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Osman
Le 22 mai 1622, l’Empire ottoman assiste à un événement sans précédent : l’exécution du sultan régnant, Osman II, par sa propre milice. Les chroniqueurs européens s’en emparent aussitôt pour proposer, au-delà du cas d’Osman, une réflexion sur la notion de « majesté » – cette « force vive, personnifiée dans le roi, et qui tient les sujets en son pouvoir », pour reprendre la définition de Ralph Giesey. Si Osman est une victime de l’Histoire, il devient rapidement, sous la plume de Tristan L’Hermite, un héros de tragédie.
109 pages, Paperback
Published October 17, 2017
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About the author
Tristan L'Hermite
53 books2 followersFrançois L'Hermite du Solier, called Tristan L'Hermite, was a French nobleman and writer: dramatist, poet, and novelist.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 11, 2024
It is interesting to me that the themes in Osman are so similar to the themes in La Mort de Sénèque, i.e. the overthrow of an all-powerful emperor and the emperor's response to the complaints of his people. I am fascinated by thinking of both of these plays as responses to the absolute monarchy in France.
Osman is not well plotted (as Lacy Lockert and others have pointed out), but it has some really great sequences, especially 4.2, with the Janissaries on the deck and the emperor on (maybe?) a balcony.
One also can't help comparing this (at least a little bit) to Racine's Bajazet, since the source material is the same. Osman does partially have the structure of a Racinean tragedy—where the person with the power is also the person who loves someone who does not love him/her in return—but it lacks almost everything else that is central to Racinean tragedy. This is a surprising play in that it lacks the claustrophobia of Racine's dramas and it lacks the tension that Racine creates so finely. It also never manages to convince us to care about the Mufti's daughter (the female protagonist), though the tragedy seems invested in her death in act five as an emotional event. Still Osman has its virtues: it's invested in politics in a way that Racine's tragedies never are, and it has at least one sparkling cliffhanger (as does La Mort de Sénèque).
PS I read this in English, not in the original French, despite what I entered into GoodReads.
Osman is not well plotted (as Lacy Lockert and others have pointed out), but it has some really great sequences, especially 4.2, with the Janissaries on the deck and the emperor on (maybe?) a balcony.
One also can't help comparing this (at least a little bit) to Racine's Bajazet, since the source material is the same. Osman does partially have the structure of a Racinean tragedy—where the person with the power is also the person who loves someone who does not love him/her in return—but it lacks almost everything else that is central to Racinean tragedy. This is a surprising play in that it lacks the claustrophobia of Racine's dramas and it lacks the tension that Racine creates so finely. It also never manages to convince us to care about the Mufti's daughter (the female protagonist), though the tragedy seems invested in her death in act five as an emotional event. Still Osman has its virtues: it's invested in politics in a way that Racine's tragedies never are, and it has at least one sparkling cliffhanger (as does La Mort de Sénèque).
PS I read this in English, not in the original French, despite what I entered into GoodReads.
Displaying 1 of 1 review