Alfred de Musset

Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay^[1] (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.^[1][2] 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.^[2]

Biography

Alfred de Musset

Musset^[1] was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris.^[2] His family was upper-class, and his father worked in various key government positions, and it was under his direction in 1821, that a complete edition of Rousseau's work was published).^[2] 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.^[2]

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.^[2] Years later, elder brother Paul de Musset would preserve these, and many other details, for posterity, in a biography on his famous younger brother.^[2]

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 général. With the help of Paul Foucher, Victor Hugo's brother-in-law, he began to attend, at the age of 17, the Cénacle, the literary salon of Charles Nodier at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. After attempts at careers in medicine (which he gave up owing to a distaste for dissections), law,^[1] drawing, English and piano, he became one of the first Romantic writers, with his first collection of poems, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829, Tales of Spain and Italy).^[1] 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 Monarchy. During this time he also involved himself in polemics during the Rhine crisis of 1840, caused by the French prime minister Adolphe Thiers, who as Minister of the Interior had been Musset's superior. Thiers had demanded that France should own the left bank of the Rhine (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 Sand,^[1] which lasted from 1833 to 1835, is told from his point of view in his autobiographical novel, La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Age,^[1] made into a film, Children of the Century), 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.^[1]

Musset was dismissed from his post as librarian after the revolution of 1848, but he was appointed librarian of the Ministry of Public Instruction during the Second Empire.

Musset received the Légion d'honneur on 24 April 1845, at the same time as Balzac, and was elected to the Académie française in 1852 (after two failures to do so in 1848 and 1850).

Tomb of Alfred de Musset in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Alfred de Musset died on 2 May 1857, from a rare heart condition (today known as Musset's Syndrome).^[2] He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Reception

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud 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 Renoir's La règle du jeu was inspired by Musset's play, Les Caprices de Marianne.

Music

Lorenzaccio, which takes place in Medici's Florence, was put in music by the musician Sylvano Bussotti in 1972.

Works

Poetry

• Les Nuits (Nuits de mai, d'août, d'octobre, de décembre), 1835-1837
• Le rideau de ma voisine:

Le rideau de ma voisine

Se soulève lentement.

Elle va, je l'imagine,

Prendre l'air un moment.

On entr'ouvre la fenêtre :

Je sens mon coeur palpiter.

Elle veut savoir peut-être

Si je suis à guetter.

Mais, hélas ! ce n'est qu'un rêve ;

Ma voisine aime un lourdaud,

Et c'est le vent qui soulève

Le coin de son rideau.

Plays

• André del Sarto, 1833
• Les Caprices de Marianne, 1833
• Lorenzaccio, 1833
• Fantasio, 1834
• La nuit vénitienne, 1834
• On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1834
• Barberine, 1835
• Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, 1845

Novel

• La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical), 1836.^[2]

Secondary Literature

• Henri Lefebvre, Musset, 1955

Notes

External links

• Works by Alfred de Musset at Project Gutenberg
• Sand and Musset at the Theater to Paris : "Sand et Musset, les Amants du siècle"
• The New Student's Reference Work/Musset, Alfred de