Corneille Sentence Examples

Some of his finest tragedies were written for her, but her repertoire was not confined to them, and many an indifferent play - like Thomas Corneille's Ariane and Comte d'Essex - owed its success to "her natural manner of acting, and her pathetic rendering of the hapless heroine."

It has been the custom to speak of Thomas Corneille as of one who, but for the name he bore, would merit no notice.

But of Laodice, Comma, Stilico and some other pieces, Pierre Corneille himself said that "he wished he had written them," and he was not wont to speak lightly.

Thomas Corneille is in many ways remarkable in the literary gossip-history of his time.

See also the Fragments inidits de critique sur Pierre et Thomas Corneille of Alfred de Vigny, published in 1905.

Owing to his eloquence he was speedily ranked in popular estimation with Corneille, Racine, and the other leading figures of the most brilliant period of Louis XIV.'s reign.

A generation later appeared Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), who was to Bossuet as Racine to Corneille; and Jacques Saurin (1677-1730), whose evangelical sermons were delivered at the Hague.

Translations from Moliere, Racine, Corneille, Calderon and Moreto have also been issued by the Kisfaludy society.

But more important than his own efforts as an author were his protection and patronage of literary men, especially of Corneille, and his creation of the French Academy in 1635.

His father was an advocate settled in Rouen, his mother a sister of the two Corneille.

Perhaps the best known of his 'loges, of which there are sixty-nine in all, is that of his uncle Pierre Corneille.

This was first printed in the Nouvelles de la republique des lettres (January 1685) and, as Vie de Corneille, was included in all the editions of Fontenelle's OEuvres.

Fontenelle forms a link between two very widely different periods of French literature, that of Corneille, Racine and Boileau on the one hand, and that of Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot on the other.

How he built a church and got into trouble in so doing at Ferney, how he put "Deo erexit Voltaire" on it (1760-61) and obtained a relic from the pope for his new building, how he entertained a grand-niece of Corneille, and for her benefit wrote his well-known "commentary" on that poet, are matters of interest, but to be passed over briefly.

Although Voltaire had neither the perfect versification of Racine nor the noble poetry of Corneille, he surpassed the latter certainly, and the former in the opinion of some not incompetent judges, in playing the difficult and artificial game of the French tragedy.

In literary criticism pure and simple his principal work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, though he wrote a good deal more of the same kind - sometimes (as in his Life and notices of Moliere) independently sometimes as part of his Siecles.

Among his principal works upon these subjects may be noted the four volumes of Letteratura della nuova Italia (1860-1910); his essays upon Goethe, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Corneille, and the Poetry of Dante; his two volumes Storia della storiografia italiana del secolo XIX.

The drama that has made Castro's reputation is Las Mocedades del Cid (1 599 ?), to the first part of which Corneille was largely indebted for the materials of his tragedy.

His favourite authors were Euripides, Virgil and Racine, whom he defends against the stock criticisms of the admirers of Corneille with equal zeal and insight.

He translated the Cid of Corneille, and wrote a poem on the subject of Psyche, based upon the well-known Greek myth.

Meantime, he had gained a high literary reputation by his Eloges of Charles V.,, Lacaille, Moliere, Corneille and Leibnitz, which were issued in a collected form in 1770 and 1790; he was admitted to the French Academy (February 26, 1784), and to the Academie des Inscriptions in 1785, when Fontenelle's simultaneous membership of all three Academies was renewed in him.

The Jesuits, on the other hand, claimed Corneille and Moliere, as well as Descartes and Bossuet, Fontenelle, Montesquieu and Voltaire.

The remains of the ancient abbey of St Corneille are used as a military storehouse.

It was enriched by Charles the Bald with two castles, and a Benedictine abbey dedicated to Saint Corneille, the monks of which retained down to the 18th century the privilege of acting for three days as lords of Compiegne, with full power to release prisoners, condemn the guilty, and even inflict sentence of death.

Literary men owed him also much; not only did he throw his famous library open to them, but he pensioned all their leaders, including Descartes, Vincent Voiture (1598-1648), Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654) and Pierre Corneille.

He insisted especially on the necessity of truth to nature in the imaginative presentation of the facts of life, and in one letter he boldly proclaimed the superiority of Shakespeare to Corneille, Racine and Voltaire.

At Rouen they became acquainted with Corneille, and Blaise pursued his studies with such vehemence that he already showed signs of an injured constitution.

He had several illegitimate children, among them being Corneille, called the Grand Bastard, who was killed in 1452 at the battle of Ruppelmonde.

In 1841 and in 1842 she visited London, where her interpretations of Corneille and Racine were the sensation of the season.

These three masters were the contemporaries of Corneille, and do not belong to the Renaissance period.

This piece, written in the extravagant SpanishItalian manner, which was fashionable in the interval between the Pleiade model and the innovations of Corneille, was ridiculed by Boileau (Preface to his Ouvres, 1701).

Sophocles and Euripides (and in modern times Corneille) made the story the subject of tragedies, and its incidents were represented in numerous ancient works of art.

The plays produced on the Rumanian stage included most of the dramas of Moliere, some of Corneille, Kotzebue and Metastasio, whose Achille in Schiro was the first drama translated into Rumanian (by Iordache Slatineau, printed at *ibiu in 1797).

After being educated by the Jesuits of Rouen, Corneille at the age of eighteen was entered as avocat, and in 1624 took the oaths, as we are told, four years before the regular time, a dispensation having been procured.

No one could be less suited for such work than Corneille, and he soon (it is said) incurred his employer's displeasure by altering the plan of the third act of Les Thuileries, which had been entrusted to him.

Chapelain's Sentiments de l'Acaddmie francaise sur la tragi-comddie du Cid (1638), when its arbitration was demanded by Richelieu, and not openly repudiated by Corneille, was virtually unimportant; but it is worth remembering that no less a writer than Georges de Scudery, in his Observations sur le Cid (1637), gravely and apparently sincerely asserted and maintained of this great play that the subject was utterly bad, that all the rules of dramatic composition were violated, that the action was badly conducted, the versification constantly faulty, and the beauties as a rule stolen!

Corneille himself was awkwardly situated in this dispute.

Finding it impossible to make himself fairly heard in the matter, Corneille (who had retired from his position among the "five poets") withdrew to Rouen and passed nearly three years in quiet there, perhaps revolving the opinions afterwards expressed in his three Discours and in the Examens of his plays, where he bows, somewhat as in the house of Rimmon, to "the rules."

In the following year Corneille figured as a contributor to the Guirlande de Julie, a famous album which the marquis de Montausier, assisted by all the literary men of the day, offered to his lady-love, Julie d'Angennes.

Rodogune (1644) was a brilliant success; Theodore (1645),(1645), a tragedy on a somewhat perilous subject, was the first of Corneille's plays which was definitely damned.

In this latter year Corneille (who had at last removed his residence from Rouen to Paris in 1662) was included among the list of men of letters pensioned at the proposal of Colbert.

The part which Corneille took in Psyche (1671), Moliere and P. Quinault being his coadjutors, showed signs of renewed vigour; but Pulcherie (1672) and Surena (1674) were allowed even by his faithful followers to be failures.

It used to be said that he was in great straits, and the story went (though, as far as Boileau is concerned, it has been invalidated), that at last Boileau, hearing of this, went to the king and offered to resign his own pension if there were not money enough for Corneille, and that Louis sent the aged poet two hundred pistoles.

Corneille was buried in the church of St Roch, where no monument marked his grave until 1821.

Racine is said to have assured his son that Corneille made verses "cent fois plus beaux" than his own, but that his own greater popularity was owing to the fact that he took some trouble to make himself personally agreeable.

No story about Corneille is better known than that which tells of the trap between the two houses, and how Pierre, whose facility of versification was much inferior to his brother's, would lift it when hard bestead, and call out "Sans-souci, une rime!"

Notwithstanding this domestic felicity, an impression is left on the reader of Corneille's biographies that he was by no means a happy man.

Thomas Corneille himself, who to his undoubted talents united wonderful facility, untiring industry, and (gift valuable above all others to the playwright) an extraordinary knack of hitting the public fancy, died, notwithstanding his simple tastes, "as poor as Job."

Corneille, unlike many of the great writers of the world, was not driven to wait for "the next age" to do him justice.

The cabal or clique which attacked the Cid had no effect whatever on the judgment of the public. All his subsequent masterpieces were received with the same ungrudging applause, and the rising star of Racine, even in conjunction with the manifest inferiority of Corneille's last five or six plays, with difficulty prevailed against the older poet's towering reputation.

We have quoted the informal tribute of Racine; but it should not be forgotten that Racine, in discharge of his duty as respondent at the Academical reception of Thomas Corneille, pronounced upon the memory of Pierre perhaps the noblest and most just tribute of eulogy that ever issued from the lips of a rival.

Boileau's testimony is of a more chequered character; yet he seems never to have failed in admiring Corneille whenever his principles would allow him to do so.

It was reserved for the 18th century to exalt Racine above Corneille.

But it was the glory of the romantic school, or rather of the more catholic study of letters which that school brought about, to restore Corneille to his true rank.

That Corneille was by no means destitute of the critical faculty his Discourses and the Examens of his plays (often admirably acute, and, with Dryden's subsequent prefaces, the originals to a great extent of specially modern criticism) show well enough.

For a poet is to be judged by his best things, and the best things of Corneille are second to none.

The language and dialogue of Melite are on the whole simple and natural, and though the construction is not very artful (the fifth act being, as is not unusual in Corneille, superfluous and clumsy), it is still passable.

Corneille accordingly, as he tells us, set to work to cure these faults, and produced a truly wonderful work, Clitandre.

It is certain, however, that there is more interval between these six plays and than between the latter and Corneille's greatest drama.

The conflicting passions of love, honour, duty, are here represented as they never had been on a French stage, and in the "strong style" which was Corneille's own.

Nicomede, often considered one of Corneille's best plays, is chiefly remarkable for the curious and unusual character of its hero.

Odipe is certainly unworthy of its subject and its author, but in Sertorius we have one of Corneille's finest plays.

Corneille published a complete Theatre in 5 vols.

Of the exceedingly numerous writings relative to Corneille we may mention the Recueil de dissertations'sur plusieurs tragedies de Corneille et de Racine of the abbe Granet (Paris, 1740), the criticisms already alluded to of Voltaire, La Harpe and Palissot, the well-known work of Guizot, first published as Vie de Corneille in 1813 and revised as Corneille et son temps in 1852, and the essays, repeated in his Portraits litte'raires, in Port-Royal, and in the Nouveaux Lundis of Sainte-Beuve.

Segall, Corneille and the Spanish Drama (1902); and the recently discovered and printed Fragments sur Pierre et Thomas Corneille of Alfred de Vigny (1905).

Corneille has suffered less than some other writers from the attribution of spurious works.

Internal evidence by no means fathers it on Corneille, and all external testimony is against it.

It has never been included in Corneille's works.

In affairs of intellect dragooning was equally the policy; and, as Corneille learnt to his cost, the French Academy was created in 1635 simply to secure in the republic of letters the same unity and conformity to rules that was enforced in the state.

Meredith, the What is living and what is dead of the Philosophy of Hegel (Macmillan), and the Breviary of Aesthetic (Rice Institute, Texas), the volume Shakespeare, Ariosto and Corneille (Henry Holt & Co., New York), and the Poetry of Dante by Douglas Ainslie.

But on the 12th of June in the following year she succeeded, after great difficulty, in making a debut at the Theatre Francais, as Camille in Corneille's Horace, when her remarkable genius at once received general recognition.

Perhaps the pleasantest feature in the whole matter is the unshaken and generous admiration with which Rotrou, the only contemporary whose genius entiled him to criticise Corneille, continued to regard his friend, rival, and in some sense (though Rotrou was the younger of the two) pupil.

Voltaire, who was prompted by his natural benevolence to comment on the latter (the profits went to a relation of the poet), was not altogether fitted by nature to appreciate Corneille, and moreover, as has been ingeniously pointed out, was not a little wearied by the length of his task.

When it was thought sufficient to say with Boileau that Corneille excited, not pity or terror, but admiration which was not a tragic passion; or that "D'un seul nom quelquefois le son dur ou bizarre Rend un poeme entier ou burlesque ou barbare;" when Voltaire could think it crushing to add to his exposure of the "infamies" of Theodore - " apres cela comment osons-nous condamner les pieces de Lope de Vega et de Shakespeare?"

The fact seems to be that the form in which Corneille's work was cast, and which by an odd irony of fate he did so much to originate and make popular, was very partially suited to his talents.

The splendid soliloquies of Medea which, as Voltaire happily says, "annoncent Corneille," the entire parts of Rodogune and Chimene, the final speech of Camille in Horace, the discovery scene of Cinna, the dialogues of Pauline and Severe in Polyeucte, the magnificentlycontrasted conception and exhibition of the best and worst forms of feminine dignity in the Cornelie of Pompee and the Cleopatre of Rodogune, the singularly fine contrast in Don Sanche d'Aragon, between the haughtiness of the Spanish nobles and the unshaken dignity of the supposed adventurer Carlos, and the characters of Aristie, Viriate and Sertorius himself, in the play named after the latter, are not to be surpassed in grandeur of thought, felicity of design or appropriateness of language.

In the French course I read some of the works of Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those of Goethe and Schiller.