Racine, Jean (Vol. 113) | Roland Racevskis (essay date spring 2002)
Roland Racevskis (essay date spring 2002)
SOURCE: Racevskis, Roland. “Subjective Dispersion in Iphigénie or the Unbearable Fullness of Being.” French Forum 27, no. 2 (spring 2002): 13-27.
[In the following essay, Racevskis contends that Iphigénie is a tragedy about the universal human predicament of being caught on the threshold between self and others, present and future, duty and desire, knowledge and ignorance, immanence and transcendence.]
Racine's Iphigénie (1674) is a drama of anticipation in excess. With the gods' all-powerful yet undisclosed will hanging over them, this tragedy's characters stumble in the dark, interrogating their destinies in a present moment overfilled with potential, on the cusp of the future. In typically Racinian fashion, they find their circumstances unbearable, so filled are they with a strong yet vague sense of what is to come. As tensions mount, the waiting leads to confusion,...
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