Sublime Bérénice
Racine, in the preface to Bérénice, invents a new tragic emotion: sadness, which replaces Aristotelian pity. According to Georges Forestier, the selfishness of sadness is opposed to the altruism of compassion, and confirms this drift from tragedy to lyricism that has often been blamed on this play....
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institut du Monde Anglophone
2019-02-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/3507 |
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| Summary: | Racine, in the preface to Bérénice, invents a new tragic emotion: sadness, which replaces Aristotelian pity. According to Georges Forestier, the selfishness of sadness is opposed to the altruism of compassion, and confirms this drift from tragedy to lyricism that has often been blamed on this play. In this contribution, we propose to reassess this sadness, which has been associated for too long with the so-called elegiac dimension of Berenice. In fact, the playwright’s insistence on this feeling invites us to read the play as a journey of conversion from one type of sadness to another. Saint Paul distinguishes between, on the one hand, mortal and diabolical sadness and, on the other hand, holy sadness that gives life: we see Berenice, at first consumed by fear and self-love, rising to this purified form of sadness on which the tragedy ends. It is the irruption of grace, sublime and “merveilleuse”, that brings about this metamorphosis and makes Berenice capable of the supreme sacrifice of separation. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |