This success, due to a perfect exploitation of the rules and an exact intuition of the taste of its century, paradoxically conferred on the work of Root a kind of timeless perfection which generally allured, which sometimes could irritate, but which, in the final analysis, will not have ceased since three centuries fascinating the public successive ones of its theater.

Port-Royal at the court

Jean Racine was born on on December 22nd, 1639, with Ferté-Milon, where his/her father was controller of the attic with salt, a modest employment. The mother of the future poet died when this one was two years old, and her father two years later. He was then collected by his paternal grandmother and tutor, Marie of the Mills, whose sister had given asylum to main Jansenists, in particular Lancelot, and whose girl and two others of her sisters were nuns in Port-Royal; also the young Root was it high in this austere atmosphere. Whereas it was ten years old, his/her grandmother registered it in a college directed by Jansenists, then, at sixteen years, with the Barns, where the teaching of Port-Royal was given. The child accepted there a intellectual, moral and religious formation marked by the specific intransigence and the rigor to these doctrines. He learned the Greek and acquired this familiarity with the traditional texts of Antiquity and the broad biblical, mythological topics and histories which its art of tragic poet will exploit: he formed his taste and his writing there, by contracting there perhaps already this dyeing of pessimism and this fascination for the devastations of passion which will color its work. He entered in 1658 to the college of Harcourt, in Paris, still directed there by Jansenists.  

But whereas its family intended it to enter the orders, it started to become emancipated supervision of Port-Royal, and thought of becoming poet, and more particularly author of theater. It composed in 1660, at the time of the marriage of Louis XIV, the Nymph of the Seine, ode dedicated to the Marie-Therese queen of Austria, where it shows his control of the kind without revealing particular feature however. The following year, Racine remained in Uzès in the hope - finally disappointed at the end of a lawsuit which will inspire the Litigants to him - to obtain there an ecclesiastical benefit through his/her uncle Antoine Sconin. In 1663, of return in the Parisian literary world, Racine published two odes, On the convalescence of the king, which was worth a gratification of 600 pounds to him, and the Fame with the Muses, where he thanks the king for his generosity.  

One glorious period
Of Thébaïde (1664) with Phèdre (1677), nine tragedies and a comedy - misdemeanor in a light kind, but in imitation of Aristophane - indicated Racine, after the death of Molière, in 1673, and the failures of a Corneille aged, like the uncontested Master of the scene near a public of which it could marry and satisfy the tastes with a very precise feeling - waitings and rejections - time.  

Its first tragedy, Thébaïde or the Enemy brothers, was created on on June 20th, 1664 by Molière, which was worth to him to be registered on the list of the royal gratifications to the men of letters; the part, if it does not reveal yet the size of the author, outlines already its leaning for a subtle psychological painting of the characters. The following year, Alexandre the Large one was initially entrusted to the troop of Molière; but Root, dissatisfied with the actors, offered his part to the rival troop of the hotel of Burgundy, with no regard for uses and of the friendship of Molière: success shining, and rupture with Molière.  

In 1666, Racine broke with the Jansenists mediums following a polemic with Pierre Nicole, attached to Port-Royal, in connection with the morality of the theater. This last had written: “A poet of theater is a public nuisance, not bodies, but of the hearts (...)” (the imaginary Heresies, 1665, directed against Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin). Root, feeling directly attacked, wrote two violent and ironic letters, With the author of the “imaginary Heresies”, whose only first appeared, which was sufficient to consume in a spectacular way its rupture with its former guards.  

Root took from Molière one of her best actresses, Of the Park, to offer to him the title role of its Andromaque (1667), created with a success resounding on on November 17th, 1667 at the queen, in front of the king, and under the protection of Madam (Henriette of England), to whom it part is dedicated. The part is characteristic of the work of Root by the modification of a known narrative screen - here Andromaque d' Euripide - so that the description of unhappy passions makes it possible to reach with paroxysm in the tragic outcome. Thus Racine it “was obliged to make live Astyanax a little more than he did not live”, but, writes he in his second foreword at piece-rates, “I doubt that the tears of Andromaque had made on the spirit of my spectators the impression that they made there, if they had run for another son that which it had of Hector”. The intrigue of Andromaque very whole is suspended on the decision of heroin, since one almost does not find an action in the part, which in fact its innovation; it is also what caused the quarrel which opposed its admirors to its detractors. Among the latter, an actor named Subligny composed the Insane Quarrel, comedy-lampoon against Racine, which was played in Molière in November 1668.  

Root composed then its only comedy, the Litigants (1668), imitated of Aristophane, whose foreword scratches the design and comic creations of Molière. With Britannicus - first “Roman” tragedy (1669) -, it defied Corneille on one of her grounds of predilection, that of the political dramaturgy drawn from the history of Rome. The part was very criticized for freedoms which the author took with the history, and Root, believer that Corneille was at the origin of these criticisms, composed against his rival a polemical foreword for the first edition, that it softens however in the posterior editions, on the council of Boileau.  

Champmeslé, news interprets liked of the poet since the death of Park in 1668, held the main role in the following tragedy, Bérénice (1670), reduced unhappy love affair dedicated to Colbert and created at the court. It is in its foreword, which is a kind of proclamation, that Racine defines the basic principle of the tragic spring: “It is not a need which there is blood and deaths in a tragedy; it is enough that the action is large, that the actors are heroic, that passions are excited there, and that very feels there this majestic sadness which makes all the pleasure of the tragedy. (...) There is only the probable one which touches in the tragedy.” With criticisms which reproached him for having based its part on no intrigue, an complete absence of action, it retorted: “There are some who think that this simplicity is a mark of little invention. They do not think that on the contrary all the invention consists in doing something of nothing (...).”  

In 1671, Racine wrote Bajazet (created in January 1672), a contemporary tragedy drawn from a “adventure arrived in the Seraglio”. The fame of Root from now on was sufficiently established so that it could do without guards, therefore of dedication. Always in the same vein, Mithridate (1672, played in January 1673) links the Roman and Eastern inspiration, the love and the policy. In its foreword, Racine insists then on another of the elements of its dramatic technique: “One can take too much precaution nothing to put on the theater which is not very necessary.”  

Then it returns to the Greek tragedy, in tribute to Euripide, with Iphigénie in Aulide, which is created in Versailles on on August 18th, 1674. The part is most fertile in events of all the theater racinien; by its meticulous construction, she manages to make probable a dramatic mythological episode, and an amazing psychological tension traverses all the part, through only one question: the necessary sacrifice of Iphigénie will it take place? It is all the art of Root to find a outcome from which it eliminated any divine intervention and which satisfies the heroic destinies however with the characters.  

Soon a cabal protested against its following part, Phèdre (1677): one claimed to prefer Phèdre and Hippolyte to him, of Pradon, part played a few days only after the exit of Phèdre, with the Guénégaud hotel - undoubtedly Pradon it had profited from complicities to then obtain the text of the part of Root in repetition with the hotel of Burgundy and to compose with haste its own part. The first representations turned to the advantage of Pradon, but soon, on the intervention of the Large Cop in particular and after a vigorous exchange of lampoons and insults between the two parties, the part of Root was essential. However, this battle, it seems, impressed Racine unfavourably.  

Root Maria in 1677 with Catherine de Romanet, of which it will have seven children. Thanks to influential protections (Cop, Conti, the marshal of Luxembourg), it accepted the same year, with Boileau, the load of royal historiographer. It consequently carried out a perfect career of courtier, while approaching its former Masters Jansenists, however in disgrace - it is Boileau which is at the origin of the reconciliation of Root and Large Arnauld. Protected from the court which grants its favor to him - in 1690, it will be named ordinary gentleman of the king -, it gave up the dramatic career then; was this the effect of the relative failure of Phèdre, the feeling to have carried out by the theater a social rise for which it was necessary for him from now on to sacrifice its art, or rather a return to the ideas Jansenists which had impregnated its first years?  

In any case, devoted from now on to the only glory of Louis XIV and fixed at the court, it will return episodically to the scene only at the remote days of a pious old age while composing at the request of Mrs. de Maintenon for the young girls of Saint-Cyr military school, its protected, two biblical tragedies with choruses: Esther, represented for the first time at Saint-Cyr military school on on January 26th, 1689, which met a great success society man, and Athalie (1691), also created in Saint-Cyr military school, in a greater discretion but with not less success than Esther. These two last works are very different from the other parts of Root, passion not playing there the crucial role which it holds elsewhere.  

Increasingly concerned of piety and devotion, Racine published religious poems, of which spiritual (1694), translated Cantiques Writings and epistles of Paul saint. Its work understands also a Precis of the campaigns of Louis XIV (1684), odes and a Summary of the history of Port-Royal (compound around 1698 and published in 1767). It died out on on April 21st, 1699, after sixty years of a life of which hardly more than one decade will have been enough to crown it larger poet of its century.

Sources of the inspiration

Root turned to the tragic theater, of which it finds the true accents inspired of the Greek originals, but polished by the graces of the fashionable courteousness and refined by the reflection of the novelists and the moralists of his time on the torments of the unhappy love affair.  

Triumph of Andromaque (1667) to the cabal which Phèdre causes run out ten years, punctuated of creations and regular successes, passions and burning conflicts, poetic successes and esthetic reflections.  

Mythology and history
Thébaïde and Alexandre the Large one (1665) had outlined an inflection towards a tragic art drawn with the ancient sources, drawing all its effect of a superb and sparing simplicity, and all its force of a vibrating meditation on the ambitions and passions of the heart. This tendency opens out in the funeral and stormy lyricism of Andromaque, where confront themselves, on a bottom of legend borrowed from the Homeric cycle, on a side, the noble one and pathetic fidelity of the widow of Hector towards his late husband and his threatened son, and, other, passions devastators which agitate the cursed children of the heroes of Iliade between-tearing in an infernal round of not shared loves, source of jealousies and fatal spites.  

Other works borrowed from Greek mythology, Iphigénie in Aulide (1674) then Phèdre will oppose in the same way the pure moving heroin images, Iphigénie or Aricie, with the torn and fatal heat of hearts tormented by the jealous desire. The evil will of the gods of mythology is used to with it of prestigious alibi and expression illustrated to indicate the nests of vipers getting a move on with the subsoil of these tortured hearts and violent one.

The three tragedies inspired of the Roman history, Britannicus (1669), Bérénice (1670) and Mithridate (1673), associate on the expensive mode to Corneille a set of themes and a spring policies, even heroic, with these emotional refinements of cruelty. But at Racine the stakes of the political power are essentially controlled to the stakes of the psychological and sensual power: confusion between the two forms of ambition plays the part of ancient Fate there. Even the three protagonists of Bérénice, if noble and generous they are, are propelled by the cruel requirements of the Empire and their glory towards a shared misfortune which the ultimate sigh (triple summarizes “Alas! ”) on which this painful elegy is concluded, spurred and tended by the dramatic dynamics of the false hopes and true disillusions.  

The East
This esthetics of cruelty that Mithridate achieved by marrying the rigor of Roman manners to refinements of Asia Mineure, Bajazet had declined about it one year earlier the register, by boldly drawing its subject in the fashion of the novels of adventures in Turkish country. It was besides there to chant the same despaired songs, choked by the insuperable walls of the seraglio, governed remotely by a sultan absent and present at the same time, hidden god and omnipotent demon. This door - closed doesn't it offer the emblem of the human condition according to Racine, with its illusions, its limits, its furies and its despair?