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]//
[edit] Biography
Alfred de Musset
Musset
[1] was born on 11 December 1810 in
Paris.
[2] 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 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] 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.
[3]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.
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