Poésies complètes

Description

Born after Lamartine, Vigny and Hugo, Musset was the eternal junior of Romanticism, and Rolla soon said: 'I came too late into a world that was too old'. When he published his first collection, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (Tales of Spain and Italy), in 1829 - he was nineteen - he made no secret of his iconoclastic insolence, and this freedom of pace, this clearly displayed shamelessness, was accompanied by a youthful grace that made everything seem forgivable. Her poetry, full of promptness and nonchalance, casualness and yet efficiency, was to open up to the theatre, embracing all registers - worldly, political, satirical or comic - and of course all the experiences of love that she evoked in the most playful or serious tones.

After the age of thirty, Musset's work is no more than sporadic, though sometimes superb, bursts of inspiration: it is entirely a work of youth. Is he a poet of ease, whose I never ceases to invade his work? Perhaps he is. But in this open and ultimately mobile I, everyone can recognise themselves. Musset's poetry needs the reader, his sensitivity and his voice, to fulfil itself: this secret fragility is what keeps it alive for us.

Edited by Frank Lestringant.