drama, and some fantasy poems, jolted romantic circles with its indirect jibes at the exotic brand of poetry exemplified by Hugo’s recent collection,Les Orientales (1829; English translation, 1879). That same year, at the request of the manager of the Odéon Theater, Musset composed a play entitled The Venetian Night. It was hissed down at its first performance, and its failure proved a deep psychological blow for the twenty-year-old playwright, who resolved never again to write specifically for the stage. Significantly, the greater portion of his subsequent drama was of the closet variety, pieces created for reading only, not production.

Musset immediately returned to the hedonistic life that he had somewhat modified by this burst of literary activity, but, with the death of his father in 1832, he was impelled to provide for himself and his mother (with whom he continued to live for the greater part of his life) by further writing. He soon published the first volume of Un Spectacle dans un fauteuil (1833, first series, two volumes; A Performance in an Armchair, 1905), a collection of poems and two verse plays. The volume was not a great success, but it did attract the attention of Musset’s friend from Cénacle days, Sainte-Beuve. The critic’s favorable review resulted in an invitation from François Buloz, editor of the fortnightly literary magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, to become a regular contributor of poetry, drama, and fiction. It was in this review that the first of Musset’s plays to reveal truly his particular dramatic genius, The Follies of Marianne, made its appearance; it was also at a dinner party given by Buloz in June, 1833, that Musset made the acquaintance of the talented writer of notorious reputation, George Sand . A mutual fascination was immediately aroused in the two authors, and approximately two months later they inaugurated their brief but tempestuous affair.

What began idyllically and peacefully was destined in a very short time to turn acrimonious and bitter. A trip with Sand to Italy, ending in Venice during the winter of 1833-1834, was marked not only by mutual financial embarrassments but also by sometimes violent and abusive quarrels. Sand became ill soon after their arrival in Venice, and Musset took the opportunity to drink heavily and sample the charms of Venetian women. Just as Sand began to recover, Musset became severely ill, suffering from fever and delirium for almost two weeks. While devotedly nursing her lover, Sand was drawn to the attractive, sensitive attending physician, Pietro Pagello, and became his lover within the month. When Musset finally recovered, he recognized the nature of the relationship that had developed between the two people who had practically saved his life. After a brief period of jealous recrimination and display, Musset left Sand and Pagello together with his blessing and returned alone to Paris. The characteristics Musset displayed in this “Venetian drama” would recur in his subsequent relationships. His temperament was a curious combination of the libertine, the ardent idealistic lover, and the paranoid.

The entire episode was, by his own admission, the most crucial and devastating of his life. When Sand left Pagello and Italy to return to France the following autumn, there was a short-lived reconciliation, but the intensity and devotion of their brief time together could not be rekindled. In spite of the personal pain suffered, the relationship proved to be a source of artistic nourishment for both writers. Musset’s play Fantasio was published at the height of the affair, and shortly after the rupture, the comedy No Trifling with Love and the historical drama Lorenzaccio were published. In addition, the break with Sand served directly as inspiration for some of Musset’s finest poetic achievements, notably the four nuit poems, works concerning the acceptance of lost love and the transformation of experience into art.

The final break with Sand in early 1835 had cured Musset, at least temporarily, of his self-destructive, hedonistic proclivities and provoked a four-year period of considerable literary activity. Four plays came out of this period as well as a number of poems, tales, and a semiautobiographical novel, The Confession of a Child of the Century. In 1839, however, at the age of twenty-eight, Musset returned to his former habits of heavy drinking, gambling, and womanizing. In the succeeding years, he was to have a number of amorous relationships of varying seriousness and success. Perhaps the most enduring of these was his affair with a Madame Jaubert, a relationship that evolved into a devoted friendship. Like Sand before her, Madame Jaubert recognized the young man’s need for a mother figure of similar intellectual tastes and sympathies to whom he could turn for conversation and compassion.

Since his father’s death, Musset had always suffered from financial anxieties, but these largely disappeared in 1838 with his appointment as librarian for the Ministry of the Interior. He retained this post until the 1848 revolution, when he was dismissed for suspected Royalist sympathies. By the time of his dismissal, however, Musset had begun to enjoy a revival of interest in his dramatic uvre, and the performance of his plays now assured him a fairly reliable income. With the success of A Caprice in Russia and at home at the Comédie-Française in 1847, Musset’s reputation as a playwright began to create a mounting demand for his work. He revised and expanded several earlier works and received commissions from leading actors and theater managers for new ones.

In 1852, after two attempts, Musset made a third and successful bid for election to the Académie Française. After many years of remaining in the family home with his mother, he now lived there alone under the care of a housekeeper. He continued to write but composed no new poetic or dramatic works of particular importance. Since 1842 at the latest, he had been suffering from heart trouble, and, in the winter of 1856, his health began to deteriorate rapidly. He died at home on May 2, 1857.