Cinq Mars — Complete. Alfred de Vigny

ALFRED DE VIGNY

       Table of Contents

      The reputation of Alfred de Vigny has endured extraordinary vicissitudes in France. First he was lauded as the precursor of French romantic poetry and stately prose; then he sank in semi-oblivion, became the curiosity of criticism, died in retirement, and was neglected for a long time, until the last ten years or so produced a marked revolution of taste in France. The supremacy of Victor Hugo has been, if not questioned, at least mitigated; other poets have recovered from their obscurity. Lamartine shines now like a lamp relighted; and the pure, brilliant, and profoundly original genius of Alfred de Vigny now takes, for the first time, its proper place as one of the main illuminating forces of the nineteenth century.

      It was not until one hundred years after this poet’s birth that it became clearly recognized that he is one of the most important of all the great writers of France, and he is distinguished not only in fiction, but also in poetry and the drama. He is a follower of Andre Chenier, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, a lyric sun, a philosophic poet, later, perhaps in consequence of the Revolution of 1830, becoming a “Symbolist.” He has been held to occupy a middle ground between De Musset and Chenier, but he has also something suggestive of Madame de Stael, and, artistically, he has much in common with Chateaubriand, though he is more coldly impersonal and probably much more sincere in his philosophy. If Sainte-Beuve, however, calls the poet in his Nouveaux Lundis a “beautiful angel, who has been drinking vinegar,” then the modern reader needs a strong caution against malice and raillery, if not jealousy and perfidy, although the article on De Vigny abounds otherwise with excessive critical cleverness.

      At times, indeed, under the cruel deceptions of love, he seemed to lose

      faith in his idealism; his pessimism, nevertheless, always remained

      noble, restrained, sympathetic, manifesting itself not in appeals for

      condolence, but in pitying care for all who were near and dear to him.

      Yet his lofty prose and poetry, interpenetrated with the stern despair

      of pessimistic idealism, will always be unintelligible to the many. As a

      poet, De Vigny appeals to the chosen few alone. In his dramas his genius

      is more emancipated