Capitole relevante pentru limbaj la Racine:

Chambers

„The Chamber is contiguous to the second tragic site, which is the Antechamber, the eternal
space of all subfections, since it is here that one waits. (For what? I think for speaking, for being
born by language) The Antechamber (the stage proper) is a medium of transmission; it partakes
of both interior and exterior, of Power and Event, of the concealed and the exposed. Fixed
between the world, a place of action, and the Chamber, a place of silence, the Antechamber is
the site of language: it is here that the tragic man, lost between the letter and the meaning of
things, utters his reasons.” (p.4, Barthes)

„(...) in tragedy one never dies because one is always talking.” (p.5, Barthes)

„(...) all behavior that suspends language causes life to stop.” (p.6, Barthes)

Disorder

„The most spectacular agitation, that is, the one best suited for tragedy, is the kind that attacks
Racinian man at his vital center, his language3. Suspension of speech, whose sexual nature has
been sugested by certain authors, is very frequent in the Racinian hero; it perfectly expresses the
sterility of the erotic relation, his immobility. (...) To avoid speech is to avoid the relation of force,
to avoid tragedy: only the extreme heroes can attain this limit (Nero, Titus, Phaedra), from which
their tragic partner leads them back as quickly as possible , constraining them in a sens to
recover a language (Agrippina, Berence, Oenone).” (p.15-16, Barthes)

I also wanted to say that for Oenone, what Barthes says here doesn t apply because she employs
the ritual language of disorder when she kills herself.

„The confidants may share the master s agitation – more often they atempt to calm it – but they
never employ the ritual language of disorder: a handmaid does not faint.

„The sight of the adverse body disorders language4, troubles it, whether by exagerating it (in the
excessively rationalized harangues) or by silencing it.” (p17, Barthes)

The „dogmatism” of the Racinian hero (about fidelity)

Racinian man is caught in his disengagement: he is the man of the «que faire»? [what is to be
done?] not of the «faire» [doing]; he appeals to, he invokes, an action, he does not perform it,
he proposes alternatives but does not decide between them; [...] This suspended nature of the
alternative is expressed in countless Racinian speeches; its usual articulation is «Ah plutôt...» [Ah
rather...] [...]” (p.48-49)

The confident

The confident has a big role in Racine’s plays (especially because in his period the role’s
popularity was waning), it is the double of the hero, a devoted one situated in the nontragic part
of the tragedy, where „language is discredited, becomes domestic.” The confident is the voice of
reason, the opposite of the voice of passion. The confident’s role is also to clarify the very
interior of the hero, ann where he stands.

The fear of signs

The languages of the hero and the confidant are never the same. The hero is surrounded by
signs but this signs are not certain. When meaning is to harsh, the first instinct is to withdraw.

„This is perhaps the final state of the tragic paradox: that every system of signification is double,
object of an infinite confidence and an infinite suspicion. Here we touch the heart of the
disorganization: language. The behavior of the Racinian hero is essentially verbal; but also, by a
movement of exchange, his language constantly represents itself as a course of action, so tthat
the speech of Racinian man consists of an immediate movement.(...) The Racinian logos is never
separated from itself, it is expresion, not transitivity, it never leads to the manipulation of an
object or the modification of a fact; it remains always in a kind of exhausting tautology, the
language of language.” (p.57, Barthes)

In a note Barthes says: „I believe that this language derives its special character (and its very
great beauty) from the ambiguous quality of its metaphors, which are both concept and object,
sign and image. –

Phaedra: Though the name of lover may daunt his courage,

He has the eye of one, if not the language. (II, 1)

Logos and praxis

„universality of language” (p.58, Barthes)

„(...)one may almost say that it is „polytechnical: it is an organ, can take the place of sight, as if
the ear looked; it is a sentiment, for loving, suffering, dying are never anything here but
speaking; it is a substance, it protects (to be confounded is to cease to speak, to be discovered);
it is an order, it pennits the hero to justify his aggressions or his failures, and from them to derive
the illusion of an agreement with the world; it is a morality, it authorizes him to convert passion
into privilege.” (p.58)

„Here the logos takes over the functions of the praxis and substitutes for it. All the
disappointment of the world is gathered up and redeemed in speech, praxis is drained, language
filled. It is not question of verbalism, Racine s theater is not a garrulous one (much less, in a
sense, than Corneille s), it is a theater where action and speech pursue each other and meet
only to escape each other at once. One might say that speech here is never an action but a
reaction.”(p.58, Barthes)
Time has no importance for Racine because reality is speech and that is why spoken time
coincides with real time.

To speak is to endure (p.58, Barthes)

„The paradox explains the demented aspect of the Racinian logos; it is both agitation of words
and fascination of silence, illusion of power and terror of cessation.” (p.59)

”(...) silence is the invasion of the true praxis, the collapse of the entire tragic apparatus;(...)”
(p.59, Barthes)

Being and doing resolved in seeming – art of spectacle (giving failure an aestethic profundity), a
spectacle of the impossible

Tragedia ca antiteză a mitului ( a pleca de la contrariu spre mediere și a imobiliza contrariul, a

refuza medierea și a menține conflictul deschis)

„(...) tragedy is the myth of the failure of myth.” (p.60, Barthes)

„ Tragedy tends ultimately toward a dialectical function: out of the spectacle of failure it
believes it can create a transcedence of failure, and out of the passion of the immediate, a
mediation. When all things are destroyed, tragedy remains a spectacle, that is, a reconciliation
with the world.”