Racine : Jean Baptiste (1639-99), French dramatist & poet, a master of tragedy.
... quite agree. How-ever, they are not likely to wrangle over Hugo so much as over another poet who is their darling. They will jump up and protest: "What about Racine, the divine Racine?" And if there were a Frenchman here to see me look at Racine with unworshipping eyes, I might be in danger of savate. Do you know of savate? It is French boxing, in which feet and head are used as well as fists. It... provoked the fight by sneezing at the name of Racine. It is not likely, for Sullivan may not have been aware that a dramatic poet named Racine existed or perhaps even that a dramatic poet like Shakespeare existed. But Frenchmen are more conscious of their own literature . than Englishmen and it would be risky to be lacking in sovereign respect for Racine in front of any son of Ia belle France. Since... and myself. Frenchman: "Mais vous avez oublie notre cher Racine! C'est intolerable. Myself: "Excusez-moi, Monsieur — je n'ai pas oublie votre Racine, je l'ai ignore." Frenchman: "Ignore? Sacre nom de Dieu! Ma foi! Zut alors!" Myself: "Mais permettez-moi, mon ami, d'expliquer un peu ma petite insolence. Vous parlez de Racine. Oui, il y a beau-coup de racines, mais une plante doit avoir ...
... great creator, even though he has an art of his own, especially an art of dramatic architecture and copious ornament; but his work is far from being always perfect. In Racine, on the other hand, there is an unfailing perfection; Racine is the complete poetic artist. But if comparisons are to be made, Shakespeare's must surely be pronounced to be the greater poetry, greater in the vastness of its range... richness of his inspiration, in his world-view, in the peaks to which he rises and the depths which he plumbs—even though he sinks to flatnesses which Racine would have abhorred—and generally a glory of God's making which is marvellous and unique. Racine has his heights and depths and widenesses, but nothing like this; he has not in him the poetic superman, he does not touch the superhuman level of creation... greater, though not more perfect than many of those which you have put side by side with it. And this I say on the same principle as the comparison between Shakespeare and Racine: according to the principle of art for art's sake Racine ought to be pronounced a poet superior to Shakespeare because of his consistent and impeccable flawlessness of word and rhythm, but on the contrary Shakespeare is universally ...
... that their language and literature have been formed and enriched. Corneille, Racine, Molière, La Fontaine (or up the stream to Rabelais) – they are a goodly company; among these whom to exclude and whom to include? And yet here too, perhaps only one can be taken as France's representative spirit. He can be only Racine. Racine embodies in himself, as no other does so completely, the special characteristic... line, as it were, of the French language and literature, as if it was an acquired capacity, the sign of a growth towards a greater possibility – but in regard to the other it may be said that what Racine is the French language and literature; their inherent quality is a spontaneous formation out of the inner soul of this great creator. These thoughts about the genius of French occurred to me because... so too is Tagore the paramount and versatile poetic genius of Bengal who made the Bengali language transcend its parochial character. I think that Tagore has in many ways the title and position of a Racine amongst us. There is a special quality, a music and rhythm, a fine sensibility of the inner soul of Bengal. Its uniqueness is in its heart; a sweet ecstasy, an intoxicating magic which Chandidas was ...
... motives at their best "give us, in Corneille, "a strong nobility of character", 37 a pulsing and powerful rhetoric and, in Racine, "a fine grace of poetic sentiment", 38 a clear controlled poignancy. Racine is also one of the world's master artists in expression, comparable in his own way with Virgil and Milton, a much lesser way... tombe des Etoiles - This shadowy light that falls here from the stars. (K.D.S.) Page 33 Racine commands some remarkable effects, incantatory yet the gentlest: Dans 1'orient desert quel devient mon ennui. In the desert orient how my weariness grew... subjective in Dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon, intensely objective in Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves. Racine is well-known for achieving with the most ordinary vocabulary, plainly set forth, a moving exquisiteness for which the Romantics and even other Classical writers need more ...
... universe of discourse we may note Sri Aurobindo's rating Shakespeare much higher than Racine in spite of the Frenchman's uniform perfection of art and the Englishman's repeated scoriae or, to put it more expressively, his sun-spots. Shakespeare has a height or a depth of vision, a magnificence or a mystery of word which Racine, for all his beautiful polish and finish, rarely, if at all, equals. Sri ...
... And then there is Keats, whose Hyperion compelled even the sneering Byron to forget his usual condescending attitude towards "Johnny" and confess that nothing grander had been seen since Aeschylus. Racine, too, cannot be left out—can he? Voltaire adored him, Voltaire who called Shakespeare a drunken barbarian. Finally, what of Wordsworth, whose Immortality Ode was hailed by Mark Pattison as the ne plus... universe—it was the front bench or benches you asked for. By others I meant poets like Lucretius, Euripides, Calderon, Corneille, Hugo. Euripides ( Medea, Bacchae and other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the first ranks. If you want only the very greatest, none of these can enter—only Vyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside Valmiki, Sophocles beside Aeschylus ...
... — a fine music of language making suggestions that do not need to convey anything even emotionally important, leave aside anything intellectually significant. Thus they would relish the line from Racine which used to enchant Marcel Proust: La fille de Minos et de Pasiphae. (The daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, (I think they would equally savour a line I might make about the sister of a... upon our understanding. What does our understanding discover? As Middleton Murry tells us, we get a sense of the exotic, the out-of-the-way, the rich and rare — an exoticism soft and languorous in the Racine-line, martial and clangorous in the Milton-verses. A distinguishable sensation or perception is almost all we have. But if we are after such an effect in "pure poetry" we should go beyond even the ...
... depend for its absolute effect on the presence of any idea, the presence of even any recognisable mystical idea. What idea worth mentioning, at least what markable mystical idea, is in that line of Racine which we have already cited as a favourite of Proust's and which is also dear to Bremond: Page 331 La fille de Minos et de Pasiphae And yet, according to Bremond, it casts a spell... passing although not only the idea but the words as well remained identical. Bremond would not go to the extreme of saying that "pure poetry" is devoid of even the perceptional content found in the Racine phrase — the mental observation of a certain legendary child-parent relation. What he does urge is that the idea-factor can be reduced almost to the vanishing point without the poetry suffering in ...
... poetry can exist without the wings of the imagination in the word. Both may be controlled, both may be let loose - but they must be present. In the Greeks and Romans, in Dante and Milton, Corneille and Racine, they are controlled, though often very intense - and the controlling actually adds at times to the effect of the intensity. In the Elizabethan Romantics they are mostly let loose, though even in the... become so in less powerful hands. The result is that their poetry lacks that element of strict prolonged thought which gives an additional strength not merely to the great Greeks but to such writers as Racine and Goethe, whose strictly poetical power owes a great deal to the hard thought which has preceded composition and is indeed transcended in the poetry, but none the less is invisibly present and powerful ...
... of discourse we may note Sri Aurobindo's rating Shakespeare much higher than Racine in spite of the Frenchman's uniform perfection of art and the Englishman's repeated scoriae or, to put it more expressively, his sun-spots. Shakespeare has a height or a depth of vision, a magnificence or a mystery of word which Racine, for all his beautiful polish and finish, rarely, if at all, equals. Page ...
... an individualistic creation, even there one single Name can be pointed out as the life and soul, the very cream of the characteristic poetic genius of the nation. I am, of course, referring to Racine, Racine who, in spite of Moliere and Corneille and Hugo, stands as the most representative French poet, the embodiment of French resthesis par excellence. Such a great name is Rabindranath Tagore ...
... glorified will power and the striving for perfection. Corneille was still writing when Louis XIV began his personal reign, but he was soon eclipsed by. his brilliant younger contemporary, Jean Racine (1639-99). Racine wrote more realistically about human beings in the grip of violent and sometimes coarse passions, bringing French tragedy to its highest point of perfection in the years between 1667 and 1677 ...
... more than half a century the whole of Europe has not been able to produce a single poet of even secondary magnificence. One no longer looks for Shakespeare or Dante to return, but even Wordsworth or Racine have also become impossible. Hugo's flawed opulence, Whitman's formless plenty, Tennyson's sugared emptiness seem to have been the last poetic speech of modern Europe. If poetical genius appears, it ...
... and ego in abeyance, the perfect instrument of the Daemon. No harm if he did not blot out a thousand words: he was no artist, he was a creator. Others might be greater as artists, one might recall Racine; greater in his range, the poet of the Mahabharata, for instance; Milton a greater music-maker; but none approaches Shakespeare in word-magic. The "easily-come" word rather than the play was the ...
... to a difficulty in entering into the finer spirit and subtleties of a foreign language. It is difficult for a Frenchman to get a proper appreciation of Keats or Shelley or for an Englishman to judge Racine, for this reason. But a Frenchman like Maurois who knows English as an English- man knows it, can get the full estimation of a poet like Shelley all right. These variations must be allowed for; the ...
... literally to its classification of the three artists concerned or to its ascription to them of the qualities defined. The Classicism of the Graeco-Roman poets as well as of Dante and Milton, Corneille and Racine, is the art Ellis attributes to Ristori. The Elizabethans - in one mode Marlowe Page 183 and his fellow-dramatists, in the other Spenser and, in both, Shakespeare - practise what he ...
... plays which will live their time on the stage and in the library; they are not, by themselves, sufficient for great dramatic creation. Something else is needed for that, which we get in Shakespeare, in Racine, Corneille and Molière, in Calderón, in the great Greeks, in the leading Sanskrit dramatists; but these other Elizabethans show themselves in the bulk of their work to be rather powerful writers and ...
... the highest heights of speech, yet it has ideas and a strong or delicate power, a true nobility of character in Corneille, a fine grace of poetic sentiment and a supreme delicacy and fine passion in Racine. But the verse of these pseudo-Augustan writers does not call in these greater gifts: it is occupied with expressing thought, but its thought has most often little or none of the greater values. This ...
... Rambha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie, Lolita, Lavonya and Tillottama... It is possible to be intoxicated with such Melopoeia, just as Marcel Proust could never tire of that enchantment from Racine: La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë. (The daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë.) But we do not have here the finest that poetry can offer in this genre, lacking as it does what Rossetti ...
... alibi because: "Juste à cette heure-là je me trouvais chez un marchand de vin de la Rue de Tracy et je discutais avec un camarade au sujet de la mère de Britannicus dans la tragédie de Racine." This discussion at a wine-merchant's on a personnage out of a classic drama in verse was proved to have lasted three-quarters of an hour. "No doubt," remarks Lucas, "burglars in England ...
... taken in a mass, one can't justify the comparison? SRI AUROBINDO: I didn't speak about mass. Villon is considered a great poet in France and certainly he is the greatest that preceded Corneille and Racine. NIRODBARAN: But I thought you said that his poems taken singly are as great as those of any other poet. SRI AUROBINDO: I didn't put it in that way, but that is the impression he creates. (After ...
... Pragmatism, 326 Prithwiraj, 90 Prometheus, 234 Proteus, 274 Prussia, 88 Puranas, the, 71 Pythagoras, 150,211,219 QUANTUM MECHANICS, 316 RACINE, 197 Raghus, the, 55 Ramayana, the, 217 Ramdas, 396 Raphael, 176-8 Red Cross, 104 Reichenbach, Hans, 315 -Atom .& Cosmos, 315n Relativity ...
... the, 80,213 Plato, 34, 120, 134, 178 Plotinus, 34, 40 Pondicherry, 17 Pradyurnana,44,207 Prudhomme, Sully, 320 Puranas , the, 46 Pyramid, the, 200 Pythagoras, 180 RACINE, 210 Raghus, the, 214 Rakshasas, 46 Rama, 58 Ramakrishna, 116, 128, 141, 160, 243, 247,383 Raphael, 210 Ravana, 58 Ravel, 427 Red Sea, 324 Ribhus, the, 208 Rome, 199,421 ...
... Mahakali. Virgil or Petrarch, Shelley or our Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, Love—Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspiration seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the ...
... transparent, less decorating and ambulating. There is in Bankim what is called decorum, restraint, stability and clarity, qualities of the classics; he reminds us of the French language – the French of Racine and Voltaire. In Rabindranath's nature and atmosphere we find the blossoming heart of the Romantics. That is why the manner of his expression is not so much simple arid straight as it is skillful and ...
... genius of the Latin is replete with intuition and that of the Celtic, the Slav, the Teuton with inspiration. If Shakespeare, Ibsen and Dostoevsky belong to the latter category, Virgil, Petrarch and Racine represent the former. Intuition and inspiration do not limit themselves, however, to particular countries or races, but the two appear in all ideological schools and even through social customs ...
... of Pope: We call our fathers fools so wise we grow, Our wiser sons no doubt will call us so. Page 84 In French, we may take as specimens, in the pathetic voice of the great Racine: Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour blessée Vous mourûtes au bord où vous fûtes laissée? (Ariane, my sister, what love it was that struck you and left you dying on the shores of the sea ...
... listening to the Mother that I understood how words combined with music and rhythm in order to bring out the actual meaning of the poem. In this French class, the Mother read out from works of Molière, Racine, Corneille, Anatole France. She enjoyed reading Révolte des Anges by Anatole France and Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. She also read Andromaque , Le Cid , Les Femmes Savantes and other ...
... literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. Shakespeare in this as in other dramatic gifts is splendidly & unapproachably first or at least only equalled in depth though not in range by Valmekie; Racine has the same gift within his limits & Kalidasa without limits, though in this as in other respects he has not Shakespeare's prodigal abundance and puissant variety. Other names I do not remember. There ...
... to a difficulty in entering into the finer spirit and subtleties of a foreign language. It is difficult for a Frenchman to get a proper appreciation of Keats or Shelley or for an Englishman to judge Racine,—for this reason. But a Frenchman like Maurois who knows English as an Englishman knows it, can get the full intuition of a poet like Shelley well enough. These variations must be allowed for; the ...
... logical intellect and systematised sentiment. The form of poetry lay as well under the shadow of the mechanistic philosophy. Corresponding to the theorems of physics, there were the geometrical plays of Racine and the balanced clicking couplets of Pope. Whitehead points out that Romanticism refused to look on the world as mechanism and saw it as organism: the Romantic poet perceives, in Edmund Wilson's ...
... can exist without the wings of the imagination in the word. Both may be controlled, both may be let loose - but they must be present. In the Greeks and Ro- mans, in Dante and Milton, Corneille and Racine, they are controlled, though often very intense - and the controlling actually adds at times to the effect of the intensity. In the Elizabethan Romantics they are mostly let loose, though even in the ...
... Prajna 99 pralaya 81 Page 376 prānāyāma 116 prayer 76 progress 312 psychic being 28 opening through Savitri 286 R Racine 206 Ramayana 60,140,182, 327 Reynolds, Barbara 210 Rig-veda 97,141,207,298 Rilke 154 Rishis 1,4,344 Ritam 43 Roman Lucretius 161 S S samadhi 29 samskāras ...
... crucial difference is that true pantheism posits a total unity within which personal beings 1. Lettres lntimes..., p. 304: "C'est toute la question du vrai pantheisme qui git la dans sa racine." 2.Ibid., p. 295: "Tout le 'jeu' consiste a reconnaifre (montrer) qu'il ne saurait y avoir d'unification vraie hors d'une fusion PERSONNALISANTE 3.Ibid., p. 269: "Ou bien le phenomene ...
... of prose, i.e., its measure and rhythm will be of poetry, but the tone will Page 134 be of prose. The French Alexandrine; the high order of twelve-line poetry of Corneille and Racine – if it is read as poetry should be, it would sound totally dry and monotonous, but if despite pause and rhyme, it is read like prose, it would reveal its beauty. Because the noted actress Rachel ...
... or our Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, Love – Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship Page 209 of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspirations seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and ...
... Mother herself." "You also taught French to Nolinida and Amritada, didn't you?" "Who told you that?" "Everybody knows about it. Not only that, the first books that they read were the works of Racine and Molière!" Sri Aurobindo replied, "They were already so learned that I could hardly start by teaching them the conjugations of verbs. I believed that once they had learned to love the beauty ...
... its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work. A soul expressing the eternal spirit of Truth and Beauty through some of the infinite variations of beauty, with the word ...
... Shelley's Cenci is a remarkable feat of dramatic construction and poetic imagination, but it has no organic life like the work of the Elizabethans or the Greeks or like such dramas as the Cid or Racine's tragedies. 7 February 1935 With regard to Keats, is it not rather difficult to deny a great poet a possibility when his whole ambition is set towards acquiring it? If we didn't have Hyperion ...
... t'attendais, pour refermer sur toi mes bras de rêve avant la nuit. As-tu un vœu à formuler? LUI O arbre, grand Androgyne sacré, initie-moi à ton mystére. ARBRE Vois, mes racines plangent jusqu'à la source de la vie. Celui qui petit y boire devient immortel. Vois! mes ramures plangent dans l'infini; je suis l'espace entire que remplit Ie soleil. En moi ...
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