Racine

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani mainly reads Phèdre, which he studies for a whole year, in particular the confession to Hippolyte, as well as Andromaque, Britannicus and Mithridate. He often returns to the line "Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter", whose Vs undulate like the wave: for him, it is the music of the line, not its meaning, that makes poetry1. In his view, Racine's heroes are "possessed by what they possess" and sacrifice honour to passion, which he links to the internalisation that comes with the stabilisation of power2. He sees in Racine a poet who expresses the unconscious without thinking it, with an "arithmetical" rigour, that of Hippolyte's six months3. He notes the motif of the "shore" (bord), always perilous4. He reads the preface to Phèdre, which gives the calumny to the servant, as the sign of a class unconscious5. He also stresses the deliberate anachronism of Greeks speaking like courtiers of Versailles, the separation of genres, and the comparison with Corneille, of whom Racine would be the inverse.

1. 1#2.6 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 30:45
2. 2#1.5 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?10 Dec 2015 · 17:54
3. 3#2.6 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 44:26
4. 4#10 UKRAINE : Du problème des "Bords" au déchaînement de la guerre24 Feb 2022 · 1:37
5. 5#2.6 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 1:24:42

Summary produced automatically from 150 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.