The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine
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implications of his actions, and, second, has had, from the opening of the play, a set purpose that he has relentlessly and undeviatingly pursued, a soliloquy would be inappropriate and unnecessary. There is no question here of a character in conflict with himself, of any battles being waged, of any soul-searching or soul-wrestling (as one sees in Agamemnon), only after which, capitulating to his evil genius, would he finally determine to kill Britannicus.
Since Nero is granted no intensely introspective soliloquy, the only evidence available to us concerning the true nature of his feelings for Junia must be gleaned from what he says — reveals would be going too far — to Junia and, more significantly, from the way he treats her. Later, when we analyze the lengthy scene of their first meeting, we will scrutinize his behavior toward Junia, and that will prove revealing, but for now I would just offer a small but telling observation based on a brief, selected verbal comparison of Nero’s Act II scene with Narcissus and his subsequent scene with Junia. In the former, Nero, most conspicuously, uses the flamboyant “idolâtre” (idolize, which I translate as “adore,” II.ii.12) to describe what he feels for Junia, having decided that the just-uttered “aime” (love) could not do justice to such a passion; and during the course of that scene, the word “love” in its various forms (“amour,” “aime,” “aimer”) is used thirteen times, and of those thirteen, eight refer to his feelings for Junia. By contrast, in his scene with Junia, the word “love” appears seven times, and of those seven, regardless of who is speaking, six of them refer to Junia’s love for Britannicus or his love for her; only once does Nero use the word in regard to his feelings for Junia, and there it is almost lost in the midst of the climactic rhetorical peroration that closes his marriage proposal:
Weigh well this boon that Caesar would bestow,
Worthy the lengths that love has made me go,
Worthy those eyes, too long concealed from view,
Worthy the world which claims you as its due.
(II.iii.75–78)
The word “désirs” (desires), one should also mention, is used twice (by Junia), once to refer to Britannicus’s love for her and once to refer, with no amorous implication, to Nero’s wishes, which she galls Nero by declaring “are always so consistent with hers [that is, your mother’s]” (as the French for II.iii.36 literally translates). These statistics would certainly suggest that Nero’s professions of his love for Junia are more effusive when he is conveying his putative passion to Narcissus than when he is speaking directly to Junia. Nor can this reticence by any means be attributed to his being tongue-tied at seeing her tête-à-tête for the first time, since his elaborate marriage proposal (and I use the word “elaborate” advisedly, since, as I mention elsewhere, he probably spent much of the previous night working on it, and then, undoubtedly, rehearsing it) and its prefatory narrative about his attempt at matchmaking on her behalf — each of them a rhetorical tour de force — are delivered with eloquent aplomb.
XVIII
Aside, then, from a judicious sprinkling of amorous expressions in his conversation with Narcissus (expressions conspicuously absent from his discourse when in Junia’s presence), we are left with Nero’s torrid account (bordering on a reenactment) of his momentous first view of Junia to provide some verbal corroboration of his love for her. And I think that it is precisely in this famous, overwrought reliving of the genesis of his love for Junia that we will find the most convincing evidence of that love’s being an extravagant figment.
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