Hooked on Literature - Part 6

With regard to Racine’s other tragedy, Phèdre, I observed that the playwright uses Greek mythology as sumptuous metaphors to evoke complex states of consciousness or profound emotional turmoil. The heroine, Phèdre, is torn between her moral integrity and her lusting for her husband’s son, Hippolyte, by a previous marriage. Racine conjures up this inner torment by drawing upon the myth of Minos and Pasiphaë.

According to Greek legend, Minos was the incorruptible ruler of the kingdom of Crete, and became the judge of all mortals in the underworld after their deaths. His wife, Pasiphaë, punished by the gods, was overcome by a monstrous passion for a bull. The result of this union was the minotaur, half-human and half-animal with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. To hide their shame, Minos had an inextricable labyrinth built for this creature. Every year, the city of Athens had to send 40 adolescents to serve as nourishment for the monster.

Thesée, the young Athenian hero was sent by his city to slay the Minotaur. With the help of Arianne, Phèdre’s older sister who led him through the labyrinth, he confronted and killed the sanguinary creature, after which, being fickle-hearted, he abandoned her on the island of Naxos.

Thus Phèdre’s terrible drama of passion is conveyed through constant references to her ancestors, they being the tangible manifestations of her genetic endowment. Her father, Minos, represents her moral conscience that impels her to condemn herself with ruthless lucidity. Pasiphaë on the other hand depicts the irrational and seemingly irresistible erotic cravings within her nature that are condemning her to covet her step-son.

Even the Alexandrine verse that the disdainful Hippolyte uses to describe Phèdre resumes grippingly the contradictory forces that are tearing her apart. Incidentally, this is how I managed to sneak in a very laudatory remark about Racine’s greatness as a poet, and coming as it did at such an opportune moment, my students listened attentively. Here is the verse, one of the most famous in French literature:

La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë

The first half of this verse with its flowing, dignified rhythm suggests Phèdre’s father, the imperturbably serene judge; the second half, however, with its syllables rushing headlong and crashing into the open “a,” followed, after a hiatus, by the disquieting sound “ë,” depicts the demonic erotic energy of Phèdre’s mother. Thus Phèdre’s conflict, the result of the two opposing tendencies within her genetic endowment, is rendered with admirable concision and power within the twelve syllables of this alexandrine.