Racine 29 



best, Hippolytus' attachment for Aricie may be a motive as re- 

 gards Phedre, who is sensitive in just that particular spot ; but 

 it is no term in his own sequence of dramatic liabihties, his to 

 BlaXXrjXa, as Aristotle would call it,^*^ for it does not appear 

 that there is any mesh, in the ancient sense, between his fate and 

 his tenderness for the daughter of a hostile house. This is not 

 the issue ; and he is never called to accoimt on this score. On the 

 contrary, so far has Racine missed the point, that this very senti- 

 ment for another woman — any woman would do — which Racine 

 imputes to him, does, as a matter of fact, clear him altogether of 

 the charge on which he should by rights be sentenced and actu- 

 ally is sentenced in the original version. The Hippolytus of 

 Racine has already paid his tribute to Venus and no longer stands 

 within her danger. Whether he is guilty of filial impiety on the 

 score of Aricie's ancestry and descent is another question than 

 the one Racine has discussed. His injection of such a motive 

 into his preface is simply misleading. As things are, the appre- 

 hension of Hippolytus by the fatal snare is fortuitous and unin- 

 telligible.^^ In a word, Hippolytus is not responsible for the 

 plight in which he finds himself. As a result his tragedy is har- 

 rowing but not edifying. This is not to say that his character or 

 his conduct is without its interest or its lesson, but merely that 

 the drama lacks the severe determinism which Euripides has 

 known how to imipart to this one subject at least. 



But the Phedre, it may be objected, is not Hippolytus' tragedy 

 at all ; and its author has given us to understand as much by the 

 change of title. Granted. Racine's theatre is for the most part 

 a tragedie dcs femfnes ; and it is not Phedre which is the excep- 

 tion. But this concession only makes the predicament worse. 

 With Phedre in the leading role it is without a problem, as with 

 Hippolytus in that part it is without a solution. I am still trying 

 to occupy the Greek point of view. That I myself am no aesthete 

 or aesthetician must be abundantly evident by this time ; a prob- 

 lem has no terrors for me — nor yet a thesis or a theme. I am 



^° Poetics, IX, II. 



31 Compare Arnauld's ejaculation, "Mais pourpoui a-t-:l fait Hippolytus 

 amoureux?" Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, t. VI, p. 130. 



201 



