I reviewed one of Patrick DeGuira's shows years ago. I haven't reread it, but I bet I'll say some of the same things. He's the same person and I'm the same person, in spite of intervening life experience. Seeing art by the same person has to have the effect of seeing a person from time to time--"every time I see you I'm reminded of..." For me, because my memory is unreliable and spotty, sometimes the thing I remember is highly idiosyncratic--maybe one comment the person made in passing in a conversation that passed in seconds, not a representative sample of the truly salient details of the testimony of that person's life.
1. I do remember Patrick's long ago (2004) show at Zeitgeist. It had many images related to the difficulty in hearing. In itself, this was a neat trick, making visual the sensation of aural frustrations. The show at Zeitgeist this December contained analogous images of sensory frustration, in this case visual. There are a couple of photos of adolescents in the 70s or 80s, enlarged to the point where the pixels take shape. It pulls you into the experience of peering closely at a photo to try to make out details that seem to slip further away the more you strain, or which evaporate as you increase the magnification on screen. You want to make out who these people are, but you can't quite remember. You look for clues on the spines of books or posters on the walls, but the letters don't quite make sense.
Several paintings have words painted on them. Little puns, or bits of something like poetry or snippets of a narrative. The words are mostly painted in a slightly different shade of the color applied uniformly across the rest of the surface. The words are legible, but turn the knob on tone and intensity of the color a little and they sink back into the dimensionless background.
On one of the bigger paintings, two blocks of text take up the bottom 60% of the surface--painted in tone just different enough from the background to be visible. Above them are four black horizontal lines that correspond in the length to the fours lines of the first block of text. It's the black-out lines from a censor's redaction that have been lifted to reveal the underlying text. What was impossible to seen has been made visible. But the revealed words didn't make sense to me. Seeing is hard, and understanding is harder. Much remains hidden in plain sight.
2. Patrick's art seems to function best as a suite. I'm not sure I would have gotten this idea about the frustration of visibility from any one piece. You see parts of it, in different ways, in different works, and you add them up to reach the observation. I wonder whether any of these pieces work as single isolated objects--say you encountered one on a collector's wall (not as an artifact reminding you of the show). In the exhibit, the works are always organized carefully, placed asymmetrically around the room to manage the dynamic of space between them. Colors recur across pieces--the pink color of bubble gum stuck on some of the pieces matches the color of a model of a country church. The words in one painting--"die garage is meine kapelle" also point to that model of the country church.
The collection of works becomes a poem, with rhymes between portions and careful pacing of images. Maybe it's projective verse, but with meters easier to scan than in Olson.
The interdependence of the works raises one commercial question. How easy has he made it to buy a piece? Is there a market for poems of any sort? Or a non-commercial question. How does this artist intend to communicate with us? Is a bunch of staff the primary vehicle? What can we expect to get out of single pieces?
3. In a similar manner to the way that years ago show dealt with auditory phenomenon and this one deals with visual, each of these shows locates itself in a specific time of life. 2004 dealt with old age, this one deals with adolescence. There are those pixelated photos of teenagers--one of two boys in a living room, one with his shirt off, evokes a particular point of awkward near-adulthood in high school. The photos have wads of bright pink chewing gum stuck on them, the last bite marks in the gum visible. One of the larger works features the words Model Builder, an evocation of the classic teenage hobby of building model airplanes, and the other points in life where a person might make models, including an artist like DeGuira who made models of a church and a row boat for this show and almost always has some sculptural models in the suites of work he presents. And of course the Model Builder could be a more distant and powerful figure, maybe God, setting in place the pattern to govern what follows.
4. Patrick makes extensive use of flat, uniform color, whether on paintings, collages, or sculptures. It lacks affect, and betrays no sign of the artist's hand, of the human making marks. This places him squarely into the camp of minimalism, although the objects in his work matter and hold interpretative, not just formal, significance. This is an empirical observation that in itself does not add to understanding.
The only mark-making in the pieces is not immediately apparent--it's in the pieces of chewing gum, where you have to assume the artist chewed the stuff up and left the bite marks.
The thick layers of expressionless paint add to the quality of masking. They dampen the sense of expressive presence, and make you look elsewhere for what turns out to be highly expressive and emotionally felt work. The paint starts to hide the objects they cover. The rowboat and church models are not represents of specific instances of their type, but are more like the visualization of ideal types, a form of objectivity. And they are also ghosts--a specific rowboat that starts to lose its specificity--the different colors of different parts and materials, the marks and dings that come from use. You can't quite remember what the rowboat you used that summer decades ago looked like, you just remember that you had one there.
5. The hardest works are possibly some of the easiest. There are a couple of collages with images of mineral and crystal formations reproduced in black and white and covered with a sparkly surface. These pieces are easy in the sense that as isolated objects, they might be the ones with the strongest visual appeal left on their own. But they are harder to relate to the content and style of the rest of the work. The iconography in everything else is of the human world--abstractions, words, and constructed things like the building and boat. There are no plants, animals, or landscapes. In this context (or non-context) the mineral specimens stick out. Black and white rather than color. A sparkly surface coating rather than flat colors.
So what do you do with this? You could conclude that it's a variation that doesn't connect with the rest, a wrong move. Minerals and crystals do make some standard interpretations available. They represent self-organizing, naturally evolving structures. They repeat upon themselves. It's easy enough to relate these characteristics to human phenomena. But these are generic interpretations and Patrick's work deserves better than that.
One characteristic of these images is that their natural and naturalistic content is rendered with a more obviously artificial means--the surface treatment, laced with sparkles. The other objects are more immediately themselves, constructed objects placed in the room. The images of rocks are more mediated. So this may come back around to the difficulties in seeing--images that at first seem to be scientific illustrations are more removed from the natural world.
At the end of the day, these remain difficult interpretive corners of this show, although someone out there no doubt has gotten to the point.
6. I mentioned the emotional content of this work. At firs the emotions sneak up on you. The work is stripped of the things we associate with expression. Brushstrokes, bright color, sharp contrasts, dramatic representations. The artist is undoubtedly involved in formal arrangements. The color palettes are muted. But these stripped down images he gives us have references that draw down into significant human experience. Family is always everywhere in his works. The experience of sensory strain is not a cold phenomenological observation, but deals with the emotional weight of loss, and the frustration of reaching back and what eludes the grasp of memory.
The characteristics of this emotional landscape don't adhere to common forms. The past occupies a central place in the material, but nothing seems nostalgic. The rowboat must be connected to a rowboat that existed and events in which it featured, but it strikes me in a more matter of fact way--there was this thing that happened, we took at rowboat. Patrick distills some features from that scene, from an episode that can remain hidden.
Unless you're Proust, it may be pointless to try to describe what you encounter when you come into an emotional presence in a body of work. It gets to be like music, where the emotional heft is undeniable but exists in a realm distant from words. To use a safe example, Beethoven. Or Schumann, whose music has been on my mind a little the last few days. Passages in Kinderszenen move me deeply. I can play it for you, point to the specific measures and notes, and maybe you'll hear it too.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Jessie van der Laan
I'm a sucker for certain kinds of art objects, and it may even come down to certain effects, independent of any higher level processing. One of those things are surfaces that are tricky, ambiguous in perspective, color and form. They draw me in, and because when I get to them, they issue forms and structures that seem to combine and recombine in an insistent, quiet flow. I ran into that a couple of weeks ago with work by Jessie van der Laan in an exhibit at the Ground Floor Gallery. This is a group show of artists working with textiles, curated by Herb Rieth from Memphis.
van der Laan's work here consists of embroidery hoops covered front and back with layers of fabric, the top layer very sheer, with stitching and appliqued fabric on and between the layers. The hoops are mounted on the wall in groups of two and three to make up the pieces.
As an example, the piece "cumulonimbus" (all the pieces are named for cloud types) consists of a large oval embroidery hoop with a smaller circular one positioned above it at a 10:00 position. A strip of wavy fabric is attached to the back panel. Another flap of fabric folds over the top of the hoop. Fine stitching forms little waves on the top layer and connects to the back. van der Laan uses contrasting colors for the cross stitches that connect the thread, so here you have some yellow strands crossed with black to make tendrils that look like garter snakes. She also seems to have stained the back panel fabric with light washes of ink, which gives another layer of patterns deep down in the space. The space between front and back is less than inch but it still requires you to pore into it.
The second hoop is darker, and the bottom layer features what may be a blot of ink or applied fabirc that looks like a splash.
You've got at least four or five types of events creating the shapes and structure--the base fabric front and back, places where those fabrics dimple and wrinkle, the threads weaving across and through it, pieces of fabric that look more or less solid depending on whether it's on top of the sheer layer or behind, and then those ink stains.You can't be entirely sure what's from ink or even water stains, and what is fabric with different degrees of opacity.
Each hoop has a different look. In one, fabric bunches up inside, reducing the sense of inner captured space. Some have strips of ribbon suspended in the interior space. She uses some colors consistently, like a blue thread, but others sparingly. A lemony yellow appears in one place. Dark purples in another piece. The groups in combination all have contrast, definitely between lighter and darker compositions, but the contrasts are subtle, in keeping with the inherent subtlety of all effects in this work.
In most cases the colors are muted by the layers of intervening fabric, and by the way threads are deployed as filigree across the surface and interrupted by cross stitches. It was even hard to discern the color of portions--in one piece at times my eyes played tricks with one portion that at times looked brown, but at times seemed to take on a coppery sheen.
The visible embroidery hoops make no secret of their reference to women's traditional handwork. What is more, the works all combine one larger hoop with one or two smaller ones--the phrase hens and chicks comes to mind, like with plants.
These works have an ephemeral effect. They seem to vibrate just on the edge of focus. Colors and shapes emerge diffidently. The multiple layers both enclose an interior space and produce a surface plane, spongy as it may be.
van der Laan gave each work the title of a type of cloud (cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, pyrocumulus). I could look up each word and try to match the characteristics of the works with the qualities of the clouds, but that seems uninteresting. I'll accept the general title metaphor of clouds. The pieces certainly have cloud-like qualities, but for me it makes them less enjoyable to think of them as representations. Or I think the range of reference is broader--"cumulonimbus" seems to be as much about water, and "stratocumulus" brings to mind flowers and plants.
Graphically, the works move towards being hardly anything, and work that indulges this sort of subtlety runs the risk of lacking enough graphic presence not to keep it from fading into a series of background designs or visual pads. Again, for me a big part of the pleasure comes when an artist walks you towards or up to the line where the imposed artistic order seems to run the risk of falling into pointless chaos. A artist can go too far for me, to a point where I stop enjoying the work. van der Laan's pieces have little risk of that because the organizing devices--embroidery hoops, and a range that contains variety but also adheres to some limits--gives them an inherent resonance.
van der Laan's work here consists of embroidery hoops covered front and back with layers of fabric, the top layer very sheer, with stitching and appliqued fabric on and between the layers. The hoops are mounted on the wall in groups of two and three to make up the pieces.
As an example, the piece "cumulonimbus" (all the pieces are named for cloud types) consists of a large oval embroidery hoop with a smaller circular one positioned above it at a 10:00 position. A strip of wavy fabric is attached to the back panel. Another flap of fabric folds over the top of the hoop. Fine stitching forms little waves on the top layer and connects to the back. van der Laan uses contrasting colors for the cross stitches that connect the thread, so here you have some yellow strands crossed with black to make tendrils that look like garter snakes. She also seems to have stained the back panel fabric with light washes of ink, which gives another layer of patterns deep down in the space. The space between front and back is less than inch but it still requires you to pore into it.
The second hoop is darker, and the bottom layer features what may be a blot of ink or applied fabirc that looks like a splash.
You've got at least four or five types of events creating the shapes and structure--the base fabric front and back, places where those fabrics dimple and wrinkle, the threads weaving across and through it, pieces of fabric that look more or less solid depending on whether it's on top of the sheer layer or behind, and then those ink stains.You can't be entirely sure what's from ink or even water stains, and what is fabric with different degrees of opacity.
Each hoop has a different look. In one, fabric bunches up inside, reducing the sense of inner captured space. Some have strips of ribbon suspended in the interior space. She uses some colors consistently, like a blue thread, but others sparingly. A lemony yellow appears in one place. Dark purples in another piece. The groups in combination all have contrast, definitely between lighter and darker compositions, but the contrasts are subtle, in keeping with the inherent subtlety of all effects in this work.
In most cases the colors are muted by the layers of intervening fabric, and by the way threads are deployed as filigree across the surface and interrupted by cross stitches. It was even hard to discern the color of portions--in one piece at times my eyes played tricks with one portion that at times looked brown, but at times seemed to take on a coppery sheen.
The visible embroidery hoops make no secret of their reference to women's traditional handwork. What is more, the works all combine one larger hoop with one or two smaller ones--the phrase hens and chicks comes to mind, like with plants.
These works have an ephemeral effect. They seem to vibrate just on the edge of focus. Colors and shapes emerge diffidently. The multiple layers both enclose an interior space and produce a surface plane, spongy as it may be.
van der Laan gave each work the title of a type of cloud (cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, pyrocumulus). I could look up each word and try to match the characteristics of the works with the qualities of the clouds, but that seems uninteresting. I'll accept the general title metaphor of clouds. The pieces certainly have cloud-like qualities, but for me it makes them less enjoyable to think of them as representations. Or I think the range of reference is broader--"cumulonimbus" seems to be as much about water, and "stratocumulus" brings to mind flowers and plants.
Graphically, the works move towards being hardly anything, and work that indulges this sort of subtlety runs the risk of lacking enough graphic presence not to keep it from fading into a series of background designs or visual pads. Again, for me a big part of the pleasure comes when an artist walks you towards or up to the line where the imposed artistic order seems to run the risk of falling into pointless chaos. A artist can go too far for me, to a point where I stop enjoying the work. van der Laan's pieces have little risk of that because the organizing devices--embroidery hoops, and a range that contains variety but also adheres to some limits--gives them an inherent resonance.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Reading in reverse order
In the post on Phèdre, I mentioned Diane Arnson Svarlien's translation of Hippolytus, the play by Euripides that served as the source for Racine. Thing was, I hadn't read that play yet, but now I have. It would have been good to do it in the right order, but you can say that about a lot of things and you might never get past 500 C.E.
It's been entertaining to track the differences between the two. Much is due to the 2,000 year separation of the works, but I tend to read anachronistically. Books that appear in my reading space about the same time become part of the same conversation. I should probably work some Samuel R. Delany in here, something else I'm reading now.
Racine is interested in abstractions like virtue and honor, Euripides deals more directly in natural experience, like the nuances in the connection and rivalry between father and son across generations.
Euripides is bleaker than Racine, no surprise. At the end, Thésée is just left with grief. In Racine, there is the consolation of reconciliation with Aricie and the Pallantides.
Racine added the character of Aricie. This changed the structure in several ways. For one, in Euripides Hippolytus never succumbs to Cypris (Aphrodite) and gets punished for his resistance. In Racine, Hippolytus has lost his resistance and gets punished for his insistence on behaving honorably and not spilling the beans on Phèdre when he first had a chance. See, here's that motive force of an abstraction in Racine--he is undone by acting honorably. In Euripides it's more visceral--the goddess is jealous.
Well, really Hippolytus is punished because he's a douche. His sense of self-righteousness, and his willingness to tell people about it ("there is no man alive/whose wisdom and restraint surpass my own" 1114-1115), earn him no slack when things go wrong. His servant wanrs him early on--"those who act superior are hated" (line 110). His dad is quick to assume he's lying.
Gods exist and play an active role in Euripides. They are almost completely metaphorical in Racine.
The addition of Aricie creates a diamond structure in Racine: Thésée-Phèdre-Hippolyte-Aricie. Thésée loves Phèdre (or at least is connected to her), Phèdre loves Hippolyte, and Hippolyte loves Aricie. Aricie is connected to Thésée by the negative antipathy between the houses. In Euripides there are two triangles: Theseus-Pheadra-Hippolytus, and Cypris-Artemis-Poseidon.
Words don't seem to stand out as much against the backdrop of the action and the play. Some of this may be the fact that I'm reading this in translation, although Diane's verse is excellent. Even so, it seems like the characters don't wield the words the same way.
Lots of dialogue, some rapid and continued back and forth, like lines 331-374, where Phaedra reveals her desire for Hippolytus as she trades single lines of dialogue back and forth with the nurse. This really brings out the monologic quality of Phèdre. The fact that it has monumental stature in French culture must say something about the French. The role of Phèdre was one upon which Bernhardt built her fame. These big chunks of verse would provide a showcase for an actor.
The written word plays a critical role in Hippolytus and has no presence in Phèdre that I recall. Where the critical turn in the plot in Racine comes from false oral testimony, in Euripides it takes the form of writing on a wax tablet Phaedra attaches to her wrist as she is committing suicide. (Diane's translation comes with thorough and incredibly helpful notes, such as the one explaining this wax tablet.)
It's been entertaining to track the differences between the two. Much is due to the 2,000 year separation of the works, but I tend to read anachronistically. Books that appear in my reading space about the same time become part of the same conversation. I should probably work some Samuel R. Delany in here, something else I'm reading now.
Racine is interested in abstractions like virtue and honor, Euripides deals more directly in natural experience, like the nuances in the connection and rivalry between father and son across generations.
Euripides is bleaker than Racine, no surprise. At the end, Thésée is just left with grief. In Racine, there is the consolation of reconciliation with Aricie and the Pallantides.
Racine added the character of Aricie. This changed the structure in several ways. For one, in Euripides Hippolytus never succumbs to Cypris (Aphrodite) and gets punished for his resistance. In Racine, Hippolytus has lost his resistance and gets punished for his insistence on behaving honorably and not spilling the beans on Phèdre when he first had a chance. See, here's that motive force of an abstraction in Racine--he is undone by acting honorably. In Euripides it's more visceral--the goddess is jealous.
Well, really Hippolytus is punished because he's a douche. His sense of self-righteousness, and his willingness to tell people about it ("there is no man alive/whose wisdom and restraint surpass my own" 1114-1115), earn him no slack when things go wrong. His servant wanrs him early on--"those who act superior are hated" (line 110). His dad is quick to assume he's lying.
Gods exist and play an active role in Euripides. They are almost completely metaphorical in Racine.
The addition of Aricie creates a diamond structure in Racine: Thésée-Phèdre-Hippolyte-Aricie. Thésée loves Phèdre (or at least is connected to her), Phèdre loves Hippolyte, and Hippolyte loves Aricie. Aricie is connected to Thésée by the negative antipathy between the houses. In Euripides there are two triangles: Theseus-Pheadra-Hippolytus, and Cypris-Artemis-Poseidon.
Words don't seem to stand out as much against the backdrop of the action and the play. Some of this may be the fact that I'm reading this in translation, although Diane's verse is excellent. Even so, it seems like the characters don't wield the words the same way.
Lots of dialogue, some rapid and continued back and forth, like lines 331-374, where Phaedra reveals her desire for Hippolytus as she trades single lines of dialogue back and forth with the nurse. This really brings out the monologic quality of Phèdre. The fact that it has monumental stature in French culture must say something about the French. The role of Phèdre was one upon which Bernhardt built her fame. These big chunks of verse would provide a showcase for an actor.
The written word plays a critical role in Hippolytus and has no presence in Phèdre that I recall. Where the critical turn in the plot in Racine comes from false oral testimony, in Euripides it takes the form of writing on a wax tablet Phaedra attaches to her wrist as she is committing suicide. (Diane's translation comes with thorough and incredibly helpful notes, such as the one explaining this wax tablet.)
Friday, September 13, 2013
Eight words on Phèdre
I saw Jack Ryan last week at the Chestnut-Houston art crawl. Seeing Jack Ryan is of course special since he's in Oregon. When he said he checks this blog from time to time it made me think maybe I should post something and try to make it not completely a waste of his time. I may disappoint Jack, because instead of posting on local shows--say his show at Seed Space--I'm going to say a few words about classical French theater. Then again, Jack seems to appreciate some such things.
1. Alexandrine. In school I heard about the alexandrine, the classic French meter, but I don't remember seeing it too much because I much preferred more modern poets--think Rimbaud--who were freeing themselves of the tyranny of the alexandrine. The term refers to a 12-syllable line that breaks neatly into two halves, 6 and 6. It is to French verse what the iambic pentameter is to English. When I finally picked up Racine, there it was, line after line of couplets repeating the meter, on end, at length, and seemingly effortlessly. Drama rendered with such formal rigor boggles my mind.
2. Vertu/honneur. Oenone says "pour sauver notre honneur combattu,/il faut immoler tout, et même la vertu" (III.iii.). Throughout the play nouns like virtue and honor drop into the play like characters--once named and spoken, they take on a life of their own. Actions and emotions bend to them. They seem to be self-evident, and characters wield them as tools against each other. Their relative weights become self-evident even if their meanings may not be. These nouns protrude from the text. The Germans go so far as to capitalize their nouns, as if each were the name of a God. Like a God, every bit of added meaning the noun brings seems to come with more mystery.
3. Silence. Much of the action revolves around silence. Oenone (again III.iii.): "Mon zèle n'a besoin que de votre silence." Phèdre gives her that silence, perhaps out of weakness, but just as easily as a form of action--to protect her son, protect her honor, revenge the insult of having fallen in love with Hippolyte. As Racine says in his preface, "Phèdre n'est ni tou à fait couplable, ni tout à fait innocente." Hippolyte himself lends motion to the drama through silence--in refusing (III.v.) to explain to Thésée how, and by whose hands, he has suffered the offense he just learned of from Phèdre, Hippolyte makes himself an easy target of Thésée's suspicions.
4. Abstract. Not much happens in this play. The settings are indistinct and unimportant. A small number of players meet in different configurations and talk to each other, mostly in pretty big chunks of alexandrine. The action such as it us takes place well off stage.
5. Past. The key character developments have already taken place when the play opens. Phèdre has fallen in love with her husband's son. That son has lost his resistance to Venus, and fallen in love with Aricie, the daughter of his father's rivals.
6. Performatives. In this play with its sequence of dialogues and implacable nouns, the uttering of words changes the conditions of the world. Words are action. Thésée kills his son by going to Neptune's altar to ask his justice for the outrage he has declared that his son has committed (IV.iii and iv).
7. Irreversibility. Once something is said, it cannot be unsaid. Every generation tries to teach our children these lessons. Whether true or untrue. "I love you." "Your son took advantage of your wife." "Neptune, avenge me on my son." In Act V when Thésée receives Aricie's testimony that contradicts Oenone's lies, he starts to investigate too late--he would re-question Oenone, but she has thrown herself into the sea, and as he asks for his son, he only receives the news of his death at the hands of Neptune's sea monster. "O soins tardifs et superflus!" In the end Phèdre acknowledges "un injuste silence" and would return to Hippolyte his innocence. I suppose he does end up redeemed in his father's eyes, but too late.
8. Diane. Diane Arnson Svarlien, a friend from high school who now lives in Kentucky, grew up to become a classicist, and she is known for translations of Euripides. Her Medea is superb and very well-regarded. In that same volume she translated the Euripides play that was Racine's source. It is titled Hippolytus rather than Phèdre. Racine took a hero out of the center and replacing him with someone who combines hero and anti-hero.
1. Alexandrine. In school I heard about the alexandrine, the classic French meter, but I don't remember seeing it too much because I much preferred more modern poets--think Rimbaud--who were freeing themselves of the tyranny of the alexandrine. The term refers to a 12-syllable line that breaks neatly into two halves, 6 and 6. It is to French verse what the iambic pentameter is to English. When I finally picked up Racine, there it was, line after line of couplets repeating the meter, on end, at length, and seemingly effortlessly. Drama rendered with such formal rigor boggles my mind.
2. Vertu/honneur. Oenone says "pour sauver notre honneur combattu,/il faut immoler tout, et même la vertu" (III.iii.). Throughout the play nouns like virtue and honor drop into the play like characters--once named and spoken, they take on a life of their own. Actions and emotions bend to them. They seem to be self-evident, and characters wield them as tools against each other. Their relative weights become self-evident even if their meanings may not be. These nouns protrude from the text. The Germans go so far as to capitalize their nouns, as if each were the name of a God. Like a God, every bit of added meaning the noun brings seems to come with more mystery.
3. Silence. Much of the action revolves around silence. Oenone (again III.iii.): "Mon zèle n'a besoin que de votre silence." Phèdre gives her that silence, perhaps out of weakness, but just as easily as a form of action--to protect her son, protect her honor, revenge the insult of having fallen in love with Hippolyte. As Racine says in his preface, "Phèdre n'est ni tou à fait couplable, ni tout à fait innocente." Hippolyte himself lends motion to the drama through silence--in refusing (III.v.) to explain to Thésée how, and by whose hands, he has suffered the offense he just learned of from Phèdre, Hippolyte makes himself an easy target of Thésée's suspicions.
4. Abstract. Not much happens in this play. The settings are indistinct and unimportant. A small number of players meet in different configurations and talk to each other, mostly in pretty big chunks of alexandrine. The action such as it us takes place well off stage.
5. Past. The key character developments have already taken place when the play opens. Phèdre has fallen in love with her husband's son. That son has lost his resistance to Venus, and fallen in love with Aricie, the daughter of his father's rivals.
6. Performatives. In this play with its sequence of dialogues and implacable nouns, the uttering of words changes the conditions of the world. Words are action. Thésée kills his son by going to Neptune's altar to ask his justice for the outrage he has declared that his son has committed (IV.iii and iv).
7. Irreversibility. Once something is said, it cannot be unsaid. Every generation tries to teach our children these lessons. Whether true or untrue. "I love you." "Your son took advantage of your wife." "Neptune, avenge me on my son." In Act V when Thésée receives Aricie's testimony that contradicts Oenone's lies, he starts to investigate too late--he would re-question Oenone, but she has thrown herself into the sea, and as he asks for his son, he only receives the news of his death at the hands of Neptune's sea monster. "O soins tardifs et superflus!" In the end Phèdre acknowledges "un injuste silence" and would return to Hippolyte his innocence. I suppose he does end up redeemed in his father's eyes, but too late.
8. Diane. Diane Arnson Svarlien, a friend from high school who now lives in Kentucky, grew up to become a classicist, and she is known for translations of Euripides. Her Medea is superb and very well-regarded. In that same volume she translated the Euripides play that was Racine's source. It is titled Hippolytus rather than Phèdre. Racine took a hero out of the center and replacing him with someone who combines hero and anti-hero.
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