Capitole relevante pentru limbaj la Racine:

Chambers
The Chamber is contiguous to the second tragic site, which is the
Antechamber, the eternal space of all subfections, since it is here that one
waits. (For what? I think for speaking, for being born by language) The
Antechamber (the stage proper) is a medium of transmission; it partakes of
both interior and exterior, of Power and Event, of the concealed and the
exposed. Fixed between the world, a place of action, and the Chamber, a
place of silence, the Antechamber is the site of language: it is here that the
tragic man, lost between the letter and the meaning of things, utters his
reasons. (p.4, Barthes)
(...) in tragedy one never dies because one is always talking. (p.5, Barthes)
(...) all behavior that suspends language causes life to stop. (p.6, Barthes)
Disorder
The most spectacular agitation, that is, the one best suited for tragedy, is
the kind that attacks Racinian man at his vital center, his language3.
Suspension of speech, whose sexual nature has been sugested by certain
authors, is very frequent in the Racinian hero; it perfectly expresses the
sterility of the erotic relation, his immobility. (...) To avoid speech is to avoid
the relation of force, to avoid tragedy: only the extreme heroes can attain this
limit (Nero, Titus, Phaedra), from which their tragic partner leads them back
as quickly as possible , constraining them in a sens to recover a language
(Agrippina, Berence, Oenone). (p.15-16, Barthes)
I also wanted to say that for Oenone, what Barthes says here doesn t apply
because she employs the ritual language of disorder when she kills herself.
The confidants may share the master s agitation more often they atempt to
calm it but they never employ the ritual language of disorder: a handmaid
does not faint.
The sight of the adverse body disorders language4, troubles it, whether by
exagerating it (in the excessively rationalized harangues) or by silencing it.
(p17, Barthes)
The dogmatism of the Racinian hero (about fidelity)
Racinian man is caught in his disengagement: he is the man of the que
faire? [what is to be done?] not of the faire [doing]; he appeals to, he
invokes, an action, he does not perform it, he proposes alternatives but does
not decide between them; [...] This suspended nature of the alternative is

expressed in countless Racinian speeches; its usual articulation is Ah

plutt... [Ah rather...] [...] (p.48-49)
The confident
The confident has a big role in Racines plays (especially because in his
period the roles popularity was waning), it is the double of the hero, a
devoted one situated in the nontragic part of the tragedy, where language is
discredited, becomes domestic. The confident is the voice of reason, the
opposite of the voice of passion. The confidents role is also to clarify the very
interior of the hero, ann where he stands.
The fear of signs
The languages of the hero and the confidant are never the same. The hero is
surrounded by signs but this signs are not certain. When meaning is to harsh,
the first instinct is to withdraw.
This is perhaps the final state of the tragic paradox: that every system of
signification is double, object of an infinite confidence and an infinite
suspicion. Here we touch the heart of the disorganization: language. The
behavior of the Racinian hero is essentially verbal; but also, by a movement
of exchange, his language constantly represents itself as a course of action,
so tthat the speech of Racinian man consists of an immediate movement.(...)
The Racinian logos is never separated from itself, it is expresion, not
transitivity, it never leads to the manipulation of an object or the modification
of a fact; it remains always in a kind of exhausting tautology, the language of
language. (p.57, Barthes)
In a note Barthes says: I believe that this language derives its special
character (and its very great beauty) from the ambiguous quality of its
metaphors, which are both concept and object, sign and image.
Phaedra: Though the name of lover may daunt his courage,
He has the eye of one, if not the language. (II, 1)
Logos and praxis
universality of language (p.58, Barthes)
(...)one may almost say that it is polytechnical: it is an organ, can take the
place of sight, as if the ear looked; it is a sentiment, for loving, suffering,
dying are never anything here but speaking; it is a substance, it protects (to
be confounded is to cease to speak, to be discovered); it is an order, it
pennits the hero to justify his aggressions or his failures, and from them to
derive the illusion of an agreement with the world; it is a morality, it

authorizes him to convert passion into privilege. (p.58)

Here the logos takes over the functions of the praxis and substitutes for it.
All the disappointment of the world is gathered up and redeemed in speech,
praxis is drained, language filled. It is not question of verbalism, Racine s
theater is not a garrulous one (much less, in a sense, than Corneille s), it is a
theater where action and speech pursue each other and meet only to escape
each other at once. One might say that speech here is never an action but a
reaction.(p.58, Barthes)
Time has no importance for Racine because reality is speech and that is why
spoken time coincides with real time.
To speak is to endure (p.58, Barthes)
The paradox explains the demented aspect of the Racinian logos; it is both
agitation of words and fascination of silence, illusion of power and terror of
cessation. (p.59)
(...) silence is the invasion of the true praxis, the collapse of the entire tragic
apparatus;(...) (p.59, Barthes)

Being and doing resolved in seeming art of spectacle (giving failure an

aestethic profundity), a spectacle of the impossible
Tragedia ca antitez a mitului ( a pleca de la contrariu spre mediere i a
imobiliza contrariul, a refuza medierea i a menine conflictul deschis)
(...) tragedy is the myth of the failure of myth. (p.60, Barthes)
Tragedy tends ultimately toward a dialectical function: out of the spectacle
of failure it believes it can create a transcedence of failure, and out of the
passion of the immediate, a mediation. When all things are destroyed,
tragedy remains a spectacle, that is, a reconciliation with the world.