Between here and there: mourning Britannicus.

Every émigré has to face, from time to time, moments of forlornness, of irremediable loss. To me, it usually comes by surprise, when I’m seemingly drifting smoothly in my American life; like the other night, when I was flicking through channels, trying to catch something more interesting than cops chasing bad guys, bad cooks pretending to be French chefs, arrogant TV anchors trying to convince me of their smartness and grandeur, pet behaviorists willing to teach me how to tame my dog, carpet cleaner experts eager to sell me their awesome new product…After a while, I finally grew tired of my fruitless search and retreated to the French TV5 channel, and it hit me. My “world of yesterday”, as Stephan Zweig called it, was right there on the screen, almost unchanged. The movie was called “Evil friendships” and took place in 2006 in Paris, mostly in the Quartier Latin and at La Sorbonne. The main characters were a gang of Sorbonnards, all students of French and comparative literature, all smart, beautiful and witty people, all passionate about literature and writing, all willing to become either writers or comedians. One of them, though, was a fraud: a very talented guy but too lazy to commit himself to any serious academic writing. Instead, he enjoyed manipulating other students, baffling them with his culture, trying to convince them not to write anything since it would never be worth publishing.

But it is not the plot that riveted me on my couch but the setting of this small movie: suddenly I was there again, in La Sorbonne’s old classrooms, being lectured on Montaigne, on La Fontaine, on Abelard and Heloise, on Chretien de Troyes…I was there again, in my own high school classes, later, this time my turn to lecture teenagers on the role of the writer in society, trying to instill in them the very same passion I had for literature; or I was back in the teachers’ lounge, defending Racine’s poetic against Corneille’s; vilifying Beigbeder’s latest opus or arguing with a colleague about Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Yes, my “world of yesterday” was there, on the screen, very alive: in the movie, the students were having heated discussions about literature, and one particular discussion was about the Act II, sc. 2 of Britannicus, one of the most beautiful of Racine’s tragedies. One of the characters was accusing Racine of being “cheesy” and “thick” while the other was trying to explain why he liked that tragedy and that scene in particular, so much. In this scene, Nero makes is first stage appearance; Narcisse, the traitor (since he is supposed to be Britannicus’[1] aide-de-camp but in reality serves Nero’s interests) is also there and Nero confides in him his love for his captive, Junie (Britannicus’ lover), and all his fears about his future: how to get Junie to truly love him? How to free himself from his mother’s powerful influence? How to have Rome’s citizens love him? What to do with his brother? Will he be up to this gigantic task? In fact, this scene is one my favorite among French classical theater: here we have a historical character, well-known for his later cruelties and acts of pure and simple folie (craziness)[2] but in Racine’s tragedy, he is an adolescent, conscious of his destiny but still unsure of the path to choose; he is not yet a monster but a “monster-in-progress”; a monster who loves, who doubts and, above all, wants to be loved, not yet feared. And Racine’s Alexandrines perfectly convey to the reader/spectator all this range of emotions.

Here, listen to Nero’s narration on falling in love for Junie: (the translations that follow are from myself and render only the gross idea, not Racine's poetry)

                    «  Excité d'un désir curieux,
Cette nuit je l'ai vue arriver en ces lieux,
Triste, levant au ciel ses yeux mouillés de larmes,
Qui brillaient au travers des flambeaux et des armes,
Belle, sans ornement, dans le simple appareil
D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.
[…] Quoi qu'il en soit, ravi d'une si belle vue,
J'ai voulu lui parler, et ma voix s'est perdue :
Immobile, saisi d'un long étonnement,
Je l'ai laissé passer dans son appartement.
J'ai passé dans le mien. C'est là que, solitaire,
De son image en vain j'ai voulu me distraire.
Trop présente à mes yeux je croyais lui parler ;
J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler.
Quelquefois, mais trop tard, je lui demandais grâce :
J'employais les soupirs, et même la menace.[…] »

Excited by a curious desire,

Tonight I saw her coming into this place,

Sad, raising to the sky her eyes wet from tears,

[her eyes] that shined through the torches and the weapons,

Beautiful, without any ornament, in the simple apparel

Of a beauty that one has just snatched off sleep.

[…] Anyway, pleased by such a beautiful sight,

I wanted to talk to her, and my voice got lost:

Still, seized by a deep astonishment,

I let her go to her apartment.

I went to mine. It is there that, lonely,

From her image I wanted to distract myself [from].

Too present to my eyes I thought I was talking to her,

I loved to her tears that I made run [I’m responsible for]

Sometimes, but too late, I asked for her forgiveness;

I would use sighs, and even threats […]

It is indeed a monster’s love since he seems to love his prey’s defenseless and despair.

Or here, when he confides his powerlessness in the face of his mother’s authority:

« Eloigné de ses yeux, j'ordonne, je menace,
J'écoute vos conseils, j'ose les approuver ;
Je m'excite contre elle, et tâche à la braver :
Mais, je t'expose ici mon âme toute nue,
Sitôt que mon malheur me ramène à sa vue,
Soit que je n'ose encor démentir le pouvoir
De ces yeux où j'ai lu si longtemps mon devoir ;
Soit qu'à tant de bienfaits ma mémoire fidèle
Lui soumette en secret tout ce que je tiens d'elle.
Mais enfin mes efforts ne me servent de rien :
Mon génie étonné tremble devant le sien.
Et c'est pour m'affranchir de cette dépendance,
Que je la fuis partout, que même je l'offense,
Et que, de temps en temps, j'irrite ses ennuis,
Afin qu'elle m'évite autant que je la fuis. »

Far from her eyes, I give orders, I threaten,

I listen to your advices; I dare to approve them;

I get excited against her and try to defy her:

But, I show you here, my whole bare soul,

As soon as my misfortune bring me back to her sight,

Either that I do not yet dare to deny the power

Of those eyes where for so long I read my duty;

Either that for so many kindnesses my faithful memory

Submits her secretly all that I owe to her.

But in fact my efforts are useless,

My astonished power trembles in front of hers.

And it is to free myself from this dependence,

That I’m running away from her everywhere, that I even offend her,

And that, from time to time, I worsen her troubles,

So she would avoid me as much as I’m running away from her.

 

Many teenagers would recognize their own attempts at freeing themselves from their parents’ love in Nero’s words. It is probably one of Racine’s great talent to infuse life and realism in his Antique’s characters, so that, far from being dusty classics, his tragedies are on the contrary “larger than life”; his Nero, his Bérénice, his Phèdre, his Andromaque are not haughty characters, but sensible, complex human beings, just like us[3]. But with the inestimable advantage of talking like gods, in Alexandrines.

So, that night, alone in my couch, somewhere in the “beautiful California” of Steinbeck and London, I mourned my “world of yesterday”. Because of course, almost nobody that I know care about Britannicus (but I’m not blaming anybody here; the contrary would be astonishing) and because, more importantly to me, I realized that my kids will probably never experience, never feel the physical joy that you can feel listening to Racine’s poetry. Even if I do my best to build a bridge between them and the realm of French literature, they will most likely always be some kind of foreigners in their native language.

That was one of those moments where living here but being from there can be painful.

[1] Britannicus is Nero’s half-brother and is rival on two counts: for being their father’s real heir since Britannicus was supposed to become the emperor but Nero’s formidable mother, Agrippine, opposed the decision and put her son on the throne; and for being in loved and loved by Junie, the woman Nero wants to conquer.

[2] Remember, he kills his brother and his mother and later set Rome on fire; he also liked to race himself in the arena and to recite his own poetry in public.

[3] It is interesting, indeed, to remember that one of the constant critics Racine had to face in his time was this very one that we now consider as one of his most remarkable qualities: putting on a tragedy stage characters who, although they would still speak like the powerful and VIP people they were, would show their weaknesses and doubts. (one of the rule of the  French classical tragedy being that only noble characters should be showed: emperors, princes, kings who would all behave with grandeur. Hence it excluded the expression of personal feelings)

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