Alfred de Musset (1810–57,) fully Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay, was a French Romantic dramatist and poet. He is remembered for his lyric poems, elegant comedies, and the powerful play Lorenzaccio (1834,) possibly the best French play of the 19th century.
Born in Paris, Musset started studying law and medicine but soon realized that he had a talent for writing. At 18, he published a translation of the English Essayist Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (L’Anglais Mangeur d’opium; 1828.) Musset won the approval of Victor Hugo for his first collection of poems, Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (1830; Tales of Spain and Italy.)
After Musset’s first play, La Nuit Venitienne (1830; A Night in Venice,) failed at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, he devised an ‘armchair theatre’ by writing plays intended for reading only and refusing to allow them to be performed. Ten years later, following the massive success of his Un Caprice (1837; A Whim,) Musset allowed other ‘armchair’ plays, On ne saurait penser à tout (1849, You Can Never Think of Everything,) Carmosine (1850,) and Bettine (1851,) to be staged.
In 1833, Musset met the French novelist George Sand (pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin,) and they had a stormy three-year affair. Their romance is traced in his four volumes of Nuits (1835–37; Nights.) Sand’s Elle et Lui (1859; She and He) is a fictionalized account of their affair.
Musset’s other notable works include the autobiographical poem La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (1835; The Confessions of a Child of the Century, 1892) and L’Espoir en Dieu (1838; Hoping in God.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alfred de Musset
How glorious it is—and also how painful—to be an exception.
—Alfred de Musset
There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow
It is easy to promise, and alas! how easy to forget!
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Promise
Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Experience
Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Vanity
Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.—It opened the palaces of Constantinople to the barbarians, but it opened the doors of cottages to the consoling angels of Christ.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Christianity
Perfection does not exist. To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Perfection
Memory is what makes us young or old.
—Alfred de Musset
Topics: Memories, One liners
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand French Writer, Statesman
Jules Verne French Novelist
Gerard de Nerval French Poet, Writer
Henri de Montherlant French Essayist, Novelist, Dramatist
Emile Zola French Novelist
Alexandre Dumas fils French Dramatist, Novelist
Alexis de Tocqueville French Historian, Political Scientist
Honore de Balzac French Novelist
Michel Leiris French Surrealist Writer, Ethnographer
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux French Literary Critic