141. LA FERMIÈRE. This poem was sent as a New Year's gift to Madame Guérard, who had taken the poet in and entertained him when ill.
142. 31. FILS DE LA VIERGE, "débris de toiles d'araignée que le vent emporte"; air-thread, gossamer.
ALFRED DE MUSSET.
1810-1857.
A lyric poet of a comparatively narrow range, but within it surpassingly genuine and spontaneous. Almost his only theme was the passion of love, in some form or degree. But what he lacked in breadth he made up in the directness and intensity of his accent, and these eminently lyric qualities give his lyrics a distinction among those of his country. He began as a Romanticist, but soon grew away from the school of Hugo as it developed. With his negligence of form and his surrender to the passion of the moment, he is the opposite of Gautier; and the poets of the later school which derives from Gautier have neglected and depreciated him.
Works: Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, 1830; le Spectacle dans un fauteuil, 1833; after this most of his poems appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes; they are now collected in Premières poésies, 1 vol., containing the poems of the first two volumes and a few others, and Poésies nouvelles, 1 vol., containing the Nuits, and the later poems.
For reference: P. de Musset, Biographie d'Alfred de Musset 1877 (naturally partial); A. Barine, Alfred de Musset, 1893; Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, la Véritable histoire de "Elle et Lui" 1897; Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains, vol. ii; Causeries du lundi, vols, i and xiii; E. Montégut, Nos Morts contemporains, 1883; E. Faguet, le Dix-neuvième siècle, 1887; F. Brunetière, Évolution de la poésie lyrique, vol. i, 1894; M. Clouard, Bibliographie des oeuvres d'Alfred de Musset, 1883; O. L. Kuhns, Sélections from de Musset, Boston, 1895, for the sympathetic and interesting introduction.
143. Au LECTEUR. This sonnet was prefixed in 1840 to a new edition of his poems.
145. STANCES. 1828; from Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie. 3. VESPRÉES; see note on 7, 10. LA NUIT DE MAI. May 1835. The poet's liaison with the novelist George Sand, begun in 1833, and culminating in the Italian journey of 1834, with its successions of passion, violent ruptures, and penitent reconciliations, was the profoundest experience of his life, and the inspiration of many of his poems, including the famous Nuits of May, August, October and December.
146. 21. PARESSEUX ENFANT; the charge of indolence had often already been brought against Musset; cf. ton oisiveté, 150. 3.