I think there are strong moral arguments in favour of doing the extra work on Saturdays, sometimes, in the microcosm of my work group. But I think this extra work in itself has no special idealism or reason that ennobles it.
***
In the S and U-Bahn I've been reading Andromaque by Racine and L'École des femmes by Molière. Previously I had read Le Cid by Corneille. It turns out that, as is often the case with the two French tragedians, I am a fierce partisan of one and a fierce critic of the other. I can't stand Le Cid and Corneille's stodgy verse, the kitschy metaphors, and the 'logic' of his 'reasonable' and 'noble' characters. It is the one play I'd read where I felt let down — as the tension shifted from excited tension into bored tension as to when this work was going to end — that no other characters died by the end.
Not only I have a bone to pick with Corneille — so did some of his contemporaries. I found this passage in L'École des femmes funny — Molière's antagonism with the Corneille brothers seemed fiercer than any antagonism between them and Racine:
Je sais un paysan qu’on appelait Gros-Pierre=~ 'I know a farmer named Gros-Pierre who — although he owned nothing except one field — ordered that a marshy ditch be dug all around it, and took the pompous title Lord of the Isle.'
Qui, n’ayant pour tout bien qu’un seul quartier de terre,
Y fit tout à l’entour faire un fossé bourbeux,
Et de Monsieur de l’Isle2 en prit le nom pompeux.
2. Allusion précieuse au frère du grand Corneille, Thomas, qui avait pris le nom de Corneille de l'Isle. Les frères Corneille furent vexés de l'allusion.=~ 'Allusion, in the "precious" style, to Thomas — brother of the great Corneille — who had taken the name of Corneille of the Isle. The brothers Corneille were vexed by the allusion.'
Footnote: (ed. G. Sablayrolles, Paris: Larousse, 1959)
*
As for Racine: Before I read the introduction, I couldn't tell who Andromache was because I confused her with Andromeda and Antigone. I was hoping for Antigone because I find that legend touching. But, of course, Andromache is Hector's widow, and the Greeks captured her in the fall of Troy.
In Racine's version, Pyrrhus (')loves(') Andromache. She resists him, since she still loves Hector as much as ever. That is my interpretation, at least. The play's notes in the edition that I am reading mention that others have read Andromaque and believe that she does love Pyrrhus, and that duty causes her to resist her yearnings. Anyway, the way that I interpret it, even if she did decide that she wants to leave her marriage with Hector in the past, which to be honest I think no self-respecting ancient Greek playwright would have permitted because it doesn't suit their idea of women as being sentient property rather than human beings with their own right to determine things, she does not wish to marry Pyrrhus. It is even more repellent because Pyrrhus killed her father-in-law Priam and her sister-in-law Polyxena.
(The Pyrrhus-hounding-Andromache aspect of the plot reminded me of L'École des femmes, although of course this play is a comedy. Arnolphe is Molière's character; he has tried to force marriage on a woman whom, in a dependent situation, he has deprived of interaction with and knowledge of the outside world, and who loves another man. He is hopping mad that she refuses to love him or agree to belong to him. Faced with that opposition, he discards his dignity with disgraceful protestations and demonstrations. I found the play very uncomfortable to read as a young woman, because it feels partly true. But, of course, since this is Molière, we do feel sorry for Arnolphe despite his malfeasance.)
In Racine's portrayal, Hermione herself — who is Greek and hates Andromache for being her rival — denounces Pyrrhus for murdering elderly and female 'non-combatants' at the end of the Trojan War. He replies that he is remorseful, but that this slaughter was done to avenge Hermione's mother, and that in fact he could be nagging Hermione about the deaths except that he's able to get over such petty impulses.
Also, in an earlier passage, he tells his True (Unrequited) Love that the feelings of most the people she knew and loved when they were killed are a mere bagatelle, compared to the feelings he feels pining after her:
Hé quoi? Votre courroux n’a-t’il pas eu son cours ?
Peut-on haïr sans cesse ? Et punit-on toujours ?
J’ai fait des malheureux, sans doute, et la Phrygie
Cent fois de votre sang a vu ma main rougie.
Mais que vos yeux sur moi se sont bien exercés !
Qu’ils m’ont vendu bien cher les pleurs qu’ils ont versés !
De combien de remords m’ont-ils rendu la proie ?
Je souffre tous les maux que j'ai fait devant Troie.
Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé,
Brûlé de plus de feux que je n’en allumé,
Tant de soins, tant de pleurs, tant d’ardeurs inquiètes…
Helas ! fus-je jamais si cruel que vous l’êtes ?
Mais enfin, tour à tour, c’est assez nous punir.
Nos Ennemis communs devraient nous réunir.
Source: Wikisource
Spelling modified to comply with modern norms.
Needless to say, I do not find his character much of a charmer. I think this effusion of hyperbole also reflects a trait that literary critics and that Racine himself have acknowledged — that Racine's 'Greek' characters are anachronistically well-versed in high-flown sentimental absurdities of 17th-century French courtly literature.
Racine's characters are aware of their flaws of thinking, of course. So their missteps are less enragingly stupid. But, in the midst of plotting murder and involuntary marriage, blackmail and infanticide, etc., I do think the heroes and heroines might have taken this spirit of self-criticism far further.
Specifically, perhaps Pyrrhus might have sympathized with Andromache's grief. Perhaps he, Hermione or Orestes might have accepted the idea that their 'love' would have been more credible if they had tried to make their Beloved happier, instead of making their Beloved a hundred times more miserable/dead. I think that Orestes comes off best — the Erinyes are hounding him, so he is less responsible for what he does, and he even manages to balk at murder.
In Andromaque, fiddly shadings of moral sentiment are the least of the characters' worries, in the face of greater quandaries. But I do think that in a less dramatic situation, the characters would also feel that it is unflattering if a man or woman is inspired to show the worst sides of his (or her) character 'on one's behalf.' In the peaceful and kinder realm of literary 18th-century domestic England, I suppose that it's neatly expressed in the first marriage proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet is irritated and offended that Mr. Darcy portrays marriage to her as a necessary but degrading step that he would never have planned for himself.
"I might as well inquire [...] why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?"Source: Pemberley.com
Of course — when I suggest that people in love could be nice and thoughtful and that people in a tragic play could kill each other less, perhaps I am grossly ignoring the essence of love and of theatrical tragedy. Perhaps I am being as absurd as Caroline Bingley is in the scene where she and her brother disagree over his hosting a ball:
"I should like balls infinitely better [...] if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day."[Source: Pemberley.com]
"Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball."
Nevertheless, I'll perpetrate more absurdity: I think that the plot of Andromaque would have been far more pleasant if Andromache had had the opportunities of a modern-day Hollywood action film. She could have doctored the wine of Pyrrhus's guards to temporarily send them to sleep, or trained in martial arts, or asked for the aid of a noble mercenary-for-hire. Then whisked her son out of the room where he was being held, shipped him to an island-state where no one knew about the Trojan War (or at least had no strong feelings about it), and raised him to be a kindly philosopher who did not care about avenging his ancestors.
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