ALFRED DE VIGNY (1797-1863) BY GRACE KING LFRED VICTOR, Comte de Vigny, is represented in the voluminous literature of his country in the nineteenth century by a mere handful of books: briefly, by two volumes of poetry, 'Poésies Antiques et Modernes' and 'Les Destinées'; by a novel, Cinq Mars'; a comedy, 'Quitte pour la Peur' (Let Off with a Scare); a prose epic, 'Stello'; four tales from military life, Military Servitude and Grandeur'; a play, 'Chatter ton'; and The Journal of a Poet.' And in the resounding fame of great contemporaries and successors in literature, De Vigny's name and this handful of books might, with easy supposition, have been relegated to the position of a dwindling and expiring reminiscence of the past; the fate of long catalogues of successful writers and books of his day. De Vigny's name and work, however, have gained rather than lost lustre by the friction of time upon them; and the eulogy by Théophile Gautier, that he was "the purest glory of the romantic school," is as fresh in its truth to-day, as when it was penned over a half-century ago. Of all the romanticists, he remains, to the critical eyes of to-day, as the most genuine, the most sincere, and the least illogical; in short, as a romanticist by blood, birth, and traditions, not by school or profession of faith. ALFRED DE VIGNY He was born at Loches in Touraine, in 1797, the last descendant of a once wealthy and distinguished family. Through his mother, he was connected with great admirals and sea captains; through his father, with courtiers, army officers, and princely seigneurs. Ruined by the Revolution, his parents removed to Paris; where they consecrated their life, and what fortune remained to them, to his education. On the knees of his white-haired father, an old courtier of Louis XV. and a crippled veteran of the Seven Years' War, the child learned to know Louis XV., the great Frederick, Voltaire, and the history of the great campaigns of the past century; and was taught war, he relates, by his father's wounds, by the parchments and escutcheons of his family, by the portraits in armor of his ancestors, - the nobility acting the rôle of a great family of hereditary soldiers. He was barely sixteen when the Restoration opened to him the predestined career, as he saw it, of the sons of the nobles of France. He entered the household troops of the King, a company composed of young men of family, all graded as sous-lieutenants. But France, as he says, had sheathed her sword "in the scabbard of the Bourbons" with Napoleon the glory of army life had departed; only the dullness and routine of it remained. To while away the burdensome hours of ennui during his garrison life, the young officer returned to his early and precocious passion for poetry. His haversack library, consisting of the Bible and a few classics, ministered to him as Muse. In 1822 he published the collection of these first essays, 'Poems Ancient and Modern.' It contained some of his best pieces: 'Moses,' 'The Deluge,' 'The Adulterous Woman.' The following year he published his 'Eloa.' The historical novel of 'Cinq Mars' (1826) was however the maker of De Vigny's reputation in literature. Based upon a fine episode of the reign of Louis XIII., its dramatic interest, the virile strength of its characters, its brilliant coloring, and the elevated purity and elegance of its style and language, insured it a success that has been prolonged until the book has become fixed in its reputation as a modern classic. After fourteen years of pacific and inglorious service, during which he attained only to the rank of captain, De Vigny resigned from the army. In Paris he retired into what Sainte-Beuve wittily called "his ivory tower, ". a life of seclusion, aristocratic and mediæval in its lofty isolation. He emerged but once,-in 1842, to take his seat in the French Academy. He died in 1863, leaving ready for publication a volume of poems, 'Les Destinées,' and a collection of personal notes and reflections which was published by his literary executor as 'The Journal of a Poet.' This last volume contains some of the most exquisite passages of his writings and of his life: the long painful illness of his mother; his devotion, her death, and his grief; and afterwards, the long years of devotion to his invalid wife. Placed chronologically by birth between Victor Hugo and Lamartine, De Vigny's intrinsic value as a poet receives its best illustration from the juxtaposition. His originality, as Sainte-Beuve says, "is distinct from both, in its inspiration and filiation: we can connect Victor Hugo and Lamartine with anterior French poetry, but in it we vainly seek the parentage of Moses, Eloa, and Dolorida." De Vigny's earliest conception of the fatal and sublime gift of genius, condemning man to solitude and sadness, "imprisoning him in his own greatness," as it has been expressed,- became his master idea through life. It appeared first in 'Moses,' and reappeared in all his writings, poetry and prose, in different reincarnations; - in the 'Maison de Berger,' idyllic, in love; in 'Stello,' tragic, in the sufferings of the modern poet; the idea reaches its culmination in moral grandeur in Military Servitude and Grandeur,' where self-abnegation and virile honor are depicted as the only ransom of greatness, and the price of the happiness of the common mortal. Gran Ting MOSES E SAID unto the Lord:-"Shall I ne'er be done? HR Where wilt thou still that I my footsteps turn? Let now some other stand 'twixt thee and thine! I gladly make him heir to book and brazen rod. I am the Great: my feet tread nations' necks, My hand holds generations in its will. Alas, my Lord! I am great-I am alone: Give me―ah, give me leave to sleep the sleep of earth!" ELOA N THE snowy mountain crown of the hamlet, ON The Spaniard has wounded the Asturian eagle With bristling plumes, and raining down blood, The bird strikes upward to heaven, quick as a flash could descend, LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Gazing up at his sun! breathing it in with wide-open beak, Hovers a moment in rest, 'mid the bright darting rays,- The hot ball burns like a coal in his wound; His wing drops its shafts, his royal mantle its plumes; He sinks into the snow of the mount, with wild heaving breast; LAURETTE, OR THE RED SEAL HE grand route of Artois and Flanders is long and desolate. THE It extends in a straight line, without trees, without ditches, through countries flat and covered with yellow mud at all times. In the month of March 1815 I passed along this route, and had a rencontre which I have never since forgotten. I was alone. My comrades were ahead on the route in the suite of the King, Louis XVIII. I saw their white capes and red capes at the very horizon of the north. A lost shoe retarded my horse. He was young and strong. I urged him on to rejoin my squadron; he started at a rapid trot. It still rained, and I still sang. But I soon stopped, tired of hearing only my own self; and then I heard only the rain, and my horses' feet which plashed the beaten track. On examining intently this yellow line of the road, I remarked at about a quarter of a mile distant a small black point which moved. This gave me pleasure: it was some person. I hurried my steps. At about a hundred paces I could clearly distinguish a little wagon of white wood, covered with three circles and black oilcloth; it resembled a little cradle placed on two wheels; the wheels sank to their hubs in the mud. The little mule which dragged it was carefully led by a man on foot who held the bridle. He was a man of about fifty years, with white mustache, strong and tall. He had a hard but good face, such as is frequently seen in the army. Having seen his white cockade, I contented myself with showing him the sleeve of my red coat, and then he replaced his gun in the cart. "Will you have a drop?"-"Willingly," I replied, approaching: "I have not drunk in twenty-four hours." He had at his neck a cocoanut very well carved, made into a flagon, with a silver mouthpiece, of which he seemed rather proud. He passed it to me, and I drank a little of the bad white wine with much pleasure. I returned the cocoanut to him. We went on for about a quarter of a mile without saying anything. Then as he stopped to rest his poor little mule, which it pained me to look at, I stopped too, to empty my boots of the water which filled them. "Your boots begin to stick to your feet," said he. "It is four nights since I took them off," said I. "Bah! in eight days you will no longer think of them," he replied in his hoarse voice. "Do you know what I have in there? » "No," said I to him."It is a woman." I said, "Ah!" without too much surprise, and I began to walk tranquilly on. He followed me. "You do not care? What I said then ought to astonish you.” —“I am but little astonished," I said. "Oh! but if I should tell you how I left the sea, we should see." — "Well,” replied I, why not try? That would warm you up, and would make me forget that the rain is running down my back and out at my heels." ་ "You must know first, my boy, that I was born at Brest. I started by being the child of the troop, earning my half-rations and my half-stipend from the age of nine; my father being a soldier in the guards. But as I loved the sea,- on a beautiful night while I was on leave of absence in Brest, I hid myself in the hold of a merchant vessel leaving for the Indies: I was only discovered in mid-ocean, and the captain preferred making me a cabin-boy to throwing me overboard. When the Revolution came I had made my way, and had in my turn become captain of a little merchant vessel,- full of zest, having skimmed the ocean for fifteen years. As the royal ex-marine-ma foi! the good old marine-all of a sudden found itself depopulated of officers, captains were taken from the merchant marine. I had had some filibustering affairs, of which I may tell you later. They gave me command of a brig of war named the Marat. The 28th Fructidor 1797 I received orders to weigh for Cayenne. I was to convey sixty soldiers; and one exile, who was left over from the one hundred and ninety-three taken on board by the frigate La Decade a few days before. I had orders to treat this individual with consideration; and the first letter of the Directoire contained a second, closed with three red seals, one amongst them of I was forbidden to open this letter before the first unusual size. XXVI-960 |