1995 · Bajazet · Racine · Vigner (EN)
Roxane
Enough. I'll do all that I've sworn to do.
Brave Akhmet, go: assemble all your crew.
Sound out their feelings and report to me;
I'll let you have my answer presently.
I must see Bajazet: I can't decide
Until I'm certain our hearts are allied.
Make haste now.
Well, dear Atalide, you see:
Bajazet must decide our destiny.
I'll meet him one last time now and find out
If he loves me.
Atalide
Is this a time for doubt ? [1]
In 1995, Éric Vigner was invitated by JEAN-PIERRE MIQUEL to the Comédie-Française, the ‘house of Molière’, to stage BAJAZET by JEAN RACINE at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier with MARTINE CHEVALLIER, JEAN DAUTREMAY, BÉRANGÈRE DAUTUN, ISABELLE GARDIEN, ALAIN LENGLET, ÉRIC RUF and VÉRONIQUE VELLA.
"I did not focus on any sort of analysis - psychoanalytical, political, let alone psychological. Nor did I try to bridge the distance that has intervened between the art of tragedy and modern people. Roland Barthes quite rightly said that it is because of its very distance from us that tragedy can touch us. I approached the tragedy much in the same way as Champollion approached the hieroglyphs. What should I do with this strange language? Play what is written. Nothing more. Everything is said in Racine’s verse. What interested me was Racine the poet. I did not care to know why Racine wrote Bajazet. For me, the question was: How? I saw Bajazet as a dramatic poem, and in this dramatic poem one element, and only one, took pride of place: the alexandrine."
ÉRIC VIGNER
BAJAZET is the sixth of Racine’s plays. After the triumph of his BÉRÉNICE, that tear-jerker steeped in elegy, Racine felt the need to show his mettle. He wrote BAJAZET, the most violent and carnal of his tragedies, drawing for his inspiration on Turkish history. The setting of the play is Byzantium, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, in the seraglio of Sultan Amurat.
Roxane
You sense the slightest danger threatening you
That my too eager love subjects you to.
For yourself, for your honor, you're afraid,
And I respect these scruples you've displayed.
Have you foreseen, though, if we are not wed,
That far more certain perils lie ahead,
That, without me, your plans will go awry,
And that it's I whom you must please, Prince, I ?
I hold the palace gates: it's up to me
If you remain a prisoner or go free.
Your life is mine to take away or give:
So long as I still love you, you still live.
Without that love, which you rebuffs offend,
Can you not see your life is at an end ?
Bajazet
Yes, I owe all to you, and I had thought
The only glory, madame, that you sought
Was, once I'd gained the throne you helped me to,
To hear me avow that I owe all to you.
Why deny what my lips would fain confess ?
My gratitude I'll ceaselessly express;
The deep respect I feel demands no less.
My blood, my life: all this I'm thankful for.
But do you wish...?
Roxane
No, I wish nothing more. [2]
"Éric Vigner has met the challenge. His chosen register is one of fascination and slowness. A setting that is Japanese rather than Byzantine serves as the vessel for the cruel gold that flows, like lava, from the actors’ lips. Farewell heroes! Farewell prophets!. No fatal tension between aristocratic posture and tenderness, between nature and the sublime, as in Corneille. In Racine’s work, all the ancient materials that make up tragedy unite to become, in a language as new and plain as can be, poetry pure and simple. His characters do not live, they exist merely on paper: Roxane is merely a name and a voice. And yet the divine poet wrests a miraculous sigh from her marble lips. They all speak of themselves as of others and, if they dare to speak up against the silence, it is because without their words, without the alexandrine, the pain would be too great to bear. Speaking does not cure. Racine does not offer a cure, he brings calm, like a cool hand touching a feverish brow."
FrÉdÉric Ferney, Le Figaro, 16 May 1995
© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient
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