Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
dramatist,
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, and novelist.
Along with his poetry, he is known for writing
La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (
The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836.
Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. His family was upper-class, but he was poor and his father worked in various key government positions, but never gave his son any money.
Great artists have no country.
L’Orfèvre, Lorenzaccio (1834).
Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux. (I have come too late into a world too old.)
Rolla (1834)
Je ne sais où va mon chemin, mais je marche mieux quand ma main serre la tienne. ("À mon frère revenant d'Italie", mars 1844)
Quel que soit le souci que ta jeunesse endure,Laisse-la s'élargir, cette sainte blessureQue les noirs séraphins t'ont faite au fond du coeur ;Rien ne nous rend si grands qu'une grande douleurMais, pour en être atteint, ne crois pas, ô poèteQue ta voix ici-bas doive rester muette.Les plus déseperés sont les chants les plus beaux,Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots.("La Nuit de Mai", 1835)
On est souvent trompé en amour, souvent blessé et souvent malheureux; mais on aime, et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arrière et on se dit : j'ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompé quelquefois, mais j'ai aimé. C'est moi qui ai vécu, et non pas un être factice créé par mon orgueil et mon ennui. (Acte II, Scène V)
"The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII...Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near" (this quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement)
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
dramatist,
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, and novelist.
Along with his poetry, he is known for writing
La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (
The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836.
Biography
Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. His family was upper-class, but he was poor and his father worked in various key government positions, but never gave his son any money. His mother was similarly accomplished, and her role as a society hostess, - for example her drawing-room parties, luncheons, and dinners, held in the Musset residence - left a lasting impression on young Alfred.
Early indications of Musset's boyhood talents were seen by his fondness for acting impromptu mini-plays based upon episodes from old romance stories he had read. Years later, elder brother Paul de Musset would preserve these, and many other details, for posterity, in a biography on his famous younger brother.
Alfred de Musset entered the collège Henri-IV at the age of nine, where in 1827 he won the Latin essay prize in the
Concours généralIn France, the concours général is a national competition held every year between students of Première and Terminale in almost all subjects taught in both general, technological and professional high schools...
. With the help of Paul Foucher,
Victor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
's brother-in-law, he began to attend, at the age of 17, the
CénacleCénacle is the name given to a Parisian literary group of varying constituency that began about 1826 to gather around Charles Nodier. The group sought to revive in French literature the old monarchical spirit, the spirit of mediæval mystery and spiritual submission. The chief members...
, the literary salon of
Charles NodierCharles Nodier , was a French author who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, vampire tales, and the importance of dreams as part of literary creation, and whose career as a librarian is often underestimated by literary historians.-Early...
at the
Bibliothèque de l'ArsenalThe Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris is one of the branches of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.-History:The collections of the library originated with the private library of Marc-René, 3rd marquis d'Argenson , installed in 1757 in the residence of the Grand Master of the Artillery, at the...
. After attempts at careers in medicine (which he gave up owing to a distaste for dissections), law,
drawing, English and piano, he became one of the first
RomanticRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
writers, with his first collection of poems,
Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829, Tales of Spain and Italy).
By the time he reached the age of 20, his rising literary fame was already accompanied by a sulphurous reputation fed by his dandy side.
He was the librarian of the French Ministry of the Interior under the
July MonarchyThe July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of the French , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
. During this time he also involved himself in polemics during the Rhine crisis of 1840, caused by the French prime minister
Adolphe ThiersLouis-Adolphe was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
, who as Minister of the Interior had been Musset's superior. had demanded that France should own the left bank of the
RhineThe Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, at , with an average discharge of more than ....
(described as France's "natural boundary"), as it had under Napoleon, despite the territory's German population. These demands were rejected by German songs and poems, including Nikolaus Becker's
Rheinlied, which contained the verse:
"Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien, deutschen Rhein ..." (
They shall not have it, the free, German Rhine). Musset answered to this with a poem of his own:
"Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin allemand" (
We've had it, your German Rhine).
The tale of his celebrated love affair with
George SandAmantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist. She is considered by some a feminist although she refused to join this movement...
, which lasted from 1833 to 1835, is told from his point of view in his
autobiographicalAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
novel,
La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle (
The Confession of a Child of the Age,
made into a film,
Children of the CenturyChildren of the Century is a 1999 French film based on the true tale of the tumultuous love affair between two French literary icons of the 19th Century, novelist George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset .-Plot summary:...
), and from her point of view in her
Elle et lui. Musset's
Nuits (1835–1837, Nights) trace his emotional upheaval of his love for George Sand, from early despair to final resignation. He is also believed to be the author of Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833), a lesbian erotic novel, also believed to be modeled on George Sand.
Musset was dismissed from his post as librarian by the new minister Ledru-Rollin after the revolution of 1848. He was however appointed librarian of the Ministry of Public Instruction in 1853.
Musset received the
Légion d'honneurThe Légion d'honneur or Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
on 24 April 1845, at the same time as
BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.Due to his keen observation of detail...
, and was elected to the
Académie françaiseL'Académie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was...
in 1852 (after two failures to do so in 1848 and 1850).
Alfred de Musset died in his sleep on 2 May 1857. The cause was heart failure, the combination of alcoholism and a longstanding
aortic insufficiencyAortic insufficiency , also known as aortic regurgitation , is the leaking of the aortic valve of the heart that causes blood to flow in the reverse direction during ventricular diastole, from the aorta into the left ventricle....
. One symptom that had been noticed by his brother was a bobbing of the head as a result of the amplification of the pulse; this was later called Musset's sign. He was buried in
Père Lachaise CemeteryPère Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France at , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs....
in Paris.
Reception
The French poet
Arthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet, born in Charleville, Ardennes. As part of the decadent movement, his influence on modern literature, music and art has been enduring and pervasive...
was highly critical of Musset's work. Rimbaud wrote in his
Letters of a Seer (
Lettres du Voyant) that Musset did not accomplish anything because he "closed his eyes" before the visions. (Lettre à Paul Demeny, mai 1871) Director
Jean RenoirJean Renoir , born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France, was a film director, actor and author. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir...
's
La règle du jeuThe Rules of the Game is a 1939 film directed by Jean Renoir about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II...
was inspired by Musset's play,
Les Caprices de Marianne.
Music
Lorenzaccio, which takes place in Medici's Florence, was set to music by the musician
Sylvano BussottiSylvano Bussotti is an Italian composer of contemporary music whose work is unusually notated and often brings up special problems in interpretation.Born in Florence, Bussotti learned to play the violin as a child, becoming a prodigy...
in 1972.
Poetry
- Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, 1829
- Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil, 1832
- Poésies complètes, 1840
- Poésies nouvelles, 1850
- Les Nuits (Nuits de mai, d'août, d'octobre, de décembre), 1835-1837
- Œuvres posthumes, 1860
Plays
- La Nuit vénitienne, 1830
- a failure; from this point until 1847, his plays were published but not performed
- André del Sarto, 1833
- Les Caprices de Marianne, 1833
- Lorenzaccio
Lorenzaccio is a French play written by Alfred de Musset in 1834. It is set in 16th century Florence, and depicts a stereotypical romantic hero, Lorenzo, who swore to kill Florence's tyrant, Alexandre de Médicis. Having engaged in morally contestable actions to gain the Duke's confidence, he loses...
, 1833
- Fantasio
Fantasio is a fictional character from the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip. He was introduced in 1944 by Jijé, who was then drawing Spirou's adventures. Fantasio is Spirou's best friend and co-adventurer, a graphic reporter with an uncontrolled imagination and a mop of blond hair...
, 1834
- On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1834
- La Quenouille de Barberine, 1835
- Le Chandelier, 1835
- Il ne faut jurer de rien, 1836
- Un Caprice, 1837
- first performed in 1847, and a huge success, leading to the performance of other plays
- Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, 1845
- On ne saurait penser à tout, 1849
- Carmosine, 1850
- Bettine, 1851
- L'Âne et le Ruisseau, 1855
Novels
- La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical), 1836.
- Histoire d'un merle blanc (The White Blackbird), 1842.
External links