Abstract
Cinna’s political ambition has received curiously little attention in the extensive critical examination of Pierre Corneille’s Cinna (1641) over the years. While critics focus on whether Cinna is heroic or not and debate his sincerity when he counsels Auguste to remain emperor (II.1), “ambition” is almost never mentioned in relation to him; rather it is regularly ascribed to Auguste. In this article I trace how signs of Cinna’s political ambition are embedded in the text and consider the degree to which it is recognized by the other characters and even by himself. Cinna’s ambition is not a constant in the play, but rather decreases in the second half, as the onstage space is dominated more and more by Auguste. Of central interest is the question of the critical blind spot: what in this tragedy makes Cinna’s political ambition both present and yet difficult to perceive, and why would Corneille have wanted it so?
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Notes
Tous ces crimes d’État qu’on fait pour la Couronne,
Le Ciel nous en absout, alors qu’il nous la donne,
Et dans le sacré rang où sa faveur l’a mis,
Le passé devient juste, et l’avenir permis. (5.2.1609-12)
Georges Couton notes that the idea she expresses—the ends justify the means—comes from Machiavelli (Corneille 1980–1987, 1: 1620).
Discussing La Mort de Pompée, Albert Gérard notes that for Corneille, “love for the sake of ambition is “nobler”, more “illustrious”, than love for its own sake” (1965, 327). Corneille moves in a completely opposite direction, however, in his final play, Suréna, where ambition is explicitly rejected in favor of love.
Cinna employs a similar image of the consequences of Auguste’s ambition in act 1, scene 3:
La perte de nos biens, et de nos libertés,
Le ravage des champs, le pillage des villes,
Et les proscriptions, et les guerres civiles,
Sont les degrés sanglants dont Auguste a fait choix
Pour monter dans le trône et nous donner des lois. (1.3.216–220).
Émilie, too, imagines herself inspired by the goal of Rome’s liberation. “Et faisons publier par toute l’Italie, / «La liberté de Rome est l’œuvre d’Émilie»” (1.2.109–110).
Whereas Cinna approaches his ends indirectly in act 2 scene 1, his speech to the conspirators in act 1 scene 3 is presented indirectly; he speaks not to them, but to Émilie, and uses both direct and indirect discourse to convey his earlier words. Furthermore, it is Corneille’s choice to present one scene indirectly through a lengthy narrative and the other directly on stage. See also Hélène Merlin’s discussion of the different rhetorical forms that the two speeches take (1998, 53).
“[J]e veux l’affranchir ensemble, et la venger” (2.2.653); Cinna goes on to assert that it is not possible to “Guérir un mal si grand sans couper la racine. / Employer la douceur à cette guérison, / C’est en fermant la plaie y verser du poison” (2.2.678–680).
”Elle tient la place de Julie” (2.1.638); “Et toi, ma fille, aussi!” (5.2.1564); “Ô ma fille! Est-ce la le prix de mes bienfaits?” (5.2.1595); “Aime Cinna, ma fille, en cet illustre rang” (5.3.1711).
M. J. Muratore finds that once Cinna no longer wants to kills Auguste, his rhetorical skills decrease substantially (1990, 264).
Corneille and much of his audience knew, of course, that the historical Livie was indeed ambitious, excessively so. To pursue that extra-textual line of reasoning, however, is as pointless as to note that Agamemnon could not have sent Oreste on a mission to Sparta in Andromaque because Clytemnestra would have killed him well before he could do so. In Cinna Livie is selfless and prophetic, not ambitious.
In act 1 scene 2 Fulvie says: “Tant de braves Romains, tant d’illustres victimes / Qu’à son ambition [Auguste’s] ont immolé ses crimes” (1.2.89–90).
Consider that in the first three acts of the play, Cinna speaks 482 lines to Auguste’s 80, while in the final two acts, Cinna’s contribution has been reduced by over 90 % to 47 lines, while Auguste’s has ballooned to 313.
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Ekstein, N. Cinna’s Political Ambition. Neophilologus 101, 187–198 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-016-9509-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-016-9509-1