MUSSET, ALFRED de. — French Romantic poet, born on 11 December 1810 in Paris, where he died on 1 May 1857. He identified the ideal of life and poetry with love and, lacking interest in every other problem, displayed, even when confronted with the religious question, an absenteeism that at times, under various influences, gave way to verbal panegyric participation.
In 1830 he published the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, which, alongside a conventional Spain and Italy, present a break with classical precepts in the use of language and metres, as well as a rebellion against traditional Christian morality. His second volume of verse, Un spectacle dans un fauteuil; André del Sarto; Fantasia; and Les caprices de Marianne (comedies in prose) date from 1833. His dramatic talent is fully demonstrated by Lorenzaccio (1834) and On ne badine pas avec l'amour (1834). In the other prose comedies, La quenouille de Barberine (1835) and Il ne faut jurer de rien (1836), the Romantic element is tempered by the grace, witty humour, and verve that constitute the beauty of Musset’s comedies, among which Le chandelier (1835) is perfect. The novel Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1836), which reflects M.’s tempestuous love affair with George Sand, is centred on the “Romantic malaise” already outlined in the poem Rolla (1835). His stories and prose tales are noteworthy for their profound humanity and unaffected form. M.’s poetry, although fluent, is generally stifled by emphasis and rhetoric; but in major compositions such as La lettre à Lamartine (1836), the Nuits (1835–37), and the beautiful Souvenir (1841), the poet attains moments of passionate lyricism. Moreover, art is also evident in light poems such as Le lever (1829), Madame la Marquise (1829), La chanson de Barberine (1836), and Rondeau (1842), in which imagination, tenderness, and playfulness are harmoniously interwoven.