Hugo's heroic bearing and giant's stride had compelled reverence; his imposing rhetoric roused respectful admiration; but this miraculous jaunty grace, this genius for shameless drollery, had both an emancipatory and a fascinating effect. There was a diabolical irresistibility about it, a quality which women as a rule are, and in this case were, the first to appreciate. De Musset wrote of women, always of women, and not, like Hugo, with precocious maturity, with chivalrous tenderness, with romantic gallantry—no, with a passion, a hatred, a bitterness, a fury, which showed that he despised and adored them, that they could make him writhe and scream in agony, and that he took his revenge in clamorous accusation and fiery scorn.
There is here no ripeness, wholesomeness, or moral beauty, but a youthful, seething, incredible intensity of life, any description of which would be no more successful than the description of scarlet given to the blind man, which drew forth the remark: "Then it is like the sound of a trumpet." And in this poetry there is, verily, a quality which suggests scarlet and the flourish of trumpets. That beauty in art is immortal is true; but there is something still more certainly immortal, namely, life. These first poems of De Musset lived. They were followed by his mature, beautiful works; and all men's eyes were opened to his merits. In the poem "Après une lecture" he has himself described his art:
"Celui qui ne sait pas, quand la brise étouffée
Soupire au fond des bois son tendre et long chagrin,
Sortir seul au hazard, chantant quelque refrain,
Plus fou qu'Ophélia de romarin coiffée,
Plus étourdi qu'un page amoureux d'une fée
Sur son chapeau cassé jouant du tambourin;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Celui qui n'a pas l'âme à tout jamais aimante,
Qui n'a pas pour tout bien, pour unique bonheur,
De venir lentement poser son front rêveur
Sur un front jeune et frais, à la tresse odorante,
Et de sentir ainsi d'une tête charmante
La vie et la beauté descendre dans son cœur;
Celui qui ne sait pas, durant les nuits brûlantes
Qui font pâlir d'amour l'étoile de Vénus,
Se lever en sursaut, sans raison, les pieds nus,
Marcher, prier, pleurer des larmes ruisselantes,
Et devant l'infini joindre des mains tremblantes,
Le cœur plein de pitié pour les maux inconnus;
Que celui-là rature et barbouille à son aise;
Il peut, tant qu'il voudra, rimer à tour de bras,
Ravauder l'oripeau qu'on appelle antithèse,
Et s'en aller ainsi jusqu'au Père-Lachaise,
Traînant à ses talons tous les sots d'ici-bas;
Grand homme, si l'on veut; mais poëte, non pas."
In the allusion to those who trick themselves out with the tinsel of antithesis we have a hit at Victor Hugo and his school, and the almost unconscious expression of the genuine lyric poet's feeling of superiority to the gifted rhetorician. The overpowering enthusiasm for poetry and the poetic self-consciousness remind us of Goethe's "Wanderers Sturmlied."
And as De Musset developed and approached the years of discretion, he continued to reveal qualities which outshone Victor Hugo's. He won the hearts of the reading public by his essential humanness. He confessed his weakness and faults; Victor Hugo felt it incumbent on him to be unerring. He was not the marvellous artificer of verse, could not, like Hugo, hammer the metal of language into fashion and put word gems into a setting of gold. He wrote carelessly, rhymed anyhow, even in more slipshod fashion than Heine; but he was never the rhetorician, always the human being. In his joy and his grief there seemed to be an immortal truth. One of his poems flung upon a pile of poems by other poets acted like aquafortis; everything else composing the pile burned up or evaporated, as being mere paper and words; it alone remained, and burned and rang in its piercing truth like a cry from a human breast.
How was it, then, that not he but Hugo became the leader of the young Romantic School?
This question may be answered by reversing the position of the words in the last line of the poem just quoted, and saying: "Poëte si l'on veut; mais grand homme non pas."
In spite of the extraordinary variety of the standpoints adopted by Hugo during the course of his long life, a certain unbroken line of progression is plainly evident in his political and religious development, and, what is almost of more importance, he acts with unfailing dignity. Victor Hugo was a hard worker, Alfred de Musset was exceedingly indolent; Hugo was an excellent economist, who made the most of his great gifts, and did not squander his talents, but carefully preserved both his physical and mental powers; De Musset was reckless in the extreme, neglectful of his health, addicted to narcotics even in his youth. Hugo had the faculty of making his personality a centre, of collecting other men round him and binding them to him, the faculty of the chief and leader; De Musset, the man of the world, was an excellent companion, but De Musset, the artist, was quite incapable of pulling in the traces with others. Hugo had the unbounded belief in himself which made others believe in him.
De Musset begins with an affectation of superiority, with a display of the extremist scepticism in religion and the extremest indifference in politics. But beneath this scepticism and this indifference we soon catch glimpses of an unmanly weakness, which in course of time reveals itself plainly.
Read his masked self-revelation in Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle. He tells how he was born at an unlucky moment. Everything was dead. Napoleon's day was past, and, as if there could be no glory except the glory of the Empire, we are told that the days of glory were at an end. Faith was dead. There was no longer even such a thing as two little pieces of black wood in the form of a cross before which one could devoutly fold one's hands; and therefore, as if there could be neither heart nor soul in those who are not attached to Catholic symbolism, we are told that soul was dead. Some who comprehended that the day of glory was past, proclaimed from the rostrum that liberty was a finer thing even than glory, and at these words the hearts of the youthful audience began to beat, as with a distant, terrible remembrance. "But on their way home these youths met a procession carrying three baskets to Clamart, and in the baskets they saw the corpses of three young men who had been too loud in their praises of liberty;" and, as if callous despair were the only mental attitude which the death of martyrs can produce, we are told that their lips curled with a strange smile, and that they forthwith plunged headlong into the maddest dissipation.