[In the following essay, King surveys Musset's Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, examining this work as a product of the writer's early literary apprenticeship.]

In the early and middle years of French Romanticism, few writers and fewer critics succeeded in defining the movement clearly and positively. Hugo's Préface de Cromwell, published in 1827, the most prominent of Romantic manifestos, is seen to be inadequate when one examines its validity in so far as even Hugo himself was concerned. What relevance does the Préface have in such disparate works as Les Orientales (1829), Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné (1829), Hernani (1830), and Les Feuilles d'Automne (1831)? Earlier, Stendhal, in his Racine et Shakespeare, had argued on much safer grounds, by declaring that being Romantic meant being “modern,” being of one's age, but this says little.

Despite the manifestos, despite Hernani, despite the Cénacle, Sainte-Beuve, Le Globe, despite Chateaubriand and Lamartine, Romanticism meant different things for different writers. In England, the role and significance of imagination binds together the principal exponents of Romanticism, with the glaring exception of Byron. In France no one quality or characteristic unifies the writers of the 1820s and 1830s. There were many strands and many short-lived fashions. Apart from experimentation and innovation in form, versification and vocabulary, Romanticism was manifested in a predilection for the Orient, Spain, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; for England, Shakespeare, Ossian, Byron; for Werther and René's mal du siècle; for the glorification and even sanctification of nature and love; for liberalism, political opposition, Republicanism, monarchy, socio-political awareness. …

For a nineteen-year-old writer, in 1829, striving to be both original and modern, such a picture was indeed bewildering. Musset's Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie can be seen as a product of this bewilderment. …

The poems [of the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie,] were first read before a large audience of the Cénacle on Christmas Eve, 1829, an occasion which Dumas describes in his Mémoires. The reception must have been pleasing to a young débutant who had just celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Although all did not rush to acclaim the new poet, he was attentively heard, the young ladies blushed, the “orthodox” Romantics were scandalized by some of the liberties in his versification. Once the Contes¹ were published, critics felt impelled to review the work at length; an aunt, the “Chanoinesse de Vendôme,” disinherited him, and Harel, the Director of the Odéon theatre, begged him to write a play, “la plus neuve et la plus hardie possible.”²

This collection represents for the most part Musset's earliest literary efforts. In 1828, he had published a free translation of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and, on 31 August 1828, his first poem, “Un Rêve,” was printed. Earlier poems are known, including a song written for his mother when he was fourteen; another, dated Le Mans, October 1826, is addressed to a Mademoiselle Zoé le Douairin, whilst yet another “La Nuit” was written at about the same time.

Attention seems to have been focussed almost excessively, in the case of Musset, on a half-dozen poems and as many plays. Other works have been neglected. The Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie have been passed over, rightly perhaps more than wrongly, for several reasons: they bear manifest traits of immaturity, and, as a collection, a seemingly defiant lack of unity. It is interesting to observe an apprentice-writer, however clumsy he may be, practising his new “métier.” Even if a young writer is more susceptible to strong influences, much of the future writer can already be discerned. Mérimée, in the Théâtre de Clara Gazul, Verlaine in Poèmes Saturniens, Gide in Les Cahiers d'André Walter, are especially interesting to the student of these authors: the artist can be seen struggling to master his art, before he slips into formula or routine writing during his later and more successful career.

The Contes comprise fifteen pieces, almost all possessing a different form. The first, “Don Paez,” a narrative poem, with some dialogue inserted, is the Spanish conte; this is followed by “Les Marrons du Feu,” a poem similar in subject-matter, set possibly in Venice, and written throughout in dramatic form; the third is “Portia,” the Italian conte; to balance the “exotic” poems, the final poem, “Mardoche,” is set in contemporary Paris. Between the three early poems and “Mardoche,” there are eleven poems, with the more or less general heading of Chansons à mettre en musique et fragments.³

“Don Paez,” the opening poem of the collection, with its Spanish title, followed by an epigraph, untranslated, from Othello, is at once recognizable as a work of the late 1820s. Othello is the archetypal study of jealousy, the theme of this long narrative poem. The ever-increasing legend surrounding the writings and life of Byron is the major influence on the young Musset, more than Shakespeare, despite frequent translations of his work and the successful visit to Paris, in 1828, of an English Shakespearian Company. It is the satirical realism of Byron, the violent action and sentiment, and blasphemy, … dramatic and exaggerated. Don Paez leaves his mistress to return to sentry duty; fellow officers all claim that their mistress is the most fair. Don Etur's mistress turns out to be the same as that of Don Paez, Juana d'Orvado. A duel is fought, and whosoever wins must avenge her treachery by killing her too.

Tu vois, prit don Paez, qu'il faut qu'un de nous meure.
Jurons donc que celui qui sera dans une heure
Debout, et qui verra le soleil de demain,
Tuera la Juana d'Orvado de sa main.
—Tope, dit le dragon, et qu'elle meure, comme
Il est vrai qu'elle va causer la mort d'un homme.(4)

The dual is described with enthusiastic and vigorous detail. Don Paez is victorious and purchases from an old woman a philtre which he takes and gives to his mistress; they die together.

The outward passion, especially associated with Spain, was a new preoccupation of French writers. In “Don Paez,” Musset is creating in verse what attracted Mérimée in some of the playlets of the Théâtre de Clara Gazul. Romantic eyes were turned away, temporarily, from the contemporary Parisian scene.

Not unexpectedly, the emotions of Don Paez—Musset was only eighteen at the time of composition—are of an equally violent nature. Attempts to analyse motives and sentiments are absent. Description of Don Paez and his mistress are generally of a physical nature, superficially realistic, stressing dark eyes, pale skin, dainty feet. … There is no real impression of inner conflict, apart from the hesitation of Don Paez concerning the most effective way of avenging his betrayal. The passion is uncomplicated, and is soon transformed into hatred: “Je n'ai plus maintenant d'amour que pour ma haine.” One of the few attempts in the Contes to offer moral or psychological explanation occurs towards the end of Part Two:

Amour, fléau du monde, exécrable folie,
Toi qu'un lien si frêle à la volupté lie, …
Plutôt que comme un lâche on me voie en souffrir,
Je t'en arracherai, quand j'en devrais mourir.(5)

This is not yet the conflict between love and passion: love has not yet made its appearance.

The Romanticism, in content, of “Don Paez” is very marked, though limited. It is “exterior,” an exaggerated exoticism: frequent references to Spain and Madrid, and other Spanish embellishments, and the vigour of language and action, were “modern” in 1829. Note the mock-heroic tone of these lines:

En y regardant bien, frère, vous auriez pu,
Dans l'ombre transparente, entrevoir un pied nu.
—Certes, l'Espagne est grande, et les femmes d'Espagne
Sont belles mais il n'est château, ville ou campagne,
Qui contre ce pied-là, n'eût en vain essayé
(Comme dans Cendrillon) de mesurer un pied.(6)

Hints of another variety of Romanticism, the more personal variety, are not altogether absent: the poverty of the old woman who sold the philtre to Don Paez was beginning to trouble writers: 1829 is the year of Hugo's Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné. The frequent use of frère is an attempt to identify the reader more personally, albeit facetiously, with the action, in a less sophisticated manner than Baudelaire's “hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.”

The second poem of the collection is not really a conte, but is written in verse dialogue throughout. It is set in Italy, probably Venice. The proverbial title, meaning a catspaw, comes from La Fontaine's Fable, Le Singe et le Chat The violence and vigour of “Don Paez” now becomes flagrant melodrama, similar in tone and subject-matter to Mérimée's Une Femme est un Diable and Le Ciel et l'Enfer. An actress with a fiery temperament, La Camargo, uses a gallant, admiring priest to seek revenge on a wealthy young man, Rafael Garuci, who has abandoned her. Rafael is murdered but the heroine refuses to “reward” the priest.

This melodramatic brand of Romanticism, with gallant, lecherous priests, murders (there are two in “Marrons”), crudity of language, is more typical of the secondary literature of the eighteenth century, though, in the hands of some more serious writers, it was in vogue again in the 1820s.

Like “Don Paez,” “Marrons” is intended as a study of woman's treachery. Ironically, it is the hero, Rafael, who is unfaithful, but as La Camargo herself observes, love and moral standards for man and woman differ considerably:

                                                                                          Il est sûr qu'une femme
Met dans une âme aimée une part de son âme.
Sinon, d'où pourrait-elle et pourquoi concevoir
La soif d'y revenir, et l'horreur d'en déchoir?
Au contraire un cœur d'homme est comme une marée
Fuyarde des endroits qui l'ont mieux attirée …
                                                                                                                        … La pensée
D'un homme est de plaisirs et d'oublis traversée;
Une femme ne vit et ne meurt que d'amour;
Elle songe une année à quoi lui pense un jour!(7)

A greater attempt is made at characterization than in “Don Paez.” Rafael is a somewhat less melancholy prototype of Fantasio:

                                        Que voulez-vous? moi, j'ai donné ma vie
A ce dieu fainéant qu'on nomme fantaisie.
C'est lui qui, triste ou fou, de face ou de profil,
Comme un polichinel me traîne au bout d'un fil; …
                                                                                                                        … L'année
Dernière, j'étais fou de chiens d'abord, et puis
De femmes. Maintenant, ma foi, je ne le suis
De rien.(8)

The play is a rather simple dramatic exercise. Thematically, there is little that is typical of Musset. The heroine and the priest, with their exaggerated and superficial sentiments, display little more than Musset's precocious mastery in manipulating a plot and characters. The irony and wit which pervades this poem and much of the earlier writings of Musset spring from certain contradictions, notably the contradictions between the passions sincerely felt by an adolescent and the grotesque and melodramatic manner in which they are manifested. Nonetheless the source of cynicism in Musset, as in Byron, is manifold and complex.⁹

As in “Don Paez” and “Les Marrons du Feu,” the action of “Portia” revolves around a triangle, again one woman and two men. “Portia,” however, represents a step closer to the maturer Romanticism of Musset. This poem contains keener psychological insight, and its characters, though quite humourless, are more recognizable Musset types. An ageing Florentine count marries, suspects his young wife of infidelity, discovers her and her lover, a mysterious young man. The lover kills him in a duel. The couple take flight, but the mysterious young man reveals that he is nothing but a penniless fisherman. Although the anecdote is melodramatic, the pace is slower than in the earlier works. Musset is now a little more intent on describing the sentiments and even characterization. The husband, Onorio Luigi, though ageing, is of the same family as Rolla, Fantasio and Lorenzo:

Débauché par ennui, mais triste par nature,
Voyant venir le temps, il s'était marié.

His wife, unlike the passionate heroines of the two earlier contes, is less exaggerated and more subtly portrayed.

Mariée à quinze ans, noble, riche, adorée,
De tous les biens du monde à loisir entourée,
N'ayant dès le berceau connu qu'une amitié,
Sa femme ne l'avait jamais remercié;
Mais quel soupçon pouvait l'atteindre? Et qu'était-elle,
Sinon la plus loyale et la moins infidèle
Des épouses?(10)

The mysterious lover clad in a black cloak is a figure of melodrama, a common element in Romantic drama. Little attempt is made to analyse his motivations. He remains mysterious. Providence is alluded to when his tale is related. This spares undue psychological explanation, a “short-cut” to which Musset often resorted.

Yet another path Romanticism was taking, and one which achieved greater prominence in the later decades of the nineteenth century, is to be glimpsed in “Portia”: the significance of environment:

Venise! ô perfide cité,
A qui le ciel donna la fatale beauté,
Je respirai cet air dont l'âme est amollie,
Et dont ton souffle impur empesta l'Italie!(11)

With their histories and atmosphere of vice and crime, Venice, in “Portia,” Paris, in “Rolla,” Florence, in Lorenzaccio, all contaminated their inhabitants.

Clearly, in “Portia,” many strands of Romanticism are present: the local colour, Venice, though less exaggerated, is little more than a backdrop. The setting could almost be Paris.

“Don Paez” is the conte d'Espagne, “Portia,” the conte d'Italie, and now, to fill out a volume which the publisher had considered rather slim, Musset added “Mardoche,” a contemporary French conte. “Mardoche” is long—590 lines of ten-lined, numbered stanzas like Byron's Don Juan—racy, bearing all the signs of rapid composition, lacking the condensation and crystallization of a more carefully conceived and composed work.

Once again there is, as in “Portia,” the triangle of the ageing husband, the young wife and the ardent, and temporarily successful, lover. Although the jealous husband discovers his wife's betrayal and threatens to send her to a convent, the focus is on the “apprenticeship” in love of the young Mardoche.

More than any earlier hero, Mardoche is the prototype of most of Musset's heroes; his portrait is in a large measure autobiographical. Young, only twenty years old, alone because he has no money, he immediately launches into a life of fashionable elegance and mild debauchery after inheriting a small fortune. Musset is here concerned with Mardoche's first “affair.” Intelligent, precocious insight into depraved human nature, blasphemous, yet with a sensitive yearning for a great passion, aloof, forever posing, displaying, and perhaps possessing, a violent disposition—these are some of the essential traits of Musset's early Romantic hero. The debt to Byron is manifest.

Despite the obvious criticism levelled against “Mardoche,” this poem is not a bad one. Indeed, its very raciness and humour, sustained throughout, are allied to what was, fundamentally, a serious theme: the need for love, in conflict with the contaminating, destructive effect of experience.

In “Mardoche,” Musset deliberately burlesques a serious theme, not so much to destroy the seriousness as to give the poem an added dimension. Similarly, André Gide never presented his reader with a portrait of a perfect individualist hero, but rather a burlesqued one, as in Les Caves du Vatican, or a failed individualist as in L'Immoraliste and Les Faux-Monnayeurs; only in Les Mouches does Sartre present some kind of real existentialist hero. Their art would be debased if it solely sought to present, directly, portrayals of their ideas and philosophies. Subtlety is needed. In “Mardoche,” Musset imprints his own originality—his humour, his fantasy, including a certain touch of naïve cynicism—to make the work something more than a mere portrait of a young, apprenticed Romantic hero. Such skilled use of wit is a new development in Musset.

The eleven short poems, chansons, stances, a sonnet, a ballad, present a somewhat different picture. Three of the songs, “L'Andalouse,” “Madrid,” and “Madame la Marguise” are addressed to an Andalusian woman, probably the same one. The first two are predominantly descriptive, listing her charms, particularly her Spanish physical features and dress. The first,

Avez-vous vu, dans Barcelone,
Une Andalouse au sein bruni,(12)

became one of the most celebrated songs of the age, set to music by Hippolyte Monpou.¹³ The second, “Madrid,” continues the description, but is less colourful and somewhat less complimentary. “Madame la Marquise” introduces a new note: here, the Andalusian, though she falls asleep, plays the rôle of the comforting “muse” of the later Nuits poems.

Oh! viens! dans mon âme froissée
Qui saigne encor d'un mal bien grand,
Viens verser ta blanche pensée
Comme un ruisseau dans un torrent! …
Donne-moi, ma belle maîtresse,
Un beau baiser, car je te veux
Raconter ma longue détresse,
En caressant tes beaux cheveux.(14)

These three poems are essentially simple, playful, descriptions of exotic love.

In the shorter poems, the deeper note is not confined to “Madame la Marquise.” A sincere heart-felt despair after the betrayal by his mistress pervades the short, twelve-lined, untitled poem beginning Quand je t'aimais. This poem effectively illustrates Musset's attraction to the sentimental brand of Romanticism, to lyricism, characterized by Lamartine and much of Hugo, with the emphasis on love, betrayal or separation and death of the beloved.

Likewise, the “Sonnet,”

Que j'aime le premier frisson d'hiver! le chaume,
Sous le pied du chasseur, refusant de ployer!

describes the return to Paris for the winter, but to a Paris deprived of the mistress who once loved him and who loves him no longer. The first eleven lines are conventional enough, describing oncoming winter, and invoking Paris with its Louvre, smoke, postilions, grey skies, Seine, lights. …

“A Ulric G.” introduces yet another aspect of the theme of love and suffering. It is a poem dedicated to Ulric Guttinguer, whom Musset met in 1829, and who invited him to stay at his country home at Honfleur, in Normandy. Musset envied the extensive, amorous experience and suffering of his host. The psychological dualism of Guttinguer, like that of the ageing husband in “Portia,” though rudimentary in these two poems, attracted Musset.

Tu portes dans ta tête et dans ton cœur deux mondes,
Quand le soir, près de moi tu vas triste et courbé.(15)

The Romantic hero's psychological interest springs from inner conflict: Marion de Lorme, the prostitute with the pure heart, Fantasio, with “le mois de mai sur les joues et le mois de janvier dans le cœur,” Lorenzo, torn in the conflict between vice and purity.

The same poem introduces, for the first time explicitly in the Contes, a note of masochistic pleasure in suffering, destined to be, later, one of the principal targets of invective against Musset.

Toi, si plein, front pâli sous des baisers de femme,
Moi si jeune, enviant ta blessure et tes maux.

This vein of Romantic literature points the way to some of Verlaine, and some, if not much, of Baudelaire.

“Stances” is the almost Parnassian evocation of the remains of a Pyrenean monastery, reflecting the passion, in 1830, for medieval and Renaissance backgrounds. “Venise,” later set to music by Gounod, is a description of the Venetian scene and life; “Le Lever,” the portrait of a huntswoman, and “Au Yung Frau,” a “conceit” comparing the heart of a pure young maiden with the unattainable, snow-clad peak of the Jungfrau. These poems are largely pictorial, with minimal human interest. They reflect a fashionable trend in literature, bearing several resemblances to Hugo's Les Orientales.¹⁶

Interestingly, the most celebrated piece of the collection in the “Ballade à la Lune,” which achieved instant celebrity and notoriety, in 1830. A glance at the critics of the period would give the impression that this was the only poem of note in the volume. The point of departure is the comparison of the moon, glimpsed above the spire of a steeple, with the dot over an i.

C'était, dans la nuit brune,
Sur le clocher jauni,
                    La Lune,
Comme un point sur un i.(17)

The moon is mocked mercilessly and wittily. The description of the moon is followed, but not in the original version, by several brief descriptive scenes of a rather scabrous nature. Was Musset poking fun at fashionable Romanticism? Musset warns the reader, in “Les Secrètes Pensées de Rafaël,” against treating this poem seriously:

O vous, race des dieux, phalange incorruptible,
Electeurs brevetés des morts et des vivants;
Porte-clefs éternels du mont inaccessible, …
Sans partialité, sans malveillance aucune,
Sans vouloir faire cas ni des ha! ni des ho!
Avez lu posément—la Ballade à la lune!!!(18)

Musset was right to give such a warning. He was not mocking Romantic literature but some of its exaggerations. The humour adds another dimension to the work; it is Musset's original contribution to the school. The poem also represents in a small way his plea for artistic independence. No sooner was he introduced to the Cénacle than he began to break away. As in “Mardoche,” and many of the other pieces, including “Don Paez,” Musset was reacting against the humourless earnestness of many writers and critics of the era. All were too intent on legislating, writing prefaces, and passing judgement. The very brief Preface to the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie can almost be called an Anti-Preface.

It is indeed as much in the tone of the Contes as in their subject-matter that Musset's groping bewilderment is discernible. Was the modern writer, of 1830, to strike a note of tragedy, comedy, tragedy mingled with comedy, as Hugo advised, banter, militant didacticism or intimate lyricism? In 1829, Musset was an uncommitted artist, not yet certain which art form to choose; some (painting, for example) had already been discarded. Writing was still to be considered “un passe-temps our se désennuyer.”¹⁹ In Le Poète déchu, published posthumously, Musset wrote:

A dix-huit ans j'hésitais encore sur l'état que j'embrasserais, lorsque le hasard me lia avec quelques jeunes gens qui s'occupaient de littérature. Ils faisaient des vers, j'en fis comme eux, et mes premiers essais réussirent. Cependant, je ne songeai pas à me livrer à la poésie qui ne me semblait qu'un passe-temps.²⁰

Art was something not to be treated too seriously; this suited the adolescent Musset bent on “living,” yearning as much for a “passion dévorante” as for literary fame.

The tone of the Contes is for the most part one of vigorous comedy tinged with persistant cynicism. For Maurice Souriau, “le romantisme des Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie n'est qu'un costume de carnaval.”²¹ For Kathleen Butler, “these poems scandalized conservative critics … who could not fail to perceive that in the “Ballade à la Lune” and several passages of “Mardoche” their youngest recruit was poking fun at them.”²² Nonetheless, the variations in tone cannot be easily categorized. Although “Portia” is serious, and the “Ballade à la Lune” is mockingly comic, the tone is often mixed. As Jasinski has rightly stated: “Il mêle en proportions indéfinissables l'ironie à la sincérité. Ses outrances mêmes tournent au pastiche et souvent à la parodie.”²³ Musset's cynicism comes naturally; but it is also designed to conceal an over-sensitive and vulnerable mind. He preferred to mock rather than be mocked, even if it meant mocking himself:

Les louanges me furent prodiguées et la vanité me monta au cerveau. J'étais paresseux et insouciant; il me parut agréable d'être un génie en herbe, par boutades, à ma fantaisie, et sans avoir l'air d'y penser. Je jouais d'un air d'indifférence avec ma petite gloire naissante; je me fis une muse de mon caprice, et les femmes trouvèrent que j'avais raison.²⁴

Musset's cynicism in the Contes and his attitude to this work is distinct from, but in some measure related to, the cynicism which resulted from his “experience” and precocious insight into human motivations and behaviour. In the Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle Musset studies the impulsion one sometimes has to destroy what one loves and cherishes. This theory can be applied to his early collection of poems: he prefers to mock the artistic beliefs he held at the time of composition. Immaturity must count for something here.

The comic and the serious apart, the dominant tone of the longer contes is one of violence: this is an important element of the Romanticism of the 1820s. “But the Romanticism of 1830 also suggests supercharged passions, jealousy, revenge, and sudden death; Byronic impertinence and Satanic laughter concealing the heart-felt sob.”²⁵ Understandably, this brand of Romanticism is more likely to attract a young, barely mature writer: it is the Romanticism of Mérimée's Théâtre de Clara Gazul (1825), Hugo's Han d'Islande (1823) and the first three pieces of Musset's Contes.

As much as in the subject-matter and tone, the form of the Contes reflects the indecision of the adolescent Musset. All the poems are different. Experimentation, evident at every turn, was the order of the day: songs, ballads, narrative poems, a short play entirely in verse, complete with stage directions.²⁶ Epigraphs from Shakespeare and Schiller introduce the Contes, reflecting the dominant influence on French literature of foreign literatures.

For some critics, the predominant feature of the Contes is Musset's handling of versification: a deliberately daring use of rhymes, a displacement of the caesura, a frequent breaking-up of the alexandrine into a trimeter for effect; and enjambement, a reaction against the Romantics' preoccupation with “rime riche” which was intended to compensate for the other liberties which had been recently claimed for poetry. These are all significant for the student of versification and poetry.

In subject-matter, in tone, and in form and versification, the Contes seem indecisive, experimental and lacking in unity. This need not imply condemnation. Musset was groping, dazzled by the many directions which art was pursuing in 1829, and the many manifestos and doctrinaire prefaces writers were urged to follow and illustrate in their writings. Many of the elements of early, middle and late Romanticism are discernible. The principal omission is the absence of any preoccupation with artistic creation, perhaps the dominant theme of the Nuits poems, and indirectly of much of Musset's later writings. His art had not yet turned in on itself at this early stage. It is a joyful work for the most part. Musset must have derived pleasure in its composition.

The Contes are in most respects different from the major works which one most readily associates with Musset, and which the modern reader tends not to appreciate. In his celebrated letter addressed to Paul Demeny, Rimbaud wrote:

“Musset est quatorze fois exécrable pour nous, générations douloureuses et prises de visions,—que sa paresse d'ange a insultées! O! les contes et les proverbes fadasses! … Tout garçon épicier est en mesure de débobiner une apostrophe Rollaque, tout séminariste en porte les cinq cents rimes dans le secret d'un carnet. … Musset n'a rien su faire; il y avait des visions derrière la gaze des rideaux: il a fermé les yeux.”

Rimbaud and modern critics alike bemoan the absence of real originality and penetrating vision in Musset. Modern scholarship has concerned itself almost exclusively with, firstly, Lorenzaccio, secondly, the Musset-Sand episode, and, thirdly, the sources of the plays. In the Contes it is probably not the exageratedly personal note of On ne badine pas avec l'amour and the Nuits which is to be regretted, but the lack of it.

The more authentic Musset was not to emerge until after the publication of the Contes. One tends to divide Musset's career a little too easily into two parts, separated by the Venetian episode. Today, particularly since Jean Pommier and others have shown that Lorenzaccio was written before the end of 1833, this division is no longer acceptable. The publication of the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie marks a more significant change in the development of Musset the artist. The work was written for, under the influence of, and in some measure against, the Hugo-Nodier school.

However, the Contes as an exercise in versatility represent an impasse. Little was written in the following three years, from 1830 to 1832. What works were written are among the more original and authentic of Musset's writings: “Les Secrètes Pensées de Rafaël,” “Les Vœux Stériles,” and “La Coupe et les Lèvres.” In these writings and the more celebrated plays of 1833, one sees Musset examining certain metaphysical, philosophical and æsthetic questions. His personality is more clearly engaged in an almost existential search for identity. The play-acting of the Contes is over. He is no longer the dilettante described in “Les Secrètes Pensées de Rafaël.”

Nevertheless, the psychological complexities of this dilettante are not altogether absent from the Contes. Musset, the ‘chérubin vicieux,’ is already apparent. The commonly held notion that Musset was basically innocent and idealistic until George Sand arrived on the scene is simply not valid. The writer of “Mardoche” and “Rolla” may well be the same as the writer of the pornographic “Gamiani.” Interestingly, the ‘chérubin vicieux’ period can only be short-lived: continued, it would be simply “vicieux.” It would perhaps be dishonest not to admit that some of the attraction of the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie lies in the rather delicate balance between naïve, exuberant youthfulness and the almost scabrous tone and detail of some of the work.

Though a work of experimentation and apprenticeship, its success was dazzling for such a young writer. Harel's request for a play to be produced at the Odéon, numerous lengthy reviews, an attentive and largely enthusiastic reception at the Cénacle, the number of musical renderings,²⁷ all contributed to make this, Musset's first original publication, an auspicious success.

The Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie are not only an exercise in versatility, as they first appear, but also a product of indecision. They are the product of an adolescent yearning to write, but not yet sure what to write nor how to write.

Notes

1. This abbreviated title is not to be confused with the six contes published in 1854, which include Histoire d'un Merle Blanc and Mimi Pinson.

2. There is some doubt about whether Harel approached Musset, or Musset Harel.

3. Bizet, Gounod and Monpou (Hippolyte Monpou, 1804-1841, composed light operas, and set to music poems by Béranger and Hugo) are but three of many composers to set some of these poems to music.

4. Musset, “Don Paez,” in Premières Poésies, Edition Garnier Frères, Paris: 1962, p. 11.

5. Ibid., p. 12.

6. Ibid. p. 6.

7. Op. cit., “Les Marrons du Feu,” pp. 34-35.

8. Ibid. pp. 36-37.

9. There is an interesting chapter entitled L'Ironie de Musset in Ames et Thèmes Romantiques, Pierre Moreau, Librairie José Corti, 1965.

10. Op cit. “Portia,” 58.

11. Ibid., p. 68.

12. Musset, it appears, believed Barcelona to be in Andalusia. He had not yet travelled out of France.

13. See note 3.

14. Op cit., “Madame la Marquise,” pp. 77-78.

15. Op cit., p. 80.

16. G. Brereton, in his Introduction to the French Poets, calls the Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie Musset's Orientales.

17. Op cit., “Ballade à la lune,” p. 86.

18. In Premières poésies, p. 125.

19. See Namouna, in Premières Poésies, p. 260.

20. Musset, Le Poète déchu, Edition de la Pléiade, Prose, p. 307.

21. Maurice Souriau, Histoire du Romantisme en France, Volume II, Editions Spes, Paris, 1927, p. 13.

22. Kathleen T. Butler, History of French Literature, Volume II, Methuen & Co. Ltd, London, 1923, p. 95.

23. René Jasinski, Histoire de la Littérature Française, Volume II, Boivin et Compagnie, Paris, 1947, p. 455.

24. “Le Poète déchu,”op. cit., p. 307.

25. P. E. Charvet, A Literary History of France. The Nineteenth Century, Ernest Benn Ltd, London, 1967, p. 135.

26. Herbert S. ‘Gochberg has written an interesting book on the developing dramatic technique of Musset: The Stage of Dreams: the dramatic art of Alfred de Musset, Droz, Geneva, 1967.

27. In 1891, the Viscountess de Janzé had counted 150 musical renderings of Musset's poems, by composers including Gounod, Bizet, Delibes, Offenbach, etc.