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Lucrezia Borgia

PREFACE

As he promised to do in the preface to his last drama, the author has reverted to the occupation of his whole life, art. He has resumed his favorite task, even before he has altogether adjusted matters with the petty political opponents who have been annoying him for two months past. And then, to bring forth a. new drama six weeks after the proscription of the other was one way of speaking plainly to the present government. It was equivalent to showing it that its trouble was thrown away. It was equivalent to proving to it that art and liberty can spring up again in one night beneath the very foot which tramples on them. It is his purpose, therefore, to go forward henceforth with his political strife, so far as occasion requires, and his literary work, pari passu. One can do his duty and his task at the same time. The one does not interfere with the other. Man has two hands.

Le Roi s’Amuse and Lucréce Borgia resemble each other not at all either in form or substance, and the fate of the two works has been so different, that the one will perhaps someday mark the principal political date, and the other the principal literary date in the author’s life. He deems it his duty to say, however, that the two dramas, different as they are in form, substance and destiny, are very closely coupled in his thought. The idea which gave birth to Le Roi s'Amuse, and the idea which gave birth to Lucréce Borgia, were born at the same moment in the same corner of the heart. What is, in fact, the fundamental thought, concealed under three or four concentric envelopes, in Le Roi s’Amuse? It is this. Take the most hideous, the most repulsive, the most unrelieved physical deformity: place it where it stands out most prominently,—on the lowest, the farthest underground, the most despised story of the social structure: let the glaring light of contrast shine in from all sides upon the wretched creature: and then cast into it a soul, and endow that soul with the purest sentiment which man can feel, the sentiment of paternity.

What will take place? The sublime sentiment, warmed to life according to certain conditions, will transform the degraded creature under your eyes: the petty will become great: the deformed will become beautiful.

That is the substance of Le Roi s’Amuse.

And now, what is Lucréce Borgia? Take the most hideous, the most repulsive, the most unrelieved moral deformity: place it where it stands out most prominently,—in a woman’s heart, with all the surroundings of physical beauty and regal grandeur, which give notoriety to crime! and now mingle with all this moral deformity, a single pure sentiment, the purest and holiest that a woman can feel, the sentiment of maternity: inject a touch of the mother into your monster, and the monster will arouse your interest, and the monster will bring tears to your eyes: the creature which terrified you will move you to pity, and the deformed soul will become almost beautiful to look upon. Thus Le Roi s’Amuse represents paternity sanctifying physical deformity: Lucréce Borgia, maternity purifying moral deformity. If bilogie were not a vulgar word, the author could well express his thought by saying that the two pieces were naught but a bilogie sui generis, the title of which might well be “The Father and Mother.” Fate separated them, however, and what does it matter? One has been successful, the other was paralyzed by a lettre de cachet! the idea upon which the first is based will, it is probable, be hidden from many eyes for a long time to come, by innumerable prejudices! the idea which gave birth to the second, seems, if we are not deluded, to be accepted and understood every evening by an intelligent and sympathetic multitude. Habent sua fata! but whatever may be the fate of the two plays, which have no other merit than the consideration which the public has been pleased to bestow upon them, they are twin sisters, the laurel-crowned and the proscribed were planted side by side, like Louis XIV. and the Iron Mask.

Corneille and Moliére were accustomed to answer in detail the criticisms called forth by their works, and it is extremely interesting to-day to see how these giants of the stage struggled and squirmed in prefaces and notices to the reader, under the inextricable network of criticisms which contemporary critics were constantly weaving about them. The author of this drama deems himself unworthy to follow such great examples. He prefers to hold his peace in the face of criticism. That which becomes men of authority, like Moliere and Corneille, does not become others. Moreover, there has probably never been any other than Corneille in the world, who could remain grand, yes, sublime, at the moment when he was on his knees to Scudéri or Chapelain, inditing a preface. The author is far from being a Corneille; the author is equally far from having a Scudéri or a Chapelain to deal with. The critics, with a few noticeable exceptions, have been loyal and kindly to him.

Doubtless he might be able to meet more than one objection. To those, for example, who consider that Gennaro in the second act allows himself to be poisoned by the duke altogether too meekly, he might propound the question, whether Gennaro, a character originating in the poet’s brain, is required to be drawn more in accordance with probability, than the historical Drusus, of Tacitus, ignarus et juveniliter hauriens. To those whoreproach him for exaggerating the crimes of Lucrezia Borgia, he might say: “Read Tornasi, read Guicciardini, and above all read the Diarium.” To those who blame him for having given credence to certain popular, half-fabulous rumors touching the deaths of Lucrezia’s various husbands, he might reply that the fables of the people are often the poet’s verities: and thereon he might once more cite Tacitus, the historian being under greater obligations than the dramatic poet to be careful as to the accuracy of his facts.

He might go much more into detail with his explanations, and examine with the critics all the parts of his structure one by one: but he takes greater pleasure in thanking than in contradicting them: and, after all, he prefers that the reader should find the replies he might make to their criticisms in the drama itself, if they are to be found there, rather than in the preface.

He trusts that he may be forgiven for saying nothing more on the purely aesthetic part of his work. There is an altogether different line of thought, no less lofty in his opinion, which he would be glad to have the leisure to suggest and examine into apropos of this play of Lucréce Borgia. In his view many social questions are involved in literary questions, and every work in the field of letters is a fact to be considered. That is the subject upon which he would gladly dilate if time and space were not lacking. It cannot be repeated too frequently that the stage in our day is of immense importance, and its importance tends to keep pace with the advance of civilization itself. The stage is a platform.

The stage is a pulpit. The stage speaks loud and strong. When Corneille says:

Pour être plus qu’un roi tu te crois quelque chose,‘

Corneille is Mirabeau. When Shakespeare says: To die, to sleep, Shakespeare is Bossuet.

The author of this drama is well aware how great and how serious a thing the stage is.

He knows that the drama, without going beyond the impartial bounds of true art, has a national, a social, a human mission. When, evening after evening, he sees the intellectual, cultivated people, who have made Paris the very centre of the world’s progress, swarming before a curtain, which is to rise a moment later upon the creature of his, a paltry poet’s, brain, he feels how small a thing he is, in the face of all that expectation and interest: he feels that if his talent amounts to nothing, his probity must be everything: he catechizes himself sternly and collectedly as to the philosophical tendency of his work: for he realizes his responsibility, and he does not wish that that audience should call him to account someday for what he may have taught them. The poet also has the custody of souls. The multitude must not be allowed to go forth from the theatre, without having imbibed some austere and profound moral precepts. And so he hopes, that, with God’s help, he may never exhibit upon the stage (at least while the present grave and serious times endure) any work that does not overflow with useful lessons and sound advice. He will always gladly introduce the cofl-in into the banquet-hall: the prayers for the dead will mingle with the refrain of drinking songs, and the monk’s hood appear beside the mask.

If he sometimes allows the carnival to figure in scant attire in the foreground, he will not cease to cry out to it from the rear of the stage: Memento quia pulvis es. He knows full well that art alone, pure art, art properly so-called does not demand all this of the poet: but he is of opinion that on the stage, of all places, it is not enough to satisfy the bare requirements of art. As for the wounds and suffering of mankind, whenever he exhibits them in his drama, he will endeavor to throw the veil of a solemn, comforting thought over what might otherwise be too painful in their nakedness. He will not bring Marion de Lorme upon the stage, without purifying the courtesan with a touch of real love: he will endow Triboulet the hunchback with a father’s heart: he will give to Lucrezia, the monster, a mother’s entrails. And by this means, he will at least ensure the tranquility and repose of his conscience touching his work. The drama of which he has dreamed, and which he is trying to make an accomplished fact, will be able to touch on any and every subject, without being defiled. Let a compassionate, moral thought pervade whatever you do, and nothing will be deformed or repulsive. With the most hideous conception mingle the idea of true religion, and it will become pure and holy. Nail God to the gibbet, and you have the cross.

12TH FEBRUARY, 1833.

CONTENTS:

Lucrezia Borgia

PREFACE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE