My Racine project is wholly gratuitous and has no logical purpose. It will lead me wherever it leads me, and not connect with anything else. I read an article by Pere Gimferrer about him and now am reading Barthes's Sur Racine, which postulates Racine as the zero degree of criticism: the classic author who is simply blank and thus susceptible to any kind of critical metalanguage. Gimferrer treats Barthes simply as an anomaly. I'm half way through Brittanicus now. Then I'll re-read Phèdre and go on to the other plays.
Barthes also has an interesting point about the way Racine is spoken in the theater. This ties in with my interest in the performance of poetry. I don't follow what Barthes says completely.
Maybe I'm looking for the antithesis of Lorca?
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