Andromache, Phaedra, Athaliah
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Jean Racine ANDROMACHE, PHAEDRA, ATHALIAH Introduction Chronology PARALLEL TEXTS Andromache Phaedra Phaedra (version for radio drama) Athaliah Glossary Further Reading and Links [The word NOTE in either the original or translated text indicates a crux of translation that is explored further in the Notes. Click on NOTE to be taken to the relevant discussion, and then on RETURN to come back to the text]. © www.tclt.org.uk 2003 INTRODUCTION Five specific features of Racine’s language (rhyme, rhythm, syntax, diction, and image) are worth exploring in response to the question: INTRODUCTION Rhyme Translating Racine One immediate and major feature to be confronted in translating Racine is whether to retain or discard the rhyming couplets in which his plays are written. Certainly, there are a number of advantages in retaining such a rhyme-scheme. The sound-world evoked clearly signals that the plays are Three hundred or so years after Jean Racine’s death in 1699, the best indeed a historical, and not a contemporary, utterance; and the drama is reason for offering a new translation of his work may also seem the most unambiguously positioned within past time. The couplets draw attention, ironic: that his plays continue to appear untranslatable. Indeed, there could also, to the shaped form of the expression, which can often be tellingly be few better summaries of his current position within the English- counterpointed against content that is tense with uncertainty or speaking world than the opening words of L.P. Hartley’s The Go- irresolution. In Richard Wilbur’s words, ‘irrational leaps of the self- Between: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ deceiving mind’ can often be sharply highlighted by the ‘contrasting Between Racine and us, the countless separations of time, of place, of coherence of the form, which embodies an ideal of high and orderly human perception and behaviour, seem to generate a sense of cultural consciousness’. Then again, the rhyming couplet, in Racine’s hands, remoteness that is almost unbridgeable. On the one hand, the scrupulous evokes subtle effects of suspension and advance, containment and structures, controls and symmetries of literary expression in 17th century movement. The ear is temporarily held within the sound-world of each France; on the other, the erosion of all pattern and shape in a post- rhyme (fidèle/nouvelle, adouci/ici, funeste/Oreste, perdu/rendu), but is modernist world accelerating beyond a millennium. If ever there were an also drawn forward in anticipation of the next rhyme, and so on. Nor is illustration to prove the impossibility of all translation, this might well be such a pattern entirely inflexible. Although enjambement is rare, lines and it. In that foreign country – France – in that other time – the 1660s to rhymes can be broken up between characters to achieve an almost 1690s – they did things differently. colloquial register, as for instance in the conversations between Phèdre and Œnone, or Athalie and Joas. But, attempting the impossible, any translation of Racine immediately confronts the fundamental question of how to translate such a world, as its For all these advantages, though, the handicaps are more substantial. decorous surface is seen to belie primitive depths, into an English that is The English language is not rich in rhymes; and whether in conscious or imaginatively persuasive to a contemporary audience and readership? The unconscious recognition of this, English tragedy has never adopted rhyme pit-falls are obvious. An undue stress upon the stylisation and formalities as a natural aural tradition. The distinctive strengths of the rhyming of Racine’s expression may lead to a rendering that is self-consciously couplet have always been most tellingly deployed for satiric and comedic ‘literary’ – a style of polished cadence and knowing fluency, rather than effects, and in poetry rather than drama. It is difficult, too, to avoid the direct urgency and reality. Conversely, an over-emphasis upon the simple, feeling of ‘jog-trot’ – of an emphatic sound pattern being repeated time lived force of his utterance may lead to a translation that has after time. Then again, even in the best of such translations, it is hard not contemporary and even colloquial relevance, but that lacks any sense of to sense moments of contrivance, even palpable artificiality, as syntax or historical context or positioning. Even a diplomatic compromise between meaning is wrenched by the exigencies of rhyme. Perhaps most these extremes may fail, producing an unconvincing hybrid style that damaging, though, is the erosion of tonal consistency that can accompany lurches between the ‘formal’ and the ‘ordinary’ from line to line. But if the rhyming couplet: these are the difficulties, what kind of English do the new translations on this site embrace? ii iii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Where are you going? What’s your hurry for? eleven-syllable and a hexameter line, respectively), few versions have … followed the example. Pope’s well-known comment continues to bite (‘A To speak with Hector at his sepulchre. needless Alexandrine ends the song, / That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along’). The weight and ponderousness of the metre in English are a substantial disadvantage, evoking as they do a stately largo If it’s true she’s lifted to the throne of Caesar, di molto rather than any more vibrant pulse. As a result, this translation If Titus has spoken, has chosen, I’ll…leave her. adopts an iambic pentameter line, with very occasional contractions to a tetrameter or expansions to a hexameter when metrical variety, dramatic effect, or unusually compacted meaning in the original seemed to warrant And how he heard me! How, with many a shift, it. The pentameter not only distils and concentrates Racine’s lines yet The brute pretended not to catch my drift! further, but also speaks to the force of native aural tradition. Just as the alexandrine is the fundamental voice of French neo-classical tragedy, English drama is no less embedded in the pulse and rhythms of blank It is undoubtedly unjust to extract such couplets so baldly from the verse. translations of which they are a part. Yet their appearance (and they are not the only examples) in recent rhymed versions by three distinguished writers shows how easily hard-won tonal effects can be weakened. The Syntax decision to adopt an unrhymed scheme in this translation, therefore, is an attempt to capitalise upon a natural dramatic tradition in English, where Racine’s syntax embraces a striking range between simplicity and flexibility, richness and appropriateness in the choice of the end-word for complexity. At one extreme, there are direct, declarative sentences that each line are paramount. The absence of rhyme, indeed, serves only to would pass unnoticed in ordinary, modern speech: ‘que veut-il?’, ‘il n’est foreground more important aural effects, notably the rhythm and metre of plus temps’, ‘je ne la cherchais pas’, ‘c’en est trop’, ‘qu’ont-ils fait!’, the verse. ‘j’entends’. Slightly more formal, though still retaining a basic simplicity of construction, are a number of lines where repetition of a crucial introductory word – pronoun, conjunction or preposition – creates an Rhythm effect of accumulating power and urgency (as, to take a single instance, in Hermione’s passionate reminder to Pyrrhus of her sacrifices: ‘j’ai Racine’s plays are famously written in alexandrines, twelve-syllable lines dédaigné…je t’ai cherché…j’y suis encor[e]…je leur ai that were first used in the late twelfth-century epic Le Roman commandé…j’attendais…j’ai cru…je t’aimais’. Slightly more formal, d’Alexandre, and that later became the standard metrical form for French though still clear in pattern, are those lines where oppositions and neo-classical tragedy. In addition to end-rhymes, the alexandrine also contrasts are presented in syntactic balance: ‘épouser ce qu’il hait, et contains a caesura, normally corresponding with some measure of phrasal perdre ce qu’il aime’, ‘prête à partir, et demeurant toujours’, ‘il faut ou pause, and generally occurring in mid-line after the sixth syllable. There is périr ou régner’, ‘ils ne se verront plus / ils s’aimeront toujours!’. In terms consequently a sense of balance between the two halves of the line of translation into English, it is relatively easy to express these repetitions (hemistiches). The alexandrine is not unaccented; but it is the syllabic and balances in a similarly transparent sentence construction. More count that fashions the metrical pattern, and that differentiates the pulse so problematic, however, are the many complex expressions of markedly from the strongly accented nature of much English verse. In subordination, where parataxis gives way to shifting and often subtle terms of overall aural impact, the line generates a sense of control and relationships between different phrases and clauses. Consider for a regularity, without strong stress, yet with scope for expansiveness in its moment the way in which Josabet discusses her planned escape with the twelve-syllable length. boy-king Joas: However, although two recent translations (by C.H. Sisson and Robert David MacDonald) have sought to reproduce this expansiveness (with an iv v INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Je suis prête: je sais une secrète issue simpler and more direct sentence structure. In this way, the wide Par où, sans qu’on le voie, et sans être aperçue, variations between ease and studiedness in Racine’s syntax are translated De Cédron avec lui traversant le torrent, into a broad but single compass of English, where uncomplicated J’irai dans le désert où jadis en pleurant, construction prevails. Et cherchant comme nous son salut dans la fuite, David d’un fils rebelle évita la poursuite. (Athalie, III, vi) Diction It has long been recognised that Racine draws upon a noticeably restricted After the syntactic simplicity of ‘je suis prête’, this modulates into a lexicon in his plays.