Artémire
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| Title: | Artémire |
| Genus: | tragedy |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Voltaire |
| Premiere: | February 15, 1720 |
| Place of premiere: | Paris |
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Artémire was Voltaire's second tragedy in five acts . The play premiered on February 15, 1720 in the Comédie-Française . The failure of the premiere of his second piece led Voltaire to withdraw the piece and suppress the pressure on the work. Some fragments have been preserved, which were summarized for the first time in the Kehl edition.
action
The editors of the Kehler Werkausgabe could not find a plan for the structure of the piece. The arrangement of the fragments was based on a parody of the work in one act by Dominique performed in the Théâtre-Italien , which followed the premiere just two days later. The location of the fictitious plot is Larisa in Thessaly after the death of Alexander the Great . Artémire, the virtuous wife of the primordial supervisor Cassandre, who actually loves the rightful heir to the throne Philotas, is persecuted by her obsessive, cruel and incapable of love husband Cassandre. She is ultimately saved by the unforeseen death of her husband.
Performances and contemporary reception
The piece fell through at the premiere. Withdrawn from Voltaire thereupon, it saw seven more performances at the request of the court. The literary revue L'Europe Savante reported that the play had only seen a few performances. It contains the same weaknesses and the same high points as the Oedipe. Voltaire took the basic idea from a printed novel of the same name. Artémire itself was not printed. The success of the Artémire is opposed to that of the Oedipe.
Going to press
Voltaire withheld the manuscript. Two shorter fragments from the fourth act were published for the first time by Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines in the appendix to Bernard's edition of La Ligue in Amsterdam in 1724. A summary and arrangement of the surviving fragments was made for the first time posthumously in 1785 in the Kehler edition. In the factory edition of the works of Voltaire von Beuchot (1829–1840) further fragments from a manuscript by Decroix were incorporated.
First editions
- Fragment (et autre fragment) / de la Tragedie d'Artemire , in: La Ligue ou Henry le grand, Jean Frederic Bernard, Amsterdam, 1724, appendix pp. 185–189. [1]
- Fragment (et autre fragment) / de la Tragedie d'Artemire , in: La Ligue ou Henry le grand, Henri Desbordes, Amsterdam, 1724, appendix pp. 45–51.
- Fragmens d'Artémire , Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Société Littéraire-typographique, Kehl, 1784, Volume 1, pp. 159-186.
- Decroix: Supplément aux fragments de la tragédie d'Artémire , manuscript, BNF, naf 25137, pp. 189–198, excerpts from the Oxford edition, Les Oeuvres completes de Voltaire .
- Voltaire, Oeuvres , edited by A.-J.-Q Beuchot, Paris, 1829-1840, Volume 2, pp. 137-178.
literature
- Theodore Besterman: From the Artémire to Uranie (1719–1722), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, pp. 62f f.
- Siegfried Detemple: Voltaire: Die Werke, catalog for the 300th birthday, Berlin, 1994, p. 28.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oeuvres de 1707-1722 (II)., In: Les Oeuvres completes de Voltaire :, Volume 1, Part 2, p. 400
- ↑ See Avertissement des Editeurs on the Fragmens d'Artémire, in: Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, Société Littéraire-typographique, Kehl, 1785, Volume 1, p. 161.
- ^ Theodore Besterman: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, pp. 63f.
- ↑ See L'Europe savante, Volume 12, A. de Rogissart, 1720, p. 158