Cornelian

“ But Corneille was Cornélien even when he wrote rhymed comedy—he could not have been anything else—and he never would have fallen into rhyme had he not wished to make concessions to the prevailing fashion. [69]
Even when engaged in the most absorbing of [171] intrigues his lovers pretend that they are their own masters, and that they feel only such sentiments as they have elected to feel. At that early day—when Médée and Clitandre were written—the culte of the will had germinated; and time proved that it was predestined to become the chief director of Corneille's work. ”

“ ACT II—SEVERUS. FABIAN SEV. Let Felix bow to Jove and incense pour, I seek a dearer shrine, for I adore Nor Jove, nor Mars, nor Fortune—but Pauline. This fruit now ripening late my hand would glean: You know, my friend, the god who wings my way, You know the only goddess I obey: What reck the gods on high our sacrifice and prayer? An earthly worship mine, sole refuge from despair! FABIAN. Ah! You may see her—— SEV. Blessed be thy tongue! O magic word, that turns my grief to song! ”

“ My occasional appearance in literary circles will not be misconstrued, as I have the reputation of unusual erudition." He began to write: "Cornelia!" He paused. "Cornelia! It was a lofty spirit that gave her this proud name; is she a true child of this spirit? I almost believe it. That she glides into the cells of the lowest criminals does not spring from humility,--it is the defiance of compassion against the harshness of force, and the consciousness of the joy-giving power of her own individuality. Woe to him who ventured to wound her pride! He would have lost her." ”

“ At such times he would tell us that his own gods were merged into one omnipotent and omniscient good god, a spirit without a body, everywhere present. This one god was a synthesis of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And though he could not be felt, as I feel this rail here”—Cornelius ran his hand along the ship’s rail—“and though he was not to be seen or heard as one sees or hears another person, he was nevertheless even more real. ‘For the only things that are real,’ my tutor would say, ‘are the intangible things, and the only imperishable things are those that have no physical being. ”

“ Such is the singular passion that fills Corneille's tragedies. The creatures that give utterance to it are hardly human beings: they are embodiments of will, force, intellect and pride. The situations in which they are placed are calculated to expose these qualities to the utmost; and all Corneille's masterpieces are concerned with the same subject—the combat between indomitable egoism and the forces of Fate. It is in the meeting of these 'fell incensed opposites' that the tragedy consists. ”

“ Corneille, who sufficiently discovers himself without being named, becomes an ordinary man when he speaks for himself. He dares say any thing for a Greek or a Roman : a Frenchman or Spaniard abates his Courage; and when he speaks for him, he is quite dispirited. He racks his Imagination for all that is noble to adorn his old Heroes, and you would say, that he debarr’d himself the advantage of his own wealth, as if he were not worthy the use of it.
If you know the world perfectly, you will find in it abundance of men valuable for their Talents, and as contemptible for their Failings. ”

“ There is often in those four most popular tragedies a certain pomposity, an emphasis, an apparatus, a rhetorical colouring, which Corneille gradually did away with in himself, in order to make himself ever more nude, with the austere nudity of the spirit. It was perhaps not only constancy and coherence of logical development, but progress of art on the road to its own perfection, which counselled him to abandon too pathetic subjects. ”

“ The most recent interpreters have found Corneille's ideal to reside in will for its own sake, the "pure will," superior or anterior to good and evil, in the energy of the will as such, which does not pay attention to particular ends. Thus the false conception of him as animated with the ideal of moral duty or with that of the triumph of duty over the passions has been eliminated, and agreement has been reached, not only with the reality of the tragedies, but also with what Corneille himself laid down in his Discours as to the dramatic personage. ”

“ Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal Corneille; for none of them has known and expressed like him what is of all things most truly touching, a great soul at war with itself, between a generous passion and duty. Corneille is the creator of a new pathetic unknown to antiquity and to all the moderns before him. He disdains to address common and subaltern passions; he does not seek to rouse terror and pity, as demands Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims the practice{181} of the Greeks. ”

“ Cornelli has cost me neither patience, care, nor trouble. If by a little love I have been able to draw out the good kernel of her nature and bring it to happy development, then that is all I have done. Cornelli has never made my task hard for me. We have all become so fond of her that we had to think with sorrow of the time when she would leave us. I shall never forget what happy hours Dino had with Cornelli during his illness and how she constantly entertained my sociable little Mux with her constant merriment and kindness. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing for a Cornishman to build his own house, make his own shoes, be both fisherman and miner, and, possibly, small shop-keeper besides; and wherever the Cornish miner emigrates, he is pretty sure to take the lead in enterprise and danger.
Wilkie Collins says: "As a body of men they are industrious, intelligent, sober, and orderly, neither soured by hard work, nor depressed by harsher privations"; and the old poet Taylor, in 1649, writes: "Cornwall is the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, for high, churlish hills and affable, courteous people. ”

“ He was a wise philosopher, but had no acquaintance with any spirits but those clad in flesh and blood. His science was simply human; and human science, I soon persuaded myself, could never conquer nature's laws so far as to imprison the soul for ever within its carnal habitation. Cornelius had brewed a soul-refreshing drink--more inebriating than wine--sweeter and more fragrant than any fruit: it possessed probably strong medicinal powers, imparting gladness to the heart and vigor to the limbs; but its effects would wear out; already were they diminished in my frame. ”

“ O Cornelius, it won't be lucky for us when father hears about
Ellen and Matt.
CORNELIUS
That's true. No man sees his house afire but looks to his rick.
SALLY Come down a bit of the road with me, Cornelius. The sow will be grunting and grunting, reminding father that I'm away. Och, a minute ago I was as contented as if there was no land or pigs, or harsh words to trouble one. (She goes to the door) The boys and girls for America are coming here.
CORNELIUS Give me your hands to hold, Sally. (She gives him her hands) We are as young as any of them after all. ”

“ Cornelia clung closely to him. "Do without you? Oh, Heinrich, how could I?"
"Well, promise me you will take courage and refuse Linderer's proposal; then, Cornelia, I shall first believe in the strength of your love."
"But the world,--how would it judge of such a plan?"
"Cornelia, I should have thought you philosopher enough to despise the world and its judgments."
"Perhaps,--but custom--"
"You may offend against custom, but not morality. Our love bears the highest consecration in itself. If you are thoroughly pervaded with its influence, you may trust yourself to it without fear. ”

“ POLY. Once have I said—yet now I say once more— 'Live with Severus, or—with Polyeucte die!' Thy tears are mine, and thy pure constancy I share: But—I am soldier of the Cross! Take up thine own, and count all gain but loss! Pauline—no more! (To FELIX.) Thy slumbering wrath rewake! Thy fates and furies wait! Their vengeance slake! PAUL. His life is saved! These fetters all undo!— For justice never yet a madman slew; And he is mad,—but, father, thou art sane, And thou, his father, must his friend remain. A father cannot less than father be, Oh, be to him what thou hast been to me! ”

“ It was after that fashion he might easily have been moved, and with almost no transition, to break out to Cornelia—quite as if taking up some old talk, some old community of gossip, just where they had left it; even with the consciousness perhaps of overdoing a little, of putting at its maximum, for the present harmony, recovery, recapture (what should he call it?) the pitch and quantity of what the past had held for them. ”

“ But it confutes itself by becoming modified, sometimes among the very critics whom we have been citing, into the thesis that Corneille is the poet of the "reason," or of "the rational will." And we say modified, because the reason or the rational will is in poetry itself a passion, and he would be correctly [Pg 350] described as a poet of that kind of inspiration, who should accentuate the rational-volitional moment in the representation of the passions, by creating types of wise and active men, such as are to be found in the epic, in many dramatic masterpieces, in high romance and elsewhere. ”

“ Mais qui hait par devoir ne s'aveugle jamais; c'est sa raison qui hait ...." His ideal personages sometimes declare, when face to face with their enemy: "je te dois estimer, mais je te dois haïr." [Pg 372] On the other hand, we perceive clearly why Corneille was led to admire the will, even when without moral illumination, even indeed when it is actively opposed to or without morality; for it has the power of not yielding to and of dominating the passions, of not being violent weakness, but strength, or as it was called during the Renaissance, "virtú." ”

“ Cornelia watched him with mingled surprise and grief. "Severinus, you are playing a part with yourself, like all who hold ideas founded on sophisms and principles contrary to nature; you must do so, at a moment when your illusion forms so striking a contrast with the truth. I can only pity you; but may God let those who made you a Jesuit,--who robbed you of the world and the world of you,--reap the fruits of their deed!" ”

“ And when he is blamed for having given so small and so unhappy a place to love, "to the act by which the race perpetuates itself, to the relations of the sexes and to all the sentiments that arise from them, and which, by the nature of things form an essential part of the life of the human race," it is not observed that beneath this reproof, which is somewhat physiological and lubricious and lacks seriousness of statement, there is concealed the yet more serious and more general reproof that Corneille suffocates and suppresses the quiver of life. ”

“ But his rank among the greatest of dramatic poets is not a matter of question. For a poet is to be judged by his best things, and the best things of Corneille are second to none.
The Plays.—It was, however, some time before his genius came to perfection. It is undeniable that the first six or seven of his plays are of no very striking intrinsic merit. On the other hand, it requires only a very slight acquaintance with the state of the drama in France at the time to see that these works, poor as they may now seem, must have struck the spectators as something new and surprising. ”

“ The fact that one of the characters jumps on another’s back, and the rather promiscuous kissing which takes place, are nothing to the liberties usually taken in contemporary plays. A worse fault is the στιχομυθία, or, to borrow Butler’s expression, the Cat-and-Puss dialogue, which abounds. But the common objection to the play at the time was that it was too natural and too devoid of striking incidents. Corneille accordingly, as he tells us, set to work to cure these faults, and produced a truly wonderful work, Clitandre. Murders, combats, escapes and outrages of all kinds are provided ”

“ The drama of Corneille deals with what is extraordinary, but in what is extraordinary it seeks for truth. He finds the marvellous in the triumphs of the human will. His great inventive powers were applied to creating situations for the manifestation of heroic energy. History attracted him, because a basis of fact seemed to justify what otherwise could not be accepted as probable. Great personages suited his purpose, because they can deploy their powers on the amplest scale. His characters, men and women, act not through blind, instinctive passion, but with deliberate and intelligent force ”

“ In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own [Pg 9] appearance caused him moments of acute anguish.
“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby! If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I am taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected fashion. ”

“ The little Frenchman rose, with a quiet and graceful air, full of sadness, yet of courtesy; and I knew then that he was no longer my guest and entertainer, but once more the chapman with his wares.
"Monsieur, Cornelia is under my protection. You will comprehend that—after that—she has not escaped with impunity. Some little strings snapped in the harp. She is touchée, here," said he, resting one finger lightly upon his forehead,—"but 'tis all for the best, sans doute. She is quiet, peaceable,—and she does not remember. She sits in my house, working, and the bird sings to her ever. ”