history on which the drama is founded by perusing Second Kings, chapter
eleven, and Second Chronicles, chapters twenty-two and twenty-three.
Athaliah, whose name gives its title to the tragedy, was daughter to
the wicked king, Ahab. She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the kingdom
of Judah. To secure her usurped position, she had sought to kill all the
descendants of King David, even her own grandchildren. She had
succeeded, but not quite. Young Joash escaped, to be secretly reared in
the temple by the high-priest. The final disclosure of this hidden
prince, and his coronation as king in place of usurping Athalia,
destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death in his name,
afford the action of the play. Action, however, there is almost none in
classic French tragedy. The tragic drama is, with the French, as it was
with the Greeks, after whom it was framed, merely a succession of scenes
in which speeches are made by the actors. Lofty declamation is always
the character of the play. In the "Athalia," as in the "Esther," Racine
introduced the feature of the chorus, a restoration which had all the
effect of an innovation. The chorus in "Athalia" consisted of Hebrew
virgins, who at intervals marking the transitions between the acts,
chanted the spirit of the piece in its successive stages of progress
toward the final catastrophe. The "Athalia" is almost proof against
technical criticism. It is acknowledged to be, after its kind, a nearly
ideal product of art.
First, in specimen of the choral feature of the drama, we content
ourselves with giving a single chorus from the "Athalia." This we turn
into rhyme, clinging pretty closely all the way to the form of the
original. Attentive readers may, in one place of our rendering, observe
an instance of identical rhyme. This, in a piece of verse originally
written in English, would, of course, be a fault. In translation from
French, it may pass for a merit; since, to judge from the practice of
the national poets, the French ear seems to be even better pleased with
such strict identities of sound, at the close of corresponding lines,
than it is with those definite, mere resemblances to which, in English
versification, rhymes are rigidly limited.
Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of
feeling represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the leading
singer:
SALOMITH.
The Lord hath deigned to speak,
But what he to his prophet now hath shown--
Who unto us will make it clearly known?
Arms he himself to save us, poor and weak?
Arms he himself to have us overthrown?
THE WHOLE CHORUS.
O promises! O threats! O mystery profound!
What woe, what weal, are each in turn foretold?
How can so much of wrath be found
So much of love to enfold?
A VOICE.
Zion shall be no more; a cruel flame
Will all her ornaments devour.
A SECOND VOICE.
God shelters Zion; she has shield and tower
In his eternal name.
FIRST VOICE.
I see her splendor all from vision disappear.
SECOND VOICE.
I see on every side her glory shine more clear.
FIRST VOICE.
Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight.
SECOND VOICE.
Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light.
FIRST VOICE.
What dire despair!
SECOND VOICE.
What praise from every tongue!
FIRST VOICE.
What cries of grief!
SECOND VOICE.
What songs of triumph sung!
A THIRD VOICE.
Cease we to vex ourselves; our God, one day,
Will this great mystery make clear.
ALL THREE VOICES.
Let us his wrath revere,
While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay.
The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash as king,
and in the destruction of usurping and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by
the way, with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself
for the moment a certain factitious interest, from the resemblance,
meant by the poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the
little Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson, then of about the same
age with the Hebrew boy, and of high reputation for mental vivacity.
The scene in which the high-priest, Jehoiada, for the first time
discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from
David, and his true heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve
sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wisdom the
dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or
ten years of age Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture
interpreted without violence would make him. The lad has had his sage
curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress for some important
ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does not guess
the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly asked his foster-mother,
observed by him to be in tears:
What pity touches you? Is it that, in a holocaust to be this day
offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by my
death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does not
belong to his father!
The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now
approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high-priest, exclaiming,
"My father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What
preparations, then, are these?" asks Joash. The high-priest bids him
prepare himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him to
pay his debt to God:
_Joash._ I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my life.
_Jehoiada._ You have often heard read the history of our kings. Do you
remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the crown ought to
impose upon himself?
_Joash._ A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared, puts not
his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his God, has ever
before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and does not
with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren.
Fenelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy
when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine
must have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young
Joash sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his
royal pupil, the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fenelon.
How could the selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid
recognizing his own portrait suggested by contrast in that description
of the good king from the lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading
on treacherous ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way
under him, to let him down into the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his
king. This not, however, in the present play.
The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a
certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final
catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There
is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final
speech in which Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously
forecasts, for young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. With
this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from
Satan in "Paradise Lost," so far as French poetry may be allowed to
resemble English, we conclude our representation of Racine. Athaliah has
now just heard the announcement of things that assure her of the
overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the
first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the
celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, uttered at a
moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes--"O Galilean, thou
hast conquered!" as follows:
God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!
Ay, it is Joash; all without avail
Seek I to cheat myself with other thought:
I know the wound my weapon on him wrought;
I see his father Ahaziah's face;
Naught but brings back to me that hated race.
David doth triumph, Ahab only fall--
Unpitying God, thou only hast done all!
'Tis thou that, flattering me to hope in vain
For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again
Hast with myself myself embroiled anew,
Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few,
Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare,
Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.
Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil,
And, so to signalize his new-got spoil,
Let him into my bosom plunge the knife,
And take with filial hand his mother's life.
Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes--
Wish? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths--
That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he,
Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me,
To his grandfather, to his father, like,
Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike
Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell
Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!
With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command for
the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows
immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn
comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.
The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no means equal to
its fame. One reproaches one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously
perusing it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be
irreproachably, nay, consummately, good. But fashions in taste change;
and we cannot hold ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate,
for enjoying, according to the judgment of other races and of former
generations. It is--so, with grave concurrence, we say--It is a great
classic, worthy of the praise that it receives. We are glad that we have
read it; and, let us be candid, equally glad that we have not to read it
again.
As has already been intimated, Racine, after "Athaliah," wrote tragedy
no more. He ceased to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His
son "Louis," in his Life of his father, testifies that he never heard
his father speak in the family of the dramas that he had written. His
theatrical triumphs seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of
them rather than gloried in them.
While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine's for the devotion
of his powers to the production of tragedy was a sincere regret of his
conscience, one may properly wish that the regret had been more heroic.
The fact is, Racine was somewhat feminine in character as well as in
genius. He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against an
adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to Racine, from the
principal quarter, the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite
with his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of an exile from the
royal presence. The immediate occasion was one honorable rather than
otherwise to the poet.
In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had expressed views on
the state of France, and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which
so impressed her mind that she desired him to reduce his observations to
writing and confide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly
secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manuscript in her
hand. Taking it from her, he read in it, and demanded to know the
author. Madame de Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. "Does M.
Racine, because he is a great poet, think that he knows every thing?"
the despot angrily asked. Louis never spoke to Racine again. The
distressed and infatuated poet still made some paltry request of the
king--to experience the humiliation that he invoked. His request was not
granted. Racine wilted, like a tender plant, under the sultry frown of
his monarch. He could not rally. He soon after died, literally killed by
the mere displeasure of one man. Such was the measureless power wielded
by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff in Racine. A spirit
partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop Fenelon, will presently be
shown to have had at about the same time a partly similar experience.
XII.
BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-1704; MASSILLON: 1663-1742; SAURIN:
1677-1730.
We group four names in one title, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon,
Saurin, to represent the pulpit orators of France. There are other great
names--as Flechier and Claude--but the names we choose are the greatest.
Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as
a great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply;
Massillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their
subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces
of style, became at once, and permanently became, a part of French
literature; Saurin's, that he was the pulpit theologian of
Protestantism.
The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No
Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it.
Protestant agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in
this. Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as
Milton is to the Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence,
somehow, seems a thing too near the common human level to answer fully
the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not
eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory,
while in English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature
its satisfaction to the sentiment of the sublime, very well represents
the difference in genius between the two races. The French idea of
poetry is eloquence; and it is eloquence carried to its height, whether
in verse or in prose, that constitutes for the Frenchman sublimity. The
difference is a difference of blood. English blood is Teutonic in base,
and the imagination of the Teuton is poetic. French blood, in base, is
Celtic; and the imagination of the Celt is oratoric.
Jacques Benigne Bossuet was of good _bourgeois_, or middle-class, stock.
He passed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic
consistency with what was to be his subsequent career. He was brought
forward while a young man in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where, on a
certain occasion, he preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices
of his admiring patron. In due time he attracted wide public attention,
not merely as an eloquent orator, but as a profound student and as a
powerful controversialist. His character and influence became in their
maturity such that La Bruyere aptly called him a "Father of the Church."
"The Corneille of the pulpit," was Henri Martin's characterization and
praise. A third phrase, "the eagle of Meaux," has passed into almost an
alternative name for Bossuet. He soared like an eagle in his eloquence,
and he was bishop of Meaux.
Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to each other, in the mutual
relation of subject and sovereign. Bossuet preached sincerely--as every
body knows Louis sincerely practiced--the doctrine of the divine right
of kings to rule absolutely. But the proud prelate compromised neither
his own dignity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence of the
absolute monarch.
Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to prodigious effect, into
the controversy against Protestantism. His "History of the Variations of
the Protestant Churches," in two good volumes, was one of the mightiest
pamphlets ever written. As tutor to the Dauphin (the king's eldest son),
he produced, with other works, his celebrated "Discourse on Universal
History."
In proceeding now to give, from the four great preachers named in our
title, a few specimen passages of the most famous pulpit oratory in the
world, we need to prepare our readers against a natural disappointment.
That which they are about to see has nothing in it of what will at first
strike them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age of
France was distinctly "classic," and not at all "romantic," in style.
Its character is not ornate, but severe. There is little rhetorical
figure in it, little of that "illustration" which our own different
national taste is accustomed to demand from the pulpit. There is plenty
of white light, "dry light" and white, for the reason; but there is
almost no bright color for the fancy, and, it must be added, not a great
deal of melting warmth for the heart.
The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally esteemed the masterpieces
of this orator's eloquence. He had great occasions, and he was great to
match them. Still, readers might easily be disappointed in perusing a
funeral oration of Bossuet's. The discourse will generally be found to
deal in commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment.
Those commonplaces, however, are often made very impressive by the
lofty, the magisterial, the imperial manner of the preacher in treating
them. We exhibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a brief one, in
the majestic exordium to the funeral oration on the Princess Henrietta
of England.
This princess was daughter to that unfortunate Stuart, King Charles I.
of England. Her mother's death--her mother was of the French house of
Bourbon--had occurred but a short time before, and Bossuet had on that
occasion pronounced the eulogy. The daughter, scarcely returned to
France from a secret mission of state to England, the success of which
made her an object of distinguished regard at Versailles, suddenly fell
ill and died. Bossuet was summoned to preach at her funeral. (We have
not been able to find an English translation of Bossuet, and we
accordingly make the present transfer from French ourselves. We do the
same, for the same reason, in the case of Massillon. In the case of
Bourdaloue, we succeeded in obtaining a printed translation which we
could modify to suit our purpose.) Bossuet:
It was then reserved for my lot to pay this funereal tribute to the
high and potent princess, Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans.
She whom I had seen so attentive while I was discharging a like office
for the queen, her mother, was so soon after to be the subject of a
similar discourse, and my sad voice was predestined to this melancholy
service. O vanity! O nothingness! O mortals! ignorant of their
destiny! Ten months ago would she have believed it? And you, my
hearers, would you have thought, while she was shedding so many tears
in this place, that she was so soon to assemble you here to deplore
her own loss? O princess! the worthy object of the admiration of two
great kingdoms, was it not enough that England should deplore your
absence, without being yet further compelled to deplore your death?
France, who with so much joy beheld you again, surrounded with a new
brilliancy, had she not in reserve other pomps and other triumphs for
you, returned from that famous voyage whence you had brought hither so
much glory, and hopes so fair? "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
Nothing is left for me to say but that: that is the only sentiment
which, in presence of so strange a casualty, grief so well-grounded
and so poignant permits me to indulge. Nor have I explored the Holy
Scriptures in order to find therein some text which I might apply to
this princess; I have taken, without premeditation and without choice,
the first expression presented to me by the Preacher with whom vanity,
although it has been so often named, is yet, to my mind, not named
often enough to suit the purpose that I have in view. I wish, in a
single misfortune, to lament all the calamities of the human race, and
in a single death to exhibit the death and the nothingness of all
human greatness. This text, which suits all the circumstances and all
the occurrences of our life, becomes, by a special adaptedness,
appropriate to my mournful theme; since never were the vanities of the
earth either so clearly disclosed or so openly confounded. No, after
what we have just seen, health is but a name, life is but a dream,
glory is but a shadow, charms and pleasures are but a dangerous
diversion. Every thing is vain within us, except the sincere
acknowledgment made before God of our vanity, and the fixed judgment
of the mind, leading us to despise all that we are.
But did I speak the truth? Man, whom God made in his own image, is he
but a shadow? That which Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth to
seek, that which he deemed that he could, without degrading himself,
ransom with his own blood, is that a mere nothing? Let us acknowledge
our mistake; surely this sad spectacle of the vanity of things human
was leading us astray, and public hope, baffled suddenly by the death
of this princess, was urging us too far. It must not be permitted to
man to despise himself entirely, lest he, supposing, in common with
the wicked, that our life is but a game in which chance reigns, take
his way without rule and without self-control, at the pleasure of his
own blind wishes. It is for this reason that the Preacher, after
having commenced his inspired production by the expression which I
have cited, after having filled all its pages with contempt for things
human, is pleased at last to show man something more substantial by
saying to him, "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the
whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with
every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Thus
every thing is vain in man, if we regard what he gives to the world:
but, on the contrary, every thing is important, if we consider what he
owes to God. Once again: every thing is vain in man, if we regard the
course of his mortal life; but every thing is of value, every thing is
important, if we contemplate the goal where it ends, and the account
of it which he must render. Let us, therefore, meditate to-day, in
presence of this altar and of this tomb, the first and the last
utterance of the Preacher; of which the one shows the nothingness of
man, the other establishes his greatness. Let this tomb convince us of
our nothingness, provided that this altar, where is daily offered for
us a Victim of price so great, teach us at the same time our dignity.
The princess whom we weep shall be a faithful witness, both of the one
and of the other. Let us survey that which a sudden death has taken
away from her; let us survey that which a holy death has bestowed upon
her. Thus shall we learn to despise that which she quitted without
regret, in order to attach all our regard to that which she embraced
with so much ardor--when her soul, purified from all earthly
sentiments, full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw the
light completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have to treat,
and which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so great a prince,
and to the most illustrious assembly in the world.
It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an
effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the
far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet
was not always--as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always
was--superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of
rhetoric. Bossuet was a great man, but he was not quite great enough to
be wholly free from pride of self-consciousness in matching himself as
an orator against "the most illustrious assembly in the world."
The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, and they perhaps less
deserve to be read, than those of Bourdaloue and Massillon.
BOURDALOUE was a voice. He was the voice of one crying, not in the
wilderness, but amid the homes and haunts of men, and, by eminence, in
the court of the most powerful and most splendid of earthly monarchs. He
was a Jesuit; one of the most devoted and most accomplished of an order
filled with devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to his Jesuit
character and Jesuit training that Bourdaloue should hold the place that
he did, as ever-successful courtier at Versailles, all the while that,
as preacher, he was using the "holy freedom of the pulpit" to launch
those blank fulminations of his at sin in high places, at sin even in
the highest, and all the briefer while that, as confessor to Madame de
Maintenon, he was influencing the policy of Louis XIV.