Racine: Records and References

RACINE: RECORDS AND REFERENCES 179 Racine: Records and References DAVID M. HAYNE Nouveau Corpus racinianum: recueil-inventaire des textes et documellts du XVW' siecie COnCernallt Jeall Racine Edition cumulative par Raymond Picard Paris: Eds du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 1976. 527. 145 F The late Raymond Picard is chiefly remembered for his definitive biography La Carriere de Jean Racine (1956). during the writing of which he assembled and published all known seventeenth-century references to the dramatist, thus providing Racine scholars with two invaluable tools in the same year. The idea of creating a corpus ofcontemporary textsconcemed with a single author or subject, long familiar to classical scholars, was an innovation in seventeenth-century French studies; it has since given rise to similar compilations for Moliere (1965), Corneille (1972), and La Fontaine (1973). As Picard himself had foreseen in 1956, the first Corpus racinianum was soon found to be incomplete, and additions appeared in 1961, 1963, and 1966. The present edition incorporates these supplements, and adds more than 250 items discovered since their publication. The Nouveau Corpus is thus the record of thirty years ofRacine research by Picard. It is also his last published work: shortly after submitting the manuscript for publication, he died, on 5 September 1975. In preparing the new edition Picard has gleaned in the corners of many fields: printed books, manuscripts, notarial records, public archives, minutesoflearned academies, memoirs, correspondences, and even literary publications in other languages, particularly English. The texts carried over from the first edition have been corrected by collation with the originals, and some have been more precisely dated. The importance of dating is stressed in the new preface; faithful to the tenets of literary history in opposition to the 'imposture' of the French 'new criticism,' Picard insists upon the objectivity and irreversibility of a rigorously chronological presentation of documents, devoid of personal comment or interpretation . The Nouveau Corpus is thus an exhaustive inventory of all references to Racine or to his immediate family made between 28 June 1615 (his father's baptism) and 1734 {testimony of an eye-witness thirty-five years after Racine's death)1 with the vast majority originating during the years of the poet's own lifetime, 1639- 99. Most extracts are given in extenso, but those that are excessively long or are readily available elsewhere are merely cited. Printed books are dated by the acheve d'imprimer, periodicals by their date of publication. The personal and often fanciful spelling of the period is conSistently modernized. With the Nouveau Corpus at hand, students of Racine are now able to consult for themselves the texts and documents concerning every event of the poet's life: his first verse compositions, his quarrel with his old masters at Port-Royal, the reception of each of his plays, his activities in the Academie fran~aise, the 180 PATRICIA BRUCKMANN controversies surrounding his Phedre or his appointment as royal historiographer , his withdrawal from the theatre, his implication in the scandal of the death of the actress Du Pare, his friendship with Boileau, his financial affairs, or his last illness. In reading the thousands of extracts presented in this admirably organized volume one is filled with a deep sense of gratitude to the unselfish scholar who has thus placed at the disposal of all readers of Racine the documentation he himself unearthed and utilized in his own studies. Unfortunately, one cannot harbour the same feelings towards whoever prepared the Index nom;lI"'" of the Corpus, which fails to give ready access to the riches of the magnificent volume it concludes. Many surnames are entered without first names, page references are omitted or inaccurate, the alphabetical order is frequently defective, and cTOss-references are almost non-existent. Most irritating of all, there is no index by title of Racine's twelve plays, which makes the assembling of material about anyone of them a laborious search through dozens or hundreds of pages. Despite the inadequacy of its index, however, the Nouveau Corpus racinianu1n is a worthy monument to the scholarly career of ifs compiler, and an indispensable reference work, which the student of Racine or of his principal contemporaries will have occasion to consult almost...