SOURCE: Racevskis, Roland. “Subjective Dispersion in Iphigénie or the Unbearable Fullness of Being.” French Forum 27, no. 2 (spring 2002): 13-27.

In the following essay, Racevskis contends that Iphigénie is a tragedy about the universal human predicament of being caught on the threshold between self and others, present and future, duty and desire, knowledge and ignorance, immanence and transcendence.

Racine's Iphigénie (1674) is a drama of anticipation in excess. With the gods' all-powerful yet undisclosed will hanging over them, this tragedy's characters stumble in the dark, interrogating their destinies in a present moment overfilled with potential, on the cusp of the future. In typically Racinian fashion, they find their circumstances unbearable, so filled are they with a strong yet vague sense of what is to come. As tensions mount, the waiting leads to confusion, to experiential saturation, and eventually to the dispersion of identities. Among Racine's secular tragedies, Iphig...