my own case, I chose to use the English couplet as inevitably as Dryden and Pope would have, “had either attempted a version.” Based on my reading and my tastes, I find it as natural to write poetry in rhymed couplets as M. Jourdain found it to make use of prose when he opened his mouth to speak. The high Augustan poetic style, so decried by A. E. Housman and others (see Sec- tion IX below), is the one in which I have most deeply steeped myself. So I believe I can say I have followed Sisson’s prescription and have started from the forms of my own time. But the beautiful ease with which, in translating thousands of them, I found Racine’s alexandrines slip into their English counterparts I attribute not so much to my own poetic predilections as to a natural compatibil- ity between the two verse forms. I never had to strong-arm the alexandrines into English couplets; they always seemed to go will- ingly. They were more than compatible: they were companionable. For the most part, I had no trouble in maintaining a couplet-for- couplet correspondence with the original; indeed, it was easier to remain faithful to the French than to depart from it. A second consideration recommending the English couplet was its being a verse form that, like the French alexandrine, represents a high point in its language’s poetic development, “a medium,” translator’s introduction s xxiii according to Maynard Mack in his introduction to the Yale edition of Pope’s Iliad, “vitally expressive of the poetic sensibility of the age, and the one in which most of the age’s best original poetry had been or would be written” (Pope, VII, xliii). The English couplet is truly a verse form with a noble heritage, a verse form whose compressed power and flexibility have been exploited to produce some of the greatest works of English poetry. Certainly, Pope’s translation of the Iliad (generally held to be its finest) proves the English couplet capable of rendering into verse “the grandeur of the conception, the perfect structure, the irony, the sheer excitement of the action . . . [and] the extraordinary psychological penetration” of Homer’s epic, the very qualities Kenneth Muir finds in the plays of Racine (Muir, vii). Let me offer, apropos of the preeminence of the English couplet in the late seventeenth century, the following quotation, which appeared in the New York Times obituary (September 13, 2002) of Rolf Fjelde, the great translator of the plays of Ibsen: “In an essay, Mr. Fjelde quoted Ibsen on the art of translation: ‘I believe that a translator should employ the style which the original author would have used if he had written in the language of those who are to read him in translation.’ ” Granted, it is not easy to imagine Racine as an Englishman, and still less easy, perhaps, to think of Pope writing Racine’s plays, but had Racine been English, he might very well have found the English couplet, in such wide use at the time he wrote, most congenial to his dramatic disposition.

Before proceeding with my discussion of the aptness of the English couplet for translating Racine, I would like to address the arguments of those commentators who, contrariwise, are ever at pains to urge its inaptness. (Indeed, I have seldom encountered one who has not been at such pains.) Derek Attridge, in his stimulating article “Dryden’s Dilemma, or, Racine Refashioned: The Problem of the English Dramatic Couplet,” comes to the conclusion that “the failure of the English dramatic couplet” as a vehicle for drama is xxiv s translator’s introduction a case of “the extinction in the evolutionary struggle of a species unfitted for its environment” (Attridge, 76 –77). The conclusion I arrive at, based on the same historical survey Attridge adduces, is that its failure results more from the lack of any dramatists of Racine’s stature who could have overcome the limitations (to admit such arguendo) of the verse form and forged it into a viable vehicle for their dramatic genius, than from any insuperable liabilities inherent in the form itself. Attridge concedes that even Dryden, great poet that he was, was unable to compensate for the weakness of his dramatic gift by the strength of his verse. Although he tries to argue for the supremacy of blank verse as a vehicle for tragic drama by citing Dryden’s growing dissatisfaction with the rhymed couplet and his eventual “conversion” to blank verse, I would counter by asking whether Dryden’s blank verse dramas have proved any more resilient than his dramas written in English couplets. Indeed, aside from the plays of Shakespeare (surely to be considered sui gene- ris) and a select few by Marlowe and Webster, are there any Eng- lish dramas in blank verse that enjoy a significantly greater currency than Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe, his last rhymed tragedy? Yet Racine’s plays have held the stage in France since the seventeenth century. Attridge finds that Dryden, in Aureng-Zebe, “comes nowhere near achieving Racine’s dramatic power,” but, though he cites rhyme as contributing to that failure, there is no reason to believe that Dryden’s use of rhyme has any bearing on his also finding that “where Phèdre in the face of death involuntarily gives voice to her thoughts, Aureng-Zebe makes a touching speech” or that “in the play as a whole there are still too many pretty speeches, too many dilemmas, debates, resolves, and renunciations, to create anything like the rising wave of intensity that gives Phèdre its remark- able cohesion” (Attridge, 71–72). These strictures speak rather to Dryden’s shortcomings as a dramatist than to the shortcomings of the English couplet. Dryden may not have been able to write a great play in either heroic or blank verse, but may we not believe that an English Racine might well have done so? And, to pose a correlative question, had not France been blessed with the genius of Corneille and Racine, where would the classic French theater be? Languishing, one may be sure, in the same oblivion that has translator’s introduction s xxv swallowed up the contemporaneous English plays written in heroic couplets and blank verse. It is necessary, too, to point out here, in reference to Attridge’s assertion that the English couplet’s “unsuitability as a dramatic vehicle is a widely accepted fact” (Attridge, 56), that such an assertion is based on remarkably little empirical evidence: how often have contemporary audiences been given the opportunity to assess its suitability or unsuitability? Nor is there evidence of any greater probative value to support the view that the English couplet is an invalid mode for translating Racine’s plays. There are far too few occasions of its having been attempted for us to reach any confi- dent conclusions. At the present time, since one can neither point to an English dramatist, of a genius comparable to Racine’s, whose plays, written in rhymed couplets, have failed to hold the stage, nor adduce many — or, rather, any — examples of performances of foreign-language plays (by Racine or whomever), whose failure can be attributed to their having been given in a translation using English couplets, how can one pronounce with certainty on “their unsuitability as a dramatic vehicle”?

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Most prior translators of Racine have recoiled from rhyme, and all have avoided the more or less strictly end-stopped couplet (even though both are features of Racine’s poetry), believing that they create a different effect in English. Granted, a different effect, but a no less powerful one. Richard Wilbur writes, in the introduction to his (rhymed) translation of Andromaque: “There are good reasons for not trying to duplicate in our tongue the rhymed couplets of the French tragedy. For one thing, our audiences are better prepared to accept rhymed verse in comedy than in drama” (Wilbur, Androm- ache, xi). I do not presume to challenge that assertion, but it should be borne in mind that it is not tantamount to saying that audiences are not prepared to accept rhymed verse in drama. While there may be some rhymed translations of Racine that, by the extravagance of their style or the ineptness of their diction, might provoke a snicker xxvi s translator’s introduction or a chuckle every so often, there is nothing in the average Augus- tan rhymed couplet, even given the additional provocation of its being end-stopped, that would prompt an audience to so much as smile. I have never found Pope’s Iliad particularly mirth inducing, nor do I think it likely that my translations of Racine’s plays will invite any inappropriate hilarity. Let us also not forget that, if it be true that “our audiences are better prepared to accept rhymed verse in comedy than in drama,” this was not always the case. At the only time in the history of the English stage when plays written in rhymed couplets did enjoy a reasonable currency, namely, around the time Racine wrote — at no great remove from us in the matter of the development of the English tongue — rhymed verse was deemed inappropriate for comedy: the nobler, loftier tone it was judged to impart made it suitable, if not essential, for serious drama only (hence its designa- tion as “heroic”). Attridge’s sweeping assertion that “the artificiality [that the Eng- lish couplet] creates is, in fact, comic” (Attridge, 66) is itself difficult to take seriously. I do not recall its ever having been established that artificiality per se suggests the comic. Is the Spenserian stanza comic? Is the Shakespearian sonnet? Certainly, we need not adduce examples to prove that rhyme is not inherently comic. And if we do not construe rhyme as a signifier of the comic, why single out the English couplet to be thus stigmatized? Attridge himself admits, in discussing one of Phèdre’s speeches, that its “opposed connotations produce a bitter irony more commonly encountered in English couplets” (Attridge, 67). I think we may allow that bitter irony is something far removed from comic buoyancy. Attridge further admits that Aureng-Zebe contains “austere phrasing and unwitty antitheses” (Attridge, 71). Certainly, my intention has been, even in my most epigrammatic lines, to produce, not bons mots, but just such “austere phrasing and unwitty antitheses” as Attridge finds in Dryden. Racine’s plays may occasionally feature such sardonic sallies as Orestes’ riposte, “I scorn your charms? Ah! wouldn’t they like to be / Scorned by my rival as they’re scorned by me!” (Andro- mache II.ii.84 – 85) and Nero’s grim play on words, “I’ll clasp my rival, yes — until he’s crushed” (Britannicus IV.iii.10), but these are translator’s introduction s xxvii “witticisms” of a very caustic kind, born of jealousy and hate and meant to wound or intimidate, and there is no reason to believe they would create a comic effect in English, any more than they do in French. In discussing Titus and Berenice, Thomas Otway’s contemporaneous take on Racine’s Bérénice, Attridge makes this qualified concession: “Set-pieces . . . lend themselves to couplets, but the rapid exchange of dialogue is . . . another matter” (Attridge, 72). But surely Racine’s plays are composed mostly of such set pieces, the “rapid exchange of dialogue” accounting for far fewer lines of verse. And if, as I illustrate below, such rapid dialogue is particularly well rendered by the English couplet, then it would appear that the English couplet is ideally suited as a vehicle for translating Racine — indeed (to adopt a phrase from my Britannicus translation), “by all measure . . . the worthiest treasure chest for such a treasure” (Britannicus II.iii.54, 56).

Playing the devil’s advocate, Wilbur puts forward another argument against the use of rhyme, namely, “that rhyme is less emphatic in French than in the strongly stressed English tongue” (Wilbur, Andromache, xi). Rather than being embarrassed by the greater potency of rhyme in the English couplet, I have tried to exploit its rich possibilities, far richer in English than in French, for while it is much easier to rhyme in French, where so many words, though spelled differently, are pronounced the same (and whose rules gov- erning acceptable rhymes are less stringent than ours), in English, where even more words are spelled the same but pronounced differently, rhyming may be more challenging, but it yields results more rewarding, more memorable, in their potency, piquancy, and sheer variety. Furthermore, as Proust observes, “the tyranny of rhyme forces good poets into the discovery of their best lines,” and nothing in my experience prompts me to challenge that obser- vation. Nor have I shied away from alliteration (which is nothing more than “initial rhyme,” the duplication of sound occurring at xxviii s translator’s introduction the beginning, rather than at the end, of words). Of course, there being relatively little descriptive poetry in Racine’s plays, alliteration and assonance are not frequently called into play to mimic or suggest the thing described. There are certain occasions, however, where I have been able to use alliteration to intensify a dramatic moment. Here is an excerpt from Clytemnestra’s scorching tirade, the last of three great consecutive ones (the first two being Iphige- nia’s and Agamemnon’s) in Act IV of Iphigenia:

Shall this cruel priest, urged by a crueler crowd, Lay criminal hands on her and be allowed To rend her breast and, by his probing art, Consult the heav’ns in her still-heaving heart? (Iphigenia IV.136–39)

The conspicuous cr cluster, repeated four times in the first two lines, is amply suggestive of the remorseless rending that Clytem- nestra goes on to imagine in the third line, and the reiterated initial h’s on the last four stressed syllables in the last line evoke, almost too audibly, her dying daughter’s last convulsive gasps. One more example, Orestes’ cautionary words to Pyrrhus in Act I of Androm- ache, should suffice: “And mistrust lest the serpent in your breast / Should sting the host who’s given it its nest” (Andromache I.ii.26 – 27). Here, seven st clusters and assorted other sibilants and dentals evoke the hissing and the venomous bite of the serpent, while lend- ing Orestes’ words a minatory quality. Wilbur’s decision to employ rhymed couplets in his own Racine translations represents a clear endorsement of their viability, but few other commentators addressing the issue of Racine in translation fail to condemn the “persistent chime that rapidly tires the ear” (Attridge, 73) as a disqualifying liability of the use of English couplets. I contest that judgment on several grounds. First, I have never heard anyone complain, when reading Dryden and Pope on the printed page, that “the persistent chime rapidly tires the ear.” True, the fleshly ear hears nothing when one is reading, but the “mind’s ear” certainly does: rhyme “sounds” when we are reading it, as do the rhythm, harmony, and color of poetry — its music, in translator’s introduction s xxix short — or what would be their purpose? (And, as I insist in Sec- tion XIII below, Racine’s plays, whether in the original or in translation, deserve to be read as well as recited; moreover, they are read, and many more times than they are performed.) And if Attridge’s assertion is meant to apply only to a spoken text, then, again, is it a widely held notion that a spoken performance of one of Dryden’s or Pope’s longer poems would be some form of auricular torture? For my part, I can only say that in the course of my extensive reading and rereading (both to myself and aloud) of Dryden’s and Pope’s poetry, I never once tired of their enthralling couplets or surfeited from an overindulgence in their rhymes; Pope’s Iliad and Dryden’s Aeneid, I find, manage to avoid the intermittent tediousness that afflicts most other versions. Second, there is another aspect of the rhymed couplet that pre- vents a long succession of them from taking on a singsong quality, namely, the surprising flexibility of the rhythm of the iambic pentameter line. Although, as Wilbur notes, the stresses are more regular, more pronounced, generally speaking, in the English couplet than in the alexandrine, the subtle variances in stress, in pitch, and in phrasing — the shifting aggregations of syllables within the line — ensure that, if one were to examine a succession of, say, one hundred rhymed iambic pentameter lines, hardly two of them would display an identical “musical” profile. Third, I would argue that the very regularity of the succession of rhymed couplets quickly enables the ear to ignore “the persistent chime” and frees the mind to concentrate on the thoughts and emotions being con- veyed by the words, especially in the case of Racine’s plays, whose through line is so taut and strong. Samuel Solomon, translator of Racine’s Complete Plays, the only such intégrale undertaken in the past century, opted to compose his translations in a combination of rhymed and unrhymed couplets. Whether one considers such an approach arbitrary and absurd, or believes, as Attridge does, that in his version “rhyme is used for particular effects” (Attridge, 74), I think that such an inconsistent use of rhyme is more likely to call attention to itself than a strict adherence to rhyme. In support of such a strict adherence, Wilbur comes down in the end on the side of the angels: discussing the characters’ speaking “within the artifice of xxx s translator’s introduction rhyming verse,” he advises that “all this is so remote from our contemporary stage that ‘adaptation’ could not possibly bring it near. Our best hope, I think, is to see whether maximum fidelity, in text and in performance, might not adapt us to it” (Wilbur, Andromache, xiii). For my part, I have striven for just this “maximum fidelity” in my translations with that same hope in mind.

Such adaptation on our part may be facilitated by that strong dramatic through line I mentioned above. Roland Barthes, in “Racine Spoken,” the second part of his On Racine (trans. R. Howard), elaborates on this through line, observing that “tragic discourse proceeds in great, motionless blocks, stages,” and that “a tirade, for example, exists semantically by only three or four capital articula- tions” (Barthes, 147). Speaking of the delivery of one actor (Alain Cuny as Thésée) who did not try to “ ‘bring out’ the words, the inflections, the accents,” or “intervene in his own discourse except to manifest its major changes clearly,” Barthes found the result to be that “the Racinian discourse becomes at last fully intelligible, the obscurities of the language, the syntactical distortions imposed by the metric vanish under the massive proportions of the intentions” (Barthes, 147–48). The language of my translations being no more obscure, and their syntax being no more distorted, than Racine’s, I believe the Racinian discourse as rendered in my versions will like- wise prove fully intelligible on stage. Concentrating on the message, the audience will ignore the medium. What argues even more forcefully for the viability of the English couplet in the theater, what suggests that its very “artificiality,” if you will, may be no inhibitor, but rather a facilitator, of the dramatic through line is the concept of the English couplet’s exist- ing (as the alexandrine exists) as a precomposed “music,” which “notates” the drama and which need only be “played back” to ensure the undistorted transmission of its message. Barthes puts it this way: translator’s introduction s xxxi Classical art is musical; but responsibility for the music is assumed by a perfectly defined technique: the alexandrine. The classical alexandrine openly exploits all the music of the language [as I hope my English couplets exploit all the music of our language], and it is an indiscretion . . . to add to it a secret music proceeding from the actor and not from the “scientific”données of the verse. It is because the alexandrine is defined technically as a musical function that there is no need to speak it musically; it does not invite the actor to be musical, on the contrary it relieves him of the responsibility of being so. . . . The alexandrine is obviously a “distancing” technique, in other words a deliberate separation of the signifier and the thing signified. By what seems to me a real mis- conception, our actors continually try to reduce this distance, and to make the alexandrine into a natural language, either by making it prosaic or, conversely, by making it musical. But the truth of the alexandrine is neither to destroy nor to purify itself: it is in its distance. (Barthes, 144 –45)

The misguided attempt to make Racine sound “natural,” to col- loquialize his dialogue, as if his plays were contemporary melodra- mas, is to succumb to what Barthes dubbed “the myth of Racine,” which “seeks to domesticate Racine, to strip him of his tragic ele- ments, to identify him with ourselves, to locate ourselves with him in the noble salon of classic art, but en famille; it seeks to give the themes of the bourgeois theatre an eternal status, to transfer to the credit of the psychological theatre the greatness of the tragic theatre” (Barthes, 149). Insofar as it may serve as a “distancing technique,” the English couplet may be the very thing needed to restore to Racine “the greatness of the tragic theatre.” To stage Racine today, Barthes proposes, “one must do so seriously, one must go all the way,” one must “renounce looking for ourselves in this theatre: what we find of ourselves there is not the best part, either of Racine or of ourselves. As with the ancient theatre, Racine’s theatre concerns us much more, and much more valuably, by its strangeness than by its familiarity: its relation to us is its remoteness. If we xxxii s translator’s introduction want to keep Racine, we must keep him at a distance” (Barthes, 149). Perhaps the “strangeness” of the English couplet will serve to vindicate Barthes’ conception of Racinian drama, and perhaps his conception may serve to validate the use of the English couplet as a viable mode for that drama. But (to take the opposite tack), lest it be thought that the English couplet’s “strangeness” and its affinity for “distancing” are incom- patible with an ability to permit a more immediate response to the fervor of the encounters between Racine’s protagonists, I would mention that, reading Racine’s lines in my translations, I have no difficulty responding powerfully to the emotions they express, whether it be Hermione’s jealous desperation, Pyrrhus’s amorous frustration, Clytemnestra’s anguished concern for her daughter, Jocasta’s for her sons, or even Orestes’ final plunge into madness. I think an audience might very well find itself responding with no less immediacy.

Having tried to anticipate and refute the usual arguments that are raised against the use of the English couplet in drama, I will resume my analysis of what makes the English couplet eminently suitable for translating Racine. Discussing “other advantages” of the Eng- lish couplet, Mack mentions its “range”: “In the right hands . . . it could include . . . extreme vehemence, extreme tenderness, and all stages between. It was capable also of speed [italics mine]” (Pope, IX, lxiii). The “speed” of the English couplet contributes to its being an ideal vehicle to convey the full force of Racine’s tragedies, the essence of which, in Turnell’s words, “is their intense concentration of emotional states. For this [Racine] relies on simplicity of action, tightness of structure . . . and above all the speed [italics Turnell’s] with which the drama unfolds, the couples come and go, which explains why Racine . . . is always performed without an interval, as he should be” (Turnell, Jean Racine, 23). Racine’s range and speed are well exemplified by the scene Andromache( II.i) in which Hermione, as Wilbur observes in the introduction to his translator’s introduction s xxxiii translation, “can credibly pass in some thirty lines through six shifts of attitude toward Pyrrhus” (Wilbur, Andromache, xiv). The English couplet’s “range” that Mack mentions is also treated by Turnell in his discussion of the importance of Racine’s exploi- tation of “tone,” to mark whose changes Racine first establishes a “palace style” (a term Turnell acknowledges borrowing from Valbuena Prat): “It is simple, measured, dignified. . . . It provides a background which throws into relief the contrast between the formal meetings and those scenes in which disappointed lovers and angry rivals let their hair well and truly down. . . . It is not only what people say that counts; it is the tone in which it is said” (Tur- nell, Jean Racine, 9). The English couplet, by its concision, incisive- ness, and clarity, is a very effective transmitter of tone. Andromache provides examples of two extremes. In the first example, Orestes, the Greeks’ ambassador, has been granted an audience with Pyr- rhus, the king of Epirus; although they observe a polite, formal, even chivalrous decorum, their carefully calculated choice of words hints at their underlying hostility, and Pyrrhus’s reply is subtly sneering:

orestes Before the Greeks address you through my voice, Let me confess I’m flattered by their choice; And here before you I betray my joy To see Achilles’ son, the scourge of Troy. For, like his exploits, we admire your own: He vanquished Hector; Troy, through you, lies prone......

pyrrhus On my behalf Greece shows too much concern; Of weightier cares I thought I was to learn, And given an ambassador so grand, Supposed a grander project had been planned. Who’d think that such an enterprise would need Great Agamemnon’s son to intercede? (Andromache I.ii.1– 6, 32–37) xxxiv s translator’s introduction This slightly stiff “palace style” poses no challenge for the English couplet. In the second example, Hermione, in her only confrontation with Pyrrhus, “lets her hair well and truly down,” even sinking (in the French) to the familiar form of address (signaling her abject state), and her mordant remarks to Pyrrhus, exhibiting the sarcasm that Racine was so adept at conjuring, are also very well served by the epigrammatic bite of the English couplet:

In this avowal, of artifice quite free, I’m pleased you judge yourself impartially; That, wishing to revoke our solemn ties, Your crime you make no effort to disguise. Why, after all, should conquerors be cowed By servile laws to honor what they’ve vowed? No, perfidy appeals to you; admit: You’ve come to see me just to boast of it. The Trojan’s lover, whom no vows constrain, Nor duty either, woos the Greek again? ...... You answer nothing? Faithless one! I see You count the moments that you lose with me! Your heart, which longs to see your Trojan bride, Can scarcely bear to linger at my side. You seek her with your eyes, speak with your heart. I won’t detain you, save yourself. Depart. (Andromache IV.v.35–44, 102–7)

But the English couplet can also capture the tenderly musing, almost halting tones of Agamemnon as he thinks about his doomed daughter:

My child . . . It’s not that sacred name alone, Nor yet her youth, nor my blood, I bemoan; No, it’s her virtue, and the love we share, Her sweet devotion and my tender care, Respect for me that nothing can abate, And which I’d hoped to better compensate. (Iphigenia I.i.116 –21) translator’s introduction s xxxv Later, in Eriphyle’s cunning, disingenuous reply to Iphigenia’s accu- sations of betrayal, the English couplet closely tracks the shifting tones of her haughtiness, condescension, flattery, and false modesty:

These unjust names are jarring to my ear; They’re not, madame, what I’ve been taught to hear. Even the Gods, for long my enemies, Have kindly spared my ears such calumnies. But, though unjust, we pardon those in love. And what was it I should have warned you of ? How could you think Achilles would prefer To Agamemnon’s child a commoner, Who knows no more than this of her sad fate: Hers is a race he burns to extirpate? (Iphigenia II.v.45–54)

And in the blistering confrontation between Nero and the title character in Act III of Britannicus, featuring one of the most potent deployments of stichomythia in all of Racine, the stinging quality of their exchanges, dripping with sarcasm and as sharp as any poison-tipped épée, is perfectly captured by the thrust and parry of the rhymed couplets:

nero Thus destiny has crossed our paths today: Once I had to obey, now you obey. If you’ve not learned to act, sir, as you ought, You’re young yet: we can take care that you’re taught.

britannicus Who’ll teach me, then?

nero Rome — nay, the Empire, too.

britannicus And ’mongst your rights has Rome accorded you Those of injustice, cruelty, and force, xxxvi s translator’s introduction Imprisonment, abduction, and divorce?

nero Rome shows me her respect: she never pries Into the secrets I hide from her eyes. Imitate her respect, if you are wise.

britannicus One knows just what Rome thinks, at any rate.

nero She holds her tongue. Her silence imitate.

britannicus Nero begins to lose control, I see.

nero Nero begins to suffer from ennui.

britannicus All men shall bless his happy reign, that’s clear.

nero Happy or sad, let it suffice they fear.

britannicus I’ve misjudged Junia if such views should raise A smile of pleasure or a word of praise.

nero At least, if I can’t please the heart I prize, A reckless rival I can still chastise. (Britannicus III.viii.17–37)

None of the unrhymed versions of Britannicus that I have read manages to capture the excitement of this verbal swordplay. I am reminded of a line from Sheridan’s The School for Scandal: “The malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.” Here, it translator’s introduction s xxxvii seems to be the rhyme at the end of the line that makes the sword prick; removing the rhyme is like bating the tip of the sword. On the other hand, one recent (loosely) rhymed version, composed in “alexandrines” of indeterminable length, is too flaccid, too dull, too unwieldy, to inflict an injury, while Solomon’s spasmodically rhymed version features couplets such as the following: “I know ill Junia if you think such views / Will win her smiles and make her Nero choose” (Solomon, I, 342) — an example that goes to prove that rhyme, in and of itself, is no guarantor of acuity. In general, though, the English couplet permits — indeed, encourages — the cultivation of the varied tones, lofty or sarcastic, tender or passion- ate, that are required to do justice to Racine’s volatile characters. In addition to its speed and range, the English couplet boasts compactness. In the course of translating and compressing thousands of Racine’s hexameters into pentameters, I never ceased to marvel at what a world of thought and emotion one can pack into “the beautiful and blest” (to borrow a phrase from Henry James) iambic pentameter couplet, never ceased to be grateful for its strength, suppleness, and resilience: however heavily one imposes on it, whatever weight of words one asks it to bear, whatever irregularities of shape and stress one requires it to accommodate, it springs back, as taut and tight and trim as ever. When it is func- tioning at optimal efficiency, one is sometimes tempted to tally up the syllables, so hard is it to believe that so much has been squeezed into two little five-footed lines. When the English couplet is put to the service of translating Racine’s plays, its compactness contributes to that concentration of the drama Turnell speaks of, in the same way that, in Racine’s plays themselves, “the form does not have the effect of damping down the emotional content: it merely concen- trates it,” as Muir observes (Muir, xxviii). Lytton Strachey speaks of Racine’s style as being “compact as dynamite” (Strachey, 16). The English couplet can be just as explosive.

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Another virtue of the English couplet, I found, was that it allowed me to reproduce certain salient characteristics of the original, such as its xxxviii s translator’s introduction classic poise, its epigrammatic quality, and its sheer “punch,” which are lost in unrhymed or non-end-stopped versions. Furthermore, the English couplet restores to Racine’s plays an element that almost all previous translations have robbed them of, namely, the formal rigor — so characteristic of the English couplet — that is essential to the Racinian ethos. Wilbur, elaborating on this point, validates my own view: “There are good and compelling reasons for taking the risk of rhyming. . . . But the best justification I have found lies in a remark of Martin Turnell’s. The originality of Racine’s drama, he says, consists ‘in the contrast between extreme violence and the tightness of the form, between the primitive passions simmering just below the surface of civilized society and the versification which reflects the outer shape of that society.’ The form is part of the meaning, then” (Wilbur, Andromache, xi–xii). Turnell also observes about the alexandrine — and these observations, too, are equally applicable to the English couplet — that its formalism “is a positive advantage. In the first place it possesses what must be described as a moral value. It creates in a subtle way a standard by which the actions of the characters are seen in perspective and judged” (Turnell, Jean Racine, 336). This characteristically Racinian tension between the constraining form and the tumultuous content (which in turn reflects the struggle between a restrictive society and the rebellious individual, between judgmental morality and libidinous will, between the rational and the irrational, the logical and the psychological, and so forth) is impos- sible to re-create when there is no constraining form to “fight back.” Racine’s characters need to be kept confined within their couplets, as they are in the French, like so many caged tigers, pacing back and forth, snarling and roaring — or heaving themselves against the bars.

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Wilbur, in the introduction to his translation of Phèdre, writes: “Where I have used slightly more enjambment than Racine, it is mostly because English meters are more emphatic and less flowing than the French; too long a sequence of end-stopped English lines, especially if rhymed, can sound like the stacking of planks translator’s introduction s xxxix in a lumberyard” (Wilbur, Phaedra, vi). While one cannot fail to savor his marvelous simile, my guiding principle has been that if one is translating into an English verse form, then one should try to remain as faithful to that form as possible; exploit its strengths, rather than try to hide its weaknesses; allow it to do what it can do so well, rather than try to bring it into closer conformity with an alien verse form. If “English meters are more emphatic and less flowing than the French,” then allow them to be so. And, after all, as Lowell says of Racine’s verse: “His syllabic alexandrines do not and cannot exist in English” (Lowell, 7). As to Wilbur’s metaphor, I think we may see it in a less devastating light: his image of stacking planks proves an apt one for the construction of Racine’s tirades, for the careful building up, couplet by couplet, of those towering edifices, that is to say, of their inexorable rhetorical force. Racine’s characters, typically placed in situations that produce emotional turmoil, are often pulled in opposing directions, often forced to balancer, to weigh their options. According to Barthes, “Division is the fundamental structure of the tragic universe. . . . Racinian man does not debate between Good and Evil: he debates, that is all; his problem is on the level of structure, not of character” (Barthes, 36). Racine’s protagonists are masters of ratioci- nation, adept at convincing themselves or others, as the case may be, of whatever seems expedient to them at the time. However intense their emotional state, they still find it necessary to rational- ize their actions. Their mode of speech is frequently forensic; they are continually trying to persuade their interlocutors. In Andromache, for example, after Hermione has spent an entire lengthy scene (IV. iii) convincing Orestes to assassinate Pyrrhus, she is able, in Act V, though moved to frenzied fury after learning that the assassination has been successfully carried out, to produce, with the utmost flu- ency, a barrage of arguments to prove to Orestes that he had no warrant to kill Pyrrhus. She comes down on him — no, not like a ton of bricks, but shall we say? — like a stack of planks:

hermione Who bid you arbitrate his destiny? Why kill him? For what crime? By whose decree? xl s translator’s introduction orestes Gods! did you not, madame, just now, right here, Order his death? Your words were all too clear.

hermione Why have believed a mad, insensate lover? My underlying thoughts couldn’t you discover? And didn’t you see that I was so unstrung, With every word my heart belied my tongue? Though I implored, who forced you to consent? Ten times you should have begged me to relent. You should have asked for one more audience Before you struck, or, better, have gone hence. Why not have left my vengeance to my care? What led you to pursue me everywhere? Now see your hateful love’s more hateful fruit: The ill luck that dogged you has me in pursuit! How fatal to us proved your embassy, Which goaded him to wed Andromache. He would have shared his favors ’twixt us two, And loved me — or at least pretended to. (Andromache V.iii.49– 68)

Even the stormiest tirades are built from blocks of argument, however explosive the underlying emotions that threaten to blow them up. Maynard Mack draws attention to “the [English] couplet’s natural bias for debate, assessment, organized eloquence, and per- suasion” (Pope, VII, xliii). The rhymed couplet, moreover, has its own inner logic; it is a “valid argument”: the first line sets up the “premise” (the sound pattern to be echoed), the second presents the “conclusion,” inexorably dictated by the first. This conjunction of rhyme and reason in the English couplet confirms its aptness as a vehicle for Racinian discourse, and for several reasons. First, it adds to the impression, mentioned above, of the logical discourse being inexorably built up, layer by layer, to form the larger blocks of Racine’s monumental tirades, producing a “structural momen- tum” (the product of mass and velocity), at once accretion and translator’s introduction s xli articulation, that intensifies the irresistible power and propulsive drive of those tirades, while enhancing their self-conscious theatri- cality. Second, it heightens the tension between the rational and the irrational in Racine’s plays. In this regard, what makes Racine’s plays so unsettling is suggested by Narcissus’s line in Britannicus: “Sel- dom, my lord, does reason rule a lover” (Britannicus II.ii.58). Most of the time, the forensic skills of Racine’s characters are put to use in effectuating their irrational desires, so that it is more often the lover (or the tyrant) who rules reason than the other way around. And last, while this supremely “reasonable,” balanced verse form reflects eighteenth-century England’s view of the world as benignly ordered, it can still — indeed, for that very reason — serve, as do Racine’s alexandrines, to mock a world in which, as Turnell puts it, “there are no grounds for an optimistic view of life on earth” (Turnell, Jean Racine, 355).

There is one further affinity I would like to call attention to(a rather peculiar one) between Racine’s verse and the verse that has served as a model and an inspiration for my own (I mean, of course, the poetry of Dryden and Pope); one might term it a “pejorative affinity.” It is what some critics have seen as the very absence of “true poetry” in both. Turnell cites several French critics’ devastating assessments of Racine the poet. He tells us that Henry de Mon- therlant, totting up the fragments of poetry to be found in Racine, “put the aggregate at twenty-seven lines for the twelve plays” (Tur- nell, Jean Racine, 3), and that Jean Dutourd weighed in with this pronouncement: “Those alexandrines of Racine’s are quite absurd: they are 99 per cent rhetoric and 1 per cent poetry” (Turnell, Jean Racine, 4). Derogating the Dryden-Pope school of poetry no less high-handedly, A. E. Housman, in his delightfully provocative The Name and Nature of Poetry, comments: “There is such a thing as sham poetry, a counterfeit deliberately manufactured and offered as a substitute. In English the great historical example is certain verse produced . . . in what for literary purposes is loosely called xlii s translator’s introduction the eighteenth century” (Housman, 175). Montherlant’s metaphor to describe the paucity of poetry in Racine was the lobster, from whose shell, “if you scrape and prod long enough and hard enough, you may get a few tasty morsels” (Turnell, Jean Racine, 3). Housman avails himself of an even less seemly image to make his point, namely, the garbage dump: “Thinly scattered on that huge dross-heap, the Caroline Parnassus, there were tiny gems of purer ray; and the most genuine of Dryden’s own poetry is to be found, never more than four lines at once, seldom more than two, in his early, unshapely, and wearisome poem the Annus Mirabilis” (Hous- man, 182). And poor Pope, he finds, “has less of the poetic gift than Dryden; in common with his contemporaries he drew from a poorer vocabulary” (Housman, 183). Putting aside the telling reference to the limited vocabulary, an attribute of Racine’s output widely remarked upon in discussions of his work, I believe (while not in any way endorsing the view that Racine and Pope were no poets) that such strictures speak to some fundamental attribute shared by the poetry Racine and the Augustan poets produced.

In attempting to do justice to Racine through my translations, I have been guided by two principles. First, translating all twelve of Racine’s plays carries with it a special responsibility to be faithful to the originals, to omit and to add as little as possible, since these volumes are likely to serve as reference works and to offer the only viable translations into English of the more obscure plays. With that in mind, I have strived to achieve a couplet-for-couplet correspondence with the original, allowing as few distortions, omissions, and divergences as possible, and have been particularly careful to avoid embellishing Racine’s lines with original, intrusive images or conceits. Occasionally, when Racine has ingeniously compressed an unusually large amount of information into a couplet, I have been constrained to resort to Pope’s expedient of the tercet (which one encounters regularly in his translations of Homer), to ensure that none of Racine’s “data” is lost. In addition to remaining as translator’s introduction s xliii faithful as possible to the textual content, I have tried to preserve and to clarify Racine’s characteristic balances and antinomies and, most important, to convey, in all its variety and subtlety, the wide- ranging emotional tone of his characters’ utterances. Second — and this is where I significantly differ, at least in intent, from many of my predecessors — I do not subscribe to the assumption that Attridge, for one, makes, that there must be something that “the translator is trying to imitate” (Attridge, 66). My goal has been, not to produce a translation that sounds like bad Racine, but to produce one that sounds like good English. Racine, for the English-speaking reader, can be assimilated only through the medium of the English language, and if a translation sounds like a translation, a ghoulish simulacrum that has no life of its own and, in its timid sense of being foredoomed to failure, lacks any valid- ity as a self-sufficient work of art, it sets up at the outset an insur- mountable obstacle to the reader’s understanding and appreciating what the original must have been like. One cannot extrapolate back from prosy, dull, stilted English to imagine what Racine’s thrilling French verse sounds like. Reading a translation that sounds thrilling in English, one should come away with an awareness of much, if not all, of what makes Racine great. What is needed, then, is a translation that is not merely a verbal translation, but a translation in another sense: an English analogue, a rematerialization in English. To accomplish this, I have brought to bear on Racine’s alexandrines all the resources of English prosody, allowing their English counterparts to perform according to their own nature and rules, rather than wrenching them into a superficial semblance of the French couplet. I have done so in order to ensure that these versions will be able to stand on their own as works of English literature.

Racine is one of the greatest writers of Western literature. He shares with Shakespeare the distinction of being considered, in his native country, both its greatest playwright and its greatest poet. Barthes calls him “the greatest French author” (Barthes, 9). In England xliv s translator’s introduction and the United States, apart from a clique of enlightened initi- ates and engagé academics, his oeuvre commands no such admi- ration; it hardly commands any attention. This is not surprising, given the ongoing reluctance of most translators to venture beyond the same four oft-translated plays (Phèdre, Andromaque, Britannicus, and Athalie — a mere third of Racine’s output) and the dismaying mediocrity of most of the available translations. Almost all of them seem to validate Turnell’s implied admonition to aspiring translators of Racine: “If you try to translate him, everything goes” (Turnell, The Classical Moment, vii). Indeed, they make it quite difficult for an English-speaking reader to discern wherein Racine’s genius lies, for one searches in vain for a vestige of it. Attridge relates that “in the preface to Oedipe . . . Voltaire illustrated how essential rhyme is by rewriting some lines from Phèdre without it” (Attridge, 63). The unrhymed translations I have looked at suggest that rhyme is just as essential for Racine in English: they impress me as being no less prosy and prosaic than those that make no pretense of being in anything but prose. I strongly doubt that someone reading them, with no knowledge of their originals, would find in them anything to suggest that those originals had been composed in verse. Lack- ing the structure of rhyme and almost devoid of metaphor, they end up drowning in that prose of which Racine “often skims the surface” (Muir, vi). Indeed, Muir himself (whose own translations are in bland blank verse) admits as much: “I am only too well aware that the beauty of Racine’s poetry . . . has largely evaporated in my translation” (Muir, vi). In short, I share the views of Alan Shaw, as expressed in “Phaedra in Tact,” a judicious appreciation of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Phèdre: “But we should now be able to rid ourselves once and for all of the notion that Racine’s couplets can be dispensed with in English, on the grounds that they are merely decorative or musical, that the job they do can be done better by blank verse, free verse, or any other kind” (Shaw, 231). For my taste, then, unrhymed translations are hors concours. Among the rhymed translations that have been produced, those by Richard Wilbur, who has brought his poetic brilliance to bear on Andromaque, Phèdre, and Les Plaideurs (Racine’s lone comedy), certainly stand out as the most estimable. They are characteristically translator’s introduction s xlv fluent and fine, and, being in rhymed couplets, they sharecer- tain features with my own work, although they do not aspire, in either form, diction, or tone, to the epigrammatic style of the high Augustan period, which I find so appropriate to Racine’s elevated style. Indeed, the distinction that Robert Lowell makes between his own use of the rhymed couplet and Dryden’s (“I gain in naturalness and lose in epigrammatic resonance” [Lowell, 8]) could as fairly be made between Wilbur’s use of the rhymed couplet and my own.

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In the conclusion of Jean Racine Revisited, Ronald W. Tobin makes this “incisive” comment: “In the cruel refinement of her language, which she uses like a scalpel, Racine’s Iphigénie becomes more ferocious than any of the murderers and criminals of Corneille. Yet the ritual of bloodshed that marks Racine’s tragedies is transmitted in finely calibrated and rhymed alexandrines” (Tobin, 163). In the other translations of Iphigénie I have examined there is no question of a scalpel: Iphigénie’s language could not cut butter. But “transmitted in finely calibrated and rhymed” English couplets, her cutting words maintain their razor-sharp edge, as in this slashing denunciation of the treacherous Eriphyle:

Yes, you love him, you ingrate! And that same fury you describe so well, Those arms so steeped in blood, that foe so fell, Those dead, that hate, that Lesbos, and that fire Are etched into your soul by sharp desire; And far from hating their cruel memory, You’re pleased, madame, to speak of them to me. Nay, more than once, beneath your feigned lament, I should have seen — did see — your true intent. But my kind heart would conquer me and I’d Replace the blindfold which I’d cast aside. You love him. What mad error prompted me To embrace my rival with such amity? xlvi s translator’s introduction I loved her! Fool! The promises I made! I offered her my faithless lover’s aid! (Iphigenia II.v.22–36)

And here is the poignant, surgically precise jab Iphigenia delivers to her father, even as she reassures him of her love and obedience:

Alas! what joy it gave me when I’d name The many countries you were going to tame; And thinking Troy’s defeat would soon ensue, I planned a splendid victory feast for you. I little thought that, ere the assault was led, My blood would be the first you’d have to shed. (Iphigenia IV.iv.32–37)

These two speeches are what I call impressive, that is to say, they make an impression, they leave an impression. Reading Racine, I come upon many such impressive passages, but in virtually no other English translation are they anywhere to be found. (The only exceptions — and they are major ones — are Richard Wilbur’s Andromache and Phaedra, Ted Hughes’s Phèdre, and Robert Lowell’s Phaedra, the last being, however, somewhat extravagant — in its Latin sense, “wandering too far afield” — for my taste.) But perhaps that should come as no surprise, for, in the case of the blank verse translations, it is difficult to make out how they differ, in any significant way, from mere paraphrases (or from each other, for that matter), except that, in attempting not to be mere paraphrases, they only succeed in becoming poorly written ones. (And after all, even Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, subjected to such routine paraphrase, would probably make little impression.) But if every blank verse translation suffers from a fatal — fatal to Racine, that is — unimpressiveness, the rhymed translations (apart from Wilbur’s and Lowell’s) have proved even less fortunate, for there is nothing unimpressive about their slovenly diction, their unintelli- gibility, and their rhymes so feeble as to be pointless or so forced as to distort both meaning and syntax (like the tail wagging the dog). translator’s introduction s xlvii I cannot claim that it was my intention, when I began to translate Racine into English couplets, to produce passages that would be “impressive”: it has just turned out that the mode I chose for translating Racine naturally conduces to their production. I would characterize what I have achieved in my translations as a “heightened” style, suitable to the heightened emotions of tragedy. One might liken the “heightening effect” produced by the English couplet to that produced by the cothurnus worn by the actors who trod the boards in ancient Greek tragedies: they both add to the “stature” of the characters. I believe that such heightening, far from interfering with the transmission of the drama, focuses it, projects it, makes us sit up and take notice; the ideas and emotions are distilled, con- centrated, made more potent. (And surely, under any such understanding of this effect, it is reasonable to characterize Shakespeare’s language as heightened.) As I suggested above, in plays, as in poetry (and Racine’s dramas are both), it is often not what is being said, but how it is being said, that moves us, that excites us, that makes the work memorable for us. Everyone has felt the same things Racine’s characters feel, but Racine convinces us — and a translator, to be successful, must do the same — that it is only a Clytemnestra, only a Nero, only an Eriphyle, who could have spoken thus. The words a playwright (or translator) puts into the mouth of such monumental characters should be worthy of them. Racine’s characters should speak for us, not like us. I hope and believe that readers and audiences will often have occasion, when these great characters speak to them through my translations, to be “impressed,” whether it be by the redoubtable power of Agrippina’s tirades in Britannicus, the poignant despair of Atalide’s final monologue in Bajazet, the horrific cynicism of Creon’s avowals in The Fratricides, or the breathtaking terror and heartbreaking desolation evoked by Theramenes’ récit in Phaedra. In On Racine, Barthes writes: “Thus the Racinian discourse affords great masses of undifferentiated language, as if, through different speeches, a single person were expressing himself; in relation to such profound utterance, the extremely pure contour of the Racinian language functions as a veritable command; here language xlviii s translator’s introduction is aphoristic [italics mine], not realistic; it is expressly intended for quotation” (Barthes, 10). One need not subscribe to Barthes’ inter- pretation to believe that Racine wrote many quotable verses and to wonder where, in most translations, they are secreting themselves. By “quotable” verses I mean those that are not only potent and striking in context but also sustain interest apart from their dramatic function in situ: verses that, in short, partake of the poetic. Dare I say that, reading Racine in my own translations, I find (with all due credit to Racine!) no dearth of quotable verses? While the strongly aphoristic quality of the English couplet can almost suggest that the lines of verse are already wearing quotation marks or, at least, could slip into them very comfortably — and it is not, perhaps, a coincidence that the third-most-quotable author (according to Bartlett’s), after Shakespeare and the authors of the King James Version, is Alexander Pope — the inherent “quotability” of the English couplet is not at all inconsistent with its being a powerful vehicle for conveying the dramatic and emotional impact of Racine (quite the reverse, as I have suggested). I append the following selections, rife with “quotable” couplets, to demonstrate, better than any arguments of mine, however closely reasoned, can do, the dramatic potency of the English couplet (and also, perhaps, to tantalize readers of this first volume with a taste of what the succeeding volumes — those “high-pilèd books, in charactery, . . . like rich garners” — hold in store).

nero [recalling his first glimpse of Junia] Tristful, she raised to heav’n eyes moist with tears, Which glimmered ’gainst the torches and the spears. Lovely, her scant attire served to disclose A beauty barely roused from its repose. Who can say if it was that negligence, Her captors’ fierceness or their insolence, The gloom, the glare, the silence, or the cries, That heightened the sweet shyness of her eyes? (Britannicus II.ii.15 –22)

burrhus [admonishing Nero] You still are master here and have free will. translator’s introduction s xlix Virtuous till now, you can be virtuous still. Your way is clear, nor can you be withstood; You need but guide your steps from good to good. But if you heed your flatterers’ advice, You’ll find your course career from vice to vice. Old cruelty new cruelty demands: In blood you’ll have to bathe your bloodied hands. (Britannicus IV.iii.35–42) agamemnon [ justifying himself to Iphigenia] Your hour has come: you must be reconciled. Think of your noble upbringing, my child. It’s hard for me to obey, but you must try. This blow will kill you, but it’s I who’ll die. (Iphigenia IV.iv.74 –77) clytemnestra [excoriating Agamemnon] Why need you feign, for us, a false distress? You think with tears you prove your tenderness? Where are these wars you’ve waged to save your daughter? Where are the streams of blood and where the slaughter? What havoc can convince me you held out? What corpse-strewn fields forbid me to speak out? ...... Is this the way a father ought to feel? At such vile treachery my senses reel! Shall this cruel priest, urged by a crueler crowd, Lay criminal hands on her and be allowed To rend her breast and, by his probing art, Consult the heav’ns in her still-heaving heart? And I, who led her here triumphantly — Shall I return alone, in agony, Passing through every blossom-scented street Where loving crowds flung flowers at her feet? (Iphigenia IV.iv.90 –95, 134 –43) orestes [confronting Hermione, whom he loves] I begged for death ’mongst many a savage race l s translator’s introduction Who shed men’s blood to win their grim gods’ grace: They closed their temples, thwarting my intent, And saved the blood that I’d have gladly spent...... You claim to hate this man? Madame, admit: The soul can’t quench the flames of love, once lit. These all betray us: silence, speech, and eyes; From ill-damped fires the fiercest flames arise. (Andromache II.ii.15 –18, 98 –101) athaliah [narrating her dream] But a new trouble’s come these last few days, Afflicting my calm mind with deep malaise. A dream (and by a dream am I distressed?) Gnaws at my heart, depriving me of rest; It’s followed me, no matter where I’ve fled. — Midnight had struck, profound, instilling dread; My mother Jezebel appeared to me, As on her death-day, in full finery. Her sorrows had not undermined her pride. The ravagements of age she still defied: With borrowed bloom she kept the years at bay, Repairing time’s irreparable decay. My worthy child, she said, I fear for you: The Jews’ cruel God seeks your destruction, too. I pity you, should you come within His reach. Then, having uttered such a frightful speech, Her shade bent towards me, where I lay in bed. I reached to embrace her, with my arms outspread, But all I found was, in a mangled pile, Black bones and putrid flesh, corrupt and vile, Limbs torn apart and scraps still dripping blood, Which ravenous dogs fought over in the mud. (Athaliah II.v.28–49) mathan [advising Athaliah to kill the young Joash] He stands condemned while he is to be feared. translator’s introduction s li If it should prove he comes of high descent, The swifter shall ensue his punishment; And if he prove to be of lowly birth, What matter if we shed blood of no worth? Must kings attend slow justice’s decrees? Their safety oft demands swift penalties. These scruples might work to our detriment. Once suspect, one’s no longer innocent. (Athaliah II.v.106 –14) mathan [commenting on Athaliah’s distracted state] My friend, she’s not herself these last two days: No longer that enlightened, fearless queen, So far above her sex’s timid mean, Who smote her foes so swiftly, to their cost, And knew the price of just one moment lost. By vain remorse that noble soul is stirred; She’s wavering, weak: a woman, in a word. (Athaliah III.iii.12–18) athaliah [defiant to the end] God of the Jews, You win! Yes, Joash lives! To fool myself is vain: The scars my dagger left are all too plain; I see, too, Athaziah’s form and face: They bear the marks of his detested race. David has triumphed, Ahab’s driven out. Pitiless God, ’twas You brought this about. ’Twas You who, flattering me with victory, Set me against myself repeatedly: Now roused to pity for this hapless child, Now by the lure of treasure too beguiled, Afraid to see the flames devour it. Then let him reign, your son, your favorite; And, to inaugurate his reign, ’twere best That he should plant a dagger in my breast. Hear now his mother’s last wish, as she dies. lii s translator’s introduction Her wish? No! — Athaliah prophesies That, weary of laws that make his soul repine, Faithful to Ahab’s blood, which flows from mine, Shunning his forbears’ influence in vain, David’s abhorrent scion will profane Your altar and defame God’s majesty, Avenging Ahab, Jezebel, and me. (Athaliah V.vi.24–46) roxane [weighing her options] Doubtless the Sultan, fearful for his reign, Means to condemn his brother once again. Without me, though, they cannot apprehend him; My word is law here. But should I defend him? Which is my master? Amurat? Bajazet? One I’ve betrayed; the other, I fear, may. Time presses; I must clarify all doubt, And act before this precious time runs out. In vain they hide their love. Though well concealed, Love, by some sign, at last will be revealed. Bajazet’s actions I shall scrutinize, And Atalide I shall take by surprise; I’ll find their secret out, sooner or later, And crown the lover, or condemn the traitor. (Bajazet III.viii.16 –29) roxane [convinced at last of Bajazet’s treachery] Ah! with what insolence, what cruelty, Those two exploited my credulity! What joy I felt, believing all their lies! Wretch! you’ve gained no great victory in my eyes, Duping a heart that eagerly believed, A heart that dreaded to be undeceived. You hardly needed half your artifice, And in all fairness I must grant you this: I’m sure you often blushed to contemplate How small a lie deceived a love so great. (Bajazet IV.v.47–56) translator’s introduction s liii atalide [racked by guilt and despair] Cruel destiny, are you so unforgiving That I, condemned, alas! to go on living, Must bear, to crown my grief, the endless shame That for my lover’s death I am to blame? Yes, my dear prince, your death is due to me, Not Roxane’s rage or Amurat’s decree. ’Twas I alone who wove the fatal cord Whose odious coils choked off your life, my lord. Tormented by such thoughts, can I survive The knowledge that you’re no longer alive? I who, when told of your impending death, Was robbed of reason and bereft of breath! Ah! for what purpose did I love you so? Was it to bring about your overthrow? (Bajazet V.fin.sc.5–18)

phaedra [having confessed to Hippolytus her love for him] You well recall what I was led to do: Not only did I flee, I banishedyou . An odious mien I tried to cultivate; In order to resist, I sought your hate. My desperate efforts met with no success: You may have hated more, I loved no less. Your sorrows made you seem more charming still. I wept, I burned, I languished, I grew ill...... Trembling lest, through my fault, he be undone, I came to beg you not to hate my son. Too full of what it loved, my heart proved weak: Alas! it was of you I had to speak! Avenge and punish my depraved desire. The worthy son of your heroic sire, Rid the world of a beast so odious. Theseus’ wife dares love Hippolytus! This frightful monster, Prince, must not go free. Here is my heart. That’s where to strike at me. For its vile crime it’s anxious now to pay: liv s translator’s introduction I feel it swell to meet your sword halfway. Strike. Or if I’m unworthy of your blows, If such an easy death, Prince, you oppose, Or scorn to shed my blood, vile and abhorred, Then let your arm be spared: lend me your sword. (Phaedra II.v.106 –13, 118 –33) phaedra [invoking Venus] O you, who see my shameful, abject state, Remorseless Venus, let your wrath abate! No further can you press your cruelty: You’ve triumphed; all your darts have wounded me. Dread goddess, if you wish to enhance your fame, Then at a more rebellious foe take aim. Hippolytus, who flouts your just decrees, Before your altars never bends his knees, And from your dread dominion, goddess, flees. Your name seems to offend him in his pride; Avenge yourself; our causes are allied. [Phaedra III.ii.1–11] theseus [believing Hippolytus has molested Phaedra] You show yourself before me, wretch? You dare? Monster! too long spared by the Thunderer’s hand, Last of those thieves of whom I purged this land. After the transports of your love have spread Their shame and horror to your father’s bed, You dare present to me your hated face, Here, where the air still reeks of your disgrace, Nor seek some distant shore, ’neath unknown skies, Where Theseus is a name none recognize. Flee, traitor; you had best not brave my hate, And tempt a wrath I cannot moderate. It’s quite enough I bear the eternal blame For having sired a criminal with no shame, Without being blamed for murdering my son And tarnishing the fame my deeds have won. Flee; and if you don’t want a sudden blow translator’s introduction s lv To add you to the villains I’ve laid low, Take care the sun that lights us does not see You place a foot in this vicinity. Flee: don’t turn back, but, hastening away, Of your vile presence purge my realm today. — And you, Neptune, if my brave arm, of yore, Of infamous assassins cleansed your shore, Recall that, to reward my virtuous zeal, You promised you would grant my first appeal. Locked in that dungeon cell for countless hours, I never called on your immortal powers. Your promised help I jealously conserved; For greater needs my prayers were reserved. Today I beg: avenge an injured sire. I leave this traitor to your utmost ire; Drown in his blood his bold concupiscence: I’ll take your fury for benevolence. [Phaedra IV.ii.10–43] hippolytus [attempting to vindicate himself ] By such black lies my rancor’s justly stirred; I should tell you exactly what occurred; But since the truth would wound you, I’ll conceal it. Respect the tact which bids me not reveal it. Not wishing to augment the pain you’re in, Think who I am and what my life has been. Some venial crimes always precede the worst. One must transgress the moral order first, Before one can commit atrocities; For, just like virtue, crime has its degrees. When has one witnessed timid innocence Pass suddenly to reckless violence? In one day can a virtuous man be changed Into a beast — incestuous, vile, deranged? [Phaedra IV.ii.54– 67] phaedra [having learned that Hippolytus loves Aricia] Even now — ah! murderous thought! — they are united lvi s translator’s introduction Against the maddened lover whom he’s slighted. Despite the exile threatening them, those two Have sworn a thousand vows that they’ll be true. I can’t endure their smug felicity; Take pity, Oenone, on my jealousy. Aricia must be ruined. My husband’s hate For her vile race I must reanimate. No gentle sentence will suffice this time: Her brothers’ crimes are nothing to her crime. Yes, in my jealous rage, I’ll ask the King . . . — What am I doing? My wits are wandering. I’m jealous, and it’s Theseus I implore? My husband lives, and I’m still burning for . . . For whom? For whose heart do my prayers ascend? At each word all my hairs stand up on end. My crimes have reached the height of infamy: I breathe in incest, breathe out perfidy. [Phaedra IV.vi.40–57] oenone [counseling Phaedra] Madame, you must restrain this groundless terror. Look less severely on this venial error. You love. One cannot fight against one’s fate. A fatal charm made you capitulate. Is this a wonder of such magnitude? Is yours the only heart love has subdued? Frailty is a natural human trait. You’re mortal: yield, then, to a mortal’s fate. Why groan, madame, about an age-old blight? The Gods themselves on Mount Olympus’ height, Who, with the thunderbolt, chastise men’s crimes, Have burned with lawless passions too, at times. [Phaedra IV.vi.82–93] aricia [remonstrating with Theseus] How can you bear to see such calumny Blacken his blameless life so wantonly? So little do you understand his heart? translator’s introduction s lvii Goodness and guilt can you not tell apart? In your eyes must some odious cloud disguise The virtue that bedazzles others’ eyes? By slanderous tongues don’t let him be attacked. Desist. The deadly oath you swore, retract; Fear lest the wrath of heaven you arouse, And cause it, in its hate, to heed your vows. Our offerings stern heav’n oft accepts; ofttimes Its gifts are meant to scourge us for our crimes. [Phaedra V.iii.14–25] theramenes [narrating Hippolytus’s horrific death] Suddenly, from the ocean’s depth arose A frightful cry, which shattered the repose; And from earth’s bosom there came in reply A thunderous groan, as frightening as the cry. Our blood congealed in us as we gave ear; The attentive horses’ manes stiffened in fear. Meanwhile, there welled up from the liquid plane A billowing mountain, towering o’er the main; The wave crashed down and spewed, before our eyes, Amidst the spume, a beast of monstrous size. From its broad brow ferocious horns projected; With yellow scales its body was protected; Part bull, part dragon, vile and virulent, In tortuous coils its tail bent and rebent. The shore shook with each bellow, each convulsion. Heav’n viewed this savage monster with revulsion. The earth was racked, the very air was blighted, The tide that brought it there drew back affrighted. All fled, and seeing valor would prove vain, Sought shelter in the temple nigh the main. The Prince alone, a hero’s worthy son, Staying his steeds, from ’mongst his spears seized one, Made for the beast, and with a mighty throw, Into its foul flank aimed a riving blow. In rage and pain, the beast, with one huge spring, Fell at the coursers’ feet, still bellowing, lviii s translator’s introduction And, wheeling, from its fiery maw spewed out Flame, smoke, and blood, encircling them about. Impelled by fear, too maddened to restrain, They heeded neither master’s voice nor rein. He fiercely strove, but his attempts proved idle; With bloody foam they stained the straining bridle. Some say in this turmoil they saw a god Goading their dusty flanks with galling prod. Onto the rocks they hurled themselves from fright. The axle screeched and broke. In hurtling flight The Prince’s chariot crashed — splintered and mangled. In the reins he himself became entangled. — Excuse my grief. That image, steeped in woe, Will henceforth cause my tears to overflow. I saw your poor son dragged across the strand By those same steeds he’d fed with his own hand. He screamed to stop them, frightening them the more; They raced, his body soon all wounds and gore. Our cries of anguish echoed through the plane; Their headlong flight at last began to wane: They halted at those ancient tombs nearby, Where those cold kings, his ancestors, now lie. [Phaedra V.vi.20– 67] phaedra [in her dying confession] By now my life one sword thrust would have claimed, But I couldn’t let the innocent be blamed. To death’s dark realm I chose a slower course, To give me time to express my deep remorse. My burning veins drink in a poisoned draught Medea once prepared with cunning craft. Already the fatal venom’s taken hold, Clutching my heart with an uncanny cold; Already, as through a mist, I scarce descry The husband and the heav’n I horrify; And death, dimming these eyes that cast a blight Upon the day, restores its pristine light. [Phaedra V.fin.sc.40–51] translator’s introduction s lix xiii

One last point I would like to raise concerns the “propriety” of Racine on the printed page. It was once considered degrading, shocking, scandalous, for a woman to appear on the stage, but in the case of the drama, the opposite holds true: she is stigmatized when she does not appear on the stage. She is condescended to as a faute de mieux compromise when she appears in print. But plays have just as much right to be read as novels, poems, and essays. (Nor should one forget that the great epics of Homer, as well as the many medieval European sagas, which were once transmitted orally by rhapsodes and bards, are, nowadays, exclusively read.) Of course one would be delighted to see any of Racine’s plays staged, in French or English, but the likelihood of seeing a truly worthy production of one of the more famous ones is slight, and the likelihood of seeing any production of one of the less famous is slighter still. Fortu- nately, as Raymond Picard assures us, “Corneille and Racine can be enjoyed in print”; he maintains, moreover, that “a careful reading may be more rewarding than a poor performance” (Turnell, Jean Racine, vii). I know I have never been disappointed by reading Racine’s plays, only amazed at how consistently absorbing they are. As Patrick J. Smith puts it: “His plays — and not just the best of them — sweep you along from first to last” New( York Times, Janu- ary 3, 1999). Since we may never get to see a production of Bajazet, Mithridates, or Alexander the Great, it is all the more important that we should have good translations of them available, lest we forget that Racine wrote more than two or three plays.

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I entertain the hope, however, that, by means of a powerful new intégrale, the plays of Racine may gain greater currency in our theater and might be adopted as works of English literature, to be studied, savored, even thrilled to — through the time-honored medium of the English couplet — as dramas far more potent, profound, psychologically probing, and accessible than those produced by Dryden and others in that medium or by the Elizabethan and lx s translator’s introduction Jacobean playwrights in blank verse and prose (with the obvious exception). To give Racine his due, we should trust in the potency of his drama. As Muir remarks, “Racine’s actual drama is . . . robust enough to survive transplanting into a foreign soil” (Muir, vii). Of course, even the finest translation must represent some compromise, but is not Racine’s loss our gain? Should we allow such a great body of literature to lie unappreciated just because it must inevitably remain underappreciated? In view of English literature’s paltry holdings in the area of “classic drama,” whose practitioners Muir derides as “the droning authors of Gorbuduc, the prim Dan- iel, Addison with his now unreadable Cato, or Congreve with his Mourning Bride” (Muir, xiv), ought not the importation into our literature of such a body of work be cause for celebration? Muir further opines that “even All for Love [Dryden’s take on Shake- speare’s Antony and Cleopatra], the masterpiece of the Restoration theatre, is tame indeed compared with any of the greater plays of Racine” (Muir, xiv). Surely, such an oeuvre, so superior to almost any English verse drama after Shakespeare, would provide us at one stroke with the great classic drama we never had. I cannot see how an English reader, encountering Racine in a worthy translation, could fail to be impressed by his power and timelessness. Robert Lowell has written: “No translator has had the gifts or the luck to bring Racine into our culture. It’s a pity that Pope and Dryden overlooked Racine’s great body of work, close to them, in favor of the inaccessible Homer and Virgil” (Lowell, 8). It will be clear to readers of this volume that I have taken up the gauntlet Lowell has, in effect, thrown down. I hope that my translations, instead of being regarded as a compromise with, and a falling off from, the originals, will be seen as having their own artistic integ- rity, and that, informed and uplifted by Racine’s sublime genius, they will stand as a literary creation to be admired in its own right. Certainly, I shall consider myself satisfied with my work, if it be allowed that what is good is mine, what is great is Racine’s.