Ariadne (Ariane) by Thomas Corneille, Re-created in English by Oscar Mandel, with an Essay on French Classical Tragedy (review)

Book Reviews the erotically charged moves of a negativizing consciousness which continuously produce an unlocatable sense, then, says Bersani, "Mallarmé is at once impossible to read and extremely easy to read. We should . . . find him close to the most familiar moves of ordinary consciousness." The book is divided into three parts. The first, entitled "The Man Dies," presents Mallarmé's early struggle with nothingness in the 1860's, his anxiety and illnesses and his creative "sterility." Close readings of "Hérodiade" and "le Pitre châtié" illustrate the poet's struggle with the unlocability of self and his recognition that contemplation cannot capture an image. In the second part, "Poetry is Buried," confronting the paradox that Mallarmé's major enterprise was an effort to do away with literature, Bersani defines the poet's most original work as an effort to rescue writing from the same destructive claims which he so often made for it. The concluding chapter is entitled, "Igitur, the Poet Writes." Here Bersani focuses on the role of consciousness as a source of negation, a negation which he sees as an ironic act having "the odd and important effect of reaffirming the world's presence." In The Death o/ Stéphane Mallarmé, Bersani explicitly attempts to move away from the Freudian texts and terminology used in his previous critical works although he does suggest that the book offers a possible "prolegomenon to an essay on sublimation" and shows his Freudian roots in the discussion of the appeal of negativity and the human capacity to love death. The intentional avoidance of psychoanalytical structures in this discussion of Mallarmé renders problematical some of his conclusions about erotic and aesthetic equivalencies in Mallarmé's art. Without the buttress of a psychoanalytic context, certain arguments are more exhilarating than persuasive. Nonetheless, this seems a minor flaw in a book made rich and stimulating by close and creative reading of examples drawn from Mallarmé's poems, theoretical writings and circumstantial pieces. DEBORAH B. GAENSBAUER Regis College Thomas Corneille. Ariadne (Ariane). Re-created in English by Oscar Mandel, with an Essay on French Classical Tragedy. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1982. 83p. Thomas Corneille, Pierre's younger brother, a man who enjoyed great popularity well into the eighteenth century, wrote Ariane in 1672; produced the same year, it was an immediate and lasting success. The last known performance took place in 1842. Since then, Thomas Corneille's moving tragedy has fallen into oblivion. Timocrate, distinctly inferior, is sometimes read, as are a few of the comedies; but Ariane, castaway on the rock of time, is largely unknown and even neglected by scholars. Why should this be so? Certainly, as Oscar Mandel points out, the play offers actors — and particularly actresses — superb roles. And the list of Arianes down through the centuries sounds like a roster of stars: la Champmeslé, Duelos, Clairon, the elder Saint-Val, Louason, Mrs. Siddons (in Murphy's English adaptation, with John Kemble, her brother, playing the honorable Pirithous), Duchesnois, and, in the final staging, the incomparable Rachel. In a few cases, the magnificent part launched a famous actress's career. Why then the total eclipse? For several possible reasons: the play eschews romance; it highlights hardness of heart (Theseus is portrayed as a twentieth century cad, a hollow don Juan); and the verse, though adequate, is only occasionally inspired. Above all, however, Thomas is the wrong Corneille. In short, 90ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW the two brothers, so close in life, were forced into a posthumous rivalry by literary historians anxious to categorize and in the process, as the sportscasters say, Thomas was annihilated. In his remarkable little essay on French Classical Tragedy, a critical gem of incisive originality that scholars would be well-advised not to ignore, Mandel goes about proving — yes, proving — that "Thomas Corneille created a work (Ariane) more nearly irreproachable — as classical drama — than any written by the two masters, his brother and Racine" (p. 57). Today, scholars and critics would not dream of "proving" a point. We merely utter truths, the eternal truths of the moment. But prove? Horresco referens, Oscar Mandel does precisely that. Moreover, he is totally and elegantly persuasive. Indeed, Thomas Corneille did succeed...