When you read Jean Racine, the French dramatist of the 17th century, you have the same feeling when you first take in Homer in your hands, I mean the same awe and uneasy feeling to understand a majestic poetry.
But what is poetry? It is the art to lead and reach to the point that exceeds yourself (Odysseus Elytis Nobelist), to be able to coordinate the poetic word with the action; this is the Theater of Jean Racine.
The first difficulties to apprehend and go deeper of a tragedy in a poetic word, according to the French way of thinking during the Renaissance period, demands a mature thought and indulgence with this poetry, because the more you study it, the more you become addicted and find out yourself through the poet's thought and feeling.
Because the human vibration is consisted by the intellect and feelings.
Certainly, both sides are important for the Greek culture.
In order to penetrate deeper into Racine's sense, we will have to comment to his motivated conditions. Thus, it is imperative take a course back to the time.
Arts appeared to develop according to the human's necessities and those of a society as well. The start is caused by the intelligence and on the way, the feeling intrudes into which is nothing but the resulting expression of our soul.
Poetry is the linchpin that bridges the thought to the feeling. The rhythmic word includes strong or soft vibrations and with the rhyme cause the couplet that means the "the musicality" making poetry pleasant and understandable, seducing even the unversed while it impacts and communicates the message intellectually. The ancient tragedy is based on these factors with the purpose to entertain but also to report and reveal on problems of their time as the man struggled with his destiny. Human bewares or gets punished by the twelve gods, as man is directly related to gods. In ancient tragedy there is passion, passion for love, friendship, the sacrifice becomes a passion too. Passion or pathos becomes the top of feelings.
Alexandra Symeonidou is a best-selling author in Greece and has published 10 novels, translated three French theater plays from old French to Greek and two children's books. "Nightmares in the Saudi Arabian Desert" is her autobiography and her first translation from Greek to English. It is available on Amazon.com.