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

Criticism, Wntr, 2000 by Remy Roussetzki

The dramatic center of The Cenci and of Lorenzaccio, their coup de theatre, consists in sublime figures that "lift the veil ... idly spread" and inadequately but explicitly speak of what is everywhere and nowhere therein, at once present in every line and absent in every word: the real. What Lacan in our century has elaborated under the expression "le reel" is in us; and yet, in us human beings, it is paradoxically absent.(24) Shelley recognizes in the fragment On Love: "we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void." He adds in On Life: "How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being."(25)

Lorenzo's epicentral confession to Philippe Strozzi turns itself, as in a vortex, around the black hole of an extended sublime metaphor:

   La main qui a souleve une fois le voile de la verite ne peut plus le
   laisser retomber; elle reste immobile jusqu'a la mort, tenant toujours ce
   voile terrible, et l'elevant de plus en plus au-dessus de la tete de
   l'homme, jusqu'a ce que l'Ange du sommeil eternel lui bouche les yeux.

   (The hand that has once lifted the veil of truth cannot let if fall back;
   it remains motionless till death, forever holding that terrible veil and
   raising it higher and higher over the head of man, till the angel of
   eternal sleep closes his eyes.)(26)

This oxymoron, the contradictory figure of an apparent veil lifted on a real absence was not "original." By the time Musset wrote, it was known in literary circles. Lacoue-Labarthe notes that the trope was circulated in the Germany of the late Aufklarung from the Schlegels to Hegel and Novalis.(27) One may even consider that it was well on its way to becoming a Romantic commonplace. In Les Filles du Feu (1854), Gerard de Nerval will visit the topos one more time and in a spirit very close to that of Musset, write:

   O nature! O mere eternelle! Les mortels en sont-ils venus a repousser toute
   esperance, et tout prestige, et, levant ton voile sacre, deesse de Sais! le
   plus hardi de tes adeptes s'est-il donc trouve face a face avec l'image de
   la Mort?

   (Oh, nature! Oh, eternal mother! Mortals have managed to reject all hope
   and all respect and, as he lifted your sacred veil, goddess of Sais! would
   the most daring of your votaries have found himself face to face with
   Death?)(28)

In Musset, however, the figure acquires a dramatic function. In terms of the unfolding plot of Lorenzaccio, of what pertains to Lorenzo's secret scheme, the interview with Philippe Strozzi serves the purpose of dissuasion. Before moving to an intimate dialogue, Act III, scene iii starts with an open confrontation between the German soldiers and "le peuple" of Florence, leading to the arrest of Pierre and Thomas Strozzi. Philippe had just rushed to reclaim his two sons and make a public statement against the tyranny of the Medici. Crushed by the arrest, he sits down on the bench and mopes: "J'ai beaucoup d'enfants, mais pas pour longtemps, cela va si vite" (I have many children, but not for long, it goes so fast).