The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine
The Complete Plays of Jean Racine
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Please Note
After having received permission to produce this Play, it is required that the translator geoffrey alan argent be given credit as the sole and exclusive translator of the Play on the title page of all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all cases where the title of the Play appears for purposes of advertising or publicizing the production. The name of geoffrey alan argent must appear on a separate line immediately beneath the title line and in type size equal to 50% of the size of the largest letter of the title of the Play and the acknowledgment should read
jean racine’s athaliah
Translated into English Rhymed Couplets by geoffrey alan argent
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found in the back of this book.
translator’s note
This translation of Athaliah, Racine’s twelfth and last play, is one of a series that, when complete, will offer in English translation all twelve of Racine’s plays (eleven tragedies and one comedy), only the third such traversal since Racine’s death in 1699. This traversal, in addition, is the first to be composed in rhymed iambic pentameter couplets. My strategy has been to reconceive Racine in that pedigreed indigenous English verse form in order to produce a poetic translation of concentrated power and dramatic impact. After all, as Proust observes, “the tyranny of rhyme forces good poets into the discovery of their best lines”; and while subjected to that tyranny, I took great pains to render Racine’s French into English that is incisive, lucid, elegant, ingenious, and memorable. For I believe that the proper goal of a translation of a work of literature must be, first and foremost, to produce a work of literature in the language of the target audience. For a considerably more expansive discussion of my approach to translation, as well as a vigorously, rigorously, argued rationale for my decision to employ rhymed couplets, I direct the interested reader to the Translator’s Introduction that appears in Volume I of this series, devoted to my translation of Racine’s first play, The Fratricides.
This translation is based on the definitive 1697 edition of Racine’s theater as it appears in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition of 1980, edited by Raymond Picard. The 1697 text represents Racine’s final thoughts on this play. The divergences between this edition and the two prior editions that Racine oversaw (1691 and 1692) are extremely minor, involving touch-ups to a mere handful of lines, changes in punctuation, and the reinstatement of several verses and strophes of the choral odes concluding Acts I, II, and III that had been omitted in the earlier editions. The translation of Racine’s preface is my own, as are the translations of passages from the critical commentaries in the Picard and Forestier editions that appear in the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary. In my own critical commentaries, when I refer to a play or a character, I use the title or name as it appears in my translations. It should be noted, however, that where any other commentators (writing in English) retain the French spellings, I have respected that preference and beg the reader to pardon the discrepancies.
Speaking of discrepancies, I should note, now that this traversal is a third of the way toward completion, that the extremely alert reader may begin to notice occasional (and inevitable) discrepancies between lines of verse from any particular play, as cited in earlier volumes, and the revised and (one hopes) improved versions of those verses as they appear in the volume devoted to the complete translation of the play in question. I like to think that so astute a reader would find such discrepancies more interesting than irritating, so I shall not beg her or him to pardon them.
I have preserved the scene divisions as they are given in the Pléiade edition (each new scene marking the arrival or departure of one or more characters) and have, likewise, listed the characters participating in each scene just below the scene number. I have, in addition, furnished these translations with line numbers (every fifth line being numbered, and the numbering beginning anew for each scene), for ease of reference for readers and actors, and to enable me to cite passages precisely in the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary. Be it noted that these line numbers do not conform to those of any French edition, the Picard, for example, providing no line numbers at all and the Forestier using unbroken numbering from beginning to end; besides, I have sometimes expanded one of Racine’s couplets into a tercet (or even, more rarely, into two couplets), a procedure that would vitiate any line-for-line correspondence.
The Discussion is intended as much to promote discussion as to provide it. The Notes and Commentary, in addition to clarifying obscure references and explicating the occasional gnarled conceit, offer, I hope, some fresh and thought-provoking insights, such as are occasionally vouchsafed the sedulous translator. But whatever the merits of the ancillary critical material, I believe that the enduring value of these volumes will reside in the excellence of the translations. New approaches to studying Racine will undoubtedly be discovered and developed, opponent schools of thought will continue to clash, arguments may be challenged or overturned, but I am hopeful that the value of these translations will prove indisputable.
I feel myself blessed — however much I may occasionally feel myself cursed — in having as my sole consultant and counselor in this epic enterprise one who, refusing to caress my ear with “la voix enchanteresse des lâches flatteurs” that Jehoiada warns Joash not to heed, displays, rather, “l’inflexible rudesse” of Jehoiada himself, and, far from “dérobant à mes yeux la triste vérité,” as Mathan would do, lets me have it right between them; I refer to Leslie Eric Comens, the “hypercritique lecteur” of my Dedication. Often and often has he pulled me back when I was about to take a faux pas, one or another of which would have brought me perilously close to “le bord des précipices.” That I am still here to tell the tale is a tribute to his vigilance. Indeed, I might well assure him, as Britannicus does Narcissus (but without the ironic subtext), “Tes yeux, sur ma conduite incessamment ouverts, / M’ont sauvé jusqu’ici de mille écueils couverts” (“Your eyes, observing me with vigilance, / Have saved me from a thousand accidents”).
dedicated to
Leslie Eric Comens,
“— hypercritique lecteur,
— mon semblable,
— mon frère!”
and to
The Reverend Melchisedech Howler,
“who