How many individualized characters are there in the Phaedra? Poetic drama "Phaedra"

The work of Jean Racine belongs to the era of the formation of French classicism. By the middle of the 17th century, gradually, in the course of critical discussions and speeches, a system of rules was developed, the main requirement of which was clarity of thought and rigor of construction. Thus, it is characteristic of the poetics of classicism to reflect life gravitating towards the ideal. Hence the cult of antiquity as an example of perfect and harmonious art, as the eternal ideal of beauty.

Racine's literary heritage includes more than one work on an ancient plot, but the best and most significant, in the opinion of the author himself and according to the reviews of contemporaries and critics, is Phaedra. The author begins work on the tragedy in October 1676, and on January 1, 1677 it will be presented for the first time on the stage of the Burgundy Hotel under the name “Phaedra and Hippolytus.” The title "Phaedra" appears only in Racine's collection of tragedies in 1687.

The basic principles and some clarifications were written by Racine in the preface to the tragedy. The closest to the work, according to the author, was the plot of Euripides, although in the development of the action Racine chooses a slightly different path. This is manifested primarily in relation to Phaedra. This image in the tragedy of Euripides and Seneca causes terrible indignation and condemnation, primarily because the queen herself decides to accuse Hippolytus. According to Racine, Phaedra could not have fallen so low, since her feelings for her stepson were too noble and sublime. But the nurse, in whose image the author saw “baseness” and “vile inclinations,” decides to slander in order to defend the honor of her mistress.

The image of Phaedra in Racine's work evokes both compassion and horror at the same time. Her fate is truly tragic. She, having become the wife of the founder of Athens, the famous hero Theseus, was inflamed with a sinful passion for her stepson Hippolytus. This feeling caused disgust in the heroine, first of all, with herself.

What a criminal, what a fiend of evil

I became my own person! I cursed

And your passion and your life!

She tries to fight: to be an evil stepmother, to send Hippolytus into exile, to appease the angry goddess Aphrodite, but all to no avail. The only way out, it would seem, is death, but even at this thought she is overcome with horror. Her father Minos is a judge in the underworld of Hades. All paths are cut off. Phaedra is in despair. But this is not the end of her suffering. Fate and the wrath of the gods prepared even more difficult trials for the heroine. The imaginary death of Theseus and the insidious persuasion of the nurse Oenone pushed Phaedra first to reveal a terrible secret, then to declare her love for Hippolytus and, finally, to agree to participate in vile slander. In Racine’s tragedy, Phaedra’s act finds justification, very clearly formulated in the preface: “Phaedra turns out to be involved in this only because of her mental confusion, due to which she does not control herself.”

Crazy! What I'm talking about? Where I am?

Where is my mind? Where did my thought go?

Why, immortals, are you so cruel to Phaedra?

Indeed, Phaedra, to some extent, may be justified, since this criminal passion is caused by Aphrodite. The goddess’s hatred of her entire family is explained by the fact that Helios, the father of Pasiphae, Phaedra’s mother, revealed the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite to her husband Hephaestus.

At the end of the tragedy, Phaedra will atone for her guilt: she will reveal the truth and justify the innocent Hippolytus. But the sentence and judgment against oneself will be very severe: death in terrible agony from the poison once brought by Medea.

Thus, Racine’s rationalistic rethinking of the Euripidean plot lies in the principle of the hero’s ethical justification. Phaedra's passion and her guilt are undoubted, but the author fixes the audience's attention not so much on this, but on the universal human nature of the heroine's mental suffering and doubts. The moral and philosophical idea of human sinfulness in general receives its artistic embodiment on the basis of the classicist principle of typification and verisimilitude. This also explains those particular deviations from Euripides that Racine discussed in such detail in the preface. The introduction of a new character, Arikia, turned out to be especially successful, thanks to whom Phaedra’s spiritual struggle was revealed more deeply and dynamically. The image of the young maiden was not at all invented by Racine; the author “strictly adheres to the myth.” This character is mentioned both in Virgil’s Aeneid and in the works of other authors. Arikia is the daughter of Pallant, brother of Aegeus. Her brothers laid claim to the Athenian throne, since Aegeus was considered childless for a long time. When Theseus appeared to his father and was declared heir to the throne, the Pallantides rebelled against him as a foreigner and illegitimate. Theseus defeated and destroyed the Pallantides, and “doomed their sister Arikia to virginity,” “so that the evil trunk could not give rise to shoots.”

And then the unexpected happens - Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, fell in love, ardently and passionately, with the beautiful Arikia. However, this storyline was absent in the tragedy of Euripides. But it is not by chance that Racine follows this path. As it turned out, the ancient authors reproached Euripides for showing the character of Hippolytus as completely ideal, “free from any imperfections.” Therefore, Racine gives the proud and stern son of the Amazon one weakness, by which he means love “for the daughter and sister of his father’s sworn enemies.” Thus, the death of Hippolytus does not cause the terrible indignation that the ancients experienced. He, at least partly, is guilty before his father. However, this does not in any way detract from its merits. His nobility towards Phaedra, concern for his father’s honor, love and tenderness for Arikia make this image truly beautiful.

No, I was not captivated by the sparkling bait,

Not by his beauty, not by his regal bearing, -

Endowed with generous gifts of nature,

He does not appreciate those advantages in himself, -

I was captivated by the nobility.

Significantly new features of Racine’s poetic mastery also appear in those parts of the tragedy that can conventionally be called “epic.” “Phaedra” is full of retrospective stories, starting with Hippolytus’ monologue about the exploits of Theseus and ending with Theramenes’ story about the death of the Amazon’s son. But the epic element in Racine’s tragedy does not overshadow, but on the contrary, enhances the dynamism of the narrative.

The strength and weakness of a person, the firm consciousness of a moral norm that a person violates under the influence of passion and the verdict passed on himself - all this is brought to its apogee in Phaedrus. “Here the slightest mistakes are punished with all severity; the mere criminal thought is as terrifying as the crime itself; the weakness of a loving soul is equated with weakness; passions are depicted with the sole purpose of showing what confusion they generate, and vice is painted with colors that make it possible to immediately recognize and hate ugliness.”

"Phaedra" is a tragedy by Jean Racine. Racine's most famous tragedy was first presented at the Hotel Burgundy in Paris on January 1, 1677, under the title "Phaedra and Hippolyte." Only ten years later a name appeared under which Racine’s masterpiece remained for centuries. Greek and Roman authors, who took on the interpretation of the tragic love story of King Theseus’s wife Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus, highlighted either the innocently ruined Hippolytus or his treacherous stepmother.

The playwright talks in detail about the fact that Racine, when writing his tragedy, relied on a plot borrowed from Euripides, and about the ways in which he developed it, as was customary among classicists, in the preface to Phaedre. When comparing Racine’s “Phaedra” with Euripides’ “Hippolytus” and Seneca’s “Phaedra,” it is easily discovered that in terms of plot and characters, Racine’s tragedy is much closer to the tragedy of Seneca, who took as a basis (like Ovid) a version of one that did not survive to a later time from two "Hippolytes" by Euripides. This option was rejected by Euripides’ contemporaries “because of the obscenity” of the scene in which Phaedra herself confessed her passion to Hippolytus, and then, after Hippolytus’ death, told her husband that she had lied to his son.

In the surviving “decent version,” Euripides gives the story of Phaedra’s love to her nurse, who, in order to save the mistress from the torments of her conscience, tells Hippolytus about everything without her knowledge. Rejected by the chaste young man, fearing shame, Phaedra hanged herself, tightly clutching a wax tablet in her hand, after reading which Theseus learns that his son has encroached on his stepmother’s honor. The truth about Hippolytus's innocence is told to Theseus by the goddess Artemis, as well as the fact that his beloved wife became an instrument of revenge in the hands of Aphrodite, who did not forgive Hippolytus for his indifference. In Seneca, as later in Racine, Phaedra seeks justification for her betrayal of her husband in the fact that he, too, destroyed many.

By the time literary developments of the story of the “love triangle” Hippolytus - Phaedra - Theseus appeared, it was Phaedra’s husband and Hippolytus’ father who was the most famous person: an Attic hero, one of whose famous exploits was the destruction of the Minotaur with the help of Phaedra’s sister Ariadne, whom he took from Crete, and then he quit; He also became famous for his victory over the Amazons, bringing their queen Antiope (Hippolyta) as his wife, who bore him a son, Hippolytus. One of the characters in Homer's Odyssey, Theseus was considered a historical figure in antiquity, and his biographer was Plutarch. It is in the character of Theseus, who is prone to adventure, that Racine seeks justification for his heroine and prepares the audience for this already in the dialogue between Hippolytus and his mentor Theramen, with whom the tragedy begins: “Six months have already passed since my father, Theseus / Disappeared and gives no news of himself.” Hippolytus is worried, but not Theramen: “What if, in the days when we tremble for him, / This glorious man, again obsessed with love, / Has taken refuge with his new girlfriend?..” Rumors about the death of Theseus make Phaedra fear the rivalry that might arise between her son and Hippolytus for inheriting the throne. All these circumstances complicate the motives of the command of a woman passionately in love.

Racine created a whole constellation of captivating female images (Andromache, Berenice, Iphigenia, etc.), among which Phaedra is perhaps the most striking. The depth of her experiences, the inconsistency of the feelings she experiences, the subtle psychological nuances of the internal struggle waged by a woman, torn by the awareness of the baseness of her criminal passion and the desire to be happy, make Phaedra one of the most attractive characters of the classic tragedy. Racine's poetic talent prevailed over outright moralizing about “punished vice,” focusing attention on compassion for the fallen hero passing judgment on himself. Largely following Seneca and Ovid, Racine did not dare to follow them when Phaedra had to slander Hippolytus before Theseus, and entrusts this “not a royal matter” to Oenone.

Contrary to ancient sources, Racine gives his heroine the pangs of jealousy, introducing into the tragedy Arikia, with whom Hippolytus is in love and who belongs to the family of Theseus’s sworn enemies. Racine writes that he found this plot thread in Virgil. Without retreating, it would seem, from the myth, the author of the 17th century. gives this collision a Shakespearean resolution. Theseus is going to go to his son’s chosen one, after washing his corpse, saying: “Forgetting the past enmity towards her whole family, / His chosen one will honor his own daughter.” This ending, worthy of Romeo and Juliet, is designed to bring peace to the souls of viewers tormented by images of the heroes’ suffering. Love for Arikia makes the image of Hippolytus more vibrant and voluminous. If in ancient tragedies the son of an Amazon rejected women with contempt, then in Racine the young man experiences torments similar to the despair of his rejected stepmother: the laws of family enmity leave him no hope of happiness with his beloved.

The most indisputable success of Racine the tragedian remains the image of Phaedra. It is impossible to list the famous French actresses who triumphantly played this role for three centuries, and the directors who offered it in the 20th century. his interpretation of Phaedra. Let us note the performance created in 1975 by the famous actor and director Antoine Vitez (in the title role of Nada Strankar), who moved the action to the century of Racine, showing how much the 17th century. reflected in the transcription of the myth.

Jean Racine

(Phedre)

PREFACE

Here is another tragedy, the plot of which is borrowed from Euripides. Despite the fact that in the development of the action I followed a slightly different path than the mentioned author, I allowed myself to enrich my play with everything that seems to me most striking in his play. If I owed him only the general idea of the character of Phaedra, I could say that thanks to him, perhaps the most significant thing I wrote for the theater was created. That this character had such eminent success in the time of Euripides, and that he is equally well received in our time, does not surprise me in the least, for he possesses the qualities which Aristotle requires of the heroes of tragedy, that these heroes may excite compassion and horror.

In fact, Phaedra is neither completely criminal nor completely innocent. Fate and the wrath of the gods aroused in her a sinful passion, which terrifies herself first of all. She makes every effort to overcome this passion. She prefers to die rather than reveal her secret. And when she is forced to open up, she experiences a confusion that shows quite clearly that her sin is more a divine punishment than an act of her own will.

I even made sure that Phaedra was less disliked than in the tragedies of ancient authors, where she herself dares to accuse Hippolytus. I believed that there was something too base and too disgusting in slander to be put into the mouth of the queen, whose feelings were also so noble and so sublime. It seemed to me that this baseness was more in the character of the nurse, who was more likely to have vile inclinations and who, however, decided to slander only in the name of saving the life and honor of her mistress. Phaedra turns out to be involved in this only because of her mental confusion, due to which she does not control herself. She soon returns to acquit the innocent and declare the truth. In Seneca and Euripides, Hippolytus is accused of allegedly committing violence against his stepmother: “Vim corpus tuli.” In my case, he is accused only of intending to do this. I wanted to save Theseus from a delusion that could bring him down in the eyes of the audience.

As for the character of Hippolytus, I discovered that the ancient authors reproached Euripides for portraying his hero as a kind of philosopher, free from any imperfections. Therefore, the death of the young prince aroused more indignation than pity. I considered it necessary to endow him with at least one weakness that would make him partly guilty before his father, without in the least detracting from the greatness of his soul with which he spares Phaedra’s honor and, refusing to accuse her, accepts undeserved punishment. By this weakness I understand the love that he is unable to suppress, the love for Arikia, the daughter and sister of his father’s sworn enemies.

This character, Arikia, was by no means invented by me. Virgil says that Hippolytus, having been resurrected by Aesculapius, married her and had a son from her. I have read from other authors that Hippolytus went to Italy with his wife, a young Athenian woman of noble birth named Arikia, and that an Italian town was named after her.

I cite sources to show that I have tried to adhere strictly to the myth. In the same way, in telling the story of Theseus, I followed Plutarch. I read from him that the event that gave rise to the legend that Theseus descended into Hades to kidnap Proserpina was the hero’s journey to Epirus, to the sources of Acheron, into the domain of the king, whose wife he planned to kidnap Pirithous; the king killed Pirithous, and kept Theseus in captivity. So I tried to preserve historical verisimilitude without depriving the myth of the decorations that are so fruitful for poetry. The rumor about the death of Theseus, based on this fabulous journey, prompts Phaedra to open up in her love, which then becomes the main cause of her suffering and which she, of course, would not have done if she had thought that her husband was alive.

However, I will not insist that this play is really the best of my tragedies. I will leave it to readers and time to determine its true value. I can only say that in none of my tragedies was virtue brought out so clearly as in this one. Here the slightest mistakes are punished with all severity; the mere criminal thought is as terrifying as the crime itself; the weakness of a loving soul is equated with weakness; passions are depicted for the sole purpose of showing what confusion they generate, and vice is painted in colors that allow its ugliness to be immediately recognized and hated. Actually, this is the goal that everyone who creates for the theater should set for themselves; the goal that the first authors of poetic tragedies had in mind above all. Their theater was a school, and virtue was taught there with no less success than in the schools of philosophers. That is why Aristotle wanted to establish rules for dramatic writing, and Socrates, the wisest of thinkers, did not disdain to have a hand in the tragedies of Euripides. One should only wish that our works would rest on just as solid foundations and be as instructive as the works of the ancient poets. Perhaps this would serve as a means to reconcile with the tragedy many persons renowned for their piety and the firmness of their convictions who condemn the tragedy in our days. They, no doubt, would have treated it more favorably if the authors cared as much about instructing their viewers as about entertaining them, following in this the true purpose of the tragedy.

CHARACTERS

Theseus, son of Aegeus, king of Athens.

Phaedra, his wife, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae.

Hippolytus, son of Theseus and Antiope, queen of the Amazons.

Arikia, princess from the Athenian royal family.

Theramen, mentor of Hippolytus.

Oenone, nurse and confidante of Phaedra.

Ismene, Arikia's confidant.

Panope, Phaedra's servant.

The action takes place in the Peloponnesian city of Troezen.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

Hippolytus, Theramen.

The decision has been made, my good Theramen:
I must leave Troezen, so dear to me.
Can I reconcile my soul's anxiety?
With shameful idleness? Oh no, it's time to hit the road!
Six months have already passed since my father, Theseus,
He disappeared and has not heard from him.
Disappeared! How to know where he is? And his trace is lost.

M. Tsvetaeva is a spontaneous poet, a poet of all-consuming passion. Its most important element is love, which causes “secret heat” and heartbeat. If love is regarded as a talent, Tsvetaeva had super talent for love. She threw herself into love like into a pool: “Into a bag and into water is a valiant feat. To love a little is a great sin.” This maximalism of M. Tsvetaeva was embodied in "Phaedre".

In 1923, M. Tsvetaeva conceived the dramatic trilogy “The Wrath of Aphrodite 1”. The main character of the trilogy is Theseus. Parts of the trilogy were to be named after the women Theseus loved: the first part was “Ariadne”, the second was “Phaedra”, the third was “Helen”. “Ariadne: the early youth of Theseus: eighteen years old; Phaedra: the maturity of Theseus, forty years old; Elena: the old age of Theseus: sixty years old,” wrote Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva finished the first part of the trilogy - "Ariadne" - in 1924; "Elena" was not written.

In Greek mythology, Phaedra, the daughter of the Cretan king Minos, wife of Theseus, inflamed with love for her stepson Hippolytus and rejected by the young man, slandered him in a suicide note, accusing him of violence, and then committed suicide.

In ancient mythology and then in the history of world literature, the image of Phaedra is an image of criminal love. However, over the course of thousands of years, this image, of course, did not remain unchanged; from century to century it evolved, deepened, acquired new facets, new colors. Every writer and poet who addressed the tragic fate of Phaedra introduced something new into her interpretation, and over the past millennia, the attitude towards Phaedra’s crime has evolved from unconditional condemnation (Euripides, Seneca, Racine) to the deepest sympathy (M. Tsvetaeva). These fluctuations were determined by the demands of the time, the author’s belonging to one or another literary movement, as well as the creative individuality and psychological temperament of the author of the next interpretation of the famous ancient myth.

In terms of plot, M. Tsvetaeva in her poetic drama “Phaedra” follows Euripides. But the plot itself is not important in her drama, and the twists and turns of the plot here, in fact, do not play any role. Then why was M. Tsvetaeva’s drama written? Tsvetaev's drama was written in a different key, with a different worldview. Her drama is a hymn to love, tragic love. The words of M. Tsvetaeva are known: “And I haven’t written a single thing of mine without falling in love with two people at the same time (with her - a little more), not with two of them, but with their love. With love.” This statement also corresponds to the structure of the drama, consisting of four parts-pictures 2 - the peaks of emotional experiences. Moreover, for each painting Tsvetaeva finds a strikingly original, precise, succinct, metaphorical and poetic title, breaking all the plot canons that have developed over two millennia. Tsvetaev's metaphors are impossible to predict and calculate. That's what makes them interesting.

The first picture - "Halt" - is dedicated to Hippolytus, the daring, free life of him and his friends, glorifying the goddess Artemis 3, the joy of hunting:

Praise be to Artemis for the heat, for the sweat, for the black thicket, - Aida's entrance is brighter! - for the leaf, for the needles, for the hot hands in the play of the stream, - Praise be to Artemis for everything and everyone in Lesnoye.

Meanwhile, young Hippolyte is so beautiful that “only a blind woman could not love him,” that is, Tsvetaeva indirectly frees Phaedra from guilt already in the first picture; Moreover, in Tsvetaeva, it is not the will of the gods that is the cause of Phaedra’s passion, but the human-physical beauty of her stepson.

The second picture - "Inquiry" - depicts Phaedra, unconsciously hiding her love, and then entrusting her innermost secret to her nurse, a woman wise with life experience. The voice of the nurse is the voice of Tsvetaeva herself, the mouthpiece of her love for love, the impossibility for a woman to live without love-passion. Before-knowledge - Tsvetaeva reveals the tragedy of a woman deprived of love. Here, for example, are the words of the nurse addressed to Phaedra: “My blow // On Theseus is old.” How much power and expressiveness there is in these monosyllabic “blow”, “star”!

The third scene - “Confession” - is the culmination of the drama; it tells about the meeting of Phaedra and Hippolytus, Phaedra’s confession.

The fourth picture - "The Tree" (!) - represents a tragic denouement: Hippolytus died; Phaedra committed suicide (the death of the heroine of the tragedy - she hanged herself - is, of course, symbolic both in the context of the drama and in the context of the fate of its author). The title of this chapter conveys the poignancy and defenselessness, loneliness and hopelessness of the love feeling of the heroine of the tragedy.

Tsvetaeva in her poetic drama does not repeat the details of the famous mythological plot. She schematizes the plot to the utmost, leaving only its key episodes. Tsvetaeva gives not the moral tragedy of Phaedra, not the struggle of feeling and duty (like Racine), but the story of tragic love. The formula of Tsvetaeva’s drama, in contrast to Racine’s tragedy, is different: “Love (if it exists) is always right.” In Phaedrus, Tsvetaeva believed, Hippolytus should be 20 years old, Phaedra - 30, Theseus - 40.

Phaedra is Theseus's third wife, and she is unhappy as a woman: she does not love Theseus, and life with him does not bring her joy. Phaedra is afraid to admit this to herself, but her nurse explains it to her. Tsvetaeva and we, the readers, sympathize with the unfortunate Phaedra, who is much younger than Theseus. See the nurse's monologue from the second film "Inquiry":

I'll say so. My blow to Theseus is old.

Phaedra, you and the spider were mated!

No matter what you want, no matter what... You take revenge on the Old One. There is nothing wrong with him.

She entered her husband's house as a later wife, a third wife.

Two wives met a young woman on the threshold... ...Dishes fly from their hands, - Amazon's keen gaze, - and don't look behind the curtain!

The whole yard, the whole house looks through their eyes. The fire in the hearth died out - Ariadne sighed...

Tsvetaeva’s Phaedra dies not because she is tormented by remorse, but because passion and duty are fighting in her soul 4 . Tsvetaeva's Phaedra is not guilty of her love for Ippolit. The cause of Phaedra's death in Tsvetaeva's drama is different. Phaedra comes to Hippolytus, carrying her love like a cross, and comes in exhaustion:

"feet are bare, braids are down..."

She prays to Hippolytus, who rejects her love:

"Two words, two syllables!" Hippolytus responded:

“Not a sweet girl, but an ambush!”

In Tsvetaeva’s case, Ippolit was slandered by Phaedra’s nurse, struck down by her death. Theseus curses his son, and Hippolytus dies. But then the servant finds on Hippolytus’ body and gives Theseus a secret letter - Phaedra’s declaration of love for Hippolytus. We remember that Hippolytus responded to Phaedra’s declaration of love with a sharp rebuke. Theseus learns that it is not Hippolytus who is guilty, but Phaedra, that Phaedra’s letter is “Hippolytus’ letter of commendation.” However, this does not make his grief any easier, because “the glory of a son is the shame of a wife!”

The nurse admits to Theseus that she is to blame for everything, that she is the pimp. She cannot bear the shame of her mistress and seeks to justify Phaedra, to remove the guilt from her. But Theseus rejects the nurse’s guilt, since she is only an instrument of fate:

There is no one to blame. All innocent.

Oh, don’t burn your toe, and don’t tear out your hair, - For Phaedrine’s fatal love - Of a poor woman for a poor child - The name is the hatred of Aphrodite To me, for Naxos, a ruined garden... Where the myrtle rustles, its groan is full, Build them a double hill .

“For Naxos, the ruined garden” - for the ruined garden of love, refusal of love, since at one time on the island of Naxos Theseus left Ariadne (the god of love Apollo, who promised immortality to Ariadne). Unlike the tragedy of Euripides, Tsvetaeva’s tragedy is not the tragedy of King Theseus (“And far, far away sound // The news of the great grief of the kings!” - this is how the tragedy of Euripides ends), but the tragedy of unrequited love. Emotionally, Tsvetaeva leaves consolation to both the deceased Phaedra and the reader: Phaedra and Hippolyta were not united by life, so let at least death unite them:

Let him at least wrap his hair there - peace be upon the poor! - Hippolytus's bone - Fedrin's bone.

I even made sure that Phaedra was less disliked than in the tragedies of ancient authors, where she herself dares to accuse Hippolytus. I believed that there was something too base and too disgusting in slander to be put into the mouth of the queen, whose feelings were also so noble and so sublime. It seemed to me that this baseness was more in the character of the nurse, who was more likely to have vile inclinations and who, however, decided to slander only in the name of saving the life and honor of her mistress. Phaedra turns out to be involved in this only because of her mental confusion, due to which she does not control herself. She soon returns to acquit the innocent and declare the truth. In Seneca and Euripides, Hippolytus is accused of allegedly committing violence against his stepmother: “Vim corpus tuli.” In my case, he is accused only of intending to do this. I wanted to rid Theseus of a delusion that could bring him down in the eyes of the audience.