Alfred de Vigny

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Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny (1797-1863), was one of the finest poets of French romanticism. His lengthy journal reveals his sensitive and aristocratic nature.

Alfred de Vigny was born at Loches on March 27, 1797, the son of Léon, Comte de Vigny, a 60-year-old wounded veteran of the Seven Years War, and Marie Jeanne Amélie de Baraudin. After early education at home under his mother's influence and later training at the Pension Hix, where he spent three miserable years, and at the Lycée Bonaparte, Vigny was admitted at the age of 17 into an aristocratic corps of the Gendarmes Rouges. From 1816 to 1823 he served as an officer in the Royal Guard, but he became disillusioned with military life and in 1827 obtained his discharge from the army.

Marriage and Literary Pursuits

Meanwhile, Vigny's love affair with Delphine Gay had been broken up by his mother and, in 1825, he had married Lydia Bunbury, the daughter of a wealthy and eccentric Englishman. His wife became a chronic invalid a few years after their marriage and remained in ill health until her death in 1862.

Vigny's first volume of poems appeared anonymously in 1822 under the title Poèmes. It was republished in expanded editions in 1826, 1829, and 1837 as Poèmes antiques et modernes. After his literary debut, he wrote in various genres. In 1845 he was elected to membership in the French Academy after six refusals.

A love affair with the great actress Marie Dorval culminated in disillusionment and bitterness, and Vigny had later liaisons with Louise Colet and, during the last years of his life, with Augusta Bouvard. In 1848-1849 he was defeated as a candidate for office in the Chamber of Deputies. Thereafter, he settled down on his estate at Maine-Giraud, where he grew grapes for cognac and lived as a country squire. He died on Sept. 17, 1863.

Vigny's "Poèmes"

Vigny's literary masterpieces are his best compositions in the form he called the poème, which he defined as "compositions in which a philosophic thought is staged under an epic or dramatic form." The first fine example of this form was Moïse (1822), in which the figure of Moses going up in lonely grandeur to die on Mt. Nebo represents the man of genius of all ages, "weary … and in despair at seeing his aloneness more vast and more arid in proportion as he grows in stature."

The remarkable concentration possible in the poème is evident in Moïse, but one sees there the tyrannous nature of the idea as dramatized in Vigny's finest poems and in his best prose narratives (the tales of Stello and of Servitude et grandeur militaries). In all these pieces the relentless emphasis and focus of action does not allow the development of the subject matter in any but the prescribed direction. The staged "philosophic idea" is also evident in such fine poems of Les Destinées (1864) as La Mort du loup, Le Mont des Oliviers, La Maison du berger, La Bouteille à la mer, and La Colère de Samson. His poèmes are characterized by lonely stoicism, compact form, fine resonance, visual imagery, and remarkable use of symbolic landscapes.

Plays and Prose Fiction

Vigny's career as a dramatist began with adaptations from Shakespeare. These included Roméo et Juliette (1827), Shylock, le marchand de Venise (1828), and Le More de Venise (1829). La Maréchale d'Ancre (on the murder of Concini and his wife, Leonora Galigai) was played at the Odéon in 1831. His elegant one-act play Quitte pour la peur was presented in 1833. His finest drama, Chatterton, was first played at the Comédie Française on Feb. 12, 1835, with Marie Dorval a sensation as its heroine, Kitty Bell.

In 1826 Vigny published Cinq-Mars, ou Une Conjuration sous Louis XIII, the first significant French historical novel of the period. An interesting preface of 1827 (Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art) acclaimed artistic truth as more important than the facts of history. In later works - Stello (1832) and Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835) - he developed a "philosophic thought" (in each case in three episodes) much in the manner of his poèmes. In Stello the idea expounded was that the poet is always misunderstood, envied, and hated under whatever form of government he lives and that he should always maintain the thinker's "armed neutrality" and never form connections with those in power. Vigny's prose narrative Daphné on Julian the Apostate was published posthumously in 1912. The three tales of Servitude et grandeur militaires represent the sacrificial life of the soldier, whom Vigny sees, like the poet, as a martyr to an insentient society. Vigny's Journal d'un poète (1867 and later) shows at once his elegant and aristocratic qualities and his weaknesses; but above all it reveals the courage, sensitiveness, and moral elevation of the poet.

Further Reading

Two English translations of Vigny's Servitude et grandeur militaires are Humphrey Hare's The Military Necessity (1953) and Marguerite Barnett's The Military Condition (1964). A recent study of Vigny in English is James Doolittle, Alfred de Vigny (1967). Also useful is Arnold Whitridge, Alfred de Vigny (1933).

French architect. He worked under de Cotte from whom he inherited various commissions. Among his works may be cited the Hôtel de Chenizot, Île Saint-Louis, Paris (c.1726), the Cour du Dragon, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris (1728–32—de-stroyed 1925), interiors of the Hôtel de Luynes, the Church of St-Martin-du-Tertre, Valois, numerous apartments in Paris (e.g. 42 rue François Miron), and major repairs to the Cathedral at Rheims (all 1740s), and the General Hospital, Lille (begun 1738 but never completed). He published Dissertation sur l'architecture (1752), in which he expressed an unfashionable appreciation of the works of Borromini, and recommended a pluralist eclecticism instead of an adherence to rigid Classicism: in this, he anticipated C19 Historicism.

Bibliography

• GdBA, ser. 6, lxxxii (1973), 263–86
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Vigny, Alfred de (1797-1863). Poet, dramatist, and novelist, a distinctive voice within the Romantic movement in France. Vigny came from an aristocratic background with a tradition of service to the monarchy. As a young man during the Restoration he served in the army but found military life unsatisfying and monotonous. He aspired to literary success, which came early with the publication of Poèmes antiques et modernes (1826), containing the often anthologized pieces ‘Moïse’ and ‘Le Cor’. In the same year he brought out a historical novel Cinq-Mars. He frequented leading Parisian salons, establishing a reputation as a major Romantic author, translated Shakespeare into French (1829), and turned his own hand to historical drama with La Maréchale d'Ancre (1831).

Vigny was always sensitive to the artist's position in society and aware of his difficult relation to political reality. Despite his loyalty to the Bourbons, he had little sympathy for the Restoration and in the wake of the 1830 Revolution he showed interest in the social movements which sought to regenerate society. An important poem of 1831, ‘Paris’, described the intellectual ferment which followed the ‘trois glorieuses’ [see July Monarchy]. However, Vigny was disillusioned with political solutions and sceptical of authority. He was preoccupied by the tragic dimension of life and by the dilemma of the creative artist in modern society. In Stello (1832) he emphasized the need to separate art from political engagement; in Chatterton (1835), one of the classic works of Romantic drama, he developed at length his view of the poetic genius, victim of a materialistic society; and in Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835) he examined the military virtues of duty, honour, and service.

After 1835 Vigny published little. He tended to withdraw to his family château, Le Maine Giraud. However, a number of major poems appeared at intervals in the periodical press. These were included in his most important collection of verse, Les Destinées, published posthumously in 1864. This contained eleven philosophical poems, including ‘La Maison du berger’, ‘Le Mont des Oliviers’, ‘La Mort du loup’, and ‘La Bouteille à la mer’. Vigny believed in the profound seriousness of poetry and in the responsibility of the artist to his age. His concern lay with how modern man, deprived of the traditional consolations of faith and faced with a seemingly meaningless universe, could construct an ethic for living. He emphasized the dignity of human suffering endured in silence, and advised abandoning as unproductive the struggle to answer unanswerable ultimate questions. In Les Destinées Vigny viewed poetry not as the outpouring of emotion but as the concentrated expression of thought.

[Ceri Crossley]

Bibliography

• P.-G. Castex, Vigny, l'homme et l'œuvre (1952)
• P. Viallaneix, Vigny par lui-même (1964)

Alfred de Vigny, 1832

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Alfred Victor de Vigny (March 27, 1797 – September 17, 1863) was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.

Contents 1 Life 2 Selected works 3 External links 4 Notes

Life

Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches (a town to which he never returned) into an aristocratic family. His father was an aged veteran of the Seven Years' War who died before Vigny's 20th birthday; his mother, twenty years younger, was a strong-willed woman who was inspired by Rousseau and took responsibility herself for Vigny's early education.

As was the case for every noble family, the French Revolution diminished the family's circumstances considerably. After Napoléon's defeat at Waterloo, a Bourbon, Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was restored to power. In 1814, Vigny enrolled in one of the privileged aristocratic companies of the Maison du Roi.

Always attracted to letters and versed in French history and in knowledge of the Bible, he began to write poetry. He published his first poem in 1820, published an ambitious narrative poem entitled Eloa in 1824 on the popular romantic theme of the redemption of Satan, and collected his recent works in January 1826 in Poèmes antiques et modernes. Three months later, he published a substantial historical novel, Cinq-Mars; with the success of these two volumes, Vigny seemed to be the rising star of the burgeoning Romantic movement, though this role would soon be usurped by one of Vigny's best friends, Victor Hugo. Prolonging successive leaves from the army, he settled in Paris with his young English bride, Lydia Bunbury, whom he married in Pau in 1825.

An English theater troupe visiting Paris in 1827 having revived French interest in Shakespeare, Vigny worked with Emile Deschamps on a translation of Romeo and Juliet (1827). Increasingly attracted to liberalism, he was more relieved than anguished at the overthrow of Charles X in the July Revolution of 1830. In 1831, he presented his first original play, La Maréchale d'Ancre, a historical drama recounting the events leading up to the reign of King Louis XIII. Frequenting the theater, he met the great actress Marie Dorval, his mistress until 1838. (Vigny's wife had become a near invalid and never learned to speak French fluently; they had no children, and Vigny was also disappointed when his father-in-law's remarriage deprived the couple of an anticipated inheritance.)

In 1835, he produced a drama titled Chatterton, based on the life of Thomas Chatterton, and in which Marie Dorval starred as Kitty Bell. Chatterton is considered to be one of the best of the French romantic dramas and is still performed regularly. The story of Chatterton had inspired one of the three episodes of Vigny's luminous philosophical novel Stello (1832), in which Vigny examines the relation of poetry to society and concludes that the poet, doomed to be regarded with suspicion in every social order, must remain somewhat aloof and apart from the social order. Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835) was a similar tripartite meditation on the condition of the soldier.

Although Alfred de Vigny gained success as a writer, his personal life was not happy. His marriage was a disappointment; his relationship with Marie Dorval was plagued by jealousy; and his literary talent was eclipsed by the achievements of others. He grew embittered. After the death of his mother in 1838 he inherited the property of Maine-Giraud, near Angoulême, where it was said that he had withdrawn to his 'ivory tower' (an expression Sainte-Beuve coined with reference to Vigny). There Vigny wrote some of his most famous poems, including La Mort du loup and La Maison du berger. (Proust regarded La Maison du berger as the greatest French poem of the 19th century.) In 1845, after several unsuccessful attempts to be elected, Vigny became a member of the Académie française.

In later years, Vigny ceased to publish. He continued to write, however, and his Journal is considered by modern scholars to be a great work in its own right. Vigny considered himself a thinker as well as a literary author; he was, for example, one of the first French writers to take a serious interest in Buddhism. His own philosophy of life was pessimistic and stoical, but celebrated human fraternity, the growth of knowledge, and mutual assistance as high values. In his later years he spent much time preparing the posthumous collection of poems now known as Les Destinées (though Vigny's intended title was Poèmes philosophiques) which concludes with Vigny's final message to the world, L'Esprit pur.

Alfred de Vigny developed stomach cancer in his early sixties, which he endured with exemplary stoicism: Quand on voit ce qu'on fut sur terre et ce qu'on laisse/Seul le silence est grand; tout le reste est faiblesse. ('When we see what we were on Earth and what we leave behind/Only silence is great; everything else is weakness.')^[1] Vigny died in Paris on September 17, 1863, a few months after the passing of his wife, and is buried beside her in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, France.

Several of his works were published posthumously.

Selected works

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Alfred de Vigny

• Le Bal (1820)
• Poèmes (1822)
• Éloa, ou La sœur des anges (1824)
• Poèmes antiques et modernes (1826)
• Cinq-Mars (1826)
• La maréchale d'Ancre (1831)
• Stello (1832)
• Quitte pour la peur (1833)
• Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
• Chatterton (1835)
• Les Destinées (1864)
• Journal d'un poète (1867)
• Œuvres complètes (1883–1885)
• Daphné (1912)

Cultural offices
Preceded by Charles-Guillaume Étienne	Seat 32 Académie française 1845–1863	Succeeded by Camille Doucet

External links

• Works by Alfred de Vigny at Project Gutenberg
• Cinq-Mars (1826)
• La Mort du Loup The Death of the Wolf

Notes

1. ^ from La Mort du Loup - The Death of the Wolf

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