Volume 11, Number 12 · January 2, 1969
On Not Translating Racine
By John Weightman
Racine or The Triumph of Relevance
by Odette de Mourgues
Cambridge University Press, 180 pp., $5.50
The Complete Plays of Jean Racine
translated by Samuel Solomon, with an Introduction by Katherine Wheatley
Random House, Vol. 2, 459 pp., $20.00 the set
There are some great artists whose work travels on triumphantly through the centuries and who never need rediscovering or dusting down for contemporary use. Beethoven and Shakespeare are cases in point. Their popularity, untouched by changes in fashion, has increased in geometrical progression, so that now there can be no moment during the twenty-four hours when someone, somewhere in the world, is not being dazzled by the Diabelli Variations or the power of Shakespeare's imagination. Other artists, and particularly some poets, never achieve this universal significance and have to be defended afresh by successive waves of admirers. To this category belong, for instance, Pushkin and Racine. And Racine is perhaps an even more peculiar case than Pushkin. Whereas Russians seem to be unanimous in considering Pushkin as their greatest poet, even if he is not much appreciated abroad, many Frenchmen with literary tastes remain insensitive to Racine and take no interest in his plays, once they have been freed from the obligation of reading them at school or university. To be a genuine Racine enthusiast in France is to belong to a minority, even among theater people. It is a remarkable fact, for instance, that none of the many theatrical innovators of the modern movement—Antoine, Lügné-Poë, Copeau, Dullin, Jouvet, Barrault, Vilar, Planchon, etc.—has shown any special concern for Racine; they have all been much more interested in Shakespeare, Chekhov, or Molière.
Review, 2694 words
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