The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills--
there is no violent appeal, nothing surprising, nothing odd--only a direct and inevitable beauty; and such is the kind of effect which Racine is constantly producing. If he wishes to suggest the emptiness, the darkness, and the ominous hush of a night by the seashore, he does so not by strange similes or the accumulation of complicated details, but in a few ordinary, almost insignificant words--
Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune.
If he wishes to bring before the mind the terrors of nightmare, a single phrase can conjure them up--
C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit.
By the same simple methods his art can describe the wonderful and perfect beauty of innocence--
Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon coeur;
C'est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée.
But the flavour of poetry vanishes in quotation--and particularly Racine's, which depends to an unusual extent on its dramatic surroundings, and on the atmosphere that it creates. He who wishes to appreciate it to the full must steep himself in it deep and long. He will be rewarded. In spite of a formal and unfamiliar style, in spite of a limited vocabulary, a conventional versification, an unvaried and uncoloured form of expression--in spite of all these things (one is almost inclined, under the spell of Racine's enchantment, to say _because_ of them)--he will find a new beauty and a new splendour--a subtle and abiding grace.
But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist. The combination is extremely rare in literature, and in Racine's case it is especially remarkable owing to the smallness of the linguistic resources at his disposal and the rigid nature of the conventions in which he worked. That he should have succeeded in infusing into his tiny commonplace vocabulary, arranged in rhymed couplets according to the strictest and most artificial rules, not only the beauty of true poetry, but the varied subtleties of character and passion, is one of those miracles of art which defy analysis. Through the flowing regularity of his Alexandrines his personages stand out distinct and palpable, in all the vigour of life. The presentment, it is true, is not a detailed one; the accidents of character are not shown us--only its essentials; the human spirit comes before us shorn of its particulars, naked and intense. Nor is it--as might, perhaps, have been expected--in the portrayal of intellectual characters that Racine particularly excels; it is in the portrayal of passionate ones. His supreme mastery is over the human heart--the subtleties, the profundities, the agonies, the triumphs, of love. His gallery of lovers is a long one, and the greatest portraits in it are of women. There is the jealous, terrific Hermione; the delicate, melancholy Junie; the noble, exquisite, and fascinating Bérénice; there is Roxane with her voluptuous ruthlessness, and Monime with her purity and her courage; and there is the dark, incomparable splendour of Phèdre.