C. S. Lewis, Jung and others have analyzed the movement of the romantic consciousness in the experience of poetry as a desire to create through harmonious, symbolic language the image of a world which would be whole; that is coherent, ordered and beautiful. The essential rhythm of the poet's quest for wholeness can thus be seen in terms of the archetypal pattern of rebirth; the poems themselves manifest in their themes and structure a sense of evolution and spiritual discovery such as that of the Ancient Mariner or the Prelude of Wordsworth.¹ Legends, myths and poems usually containing the rebirth archetype exhibit a similar tripartite structure which is found in the initiatory rites and ceremonies of many peoples: a spiritual death, or refusal of the world defined as fatally imperfect and static, is followed by contact during a time of isolation and alienation with a source of spiritual meaning and beauty (such as new knowledge of the profound life of nature, love or God), which leads to a renewal of being or renascence on a higher plane of existence.

Images of mythical half-gods dying and resurrected, titans like Prometheus, often served the romantic poets to illustrate their themes of disenchantment with society, spiritual alienation, and finally, necessary revolt and change, even revolution. The theme of "la révolte sainte," for example, was actualized in Hugo's Le Satyre and La Fin de Satan; Michelet presented history as inevitable progress resulting from the dialectical struggle of man's liberty and genius against the fatalities of time. These works corroborate the thesis of critics² who see the romantic vision in terms of a rejection of the world as a mechanical, static, chain of being in favor of a world in the state of perpetual "becomingness," an organic process of evolution in which man, nature and God are parts of a meaningful whole.

Vigny's works, often dealing with much the same content as those of his romantic contemporaries, have suggested contradictory ideas, a prideful retreat to the ivory tower and even disappointment due to awkwardness in his poetic language. Sympathetic critics on the other hand have examined his poetic practices, the Icarian aspect of his concept of the poet, and have studied in depth his moral and religious ideas.³ Germain's excellent L'Imagination d'Alfred de Vigny (Paris: Corti, 1962) provides us with an indispensable and thorough analysis of the ways in which Vigny imagines the world of objects and sensations, and offers a sensitive psychological portrait of his complex creative personality. Except for this latter study Vigny criticism remains fragmented, and we are left with the uneasy impression of a basic lack of unity or confusion in his work which is even attributed on occasion to the fact that Vigny was more "poète" than philosopher, although he claimed to be a philosophical poet.

It is precisely his concept of the poet and of poetry itself which seems to me to be at the heart of his work and of his experience as a writer. A closer reading of the texts concerned with the poet (specifically Stello and "La Maison du Berger," as well as the Journal d'un Poète) will reveal, I believe, a recurrent structural pattern very similar to the dialectical or oppositional structure of many poems in Hugo, and inherent in Michelet's view of history, which gives unity and coherence to his writing. Expressed in these works is a strong confidence in the act of poetry, capable of leading to a "seconde vie," which makes of Vigny perhaps the major French exponent of the romantic poem as a process of spiritual discovery. Not only are poets and poetry the major subject of much of his work (an early example of highly self-conscious literature), but he chose to represent in his own world the needs of other unappreciated poets, and through an obstinate defense of poetry, the need for poetic idealism in an increasingly materialistic society. His misunderstood efforts in Parliament and through the Académie Française in favor of subsidizing young artists were part of a strong commitment to the social value of poetry.

There is very definitely a change in perspective between the publication of Stello (1830) and that of "La Maison du Berger" (1844), concerning the poet and the creative process. Even Germain fails to take this development into account when he considers to be conclusive Vigny's presentation of the artistic personality as dualistic and permanently divided into Docteur Noir and Stello, animus-intellect and anima-dreamer.

It is quite clear that in Stello Vigny presents the poet as the scapegoat of society. Like a Prometheus chained to the rock, he is devoured by the sense of his own uselessness and forced to renounce the "sacred fount" of life, to take refuge in the Ivory Tower in order to find spiritual nourishment through solitude. It becomes evident, however, that in "La Maison du Berger" we are presented with the liberation and regeneration of the poet, a Prometheus unbound, inspired by love and a new confidence in his own genius, prepared to create and participate in the life of man: "j'aime la majesté des souffrances humaines."

My essay will attempt to account for this transformation. From sacrificial victim of society's power to shepherd of men, from alienation and spiritual death to rebirth, the poet-Prometheus has been freed and his creative force renewed.

Not enough attention has been paid to the interesting variety of narrative techniques employed by Vigny in the writing of Stello, to the complexity of "point of view," and especially the dialectical structure underlying its composition. The work has the form of a dialogue or "consultation," actually an early example of a psychoanalytical session between doctor and patient, a form which Vigny repeated in Daphné (his unfortunately neglected version of the life of Julian the Apostate that parallels his own spiritual itinerary), and which he projected for other incompleted works. Within the outer dialogue between the Docteur Noir, realist, rationalist and cynic (also poet and repressed sentimentalist) and the poet-dreamer, Stello, there are three "récits" presenting the opposition between power and poetry in three different societies and in increasing complexity. The final "récit" actually presents four different kinds of "poet" from the viewpoint of the Docteur Noir who himself "sees" poetically. A series of binary oppositions or antitheses governs the dialogue and the "récits" contained within it, giving each part dramatic tension, suggesting the movement and struggle of ideas,⁴ and finally producing the tragic consequences for poets and for poetry. The binary oppositions do not result in a new synthesis but rather the domination of thesis over antithesis, of power over poetry, and of the need for solitude and a refusal of life over participation and communion. Gilbert, Chatterton and André Chénier become tragic victims of the monarchical, parliamentarian and democratic grovernments respectively in the three "récits." Stello learns from the telling of the stories and his dialogue with the doctor that "la solitude est sainte," and that the poet must remain isolated and alienated if he is to survive.

What might be termed the romantic aspects of the narrative have been mentioned by critics, such as the Hugolian antithesis of the grotesque and the sublime in character and situation (e.g. the materialistic Lord Mayor and the spiritual Chatterton, the horrors of St. Lazare and the stoic resignation of the aristocrats during the terror). The use of local color and historical setting, a mixture of styles and even genres quite contrary to classical design have been singled out. It should be stressed that each récit has its characteristic tone or rather tones, since for example the Doctor changes his language and style as he describes in the first "récit" the frivolity of the court of Louis XV and then the pathetic suicide of Gilbert. He consciously adopts the tone and style of the period he is presenting and imitates the language of the actors of the scene, cryptic and witty when speaking of Louis XV, pedantic during the presentation of London's lord mayor, and gravely poetic concerning the Terror.

Point of view is complex and innovative. In the "récits" it is obviously the doctor-narrator who focuses on reality for his auditor and for the reader. The dialogue presents a double or rather triple point of view; the doctor's voice seems reliable about society, but nevertheless we are told by the narrator-persona of Vigny that the dreamer Stello is always superior to the reasoner. And yet Stello is presented as a "malade" almost driven mad by spleen. In fact the narrator-persona remains detached and through a use of ironic distance refuses a simple identification with either voice in the dialogue or part of the creative personality, head or heart. It is perhaps this irony which made the text so disconcerting to its early readers, but which gives it now a modern cast.⁵ The author remains outside of his text since he cannot be identified entirely with either the coldly cynical doctor or the sometimes foolish dreamer. F. Germain's analysis of the dialogue as representing the divisions within the creative personality of Vigny is penetrating and convincing, and a reading of the Journal reveals the importance Vigny attached to the reflection of his own personality in his imaginary characters.⁶ According to Germain the doctor (intellect-will-animus) finally purges the dreamer Stello (sentiment-anima) of the child's nightmare world within him through an exorcism by terror. His technique is to use the poison of bitter truth against the poison of despair, thus enabling him to understand his situation clearly, and hopefully to induce him to create his poetry without illusions.

It is not at all necessary to move from the text to its author in order to see the dialogue in terms of the dialectic between the sacred fount of life (Docteur Noir) and the Ivory Tower (Stello): the conflict between the search for the sources of creativity in the realities of the outside world as opposed to the discovery of meaning and beauty within the personality of the artist himself. The stated thesis of the book counsels only the latter course for art ("l'imagination ne vit que d'émotions spontanées"), and yet it is the Doctor who has lived the experiences of the dying poets, produced the "stories," and interpreted their significance. We are even told that he has his own malady, that of protecting young poets; and that he is given to poetic expression himself. He apostrophizes Death during Gilbert's agony and transforms his sensations of the scene of Chénier's execution into a series of poetic images of destiny and time: "la roue mythologique," "le cadran ensanglanté," "l'océan du peuple."

Vigny appreciates the paradoxical nature of truth almost as much as Diderot, and in fact the complex interaction of personalities found in Stello recalls Le Neveu de Rameau, another "novel" treating the problems of creativity. Just as there are at least two contrasting personalities within "moi," le Philosophe, and in the Neveu, "lui," Vigny suggests this second level of "dédoublement" in the Doctor and Stello. Voices of ego and alter-ego speak through both men. In the final "récit" he even develops a multiplicity of poetic personalities; Stello and the Doctor are "poètes" but so are the brothers Chénier, as well as Robes-pierre and Saint-Just in their fashion.

The theme of the divided self, the splitting off of the creative personality, has been attributed by existentialist criticism to the problem of the alienated artist in search of a public to which he can address himself. Sartre's analysis in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? is certainly corroborated by the situation of Stello. He is anguished primarily because he desires to write a political tract for a specific party and discovers his contribution is not desired, and that the nineteenth-century bourgeois public has only contempt for poets; in other words he suffers and requires the services of the psychiatrist-doctor precisely because he cannot engage his talent in a social commitment. His problem is therefore the opposite of that of Icarus; he has no public with which to communicate.

At least since Rousseau (Rousseau, Juge de Jean-Jacques) artists have expressed their inability to accept the conditions of society through a curious doubling of the personality. Since their desires for freedom and beauty are manifestly in contradiction with the dictates of reason, which readily grasps the necessary limitations and imperfections of society's conventions and laws, individual revolt takes the form of a divided self in an alienated personality.

Of course Vigny's example of the double personality (the Doctor and Stello) has other literary antecedents; Quixote and Panza, Faust and Mephistopheles as well as the Nephew (a "râté," rather than a "poète maudit") and the Philosopher. Vigny quite often suggests the satanic aspects of the doctor's cynicism, his despair, and omnipresence; Stello like Faust dreams of prophecy in poetry and power over men through knowledge.

In spite of these interesting points of reference the real significance of the dialogue can best be decoded from the complex system of relations and contrasts in the text. Vigny is preoccupied even more with the problem of creativity itself than with the situation of the artist in the world. He questions to what extent imagination (the center of creative activity) depends on direct contact with things and experience with others in order to begin to function. Or does it develop like an autonomous complex through the purity of spontaneous emotions in the spirit and memory of the individual artist? Inner life-outer life, (sentiment or reason), dreams and reality, solitude versus solidarity, idealism and objective observation, these are the sets of oppositions which best characterize Stello and the Doctor. At the most profound level the couple represents the struggle within the artist himself between his idea, the result of the work of the imagination, which here takes the form of the knowledge acquired by the Docteur Noir, and his own desires and dreams, in this case the contrary aspirations of Stello, the poet. In other words the dialogue takes place within the mind of the artist, as an integral part of the creative process:

La perpétuelle lutte du Poète est celle qu'il livre à son idée. Si l'idée triomphe du Poète et le passionne trop, il est sa dupe et tombe dans la mise en action de cette idée et s'y perd. Si le Poète est plus fort que l'idée, il la pétrit, la forme et la met en œuvre. Elle devient ce qu'il a voulu, un monument.⁷

Stello's beliefs about the nature of poetry, which are not criticized by the doctor, constitute a clear statement of what we now call the romantic myth of poetry. In his "credo" he proclaims faith in the poet as the inspired guide of humanity, whose nature or God-given gift of poetic creation is a mysterious, sacred act of interpretation through imagination of the hidden meanings and secret unity of the world. He believes in his destiny, in the importance of love and enthusiasm as sources of creativity, and in the poet's mission to preserve necessary ideals in society. He sense in himself a strong creative power ("puissance secrète") and links poetry to prophecy. These familiar aspects of the romantic attitude toward poetry afford Stello the happiness of what Germain terms the "paradis intérieur," a satisfying awareness of the value of his vocation and his own worth. Surely more interesting, however, than this example of the romantic "Sacre de l'Ecrivain"⁸ is Vigny's own myth-making.

One of his most important techniques in poetry and prose is the transformation of the facts of observation, feeling or an "idea" into a "fable" which contains and expresses meaning in all its complexity, richness and ambiguity. Myth for Vigny, (although he uses the term fable), is truth condensed, a form of language corresponding to the diamond, crystal, or treasure chest, material images he constantly uses to suggest the need for the writer to concentrate, purify and illuminate his thought through the discovery of the proper form or permanent container, that is mythic structure. Vigny's well-known formula "l'art, c'est la vérité choisie," can be best understood through his creative use of myth which for him both conceals and reveals the most profound aspirations, needs and unconscious desires hidden on the surface of man's experience. The myth of Samson, for example, becomes the expression not only of the superior man's eternal cry of distress, nor of the idea of disillusionment with woman's treachery, but suggests the secret knowledge that love itself is an illusion which man must learn to live without: "Donc, ce que j'ai voulu, Seigneur, n'existe pas!"⁹

In Stello, it seems to me, Vigny has forged a myth for his time, transforming the actual lives of his historical characters, and giving new forms to the theme of the "poète maudit" or "râté" already to be found in preromantic literature. The stories told by the Doctor in order to cure Stello of his ambition to act in society present three variations on the legend or myth of the scapegoat. In all current forms of governmental organization (monarchic, parliamentarian, democratic) the poet becomes a victim or martyr, and dies a real or symbolic and spiritual death. The scapegoat, however, has the stature of a half-god or titan; the mediocre Gilbert and the weak Chatterton are likened to Promethean beings (Chatterton's eyes are compared to "deux flammes comme Prométhée les dut puiser au soleil"¹⁰). The structure of each story is identical; the opposition between Power and Poetry, the materialistic gods of the present versus the spiritualistic rebels who look to the future, produces a tragic confrontation leading to sacrifice in the form of suicide or execution. Vigny has elevated the three stories, through metaphor and mythological allusion as well as the theme of the sacrifical victim, to the level of a myth containing a cruel and ambiguous truth about the poet and society. The poet-seer as Stello has presented him, with the approbation of the rational Docteur Noir, has been and will always be the victim of society because Power always negates Art; the artist is the natural enemy of authority since by definition his critical, prophetic and independent spirit is oriented to the future or the past whereas the representatives of authority concentrate on maintaining the order of the present. The spiritualistic poet is thus always useless and even dangerous in a materialistic society. The myth of the three stories conceals an even harsher truth; social order is seen as destructive of all manifestations of profound individuality: revery, genius, spirituality, the very sources of artistic creativity are destroyed through the conformity and tyranny of social power. Representative government fosters mediocrity while revolutionary democracy tyrannizes the artist; we have only to think of the situation of the writer in America, forced to popularize in order to succeed, or that of a Solzenitzhen hounded into exile, to grasp the relevancy of Vigny's legends.

In short the conclusions drawn by the two protagonists in the chapter "Tristesse et Pitié" develop the fundamentally anti-social or even anarchical significance of the text; all contemporary forms of social order are attacked as illogical, totalitarian, materialistic, and unjust. Vigny's narrators express the despair accompanying their loss of illusion when faced with the fatality of social order which systematically excludes and destroys the very sources of art. From this perspective the book anticipates the disillusionment of a Musset confronted with the collapse of traditional values in the Confessions d'un enfant du siècle (1834); but more philosophical in nature and modern in its anarchistic tendencies, it suggests the paradoxes of Civilization and Its Discontents. In fact in his Journal Vigny gives us an excellent résumé of that Freudian discourse:

Dans l'individu est reconnu l'ennemi né de la Société s'il ne se contrefait ou ne se réforme avec effort. Donc la Société est contraire aux penchants naturels de l'homme, mais l'espèce se détruit sans la société. Il faut donc pour la conserver renouveler sans cesse cet essai.

Mais cet essai ne peut être que mauvais puisqu'il s'oppose toujours (dans un but de conservation) à notre nature qui tend sans cesse à la destruction.¹¹

Vigny's thesis (because Stello is also a "roman à thèse") quite simply informs us that if the poet tries to offer his special knowledge to society, he will be condemned to a real or at least a spiritual martyrdom. This idea is the message contained in the fable of the sacrifice of the halfgod of poetic genius which gives each story its structure and meaning: Prometheus is chained to the rock for having desired to give men the fire of knowledge and in so doing having rebelled against the authority of the gods.

The third story concerning Chénier is the most complex, and the most moving to the reader. Vigny succeeds in suggesting the tragic grandeur of the last days of the Terror without excessive pathos or grandiloquence. The Docteur Noir recollects the scene with a mixture of horror and fascination which is translated into some of the finest of Vigny's poetic prose. What interests us here, however, is Vigny's analysis of the poet in a revolutionary society. He presents André Chénier as a great artist who is conscious of the visionary aspect of his poetry, a somber, angry hero of revolt who has dared to write against the tyranny of the regime in the name of liberty, and now stoically awaits his execution. Vigny has apparently transformed his character completely, in accord with his flexible concept of the use of history in art,¹² to make of him a symbol of the ideal writer. In contrast to André Chénier is Robespierre, the anti-poet, representative of totalitarian power who has, however, the imaginative gift of prophecy (he foresees Napoleon's empire) and who wrote verses when he was young. He is sick with paranoia, and an assassin, but above all he illustrates the corruption of ideals in the hands of power. For not only does he oppose Chénier's brand of idealism, but he himself is an uncompromising idealist without human compassion or pity, with no sense of the need for moderation and indulgence. His idealism has rapidly become a tool for repression.

This danger to the essence of poetry (i.e. to the preservation of ideals and ideas through poetic symbol and fable) perverted through action in society is developed in more detail through the second group of antagonists. Saint-Just is a poet who has given himself to power; his maxims are presented as the naive, rousseauistic poetry of a sincere young moralist, who has attained power without having known life outside of books. His pitiless innocence, refusal of all compromise, and desire to live by absolute principles alone are transposed in the simple and tyranncal laws of his Institutions which Robespierre sees as inspired legislation. In other words he is a kind of Stello without the experience of the Docteur Noir. Solitude and purity without contact with humanity could thus produce a negative poetry of death, and we are back to the original problem of the proper balance between the inner and outer life, solitude and solidarity in the creative personality, posed by the couple Stello and the Doctor. Robespierre and Saint-Just are even more dangerous as perverted poets than as opponents of poetry. The final member of the quartet, Marie-Joseph Chénier, a man of talent, has compromised himself by consenting to lead an active, political life; it is easy to detect in this portrait of the weak and inefficacious brother of André the same kind of reproach addressed by Vigny to poets like Lamartine. Artistic talent in the service of politics leads only to a diminution of art and a compromise of principle.

Four poets and four different approaches to poetry, but only one genius who is sacrificed; the text "Un soir d'été" is one of the most beautiful Vigny ever wrote in which he dispenses with rhetoric in order to oblige the reader to share his horror before the absurd and tragic loss of human greatness:

Après le trente-troisième cri, je vis l'habit gris tout debout. Cette fois je résolus d'honorer le courage de son génie en ayant le courage de voir toute sa mort: je me levai.

La tête roula, et ce qu'il avait làs'enfuit avec le sang.¹³

The system of relationships in the poetic paradigm is complex and the points of view on poetry multiple. Stello's purity is reflected in that of Saint-Just, the Docteur Noir's experience in Robespierre's knowledge of men, the brothers Chénier point to the degradation of a compromise with society (Marie-Joseph), and the sacrifice of the true artist who tries to address his work and commit his idealism to the needs of society.

The fictional Docteur Noir himself eloquently opposes the position of a real writer, Joseph de Maistre, who attempted to justify massacre in the name of Christian expiation; he speaks for Life against all those who would excuse political murder and any sacrifice of humanity in the name of power and the authority of the state. His pessimistic analysis of the psychology of revolution (the reign of mediocre men who remain in power only through the elimination of all enemies) does not concern us here, except for the interesting and very modern parallel he draws between the mind of the revolutionary assassin and that of the "splénétique," or melancholy artist-dreamer. Both are sick with disgust and disillusionment in a corrupt society whose values they cannot accept. Both are dominated by the death wish and live in anger, fear and "spleen," which the revolutionary tries to sublimate by taking vengeance on others, while the poet contemplates suicide. The "émotion continue de l'assassinat" of a Robespierre is thus related to the "rêve maladif" of Stello in another cross-relationship on the complex paradigm of poets and their characteristics to be found in this novel.

F. Germain has analyzed with particular thoroughness the conclusions of Stello the "cure" effected by the Doctor and his ideas concerning poetry.¹⁴ For my purposes it should be stressed that the Doctor proclaims his ordinance in a set of solemn maxims like an ancient oracle, in effect becoming a poet once again, speaking through a language of image and myth to present his code for the young artist. Through a series of examples from the past including that of Homer and Plato's poet excluded from the Republic, the Doctor elevates his concept to that of a universal myth—the poet is not only the eternal martyr but saint of society since his mission is to preserve the necessary ideals of the group, to guide its inner, spiritual life. Perpetual ostracism and solitude must be the accepted lot of the artist, who is, however, essential to every society for it is he who helps men fight the tide of the material, rational, and animal needs which constantly reduce and diminish the quality of human experience: his work is eminently and finally that of a civilizing force. Vigny's high conception of art is seen in this mystique of poetry which both Stello and the Doctor celebrate in the concluding chapters. All direct action or political activity by the poet is impossible. The application of his ideals to society's needs is left to others—the parliament, for example, should subsidize the impoverished artist. Thus Vigny in writing Stello has fulfilled his own function by indicating to society its need of the idealism of poetry, and the danger to noots from the hostility of power. Through the writing of stello, Vigny has actually realized the conception of art which has evolved through the dialogue of the doctor and the poet.

A very serious problem, nevertheless, remains; without active participation by the artist in the life of his time how does the idealistic work of art reach its public? The response is both "romantic" and modern. Considered superior to religion itself as a spiritual guide (because it remains pure and abstracted from quotidian life) the work of the poet produces communion among men which can move them to act. Poetry elevates the spirit of its readers through the emotions it touches of love and compassion ("pitié"); it is therefore addressed to man's emotional nature and in turn engenders emotion. Parallel to Sartre's concept of the work of art as part of a quest for freedom, appealing to the reader's need to overcome his own sense of contingency, Vigny's ideal work of art presents emotions which must cause "une profonde et même une douloureuse impression"¹⁵ on its often unthinking and unfeeling readers. Art works are then symbols of emotion which act in turn on the emotions of the reader thus helping to create an increased awareness of reality or images of new realities. Vigny approximates the concepts of C. J. Jung, who thought that the authentic work of art helps to restore the psychic balance of a group, a society or even an epoch¹⁶ because it furnishes the necessary images of conscious and unconscious levels of experience which the society has been repressing, but which it needs for wholeness. Vigny's society, becoming increasingly materialistic and industrialized, is losing its sense of individual spiritual values; Hugo and Nerval certainly responded to this situation through their efforts at religious syncretism, renewing images of God and the irrational world in works like Aurélia and La Fin de Satan. Vigny perhaps more than any other romantic sees the hope for the preservation of individual values in those of poetry. The work of art thus helps the group rediscover realities it has repressed or denied by presenting symbols which can transform its image of things and of itself.

Finally, and ironically, the very misfortune of the poet becomes a source of his happiness; through his work he has the hope of transcending time and conquering the fatality of death. The work preserves the essence of his personality, and although the poet is sacrificed in life, like the half-gods of the legends he lives again for the future. Anticipating the "Bénédiction" of Baudelaire, Vigny concludes Stello with this paradox, insisting that the poet is a guide for the future of mankind; he works for his posterity and that of society:

Votre royaume n'est pas de ce monde sur lequel vos yeux sont ouverts, mais de celui qui sera quand vos yeux seront fermés.¹⁷

In the present, however, there remains the unalterable opposition, the tragic antithesis between the fatality of Power and the vulnerability of the poet.

In 1830 then, Vigny imagines the poet to be the tragic victim of an unjust order threatened by his idealism and to which he is sacrificed, just as in the ancient legends expiation and atonement necessitated the death of heroes in the name of a mysterious order of gods and nature. Most critics have, nevertheless, pointed to significant changes in idea and attitude from Stello to the Destinées (1864); Castex spoke of the development in Vigny's thought from a fundamentally tragic pessimism towards a humanistic optimism.¹⁸ However, the sometimes contradictory themes of the poems have been disconcerting to many readers (praise of science, for example, in "La Bouteille à lamer"; its apparent condemnation in "La Maison du berger"). The problem stems again from too much concern with the intellectual content of the poetry instead of a careful examination of the structure of its themes and images. "La Maison du berger" (1842), which I propose to discuss in detail, was conceived by Vigny as the prologue to his collection, to be completed by a "réponse d'Eva." Much more than an introcution, and in addition to being his poetic masterpiece, it contains the major themes, preoccupations and ideas which are treated in various ways throughout the Destinées. It is significantly the one text in which the reader can observe the working of the imagination of the poet-narrator as he gives poetic form to the experience of discovery he has undergone, a work therefore to be compared with similar texts in English romantic poetry which reveal the mind of the poet structuring the world and thereby uncovering and discovering itself.

It is also a poem about poetry, but most importantly a poem which is the romantic experience of poetry: the form given to an experience of inner discovery, spiritual change or evolution; language which expresses the movement from the poet's situation of alienation to his integration in a new and higher order of being and knowing.

Like Stello most of the fables and myths of the Destinées contain stories which suggest a sacrifice, and are constructed according to antitheses or binary oppositions which permit no antithesis, only a tragic resolution forcing the acceptance of cruel but vital human truths. Already in the Poèmes bibliques et modernes youthful love was sacrificed in a corrupt world ("Les Amants de Montmorency," "Le Déluge"), innocence was abandoned in "Eloa," and the need for human solidarity remained unsatisfied in "Moise."

The poems of Les Destinées, however, are much more uniformly dominated by sacrifice, and the presence of "mythes cruels" or "mythes consolants." In the series of "mythes cruels" there is "La Colère de Samson" whose myth contains the message that man must give up his ideal of human love; it is sacrificed to the bitter reality of his solitude and the perpetual war between the sexes. Man learns in "Les Destinées" the need to sacrifice his idea of personal freedon; Christianity with its emphasis on grace and predestination has brought only the illusion of liberty and represents no more than a modern version of ancient fatality. At the heart of the poet's disillusionment is the sacrifice of Christ ("Le Mont des Oliviers") with the concomitant realization that man must depend on himself alone, that he is abandoned in an irrational world. When man confronts woman, and his own destiny as a being of will desiring freedom, or the supernatural; that is, when his ideals (love, free will, belief in a spiritual universe) are confronted with the fatalities of experience (Samson-Dalila, human will-the fates, Christ and God) the outcome is tragic and the human ideal is sacrificed.¹⁹

The need to abandon these ideals and illusions, the "cruel" truths contained in the myths are accompanied, however, with a positive affirmation. In each case the poetnarrator has made an intellectual and personal discovery: the stoic need to affirm his own strength, to purify his mind of illusion, to develop the inner resources of his personality, his own particular "genius." In other words the myths are contradictory and ambiguous; their truths are at once iconoclastic and destructive, and yet affirmative and even consoling. They imply the sacrifice of an important ideal but affirm the power of man's spirit:

Arbitre libre et fier des actes de sa vie,
Si notre cœur s'entr'ouvre au parfum des vertus,
S'il s'embrase à l'amour, s'il s'élève au génie,

Que l'ombre des Destins, Seigneur, n'oppose plus
A nos belles ardeurs une immuable entrave,
A nos efforts sans fin des coups inattendus!²⁰

Herein lies, it seems to me, the real explanation for Vigny's constant fascination with myth and his important role as a romantic mythologizer. He finds in myth, first of all, an extension of poetic language. Like symbol it is, for him, a crystallization of ideas, a permanent form in which to distill his own personal experience. Like symbol it permits him to suggest more than can be explained rationally, above all the ambiguous, paradoxical and contradictory truths which result from the poet's intuition, the world of his imagination and memory. Myths permit Vigny to pass from the limitations of the "moi" to Everyman; they become for him the revelations of the meaning of collective experience, symbolic interpretations of essential human situations which correspond to the deepest aspirations, desires and fears of men of his generation and of mankind. Being part of a long tradition they can be interpreted in diverse ways; therefore they demand the response of the reader at the level of his individual experience; like diamonds or crystals they give off light and meaning but contain mystery, are multilayered and difficult to penetrate. For Vigny, in the last analysis, myths are the creations of the imagination of poets and thinkers which contain, that is, conceal and reveal, metaphysical, spiritual or moral truths surpassing rational and scientific knowledge. Vigny's poetry certainly confirms R. Wellek's statement: "All the great romantic poets are mythopoeic, are symbolists whose practice must be understood in terms of their attempt to give a total mythic interpretation of the world to which the poet holds the key."²¹

The consoling myths of Les Destinées are characterized first by their modernity if not their originality: "La Flûte," "La Bouteille à la mer," "L'Esprit pur" and "La Maison du berger" contain stories about the present, and images taken from contemporary experience even though the underlying myths be ancient ones. In this instance they simply resemble poems of the "modern" section of Vigny's first collection. Far more important, however, is a new, different thematic structure. The work of the creative person, that of artist or scientist, the creations of the human spirit are now seen as the means to extend and actually overcome the rational, material and temporal limitations of existence. Instead of a tragic impasse resulting from the confrontation between man's aspirations and the fatalities of the world, a new synthesis results from this conflict, producing renewed confidence in man's creative power and his power to transform the world.

"La Flûte" evokes the power and permanence of the world of ideas through a Platonic contrast with the weakness of the flesh, thus encouraging and consoling the young "râté" who resembles Stello:

Du corps et non de l'âme accusons l'indigence.
Des organes mauvais servent l'intelligence
Ils touchent, en tordant et tourmentant leur nœud,
Ce qu'ils peuvent atteindre et non ce qu'elle veut.
En traducteurs grossiers de quelque auteur céleste
Ils parlent. Elle chante et désire le reste.

…..

Votre souffle était juste et votre chant est faux.²²

"L'Esprit pur" extols the products of human genius capable of endowing their creator with immortality and identifies creativity as the divine element in man:

Ton règne est arrivé, PUR ESPRIT, roi du monde!

…. Aujourd'hui, c'est L'ECRIT,
L'ECRIT UNIVERSEL,, parfois impérissable,
Que tu graves au marbre ou traces sur le sable,
Colombe au bec d'airain! VISIBLE SAINT-ESPRIT!²³

"La Bouteille à la mer" presents an allegory of the acceptance and comprehension of a work of art by its readers in terms of the partial conquest of the destructive fatality of the ocean through the knowledge of a sea captain's charts. The Captain dies in the storm ("Son sacrifice est fait"), but he is destined to have a second life in the immortality of his science:

Il sourit en songeant que ce fragile verre
Portera sa pensée et son nom jusqu'au port,
Que d'une île inconnue il agrandit la terre,
Qu'il marque un nouvel astre et le confie au sort,
Que Dieu peut bien permettre à des eaux insensées
De perdre des vaisseaux, mais non pas des pensées,
Et qu'avec un flacon il a vaincu la mort.²⁴

The element missing then, in Stello and in the pessimistic poems of Les Destinées, (those in the series of "mythes cruels"), is belief in the power of the created work itself and in the divine nature of creativity: for Vigny man has now become his own god and his works are proof of his divinity.

Indeed "La Maison du berger" presents the complete spiritual itinerary of the poet-narrator as he relates an experience of inner discovery; an experience with life and poetry from which he emerges renewed, regenerated, as if reborn. Liberated from his alienation, his period of spiritual death, he discovers himself ready to create, to attempt to write in the name of mankind, confident in his genius and the value and power of art. The rebirth of the poet, (for that is the central theme of the poem), aided by the love of Eva, ideal woman and muse, recalls the situation of Prometheus and Asia in Shelley's poem Prometheus Unbound. In fact "La Maison" is Vigny's version of the Prometheus legend as well as a retelling of the part of the story of Adam and Eve in which man is saved from the sin of narcissism through the regenerating force of woman's love.

The poem is constructed in dialectical form; in each of its three parts there is a series of antitheses, or contradictions whose conflict produces a new synthesis. The movement of themes and images corresponds to the flux of ideas in the poet's mind and here signifies change, growth and renewal.

Part I might best be called "évasion du spleen" and "invitation au voyage"; Part II, the discovery of an esthetic, and Part III, the poet's metaphysics. The poem begins the way Stello ends, with the poet expressing his isolation when faced with the fatalities of the modern world, and his despair with the tragic limitations of the human condition. Instead of Stello, the figure of a pure but an incommunicable light, the poet is a shepherd involved with life and the poem is addressed to a mysterious Eva, who seems to have replaced the Docteur Noir. Images of weight, suffering and slavery dominate the first stanzas, evoking Napoleon's exile and Prometheus bound to his rock; "âme enchaînée," "plaie immortelle," "rocs fatals," "aigle blessé," reinforce the effect of alienation and spiritual death which the poet feels in this "monde fatal, écrasant et glacé."²⁵

Instead of the destructive nature of political power which dominated the text of Stello, the materialism and technology of modern civilization now menace the very sources of poetry. The city and science (with their product and sign the railroad) signify fatality here, and are placed in opposition to nature (a source of consolation and spiritual value), and revery (the impetus to poetic creation) which together evoke the possible happiness of escape with Eva. The interplay of themes and ideas, the conflict between the static fatality of the City and the sentimental appeal of Nature produce, however, in the central symbol of the work the idea of a new life in the moving house of the shepherd; neither limited to city or country, nor dominated by the excesses of modern technology the poet and his lover will travel through country and countryside into contact with the life of various peoples and collecting impressions for poetry. The shepherd dreams of becoming a guide for men.

The themes and images of the poetic structure are linked according to a logic suggesting the inner working of the poet's imagination. The theme of science which imposes ever new limits on man's freedom by eliminating chance and the unknown, and forcing conformity, "La science/Trace autour de la terre un chemin triste et droit," (MB, 176) leads directly to a meditation on its antithesis, revery, that is the poetic world of imagination, beauty and mystery, the very center of his spiritual life. The danger of science and modern technology is precisely that it could destroy the sources of poetry: revery before the beauty of nature, imagination's contact with the mystery of experience. Part II thus develops as a long debate on the meaning and value of poetry whose very essence is threatened in modern society.

If the "thesis" in this section is now the possibility of political life and action, it is opposed by the "anti thesis" of pure poetry and thought, or the meditative life. The same set of binary oppositions which were found in Stello become this time the basis for a new synthesis about the role of the poet in society and the value of poetry. The true poet neither participates actively in political life nor does he isolate himself in holy solitude, he becomes, however warily, the guide or "shepherd" of humanity:

Diamant sans rival, que tes feux illuminent
Les pas lents et tardifs de l'humaine Raison!
Il faut, pour voir de loin les peuples qui cheminent,
Que le Berger t'enchâsse au toit de sa Maison.
(MB, 178)

It is in Part II of the "Maison" that Vigny most profoundly develops his concept of the meaning and role of poetry, and resolves the seemingly insoluble paradoxes of Stello. The familiar images of the diamond, mirror, pearl and monument are used to convey Vigny's sense of the function of poetic forms; the symbols and myths must operate to concentrate and purify the "profondes pensées" of the artist. The poem thus becomes a durable condensation of the spirit or light of the individual poet, but also preserves the highest ideals of his civilization from the destruction of time:

Ce fin miroir solide, étincelant et dur,
Reste des nations mortes, durable pierre
Qu'on trouve sous ses pieds lorsque dans la poussière
On cherche les cités sans en voir un seul mur.
(MB, 178)

Poetry is considered to be superior to reason which functions by dividing and separating phenomena, since it is capable of grasping the highest synthetic truths through intuition and imagination; indeed, the poet through his revelations of the spiritual sense of life becomes the intuitive guide of human progress:

Le jour n'est pas levé.—Nous en sommes encore
Au premier rayon blanc qui précède l'aurore
Et dessine la terre aux bords de l'horizon.
(MB, 178)

The creative spirit of the poet represents for Vigny a kind of divinity in man, and through the exercise of this faculty in the poetic act he participates positively in the divine element of the universe:

Mais notre esprit rapide en mouvements abonde:
Ouvrons tout l'arsenal de ses puissants ressorts.
L'Invisible est réel. Les âmes ont leur monde
Où sont accumulés d'impalpables trésors.
(MB, 179)

A religion of human genius has clearly replaced traditional Christianity for Vigny; he remains an idealist whose need for transcendence is now satisfied by the works of the "pure Spirit."²⁶

There are consequently three ways in which poetry can transcend the fatalities of life: first, the work brings immortality to the poet himself; second, its form condenses and reveals the spiritual life of man, preserving his ideals against the danger of the collapse of temporary forms of civilization; and, finally, through its intuition of supreme truths it becomes the highest means to knowledge capable of guiding man to a better future.

If we return for a moment to the ordinance of the Docteur Noir at the end of Stello, the change in vision is striking. The Doctor had recommended to the young poet the necessary and sacred solitude of the ivory tower—the poet of "La Maison" is liberated and reborn through the love of Eva. Imagination, he said, thrives only on the spontaneous emotions of the artist—the poet now seeks to know and love "tout dans les choses créées" and during a long voyage with Eva will learn to admire "la majesté des souffrances humaines."

According to the Doctor his mission was to produce works, "utiles" in their very uselessness; his situation was to be "maudit" in the eyes of those in power, and to live without hope a destiny of pain and doubt. Instead, the poet of the "Maison" is confident that poetry may become the spiritual leader of science and reason, and he displays measured optimism concerning the future for himself and society.

The long period of stagnation, alienation and sterility experienced by the poet in "La Maison" (Part I) ends through contact with a new spiritual element, the very force of his own creative self, which produces new affirmation and strength (Part II). This force is, of course, poetry itself, and it is incarnated in the dream of Eva. The rebirth of the poet, his "poetic" health is thus achieved in Part HI of "La Maison" through reunion with the woman, or anima, the redemptive figure, Eva, who now replaces Christ in the poet's world, saving him from death and helping him return to wholeness.

For Germain the ordinance of the Doctor implied the necessary division or separation of the two parts of the poet's personality. In order to survive, the animus—"volonté" must repress the feminine anima—"rêverie." The poet must in effect refuse life, or at least use his willpower to cure himself of the "rêve maladif of communication and participation; in other words he must accept sterility in the name of purity, curtail the effects of revery (the very source of poetry) and concentrate solely on his craft.

The sacrifice of the feminine part of the poetic personality, the anima—"rêverie," which is the lesson of Stello in the last analysis, could only lead to a spiritual death. It is revived, however, in "La Maison" in the form of an overwhelming need for love as a necessary condition of creativity. Examined in the context of the conflict of ideas throughout the entire poem feminine symbols dominate the consciousness and creative imagination of the poetnarrator. Woman takes the form of nature, a goddess, a "voyageuse indolente," Diana, vestal virgin and priestess; she incarnates revery, the poet's muse, and most significantly poetry itself: "O toi des vrais penseurs impérissable amour!" (MB. 178). Spiritualized and yet profoundly human,²⁷ the mysterious Eva of Part III becomes the redemptive figure whose love makes it possible for the poet to find again his sense of wholeness; she not only symbolizes poetry, "L'enthousiasme pur dans une voix suave," (MB, 179), but also the fragility and impermanence of man and the possible grandeur of human suffering. Her delicate sensitivity, compassion and deep understanding of human values: "C'est à toi qu'il convient d'ouïr les grandes plaintes/Que l'humanité triste exhale sourdement" (MB, 180), are the necessary complement to the poet's intelligence and will; indeed these qualities are at the source of all creativity and their assimilation makes feasible the poet's réintégration in the world of men and nature:

Eva, j'aimerai tout dans les choses créées,
Je les contemplerai dans ton regard rêveur
Qui partout répandra ses flammes colorées,
Sur mon cœur déchiré viens poser ta main pure,
Ne me laisse jamais seul avec la Nature,
Car je la connais trop pour n'en pas avoir peur.
(MB, 180)

The artist's empathetic penetration of or identification with the world of things and man, a quality considered by writers close to Vigny but as diverse as Diderot, Balzac and Baudelaire, to be essential to the creative process was denied to Stello. It is now offered to the poet of "La Maison" as a function of the ability to love.

The dialectic of Part III is expressed in terms of an antithesis between the goddess of Nature, hostile, indifferent and eternal, and the fragile, impermanent, human woman. Nature moves ("roule") with the indifference to men of the railway trains of Part I; woman loves, suffers and knows the perishable but privileged beauty of the passing moment, of that which is always menaced by death, but alone has human value. The poet concludes from this contrast that what counts for man in his impermanence and contingency is to give meaning to a world which has none without him. The very fragility of woman makes him love men again and seek to illuminate the sense of human suffering against the beautiful but insensitive backdrop of nature:

Viens du paisible seuil de la maison roulante
Voir ceux qui sont passés et ceux qui passeront.
Tous les tableaux humains qu'un Esprit pur m'apporte
S'animeront pour toi, quand devant notre porte
Les grands pays muets longuement s'étendront.
(MB, 181-182)

Eva thus figures the regenerative principle of love which brings the poet back to the sources of being, a love which is a means of access to knowledge and spiritual elevation and the necessary impetus to creativity. The last stanzas develop the image of the poet as a modern Prometheus²⁸ freed and reborn through the strength of love and confidence in the power of poetry. He enters a new life of knowing and becoming with the possibility of renewing his "genius" and reconciling himself with nature and men.

The poem itself is therefore an experience of rebirth in that the writing of it permits the poet to rediscover the ties which exist between the alienated self and the world of others and things; as the poet develops the language to express the world of coherence and beauty which his imagination discerns, a second life begins for him and a new reality born of his images, symbols and myths is created.

Vigny himself expressed this paradox of the archetypal rebirth pattern, which to me illuminates the sacrificial death of the poet in Stello and his subsequent renascence in Les Destinées, when he wrote the following lines. They are addressed to Antoni Deschamps, one of the many unfortunate young poets who were suffering from incomprehension and poverty, and who were beginning to consider Vigny, the successful playwright and poet, as the primary contemporary defender of poets and the cause of poetry:

… J'ai souffert d'abord et gémi avec vous et j'ai admiré la beauté de vos sentiments, autant au moins que la beauté de vos vers; je l'admirais et je m'attristais avec vous, mais quand je me suis reculé de ce grand tableau de votre âme et quand je l'ai considéré avec des yeux plus sereins et moins troublés, je me suis senti heureux comme d'une seconde naissance qui vous aurait été donnée. Croyez-moi, mon ami, vous voilà guéri. La Poésie qui vous avait perdu vous a sauvé. Vous conserverez toute la vie sur le front la trace du tonnerre, mais ce ne sera qu'une cicatrice, et votre âme est restée intacte sous ce front blessé.²⁹

Notes

¹ Maud Bodkin in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (Oxford, 1934) explains the special power of the rebirth archetype: "… we may say that all poetry, laying hold of the individual through the sensuous resources of language, communicates in some measure the experience of an emotional but supra-personal life; and that poetry in which we re-live, as such a supra-personal experience though in terms of our own emotional resources, the tidal ebb toward death followed by life renewal, affords us a means of increased awareness, and of fuller expression and control, of our own lives in their secret and momentous obedience to universal rhythms." (p. 89)

² In major statements about romantic theory Lovejoy, Peckham and Wellek have essentially accepted this concept. See A. Lovejoy, "Romanticism and Plenitude," The Great Chain of Being (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1963); M. Peckham, "Towards a Theory of Romanticism," PMLA, LXI (1951), 5-23; and R. Wellek, Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).

³ F. P. Bowman, "The Poetic Practices of Vigny's Poèmes Philosophiques," MLR, LX (1964), 359-368.

M. Schroder, Icarus, The Image of the Artist in French Romanticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961).

G. Bonnefoy, La Pensée religieuse et morale d'Alfred de Vigny (Paris: Hachette, 1944).

A brief but impressive recent article from a phenomenological perspective by J. P. Richard on Vigny is found in his Etudes sur le Romantisme (Paris: Seuil, 1970).

⁴ The interplay of ideas itself was for Vigny a major expression of creativity: "La Pensée seule, la Pensée pure, l'exercice intérieur des idées et leur jeu entre elles, est pour moi un véritable bonheur." Vigny, Le Journal d'un Poète, in œuvres Complètes, Ed. Pléiade, 2 Vols. (Paris, 1948), I, 1337. Ail future references to the work of Vigny are from the Pléiade edition.

⁵ Vigny himself in an entry in the Journal of 1836 pointed out the role of irony in his largely misunderstood "Consultation": "Ce qui me surprendrait le plus, si quelque négligence des critiques pouvait surprendre, ce serait de voir que pas un d'eux ne s'est aperçu que l'originalité de Stello tient au mélange d'ironie et de sensibilité du Docteur Noir dans ses récits." (II, 1046-1047). In other references to Stello he notes the originality of its composition when compared to the taste for symmetrical patterns of unimaginative critics: "Je l'ai dit et pensé souvent, Stello a donné le vertige à la critique.—Personne n'a laissé voir qu'il eût senti ni le fond ni la forme même. Comment n'ont-ils pas vu qu'un livre de désespoir devait être désespéré dans sa forme même et dégoûté même de la symétrie des compositions ordinaires, qu'il devait laisser tomber ses récits et ses réflexions feuille à feuille comme un arbre qui se dépouille?" (II, 965). He also analyzes with remarkable precision the element of unresolved tension which constitutes the real originality of Stello; the opposition between sacred fount (Docteur Noir) and ivory tower (Stello), life and poetry, which defines the structural as well as the thematic levels of the work: "Le Docteur Noir, c'est la vie. Ce que la vie a de réel, de triste, de désespérant, doit être représenté par lui et par ses paroles, et toujours le malade doit être supérieur à sa triste raison de tout ce qu'a la poésie de supérieur à la réalité douloureuse qui nous enserre; mais cette raison selon la vie doit toujours réduire le sentiment au silence et ce silence sera la meilleure critique de la vie." (II, 969).

⁶ Speaking of his unhappy childhood in 1832 he explains the need he felt to repress his emotional nature: "—Une sensibilité extrême, refoulée dès l'enfance par les maîtres et à l'armée par les officiers supérieurs, demeura enfermée dans le coin le plus secret du cœur.—Le monde ne vit plus pour jamais que les idées, résultat du travail prompt et exact de l'intelligence.—Le Docteur Noir seul parut en moi, Stello se cacha." (II, 960). The "anima" side of his personality was thus contained under an iron mask and permanently controlled through extreme efforts of willpower: "J'étais né doué d'une sensibilité féminine. Jusqu'à quinze ans je pleurais, je versais des fleuves de larmes par amitié, par sympathie, pour une froideur de ma mère, un chagrin d'un ami, je me prenais à tout et partout j'étais repoussé. Je me refermais comme une sensitive." (II, 986).

He admits the continual presence of the two selves and their alternating influence on his actions and his writing, the animus—"moi philosophique" and the anima—"moi dramatique": Je dois donc dire que j'ai cru démêler en moi deux êtres bien distincts l'un de l'autre, le moi dramatique, qui vit avec activité et violence, éprouve avec douleur ou enivrement, agit avec énergie ou persévérance, et la moi philosophique, qui se sépare journellement de l'autre moi, le dédaigne, le juge, le critique, l'analyse, le regarde passer et rit ou pleure de ses faux pas comme ferait un ange gardien." (II, 1032).

In June of 1844 he defines and generalizes the significance of the two personalities: "Le Docteur Noir est le côté humain et réel de tout: Stello a voulu voir ce qui devrait être, ce qu'il est beau d'espérer et de croire, de souhaiter pour l'avenir: c'est le côté divin." (II, 1218).

⁷ II, 1071.

⁸ Title of P. Bénichou's recent study of the romantic concept of the writer. (Paris: Corti, 1973).

⁹ I, 194.

¹⁰ I, 656.

¹¹ II, 1196.

¹² See his defence of the historical novel, "Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art" and his essay on Chatterton, "Dernière nuit de travail."

¹³ I, 773.

¹⁴ "Les Idées du Docteur Noir," Part VI of L'Imagination d'Alfred de Vigny (Paris: Corti, 1962), pp. 443-526.

¹⁵ I, 583.

¹⁶ C. J. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" and "Psychology and Literature" found in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966).

¹⁷ I, 803.

¹⁸ P. G. Castex, Vigny, L'Homme et l'œuvre (Paris: Boivin, 1952).

¹⁹ The idea of sacrifice is at the core of Vigny's concept of morality; he never ceased to admire the Christian concept of sacrifice, and the stoical renunciation of personal desires is a recurrent theme in the last pages of his Journal. In 1863 he writes of his devotion to his wife:

Jamais mon esprit de sacrifice n'a trouvé de sentiment de reconnaissance proportionné, excepté dans la tendresse de Lydia pour moi. (II, 1381).

In one of the final entries he concludes that his life and work have been devoted to the celebration of the tragic sacrifice in modem society of the noble, the poet and the soldier. He reiterates the three great themes of his fiction and poetry, and provides a résumé of his understanding of the meaning of his life:

Etant poète, J'ai montré l'ombrage qu'a du poète tout plaideur d'affaires publiques et le vulgaire des salons et du peuple.

Officier, J'ai peint ce que j'ai vu: le gladiateur sacrifié aux fantaisies politiques du peuple ou du souverain.

J'ai dit ce que je sais et ce que j'ai souffert. (II, 1390-91).

²⁰ "Les Destinées," Poèmes Philosophiques (I, 172).

²¹ R. Wellek, "The Concept of Romanticism," Concepts of Criticism, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 188-189.

²² "La Flûte" (I, 202).

²³ "L'Esprit Pur" (I, 222).

²⁴ "La Bouteille à la mer" (I, 210).

²⁵ All references to "La Maison du berger" are to Volume I of the Pléiade edition of Vigny's works and will be designated hereafter in the text as MB.

²⁶ This concept of the human spirit as a dynamic, divine force is found delineated in the Journal as early as 1829:

Soumettre le monde à la domination sans bornes des esprits supérieurs en qui réside la plus grande partie de l'intelligence divine doit être mon but—et celui de tous les hommes forts du temps. (II, 897)

²⁷ Eva is both goddess and child:

Viens donc! le ciel pour moi n'est plus qu'une auróle
Qui t'entoure d'azur, t'éclaire et te défend;
La montagne est ton temple et le bois sa coupole.
La terre est le tapis de tes beaux pieds d'enfant.
(I, 180)

²⁸ The image of Prometheus is of course a recurrent one in romantic writing. Associated with Napoleon and with other figures of rebellion it was not considered too heroic to be applied to one's private experience as Vigny does occasionally in his Journal. In this entry he compares his stoic sense of duty and the sacrifice of himself during his army career to the suffering of Prometheus:

—Je marchai une fois d'Amiens à Paris par la pluie avec mon Bataillon, crachant le sang sur toute la route et demandant du lait à toutes les chaumières, mais ne disant rien de ce que je souffrais. Je me laissais dévorer par le vautour intérieur. (II, 960)

²⁹Lettres à des poètes, II, 996.