Theater of Anxiety in Shelley's The Cenci and Musset's Lorenzaccio - Percy Shelley, Alfred de Musset

Criticism, Wntr, 2000 by Remy Roussetzki

PERCY SHELLEY'S THE CENCI (1819) and Alfred de Musset's Lorenzaccio (1834) have never been compared by specialists of the Romantic era. They both belong, nevertheless, to the concept of "Theater of Anxiety" of which Romantic literature presents powerful examples throughout Europe. (For lack of space, I will only mention one other example of this theater, Georg Buchner's Woyzeck [1837].) But it is clear that, in the first half of the nineteenth century, if one wanted to revive the ancient genre of tragedy while not simply copying the masters of the past, one had to create, as Soren Kierkegaard was to write in Either/Or (1843), a theater "turned inward, not outward"; a theater where the drama (the action, etymologically) would be concerned with what happened "inside, not outside" the psyche of the central characters. There, on this "spiritual stage," anxiety would have to be the pervasive feeling experienced by the protagonists and, through communication and sympathy, by the public.(1) And in Fear and Trembling the philosopher repeats that only the strategies aimed at provoking this anxious feeling could be called specific to the "modern," that is, the Romantic tragedy.

I would like to establish that The Cenci in England and Lorenzaccio in France did indeed belong to the concept of "Theater of Anxiety" then in force. Before trying to understand how anxiety works in the theater, however, we must first observe to what extent Shelley and Musset had absorbed the aesthetics of the sublime elaborated by the philosophers and art critics at the end of the eighteenth century. Both obviously took for granted that serious drama should shock its audience by its immoral, if not downright obscene contents, but also and mostly by its lack of content, its failures to represent.

The Sublime Encounter

The word "sublime" belongs so much to the aesthetics of the Romantic era that one finds it at every turn in Shelley's and in Musset's writings. As a superlative, "sublime" usually means grand, great, and a little more, but not much more, than beautiful. Let us read a few examples.

In the confession to Philippe Strozzi (III, iii) in Lorenzaccio, Lorenzo de Medici reveals in secret his scheme to kill the Duke, Alexandre de Medici, and thus liberate Florence from tyranny. In personal terms, which Lorenzo divulges only to Philippe Strozzi, the price to pay is staggering. Lorenzo's moral and even physical integrity are definitely lost. To gain the confidence of the Duke, his perverse cousin, Lorenzo has had to live in the intimacy of an obscene man, wallowing in universal promiscuity and becoming himself a panderer for the sexual pleasures of the master. Once he learns Lorenzo's secret, Philippe Strozzi answers: "Si je te comprends bien, tu as pris, dans un but sublime, une route hideuse" (If I understand you properly, you have taken a hideous route to a sublime goal).(2) The goal Lorenzo has pursued is the more "sublime" in that it will be achieved at the expense of his body and soul, beyond, even against any egoistic consideration. We already notice that the sublime "object" forces the limited perspective of the individual's self. Not to leave the near company of The Cenci and of Lorenzaccio, since it was Mary Shelley who handed her husband the inspiration of his only tragedy,(3) in Frankenstein, Victor recalls at one point the "solemn" mountains and "ever-moving glaciers" of the Alps. He describes how "these sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving."(4) In "the solitary grandeur" of a scenery where man is no bigger than a speck, Victor forgets his "littleness of feeling," his worries and obsessions. He stands in awe before the "silent" presence of Nature.

Beautiful objects, in nature or in art, can be observed with pleasure and described. But the sublime stretches human faculties too far. It tends to forbid linguistic expression. When elation and enthusiasm border on fear and awe, one no longer feels the ease of pleasure. The real cause, actually, of the sublime feeling is not an object, no matter how great or small; and that is why it evades description. In A Defense of Poetry, Shelley qualifies the shock of poetic inspiration as a sublime "visitation" which may be triggered within, by "the mind alone." At best, however, the poet can only work with the residue of sublime encounters he does not have the time to decide about or control: "We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling ... sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond expression."(5)

In De la Tragedie, an article which follows Lorenzaccio by just a few years, Musset marvels at the same conjunction of baffling incomprehension and shocking delight about Mlle Rachelle, the French star actress who is sixteen years old and already pronounces the simplest verse in Corneille and Racine with a "sublime" intonation: "un fremissement electrique court toute la salle" (an electric tremor runs through the room), Musset notes, "chose incomprehensible dans une si jeune fille" (incomprehensible in so young a girl).(6)