Emmanuel Macron as Rodrigue, Jean-Luc Mélenchon as Matamore, Eric Zemmour as a Racinian who tries to convert himself into a Cornelian figure… In the tasty In search of the lost hero (Fayard), Christophe Barbier unites his two passions, theater and politics. The editorial director of Maverick analyzes French history and current presidential events through the prism of the duel between Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, the founder, according to him, of French divisions. On the one hand, a hero eager for conquest, flamboyant and free, on the other an introspective hero, fragile and subject to forces beyond him. Which side are our politicians leaning towards? Maintenance.
L’Express: Some divide the world between Beatles and Stones. You are Corneille against Racine…
Christopher Barbier: It is a flaw that creates a schism in the history of France in several areas. On the political level, the cleavage between Corneille and Racine marks the transition from feudal knightly power to an absolutist central state. On the religious level, around 1669-1670, the Jansenists prevail morally and spiritually. It is not for nothing that we venerate Blaise Pascal today. Now, Racine was trained by the Jansenists, he is a product of Port-Royal.
Finally, on a purely literary and theatrical level, Racine inaugurates an introspective literature, whiny will say the severe ones, lucid will answer the laudators, psychoanalytic one would say today. The “me” occupies a central place. It’s a tradition that gives Proust just like autofiction. Opposite, Corneille, it is the literature of cape and dagger, of travels, of conquest, which will lead for example to Alexandre Dumas.
How does November 1670, marked by the duel of the Bérénices, represent the turning point in this clash of generations?
Within a few days, Racine and Corneille presented plays on the same subject in Paris: Bérénice. Consider the story of the Roman emperor Titus who repudiates his fiancée for political reasons. And there, Racine, 31, beats Corneille, 64, hands down. What is at stake in this battle of the Bérénices is not a simple episode of the French literary epic, it is not only the passing of the baton between two genius versifiers, it is a political earthquake. It is really the passage from the first 17th century, hooked on the heroic Middle Ages and the 16th century of the war of religions, to a second 17th century, more sensitive and delicate. The theater is then the dominant medium, where political ideas are opposed.
“The Cornelian hero fights an external enemy, the Racinian hero fights himself”, you write…
The Cornelian hero has territories to conquer, enemies to defeat, women to seduce. He is a hero in the service of a sovereign or a higher cause. The Racinian hero questions himself. Its purpose is not to act and decide, but on the contrary not to act and not to decide, because in any case everything is already written.
Another difference: the relationship to time. Cornelian time is a linear and dynamic time, there is a before, a during and an after. Racinian time is cyclical and suspended. The end point is the starting point. Racine tells a story where nothing happens. From the start, we know for example that Bérénice cannot stay with Titus. What captivates the audience is not the development of the plot, but the internal maze. In Andromache, according to the brilliant formula, “Orestes loves Hermione who loves Pyrrhus who loves Andromache who loves Hector… who is dead”. But in the end, there is no progress.
“Chirac is a Racinian soul in a Cornelian body”
You remember that De Gaulle was an absolute Cornelian…
The General knew passages from Corneille by heart. In his library at La Boisserie, he had rare editions. At the end of the first volume of his Memories of Hopede Gaulle even quotes Cinna. He is deeply Cornelian, even more so than Corneille himself. De Gaulle is a man inspired by the chivalrous Middle Ages. It is not for nothing that he was given the nickname “Connétable”.
Hence the surprising choice to have taken as Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, who is a pure Racinian. When he publishes his Anthology of French poetry, in 1961, Pompidou selected excerpts from four plays by Corneille out of thirty-three written by the Rouennais, against seven plays by Racine, out of twelve written by the Milonais. He even gives Racine first place, alongside Baudelaire, among his favorite poets. After the defeat of June 1940, when he was back in his post as hypokhâgne teacher at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, the future Prime Minister of France wrote a presentation of Britannicus. It is the very admission of a deeply Racinian soul, where a Cornelian like De Gaulle drives out the German occupier like Rodrigue pushes back the Moorish assailant.
Of Jacques Chirac, you say that he is a Racinian hidden under Cornelian appearances…
Chirac is Cornelian by his physique and his style. He is a conqueror. The capture of the town hall of Paris is the cid. But as soon as we scratch a little, and look at the intimate man, we discover a Racinian. He is a being undermined by his daughter’s illness, which we never talk about, by love stories that rival politics, like the one with Jacqueline Chabridon, which forces him to choose between private happiness or power. Chirac is a Racinian soul in a Cornelian body. His taste for Russian poetry, Japanese haikai or primitive arts are meditative references, of Racinian obedience.
Giscard d’Estaing or François Hollande do not fit into this reading grid…
There is nothing literary or poetic in VGE’s career. It is enough to read his novels to be convinced of this. He is a polytechnician.
As for Hollande, we are more at Eugène Labiche, with a zest of Henry Monnier. It’s Monsieur Perrichon in Monsieur Prud’homme’s clothes. Wanting to embody a “normal president”, he turned his back on the figure of the hero, to embrace the character of the petty bourgeois. It has both likable and mediocre sides. What will we remember of him? The scooter, Julie Gayet and Valérie Trierweiler, a domestic vaudeville. Only the attacks and the Cornelian breath of this national tragedy finally hoisted it above itself.
“Zemmour a dark character”
Of Emmanuel Macron, you say that he is a Cornelian hero, but that his wife Brigitte brings back to Racine. Why ?
Initially, Macron sold us the cid, and the French loved it. Everything was there: the youth of the hero, barely 39 years old; his charisma of both angel and warrior; his brazen will and lightning energy; the fulgurance of the epic; the intoxication of a people that amazes the world and is astonished by its own audacity. But Brigitte Macron also brings her to Racine. Phèdre’s passionate tragedy for her husband’s son has become emblematic of the liaisons maintained by women with men much younger than them. Except that Brigitte is a Phèdre of today, more complex and above all able to live her love with Hippolyte without being destroyed by the system and conveniences.
Eric Zemmour?
Zemmour is Racinian in his pessimism, in the sense that he has long believed that everything would already be screwed up. Racine’s tragedies are thus symphonies of collapse. When he was a polemicist, Zemmour liked nothing more than to taunt the cheap Rodrigue who claimed to be able to drive out the Moors. For him, the white man would be disappearing, while being devirilized by women.
But since he got involved in politics, Zemmour wants to make believe that a change is still possible. Sarah Knafo has dressed him up as a Cornelian, because Cassandres of the Philippe Séguin type do not win an election. The name of Zemmour’s party, Reconquest, like the “Reconquista” of Spain by Christians against Muslims, is also evocative. He wants to replay for us the Cid chasing the migrants.
You were the first to debate with him on television. Did you imagine this fate?
No really not. He was in Cassandra’s posture. I am thus surprised that some of the French believe that Zemmour could be a Cid for them, when he has neither the physique nor the charisma. Le Cid is a sunny, seductive and happy character. Zemmour is a dark character.
“Mélenchon, it’s ‘hold me back, otherwise I’m going to make a mess'”
You compare Jean-Luc Mélenchon to the Matamore of “L’Illusion comique”…
It is an essential play in history, because it is the first to use the process of theater within theatre. Matamore keeps bragging about victories he didn’t win and promising havoc that doesn’t come. It’s “Hold me back, otherwise I’m going to make a mess”. Such is Mélenchon, for example very obsequious with the President of the Republic when he meets him on the Old Port of Marseille, on September 7, 2018, while, a few hours earlier, he accused him of being “the greatest xenophobic”. Behind the ridicule of Matamore, there is still a real talented tribune.
Hidalgo is Iphigenia…
Hidalgo-Iphigénie is the sacrifice for whom we don’t even have pity, so pale is this character. Just as Agamemnon must immolate his daughter so that the wind blows and allows the Greeks to sail towards Troy, it seems that the PS, in 2022, needs to offer the mayor of Paris as a sacrifice…
You yourself are pro-Corneille. Why ?
I am 100% Cornelian in my tastes. My fantasy would be to be a Rodrigue or a Horace. My theater practice began with Cyrano, which is a 19th century resurrection of Corneille. In the history of France, I like periods with romance and grandeur. In literature, Proust, a pure Racinian, bores me deeply. It’s very beautiful, but this sentimentality tires me. I recognize that in France, we need Racine as well as Corneille. But today, I don’t see a real Cornelian hero, nor a desire for that among the French. We are no doubt too old a country, but at the same time, we have too much national pride to give ourselves over completely to racism.
With the war in Ukraine, hasn’t the era become Cornelian again?
Unquestionably. Zelensky is a modern Cid, whose tweets and videos serve as a sword and stanzas. But the fear of war alone cannot make our country Cornelian. It also requires the emergence of a hero, with a vision, “a certain idea of France”. Will Macron II know how to be this hero? Response after April 24…
In search of the lost heroby Christophe Barbier (Fayard, 270 p., €19).