Produced by David Widger
CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY
(Confession d’un Enfant du Siecle)
By ALFRED DE MUSSET
With a Preface by HENRI DE BORNIER, of the French Academy
ALFRED DE MUSSET
A poet has no right to play fast and loose with his genius. It does not
belong to him, it belongs to the Almighty; it belongs to the world and
to a coming generation. At thirty De Musset was already an old man,
seeking in artificial stimuli the youth that would not spring again.
Coming from a literary family the zeal of his house had eaten him up;
his passion had burned itself out and his heart with it. He had done
his work; it mattered little to him or to literature whether the curtain
fell on his life’s drama in 1841 or in 1857.
Alfred de Musset, by virtue of his genial, ironical temperament,
eminently clear brain, and undying achievements, belongs to the great
poets of the ages. We to-day do not approve the timbre of his epoch:
that impertinent, somewhat irritant mask, that redundant rhetoric, that
occasional disdain for the metre. Yet he remains the greatest poete
de l’amour, the most spontaneous, the most sincere, the most emotional
singer of the tender passion that modern times has produced.
Born of noble parentage on December 11, 1810--his full name being Louis
Charles Alfred de Musset--the son of De Musset-Pathai, he received his
education at the College Henri IV, where, among others, the Duke of
Orleans was his schoolmate. When only eighteen he was introduced
into the Romantic ‘cenacle’ at Nodier’s. His first work, ‘Les Contes
d’Espagne et d’Italie’ (1829), shows reckless daring in the choice of
subjects quite in the spirit of Le Sage, with a dash of the dandified
impertinence that mocked the foibles of the old Romanticists. However,
he presently abandoned this style for the more subjective strain of ‘Les
Voeux Steyiles, Octave, Les Secretes Pensees de Rafael, Namouna, and
Rolla’, the last two being very eloquent at times, though immature.
Rolla (1833) is one of the strongest and most depressing of his works;
the sceptic regrets the faith he has lost the power to regain, and
realizes in lurid flashes the desolate emptiness of his own heart. At
this period the crisis of his life was reached. He accompanied George
Sand to Italy, a rupture between them occurred, and De Musset returned
to Paris alone in 1834.
More subdued sadness is found in ‘Les Nuits’ (1832-1837), and in ‘Espoir
en Dieu’ (1838), etc., and his ‘Lettre a Lamartine’ belongs to the most
beautiful pages of French literature. But henceforth his production
grows more sparing and in form less romantic, although ‘Le Rhin
Allemand’, for example, shows that at times he can still gather up all
his powers. The poet becomes lazy and morose, his will is sapped by a
wild and reckless life, and one is more than once tempted to wish that
his lyre had ceased to sing.
De Musset’s prose is more abundant than his lyrics or his dramas. It is
of immense value, and owes its chief significance to the clearness
with which it exhibits the progress of his ethical disintegration. In
‘Emmeline (1837) we have a rather dangerous juggling with the
psychology of love. Then follows a study of simultaneous love, ‘Les
Deux Mattresses’ (1838), quite in the spirit of Jean Paul. He then
wrote three sympathetic depictions of Parisian Bohemia: ‘Frederic et
Bernadette, Mimi Pinson, and Le Secret de Javotte’, all in 1838. ‘Le
Fils de Titien (1838) and Croiselles’ (1839) are carefully elaborated
historical novelettes; the latter is considered one of his best works,
overflowing with romantic spirit, and contrasting in this respect
strangely with ‘La Mouche’ (1853), one of the last flickerings of his
imagination. ‘Maggot’ (1838) bears marks of the influence of George
Sand; ‘Le Merle Blanc’ (1842) is a sort of allegory dealing with
their quarrel. ‘Pierre et Camille’ is a pretty but slight tale of a
deaf-mute’s love. His greatest work, ‘Confession d’un Enfant du Siecle’,
crowned with acclaim by the French Academy, and classic for all time,
was written in 1836, when the poet, somewhat recovered from the shock,
relates his unhappy Italian experience. It is an ambitious and deeply
interesting work, and shows whither his dread of all moral compulsion
and self-control was leading him.
De Musset also wrote some critical essays, witty and satirical in tone,
in which his genius appears in another light. It is not generally known
that he was the translator into French of De Quincey’s ‘Confessions
of an Opium Eater’ (1828). He was also a prominent contributor to the
‘Revue des Deux Mondes.’ In 1852 he was elected to the French Academy,
but hardly ever appeared at the sessions. A confrere once made the
remark: “De Musset frequently absents himself,” whereupon it is said
another Immortal answered, “And frequently absinthe’s himself!”
While Brunetiere, Lemattre, and others consider De Musset a great
dramatist, Sainte-Beuve, singularly enough, does not appreciate him as a
playwright. Theophile Gautier says about ‘Un Caprice’ (1847): “Since the
days of Marivaux nothing has been produced in ‘La Comedie Francaise’
so fine, so delicate, so dainty, than this tender piece, this
chef-d’oeuvre, long buried within the pages of a review; and we are
greatly indebted to the Russians of St. Petersburg, that snow-covered
Athens, for having dug up and revived it.” Nevertheless, his bluette,
‘La Nuit Venetienne’, was outrageously treated at the Odeon. The
opposition was exasperated by the recent success of Hugo’s ‘Hernani.’
Musset was then in complete accord with the fundamental romantic
conception that tragedy must mingle with comedy on the stage as well as
in life, but he had too delicate a taste to yield to the extravagance
of Dumas and the lesser romanticists. All his plays, by the way, were
written for the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ between 1833 and 1850, and they
did not win a definite place on the stage till the later years of the
Second Empire. In some comedies the dialogue is unequalled by any writer
since the days of Beaumarchais. Taine says that De Musset has more real
originality in some respects than Hugo, and possesses truer dramatic
genius. Two or three of his comedies will probably hold the stage
longer than any dramatic work of the romantic school. They contain the
quintessence of romantic imaginative art; they show in full flow that
unchecked freedom of fancy which, joined to the spirit of realistic
comedy, produces the modern French drama. Yet De Musset’s prose has in
greater measure the qualities that endure.
The Duke of Orleans created De Musset Librarian in the Department of the
Interior. It was sometimes stated that there was no library at all. It
is certain that it was a sinecure, though the pay, 3,000 francs, was
small. In 1848 the Duke had the bad taste to ask for his resignation,
but the Empire repaired the injury. Alfred de Musset died in Paris, May
2, 1857.
HENRI DE BORNIER
de l’Academie Francaise.
THE CONFESSIONS OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY
BOOK 1.
PART I
CHAPTER I. TO THE READER
Before the history of any life can be written, that life must be lived;
so that it is not my life that I am now writing. Attacked in early youth
by an abominable moral malady, I here narrate what happened to me during
the space of three years. Were I the only victim of that disease, I
would say nothing, but as many others suffer from the same evil, I write
for them, although I am not sure that they will give heed to me. Should
my warning be unheeded, I shall still have reaped the fruit of my
agonizing in having cured myself, and, like the fox caught in a trap,
shall have gnawed off my captive foot.