Racan, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de (1589-1670). French poet. Having lost his father at an early age, he was taken into the care of the duc de Bellegarde. Malherbe, on his arrival at the court in 1605, was assigned by the king to the Bellegarde household, and there he befriended the young man, whom he came to regard as his favourite pupil. The somewhat nonchalant Racan profited from Malherbe's discipline, though he disagreed with the master on some technical points and disliked excess of regulation. Nor did he share Malherbe's scorn of Ronsard, and there is a strong vein of rustic realism in his work which recalls the 16th c. This gives authenticity to his well-known stances, ‘A Tircis sur la retraite’; it blends well too with pastoral conventions in his play Les Bergeries (first performed as Arthénice, c.1619). In general his poetry is more relaxed, quieter than that of Malherbe, even in his odes, where the master's influence is at its strongest. In this respect he shows some affinity with Tristan L'Hermite, and it is not surprising that La Fontaine should have admired him. He left some interesting biographical notes on Malherbe.
— Alan Steele
