Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
Alfred de Vigny was elected to a chair in the French Academy in 1846 and died at Paris, September 17, 1863. GASTON BOISSIER Secretaire Perpetuel de l'Academie Francaise. The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart. We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
Of all the poets of our day only three, Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and De Vigny, have been able to win the double glory of poet and prose-writer, like Racine and Voltaire, Moliere, and Rabelais, a rare distinction in the literature of France, which ought to give a man a right to the crowning title of poet.
Alfred de Vigny contributed to it successively Stello, Laurette and Le Capitaine Renaud; Alexandre Dumas, whose jealousy was only aroused later on, published therein his Impressions de Voyage; Balzac wrote for it, as did also Nodier, Victor Hugo, Barbier, Brizeux, Mérimée, Lerminier, George Sand, Jouffry, Alfred de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Gustave Planche and Augustin Thierry, whose Nouvelles lettres sur l'Histoire de France first appeared in the Revue.
Until Jocelyn appeared, in 1836, the form of poetic expression was confined chiefly to the ode, the ballad, and the elegy; and no poet, with the exception of the author of 'Moise' and 'Eloa', ever dreamed that abstract ideas and themes dealing with the moralities could be expressed in the melody of verse. To this priority, of which he knew the full value, Alfred de Vigny laid insistent claim.
Finish shedding that portion of thy blood that is in others' veins. That share which remains in thee, I will take charge of. Ha! a well-employed night!" By ALFRED DE VIGNY "Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies, In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought," exclaims the immortal Shakespeare in the chorus of one of his tragedies.
As a dramatist, De Vigny produced a translation of 'Othello Le More de Venice' ; also 'La Marechale d'Ancre' ; both met with moderate success only.
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.
The style of these writers is simple and manly, and no opinions of their own shine through their statements. The chief representatives of this class, who regard Sir Walter Scott as their master, are Thierry, Villemain, Barante, and in historical sketches and novels, Dumas and De Vigny.
I am going to resume my readings for my wretched book, which I shall not begin for a full year. Do you know where the great Tourgueneff is now? A thousand affectionate greetings to all and to you the best of everything from your old friend. CCLX. TO GEORGE SAND Sunday ... I am not like M. de Vigny, I do not like the "sound of the horn in the depth of the woods."
I raised my eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all those women's souls which we do not know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really are, whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their quiet duplicity; and a verse of De Vigny returned to my memory: "Always this comrade whose heart is uncertain."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking