CORNEILLE, PIERRE. - Tragic poet, b. at Rouen on 6 June 1606, d. at Paris on 30 Sept. 1684.
His biography, lacking in outward incident, offers the vigorous profile of an intense inner life. A pupil of the Jesuits (1615–22), he drew from a classically and Christianly oriented education his ethical vision of life. He began a legal career, soon withdrawing to follow freely his poetic vocation. At the age of thirty he produced *Le Cid*, which met with triumphal success. Admitted to the Academy in 1647, he was granted a royal pension in 1663, though it was thereafter barely maintained. He spent his final years in solitary sadness, as his fortunes declined.
He made his debut in 1630 with a pastoral comedy, *Mélite*, followed by *Clitandre*, *La veuve*, *La Galerie du palais*, *La Place royale*, and *La suivante*. His first tragedy, *Mélite*, with its pronounced Baroque thrust, dates from 1635. *L’Illusion comique* (1636), a comedy, contemplates with wry complaisance the life of actors.
The cycle of Corneille’s great tragic production extends from 1636 to 1642 and consists of four works: *Le Cid*, *Horace*, *Cinna*, and *Polyeucte*, which, by reason of their formal similarities and high substantive value, constitute the “Cornelian quadrilateral.”
The dramatic force of *Le Cid* arises from the conflict in the soul of the heroine Ximena between love for Rodrigo and the wounded honor that Rodrigo has restored by killing her father.
In *Horace*, on a classical theme, love is set against civic duty, and Camilla dies that Rome may live. *Cinna*, also classical in subject, turns upon the magnanimous vacillation of the emperor Augustus.
In *Polyeucte* (from the story of St Polyeuctus, as recounted in a Byzantine menologion), the action unfolds in the capital of Armenia under the emperor Decius. Paulina, daughter of Felix, Roman governor of Armenia, is married to Polyeuctus, an Armenian nobleman, and denied to Severus, a Roman knight whom she loves and who is believed dead in the war against the Parthians. Meanwhile, Polyeuctus converts to Christianity. Severus returns, and Polyeuctus refuses to sacrifice in a pagan rite prepared for the triumphant veteran, thereby incurring the death penalty. The neophyte, tempted to apostatize, withstands the trial and resigns himself to losing Paulina, who, spiritually captivated by his Christian steadfastness, instead of yielding to Severus asks him to intercede for Polyeuctus. Severus generously agrees, but the machinations of Felix, ambitious for imperial favor, thwart his magnanimous intention, and Polyeuctus serenely faces execution.
There followed the tragedies *La mort de Pompée* (1643), *Rodogune* (1643), and *Héraclitus* (1647), as well as the witty comedy *Le menteur* (1644). *Nicomède* (1651) and *Pertharite* (1652) mark Corneille’s decline, after which, apart from a few late and unremarkable dramatic revivals, he devoted himself to a verse version of *The Imitation of Christ* (1656) and of the *Office of the Madonna* (1620) and composed lyrics mostly on sacred themes. He also wrote three *Discours* on the Aristotelian unities in dramatic poetry.
Corneille’s stature in history rests on the decisive innovations he introduced into the traditional forms of tragedy, both by purging them of intrusive comic elements and by shifting dramatic essence from the external compulsion of clashing events to the inner clash of passions and wills within a free and conscious moral dialectic.
Rendered in incisive and austere forms, Corneille’s tragedies do not indulge in calligraphic refinements; rather, all elements converge rigorously toward the decisive moment, in which the poet breathes most freely, revealing his predilection for the heroic and his scorn for the fatuous and the banal—hence his admiration for the great men and political events of his time. Love is generally rejected by Corneille as an element disturbing serene resolve, belonging as it does to an instinctive world that eludes control.