MUSSET, ALFRED DE [LOUIS CHARLES ALFRED] (1810 5857), French poet, play-writer and novelist, was born on Dec. II, 1810 in a house in the middle of old Paris, near the Hotel Cluny. In the summer of 1827 he won the second prize (at the College Henri IV.) by an essay on "The Origin of our Feelings." He took up law and medicine but could endure no profession. He was taken by Paul Foucher to Victor Hugo's house, where he met Alfred de Vigny, Prosper Merimee, Charles Nodier, Sainte-Beuve, and others. His first original volume, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829), had an immediate success, provoked bitter opposition, and produced many unworthy imitations. This volume contained a fantastic parody in verse on certain productions of the romantic school. This was the famous "Ballade a la lune" with its recur ring comparison of the moon shining above a steeple to the dot over an i. It was, to Musset's delight, taken seriously.
In December 1830 Musset was just twenty years old, and was already conscious of that curious double existence within him so frequently symbolized in his plays—in Octave and Celio for instance (in Les Caprices de Marianne), who also stand for the two camps, the men of matter and the men of feeling—which he has elsewhere described as characteristic of his generation. At this date his Nuit venitienne was produced by Harel, manager of the Odeon. It failed and Musset was disgusted with the theatre.
Musset now belonged, in a not very whole-hearted fashion, to the "Cenacle," but the connection came to an end in 1832. In 1833 he published the volume called Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil, and was asked to contribute to the Revue des deux mondes. In this he published, in April 1833, Andre del Sarto, and he followed this six weeks later with Les Caprices de Marianne. The latter play has perhaps more of the Shakespearian quality—the quality of artfully mingling the terrible, the grotesque, and the high comedy tones—which exists more or less in all Musset's long and more serious plays, than is found in any other of these. Its bril liant dialogue and swiftness of action give it superficially the char acter of comedy, but throughout there runs the sense of fate.
In 1833 the Revue published Rolla, a symptom of the maladie du siecle. Rolla, for all the strain which is not to be denied
of Wertherism, has yet a decided individuality. The poem was written at the beginning of Musset's liaison with George Sand, and in December 1833 Musset started on the unfortunate journey to Italy. It is well known that the rupture of what was for a time a most passionate attachment had a disastrous effect upon Musset, who was absolutely and completely struck down by the blow. But it was not so well known until Paul de Musset pointed it out that the passion expressed in the Nuit de decembre, written about twelve months after the journey to Italy, referred not to George Sand but to another and quite a different woman. As fiction, the story is told in the two volumes called respectively Elle et lui by George Sand, and Lui et elle by Paul de Musset.
During Musset's absence in Italy Fantasio was published in the Revue, Lorenzaccio is said to have been written at Venice, and not long after his return On ne badine pas avec l'amour was written and published in the Revue. In 1835 he produced Lucie, La Nuit de mai, La Quenouille de Barberine, Le Chandelier, La Loi sur la presse, La Nuit de decembre, and La Confession d'un enfant du siecle, wherein is contained what is probably a true account of Musset's relations with George Sand. To 1836 belong the Nuit d'aolit, the Lettre a Lamartine, the Stances a la Malibran, the comedy II ne faut jurer de rien, and the beginning of the bril liant letters of Dupuis and Cotonet on romanticism. 11 ne faut jurer de rien is as typical of Musset's comedy work as is Les Caprices de Marianne of the work in which a terrible fatality un derlies the brilliant dialogue and keen polished characterization. In 1837 was published Un Caprice, which afterwards found its way to the Paris stage by a curious road. Mme. Allan-Despreaux, the actress, heard of it in St. Petersburg as a Russian piece. On asking for a French translation of the play she received the volume Comedies et proverbes reprinted from the Revue des deux mondes. In 1837 appeared also some of the Nouvelles. In 1839 Musset began a romance called Le Poete dechu, of which the existing f rag ments are full of passion and insight.