Bajazet
First edition of one of Racine's masterpieces.
Highly appreciated at the court of Louis XIV and considered a cornerstone of his "literary royalty."
12mo of (4) ff., 99 pp. Jansenist red morocco, ribbed spine, gilt fillet on edges, gilt inner dentelle, gilt edges. Binding signed Thibaron.
147 x 87 mm.
Racine, Jean. Bajazet. Tragedy. Paris, Pierre Le Monnier, 1672.
First edition.
Tchemerzine, V, 342; Le Petit, 366-367; Guibert, p. 62-66; En français dans le texte, 127.
“This interesting play was performed with great success on Tuesday, January 5, 1672, by the troupe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and was often revived thereafter” (Le Petit).
It was a tragedy set in the Sultan’s Palace in Constantinople. For several years, oriental adventures were highly prized at the court of Louis XIV.
“The tragedy of Bajazet is the only one that Racine drew from the history of the seventeenth century, almost contemporary. Until then, he had taken all his subjects from antiquity or ancient Greek or Roman history. This time he had the idea to bring on stage events still present in living memory and to take his characters from that Orient toward which minds were still turned. The play’s hero, the young Bajazet, one of the sons of Ahmed I, had been strangled, by order of his brother Sultan Amurath IV, around the year 1635. M. de Cézy, French ambassador in Constantinople, told Racine details of which he had been a witness, and the poet set to work. He knew how to make excellent use of the dramatic circumstances that had accompanied this murder, by poeticizing them; and with the remarkable gift he had for expressing the feelings of the heart, he composed gripping scenes of emotion and recounted them in that magnificent language of which he had the secret” (Le Petit).
Shortly before the death of Molière, Racine was attaining a kind of “literary royalty,” more appreciated than ever in the city as at court.
“Why this dramatic royalty of Racine, as yet undiminished? La Bruyère suggested in his famous comparison that Corneille intimidates because he depicts men ‘as they should be,’ whereas Racine attracts because he paints them ‘as they are.’ Racine knew how to touch more deeply by placing at the center of his extremely simplified intrigues multiple quivering characters of women, without one being able to separate any from the others” (Patrick Berthier, En Français dans le texte).
