Que faire de (la mort de) Pompée ? Analyse poétique et politique d’une tragédie double

Abstract

This article proposes a double analysis, poetic and political, of the tragedy La mort de Pompée (The Death of Pompey, 1644) by Pierre Corneille. It shows the bold construction of Corneille who crosses two intrigues: an Egyptian one (what to do with the arrival of Pompey?) and a Roman one (what to do with the death of Pompey?). The French poet lends to Caesar, faced with the head of Pompey, a double reaction, worked by the tension between the joy of the defeat of his adversary and the magnanimity that he must manifest to hope to restore civil peace. By inventing a confrontation, absent from the historical sources, between Caesar and Cornelia, he introduces the question of the conditions of the end of the civil war. It thus appears that the poetics of the play unfolds a political thought. Corneille highlights the threat that imperial conquest outside Rome poses for civil peace.