Alfred de Musset (1810–1857). The Story of a White Blackbird.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.
Biographical Note
LOUIS CHARLES ALFRED DE MUSSET was born in the heart of old Paris on November 11, 1810. His father, who held various important state offices, is remembered chiefly as the editor and biographer of Rousseau. Alfred was brought up in a literary atmosphere and his early experiments in poetry and the drama convinced Sainte Beuve that he possessed genius. When he was nineteen his “Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie” had a sensational success. Though he is reckoned a member of the romantic school, he was sufficiently detached and critical to be aware of its foibles, and in his “Ballade à la lune,” contained in this first volume, he poked fun at the romantic worship of the moon, comparing it as it shone above a steeple to the dot over an i. He had a strong admiration for certain elements in classicism, and it seemed at one time that he might found a new school combining the virtues of both the old and new. But his drama, “Une nuit vénitienne,” was a failure on the stage, and in the future he wrote only to be read and so missed much of the influence he might have had on the theatre of his day. Many of his plays reached the stage years after they were written, notable among them being “Les Caprices de Marianne,” “Il ne faut jurer de rien,” “Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée,” “Un Caprice,” and “Bettine.”
In 1833 De Musset went to Italy with George Sand, and that tempestuous and typically romantic love affair left him a wreck. The traces of it are to be found not only in his elegiac love poetry, but also in prose work like his “Confession d’un enfant du siècle,” and in drama like “On ne badine pas avec l’amour,” where one is shown the danger of trifling with love.
The gaiety and irresponsibility which marked the earlier years of his production had now given place to pain and bitterness. His later years were lightened by popular appreciation, but he suffered much from illness. He wrote little of importance after he was forty, and he died on May 2, 1857.
De Musset’s reputation is primarily that of a poet, and he ranks among the greatest in French literature. His “Nuits” reveal with great beauty of expression all the passion and suffering of which a soul of extreme sensitiveness is capable. Though he resented the suggestion that he imitated Byron, he shows some resemblance to him in his self-pity; but in the delicacy and variety of the phases of sentiment and passion displayed in his poems he far surpasses the English poet. His plays and his reflective writings are often brilliant, and he had a fine satiric power.
His fiction is subordinate in importance to both his poetry and his dramas, yet it exemplifies some of his characteristic qualities. His first success was won in this field, and his “Confession” contains much besides the other side of the story told in George Sand’s “Elle et Lui.” “The White Blackbird” is a charming satire on the literary life of his time, exposing not merely the ease with which popular taste is imposed upon and some current types of literary humbugs, but also the universal tendency to confound mere eccentricity with genius. The allegorical form in which it is clothed is well sustained in the earlier part; but as the satire becomes more pronounced the blackbird and his pretended affinity tend to discard their disguise as birds and become frankly human beings—perhaps even human beings who can be identified. Yet, on the whole, the blackbird’s story holds our attention, and in the telling of it there is a delightful mingling of grace, sentiment, and wit.