Alfred de Vigny

Family and childhood

Vigny was born on 27 March 1797 in Loches, a small town in Touraine, in central France. His full name was Alfred-Victor de Vigny. His family belonged to the old nobility of the Beauce region.

His father, the chevalier (knight) Léon de Vigny, was sixty years old and had been a soldier. Wounds from the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) had left him bent and almost unable to walk. His mother, Marie-Jeanne-Amélie de Baraudin, was about forty years old.

Her family had been governors of the royal castle of Loches for a long time. Her father, Didier de Baraudin, had been a squadron commander in the French navy at Brest. Through his mother, Vigny was also related to the explorer Bougainville.

Alfred was the fourth son in the family. His three older brothers, Léon, Adolphe, and Emmanuel, had all died when they were small children. Alfred was therefore the only surviving child. He was a weak child, and his parents raised him with great care.

His parents had lost money during the French Revolution and had lived through the fear of the Terror. In 1798–1799, the family moved to Paris. Vigny never went back to the town where he was born.

His mother taught him herself until he was eight years old. In the evenings, the boy asked his old father many questions about the kings and wars of the past.

In 1807, Vigny entered the Hix school near the family home. His school years there were difficult. Other boys treated him badly because he "had a de in his name", which showed that he came from a noble family.

In 1811, he moved to the lycée Bonaparte. This was during the years of Napoleon's greatest victories. Paris was filled with the sound of military drums and bells ringing for victories, and pupils shouted "Long live the Emperor!" during their lessons. Although Vigny came from a royalist family, he began, like the other boys, to dream of military glory.

His father died in July 1816, when Alfred was nineteen years old.

A soldier without a war (1814–1827)

In 1814, Napoleon's Empire fell, and King Louis XVIII returned to France. Vigny was seventeen years old. Because of his family name, he received the rank of second lieutenant in the Gendarmes of the King, one of the "Red Companies" of the royal guard.

In March 1815, Napoleon returned from Elba, and the Hundred Days began. The king fled towards Belgium, and Vigny rode with the royal escort as far as Béthune, in northern France. It rained for four days and four nights. Vigny later remembered singing a popular song, Joconde, as loudly as he could. This was the only military campaign in which he took part. A portrait of him from that year, now in the Carnavalet museum, shows a thin young man with fair curly hair.

After Waterloo, the Red Companies were disbanded, and in 1816 Vigny joined the foot guards. He then spent quiet years in the garrison towns of Vincennes, Courbevoie, and Rouen. A garrison town is a place where soldiers are stationed in time of peace. His life was filled with military exercises, lessons, parades, and boredom.

He became a lieutenant in 1822 and a captain in the 55th line regiment in 1823. That year, France sent an army into Spain. Vigny hoped that he would finally fight, but his regiment only guarded the border in the Pyrenees.

From the end of 1824, Vigny lived on leave from the army. On 22 April 1827, his name was removed from the army lists. That day, he wrote in his diary: "Le rêve de la gloire des armes a duré treize ans pour moi" ("The dream of the glory of arms lasted thirteen years for me"). He added: "I have just ended it with difficulty."

Vigny therefore left the army without ever having fought in a battle. Later, his years as a soldier gave him much of the material for Servitude et grandeur militaires.

First poems and new friends

Vigny began writing poetry when he was very young. His two earliest known poems are dated 1815. His first published poem, Le Bal, appeared in December 1820, the same year as Lamartine's Méditations. That same year, he also published his first article, a review of the works of Lord Byron. In March 1822, he published a small book called Poèmes, which contained ten poems. Sadness is already an important part of these early poems.

In Paris, Vigny joined the group of young Romantic writers around Victor Hugo. They had their own literary magazine, La Muse française (1823–1824), and met in private homes, where poets read their new poems aloud to one another. Vigny became an important member of the group. He danced well and looked graceful in his military uniform. The writer Mme Ancelot described him as a Don Juan with the charm of a young page.

The poet Émile Deschamps wrote that Hugo had shown his greatest strength in the ode, Lamartine in the elegy, and Vigny in the poème, or short narrative poem. Hugo warmly praised Vigny's Éloa in the magazine. La Muse française ended after twelve issues. In July 1824, Vigny told Hugo that he would sincerely mourn the loss of their magazine.

At these literary meetings, Vigny fell in love with Delphine Gay, an eighteen-year-old poet. Her mother supported the idea of a marriage, and the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore kindly helped the young couple. However, Vigny's mother stopped the plan. Delphine had no fortune and little hope of inheriting one later. Alfred obeyed his mother, but he kept a tender memory of Delphine for the rest of his life.

Éloa and Moïse

In April 1824, Vigny published Éloa, ou la Sœur des anges ("Eloa, or the Sister of the Angels"). Éloa is a female angel born from a tear of Jesus. She hears about Lucifer, the fallen angel, also called Satan, and feels pity for him. She goes to find him. He speaks to her with gentle but false words. Because of her pure pity, she follows him and falls with him into the darkness.

Vigny carried the poem in his mind while his regiment marched from Strasbourg to Bordeaux. Éloa already contains one of the main ideas of his work: pity for every living being that suffers.

Moïse ("Moses"), written around 1823, expresses another important idea. Vigny read the Bible closely, but his Moses is different from the Moses of the Bible. He is a great man who is tired of being great. His power and knowledge have separated him from all other people, and he asks God to let him sleep "the sleep of the earth".

Vigny later explained the meaning of this figure. He said that Moses represented "the man of genius" in every age. Such a person is alone because his great abilities separate him from other people.

These poems were later joined by others in Poèmes antiques et modernes ("Poems Ancient and Modern"), published in 1826. Larger editions followed in 1829 and 1837.

The 1829 edition has three parts: poems based on the Bible, poems about ancient Greece, and modern poems. Among the modern poems is Le Cor ("The Horn"), about the death of the hero Roland.

Cinq-Mars and the historical novel

In April 1826, Vigny published Cinq-Mars. It was one of the first important French historical novels of the Romantic period. Vigny had loved history since childhood, and he greatly admired Walter Scott. Scott's kind of historical novel was popular in France during the 1820s, and several French writers had already tried to write in this form before Vigny.

The story takes place in 1642. The young marquis de Cinq-Mars, a favourite of King Louis XIII, takes part in a plot against Cardinal Richelieu, the king's powerful chief minister. The plot fails, and Cinq-Mars is put to death.

In the novel, Richelieu has destroyed the power of the old nobility. By doing this, he has also prepared the way for the later fall of the kings themselves. The critic Pierre-Georges Castex therefore reads the novel as an expression of Vigny's sadness at the decline of his own social class.

The novel was a great success. Thirteen editions appeared during Vigny's lifetime. Many readers now saw him as "the French rival of Walter Scott".

The biographer Émile Lauvrière calls Cinq-Mars "une œuvre si discutée", a much-debated work. Vigny freely changed some historical facts, and this brought criticism. However, Louis Maigron, a historian of the historical novel, considered it the first French historical novel of real literary value.

Vigny later added a preface called Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art ("Thoughts on Truth in Art"). In it, he says that an artist may change small historical facts in order to show a more important truth: the ideas and meaning behind the events.

Marriage

While he was in the army near Pau, Vigny fell in love with Lydia Bunbury, the younger daughter of a rich Englishman, Sir Hugh Mills Bunbury. At first, her father refused to allow the marriage. He had little respect for a poor army officer who wrote poetry. In the end, however, he gave his consent. He gave Lydia no dowry. A dowry was money that a father usually gave to his daughter when she married. Vigny and Lydia were married at Pau on 3 February 1825.

Lydia never really learned to speak French. Her health was poor from the time of their wedding journey. She lost a baby in 1826 and another in 1829, and the couple never had children. Over time, Lydia became very heavy, and in the end she was almost unable to move. Some visitors even thought that the countess was a housekeeper. Lamartine said that Vigny loved her "like a sick child".

For more than thirty years, Vigny described himself as an "eternal sick-nurse". He wrote that caring for a sick person was usually seen as a woman's virtue, and that he was proud to have this quality himself.

Money also caused problems. Sir Hugh died in November 1838 and left almost all his property to the children of his second marriage. For six years, Vigny fought the case in the Court of Chancery, an English court known for working very slowly.^[source?] He travelled to London several times and called the case a torture.^[source?]

In December 1844, Vigny finally accepted an agreement. Lydia would receive a yearly income of 6,500 francs.

Shakespeare on the French stage

Around 1827, the Romantic writers became very interested in the theatre. English actors performed plays by Shakespeare in Paris in 1827 and 1828. They gave more than seventy performances, and the young French writers were very excited by them.

In 1828, Vigny translated three plays by Shakespeare: Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and, with Émile Deschamps, Romeo and Juliet. Only Othello was ever performed on stage.

Vigny's verse translation of Othello, called Le More de Venise (The Moor of Venice), was first performed at the Comédie-Française on 24 October 1829. It broke some of the old rules about the kind of language that could be used in tragedy. The simple word mouchoir ("handkerchief") caused a small scandal because people thought that such an ordinary word did not belong in a serious tragedy.

The play was successful and continued to be performed through the winter. Vigny wrote that the reform of theatrical language had now been confirmed by success. A few months later, Hugo's Hernani, first performed in February 1830, won an even greater victory for the same kind of change.

Vigny's own historical drama, La Maréchale d'Ancre, was first performed at the Odéon on 25 June 1831. It had only about fifteen performances. A short one-act comedy, Quitte pour la peur, followed in 1833.

After the July Revolution

In July 1830, a revolution forced King Charles X from the throne, and Louis-Philippe became "King of the French". Vigny did not fight for the old royal family. He believed that thirteen years of poorly paid military service had already been enough to pay what he owed to the fallen family.

However, Vigny was also critical of the growing power of money under the new government. For a time, he read the works of the social thinkers of his day, including the Saint-Simonians and Lamennais.

His poem Paris (1831) presents the city as a place full of new and conflicting ideas. In the poem, there is no clear way to know which ideas to follow.

Marie Dorval

During these years, Vigny began the longest love affair of his life. Marie Dorval was born in 1798 into a poor family of travelling actors. She later became one of the leading actresses of popular drama in Paris. Her acting was natural and full of feeling, very different from the cold classical style.

Vigny read La Maréchale d'Ancre at her home in October 1830, and their love affair began in 1831. It lasted for about eight years and was often difficult and full of arguments.

At this time, Vigny had to care for two sick people at home: his wife and his mother. Lauvrière explains his new love partly as a way of escaping from this sad home life.

Vigny and Dorval had very different characters. He was serious, jealous, and eager to control things. She was free, cheerful, and careless. She sometimes read his letters aloud to her friends, and this hurt him deeply.

In 1835, Dorval joined the Comédie-Française. There she first played the role of Kitty Bell in Vigny's Chatterton. Their relationship finally ended in 1838.

The following year, the pain of this separation helped to produce Vigny's bitter poem La Colère de Samson. When he heard about Dorval's death in 1849, he was deeply moved.

Chatterton (1835)

Vigny took the idea for Chatterton from the second story in his book Stello. The play is about the last day in the life of the young English poet Thomas Chatterton, who killed himself in 1770 at the age of seventeen. Vigny wrote the play partly because he wanted to give Marie Dorval an important role. He later reminded her: "Was it a great glory to put on the stage an idea from one of my books? It was for you."

The reading committee of the Comédie-Française did not want to accept the play at first. The Duke of Orléans, the king's son, had to intervene before it was accepted. Some actors also worked against Marie Dorval. On the day before the first performance, Vigny was very worried.

The first performance took place on 12 February 1835 and was a great success. At midnight, Vigny wrote about his happiness in his diary. He wrote that the success had been greater than even his friends had hoped.

The play was performed about forty times in Paris and was then taken to other parts of France. The newspapers gave very different opinions of the play. Le Moniteur criticised what it saw as tiresome praise of suicide, while Le National praised Kitty Bell as a pure and moving character.

Many young people were deeply moved by the play and cried during the performances. Other people accused Vigny of making suicide seem attractive to unhappy young men. Vigny answered that he had shown a sickness in society, not given people an example to follow.

Years of mourning (1833–1839)

Vigny's mother had a stroke in 1833, and he cared for her for several years. She died on 21 December 1837. His grief was very deep. Months later, he still saw her in his dreams and sometimes woke with tears on his face.

In September 1838, his relationship with Marie Dorval ended. Vigny then went to Maine-Giraud, an old country house in Charente that belonged to his family.

There, on 31 October 1838, he finished La Mort du loup (The Death of the Wolf), which he had begun at the end of August. The critic François Germain connects the poem with this time of grief. He says that the silent wolf can be understood as an answer to the death of Vigny's mother.

In November, Vigny's father-in-law died, and Vigny travelled to England, where he stayed for about six months. At Shavington, in England, on 7 April 1839, he finished La Colère de Samson. He had begun the poem at Tours in November and had originally called it Dalila.

Return to Paris and the Academy (1839–1846)

Back in Paris, Vigny continued to live in his flat at 6 rue d'Artois. He had lived there since 1833, and he would later die there. Every Wednesday, he welcomed poets, scholars, and visitors from other countries. The critic Fernand Baldensperger called these meetings "the third Cénacle" of Romanticism. A cénacle was a close group of writers. Baldensperger believed that Vigny's group helped to connect the Romantic poets with the later Symbolists.

Vigny also helped the literary world in quieter ways. He gave advice and practical help to writers who were young or poor. The young Provençal poet Joseph Roumanille was one of them.

Writers and important visitors from other countries also came to see him. In 1839, Prince Maximilian of Bavaria wrote to Vigny, rather than to the French Academy, and asked him to describe the spirit of French literature. The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, famous for his fairy tales, also visited him in Paris. In 1841, Vigny sent the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the French parliament, a detailed plan to protect the rights of authors.

Vigny wanted to become a member of the French Academy. He tried several times but was not elected. When the Academy voted to replace his friend Charles Nodier, Vigny received three votes, while Mérimée received nineteen. Vigny was finally elected on 8 May 1845.

His formal reception into the Academy, on 29 January 1846, went very badly. Before the ceremony, a friend of the government ministers asked him to give up his old royalist views. Vigny politely but firmly refused.

Count Molé, who was then director of the Academy, answered Vigny's speech by strongly attacking some of his ideas. He defended Richelieu against the picture of him in Cinq-Mars, and Napoleon against the criticism in Servitude et grandeur militaires. Some people in the hall smiled and clapped during this attack.

King Louis-Philippe himself was unhappy about what had happened. He said: "A man honoured in the country should not be received in this way." Vigny was later welcomed at the royal palace. He officially took his seat in the Academy on 2 July 1846, one day after Molé had left his position as director.

The Republic and the land (1848–1853)

In February 1848, another revolution made France a republic. Vigny stood for election in Charente. He sent the voters a letter explaining his political ideas. His main rival was a local doctor, who spoke about practical questions such as taxes, railways, and brandy. The country people voted for the doctor. About 76,000 votes were cast, and Vigny received almost none of them. He tried once more in April 1849, without success. He later wrote that living among the peasants had helped him to understand the unhappy state of the country better than ever.

From 1848 to 1853, Vigny lived mainly at Maine-Giraud. The estate, with the house and its land, covered about 85 hectares (210 acres). With Philippe, his farm manager, Vigny planted crops, put up new buildings, and made repairs. He grew grapes, and the cognac made from them helped him pay his bills.

Vigny wrote in the small tower of the manor. Some people in Paris made fun of the poet who had become a farmer. However, these years in the countryside also produced several of his most important poems. Germain sees a special meaning in the place itself. The manor stands near the centre of an almost perfect circle of hills. He says that this round and closed view suited Vigny's imagination, which was drawn to safe and protective circles.

Vigny almost never travelled for pleasure. He never visited Italy. Of Germany he saw no more than a single view across the Rhine from Strasbourg, and he never even saw Lake Geneva. His small income and his duty to care for his sick wife kept him close to home.

Vigny accepted the new power of Louis-Napoleon, the future Napoleon III. In January 1852, he welcomed the great public vote, or plebiscite, which he said had defeated "communism".

In October 1852, the Prince-President, as Louis-Napoleon was then called, received Vigny at Angoulême and spoke with him for a long time. Vigny again hoped to receive an important public position, but he received none. The Academy, at least, had made him its director for the last months of 1849.

Last years and death

Vigny returned to Paris permanently in 1853. Visitors to his home in the rue d’Artois described him as a tall and very polite man with long fair hair. The poet Théodore de Banville also described the quiet flat and Lydia wearing fine lace. In 1857, Vigny helped to carry the funeral cloth at the burial of the poet Alfred de Musset.

He continued to write, but very slowly. La Bouteille à la mer appeared in 1854. He added a final stanza to Le Mont des Oliviers about the silence of heaven. The manuscript is dated 2 April 1862, although the editors of the Pléiade edition think that 1863 is more likely. In 1863, he finished his farewell poem, L’Esprit pur.

Lydia died on 22 December 1862. Vigny buried her at Montmartre, in the family grave near his mother. He also had his own grave prepared there.

Vigny himself was already very ill. He now had attacks of stomach pain every day. The pain was sometimes so strong that he fainted. He had cancer of the stomach. The doctors did not tell him that he had cancer. They said instead that he had a long illness causing stomach pain, which they called gastralgie.

He suffered for many months but remained calm, and this deeply impressed his visitors. One of them wrote that Vigny's sense of honour seemed to control "the beauty of his death", just as it had controlled the beauty of his life.

He continued to receive friends beside his bed. Baudelaire came and spoke with him for almost three hours. In May 1862, Vigny invited the writer Barbey d’Aurevilly to join a small group of close friends beside what had already become his deathbed.

Vigny died in Paris during the night of 16 to 17 September 1863. He had asked for a simple funeral: "Around a coffin one needs only the prayers of the Church and the tears of faithful hearts". His funeral took place on 19 September at his parish church, Saint-Philippe-du-Roule. Only a small number of people were present when he was buried at Montmartre, near his mother and his wife.

Twelve days later, Théophile Gautier wrote in Le Moniteur that few writers had ever given such a perfect image of what a poet should be. He also called Éloa perhaps the most perfect poem in the French language.

The poems of his youth

Vigny's early collections, from Poèmes (1822) to the final edition of Poèmes antiques et modernes (1837), already show his personal style. Each poem places an idea inside a story or an image.

In the preface to the 1837 edition, Vigny explained this method. He said that in each poem "a philosophical thought is presented in an epic or a dramatic form". He also said with pride that he had begun to follow this path "young, but the first".

From his early years as a writer, Vigny wanted poetry to be based on the pure music of language. In 1829, he wrote that Voltaire had never understood "la Poésie pure", or "pure poetry". Baldensperger pointed out that Vigny used this expression about a hundred years before the modern debate about pure poetry.

Cinq-Mars

Cinq-Mars (1826) made Vigny famous. He defended his freedom to change historical facts in the preface Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art. He argued that history gives the body of a story, but that art must give it a soul, "the truth of ideas".

His picture of Richelieu was sharply criticised. One of the strongest attacks came in Molé's speech at the French Academy in 1846. However, the story moves quickly, and several of its scenes have become famous. This has helped the novel to remain well known.

The theatre

Vigny's works for the theatre include a translation from Shakespeare, Le More de Venise (1829); a dark historical drama, La Maréchale d'Ancre (1831); a short one-act comedy, Quitte pour la peur (1833); and his most successful original play, Chatterton (1835). The editors of the Pléiade edition point out that his whole career in the theatre lasted less than six years.

Chatterton is a "drama of thought". One main idea fills its three acts: society kills the poet. Three main characters carry this idea. Chatterton is the poet who refuses to sell his soul. Kitty Bell is the shy young wife who feels pity for him. The old Quaker understands them both.

In his famous preface, Dernière nuit de travail (Last Night of Work), Vigny describes three kinds of writers. The first is the man of letters, who writes for a living. The second is the great writer, who helps to guide public opinion. The third is the true poet, a dreamer whom society lets die. Vigny openly asked the state to help young poets who were going hungry.

Stello

Stello (1832) is not so much a novel as a kind of cure told in the form of a story. Stello is a young poet suffering from deep sadness. He sends for the strange Docteur Noir (Black Doctor).

The Doctor tries to cure him by telling three stories about real poets. The first is Nicolas Gilbert, who died in poverty under a king. The second is Thomas Chatterton, who killed himself in England, under a parliament. The third is André Chénier, who was sent to the guillotine during the Revolution.

The lesson is harsh: every kind of political power fears and rejects the poet. At the end, the Doctor gives his advice: "to separate the poetic life from the political life".

The book was less successful than Cinq-Mars. During Vigny's lifetime, Stello had eight editions, while Cinq-Mars had thirteen.

Servitude et grandeur militaires

Servitude et grandeur militaires (Military Servitude and Greatness, October 1835) brings together three stories: Laurette ou le Cachet rouge (1833), La Veillée de Vincennes (1834), and La Vie et la mort du capitaine Renaud (1835). They are held together by a frame, that is, a fourth story based on Vigny's own memories as a soldier.

In the book, Vigny presents the modern soldier as a kind of slave. He must obey without judging, and blind obedience can turn an honest man into a killer. Joseph de Maistre had argued that war came from God. Vigny rejects this harsh idea and sets against it something entirely human: honour. He wrote in his diary: "L'honneur, c'est la poésie du devoir" ("Honour is the poetry of duty").

The critic James Doolittle considered these stories the best of Vigny's prose. He wrote that their plain and natural style is unique in his work, and that soldiers and sailors of every rank speak in their own true language.

Les Destinées

Les Destinées (The Destinies) brings together Vigny's last ideas about human life and poetry. His friend Louis Ratisbonne, who looked after his papers, published the book in 1864, a few months after Vigny's death. Its full title was Les Destinées, poèmes philosophiques (The Destinies, Philosophical Poems).

The book contains eleven poems. Seven had already been printed, in the Revue des Deux Mondes between 1843 and 1854 or in the months around Vigny's death. The other four appeared for the first time in the book. It is not certain which of the two titles, Les Destinées or Poèmes philosophiques, Vigny finally wanted, because he had used both. Baldensperger doubted that Vigny's final choice could ever be known. Lauvrière thought that Ratisbonne probably followed Vigny's spoken wishes, both for the title and for the order of the poems.

The Pléiade editors, who studied all the papers, add that the title had disappeared for a time but returned during Vigny's last period of work. They also say that the eleven poems follow a planned order. Les Destinées stands at the beginning, L'Esprit pur gives the final answer, and La Mort du loup comes at the exact centre.

The opening poem, Les Destinées, was finished at Maine-Giraud on 27 August 1849, a few months after Vigny's second defeat in an election. It is written in terza rima, the linked three-line stanzas used by Dante. The poem asks whether Christ has freed human beings from blind fate. Its answer is dark: grace has only taken the old name of destiny. Germain reads this fate above all as something inside the mind, born from the fears of childhood.

La Maison du berger (The Shepherd's Hut, 1844) is a long poem about love and thought. The poet asks a woman he loves, Éva, to leave the cities and travel with him in a shepherd's hut on wheels. Nature is beautiful but cold, and gives no answer. Only the human heart can share our feelings. For Germain, Éva is the answer to all the dreams of Stello, who stands for the poet's inner self. One line gives the main idea of all Vigny's work:

(I love the majesty of human suffering.) Vigny noted: "This line is the meaning of all my philosophical poems."

La Mort du loup (The Death of the Wolf, published 1843) tells the story of a hunt at night. An old wolf is trapped. He fights in silence and dies without a sound. The hunter understands the lesson:

(To moan, to weep, to pray is equally cowardly. [...] Then, like me, suffer and die without a word.)

Le Mont des Oliviers (The Mount of Olives, written in 1839 and published in 1843) shows Jesus alone at night on the Mount of Olives, before his death. He asks his Father why evil exists, but heaven remains silent.

During his last years, Vigny added a final stanza called Le Silence. Since heaven says nothing, the just man will meet this absence with a cold and proud silence of his own.

(The just man will answer absence with disdain.)

La Colère de Samson (The Anger of Samson, written in 1839) turns Vigny's break with Marie Dorval into a story from the Bible: Samson is betrayed by Delilah. The wounded lover curses what he sees as the endless conflict between man and woman.

La Sauvage (The Savage Woman, 1843) defends law, home, and settled work against wild freedom. La Flûte (The Flute, 1843) shows pity for people whose weak powers cannot reach their own dreams. Les Oracles passes judgement on the politicians who talked a great deal during the last years of the fallen monarchy.

Wanda tells the true story of a Russian princess who chose to follow her condemned husband to Siberia. Vigny blames the tsar above all for refusing to give her children a book from which they could learn to read. Ten years later, after the Crimean War, he added lines that present the fall of Sevastopol as a punishment from above.

La Bouteille à la mer (The Bottle in the Sea) gives an answer to despair. "A book is a bottle thrown into the open sea", Vigny had written in 1842. He finished the poem on 27 September 1847, except for the opening stanza, which he added in 1853. The poem appeared only in 1854.

A young sea captain is overcome by a storm. He puts his notes and maps into a bottle, closes it, and throws it into the waves. With this bottle, the poet says, the captain has defeated Death. Sooner or later, the bottle will reach a port. The young reader of the poem, a new Stello, even hears the advice: "Forget Chatterton". The final line expresses Vigny's belief:

(The true God, the strong God, is the God of ideas.)

L'Esprit pur (The Pure Spirit) was planned over almost twenty years and finished in the spring of 1863, a few months before Vigny's death. It closes the book with a final message to Éva.

His noble ancestors, who were hunters and soldiers, left behind only a name. Vigny, the last of his line, leaves a written work. Through writing, he enters the only kingdom that lasts. The final line calls the Pure Spirit "king of the world".

Prose of ideas and the diary

Daphné, written around 1837 and first published in 1912, was planned as a second meeting with the Docteur Noir. Its hero is the Roman emperor Julian, who tried to bring back the old gods. Through Julian, Vigny asks what happens to people when a religion dies. Another unfinished novel, L’Alméh (1831), was set in Egypt.

Throughout his life, Vigny kept notebooks in which he wrote down his thoughts. Ratisbonne published a selection from them in 1867 as Le Journal d’un poète (A Poet’s Diary). The modern Pléiade edition of 1948 gave a much fuller text. Many of Vigny's most famous sentences come from these notebooks.

A silent heaven

Pessimism is the belief that pain and evil hold a large place in human life. Vigny accepted this idea with open eyes. In his work, heaven is silent: people suffer and pray, but they receive no answer.

Georges Bonnefoy says that in the years when he was writing Stello, Vigny's work was marked by a "sceptical Christ", a Christ who doubts. However, Vigny never stopped studying religions. The list of books that he borrowed from the Royal Library fills several pages in Bonnefoy's study. For Bonnefoy, Vigny's religious thought is above all "a defence of man".

Pity and quiet courage

Vigny gives two answers to the silence of heaven. The first is pity. From Éloa, with its angel born from a tear, to his last poems, the same idea returns: if God seems absent, human beings must love and help one another.

The second answer is quiet courage. Vigny's stoicism, the old idea of facing pain without complaining, is not simply a harsh kind of pride. Lauvrière calls it a "softened stoicism", made warmer by pity. The wolf in La Mort du loup gives the rule: do your long task, then suffer and die without a word.

Honour

When religious faith disappears, one light remains for Vigny: honour. Honour asks for nothing from heaven. It is the respect that a person has for himself. For Vigny, it is the soldier's human religion, "the poetry of duty".

Bonnefoy showed that honour is also the principle that the Docteur Noir was looking for when he tried to help the unhappy Stello: good judgement for the mind and greatness for the heart.

Germain describes the same idea from another angle. Honour is like armour built around a frightened heart. Vigny himself called it "un cercle de fer fait de volonté et d'orgueil" ("an iron circle made of will and pride").

Faith in the human mind

However, Vigny's pessimism does not end in despair. For him, ideas can live longer than people. In La Maison du berger, poetry is described as a "diamond" whose light must travel far. Germain follows this image throughout Vigny's work. The diamond is a hard and clear stone that protects deep thoughts against time.

In La Bouteille à la mer, the bottle in the sea carries the knowledge of a dead man towards unknown people in the future. Vigny's final poems therefore create what Castex calls a "religion of the Spirit": a faith in the written thought of humanity.

The poet and society

For Vigny, the poet is an outsider whom society rejects. Every kind of political power uses the poet, fears him, and may leave him to die in poverty.

However, the poet is also the true maker of the laws of the future. Vigny took neither of the two main paths of other writers of his time. He did not choose direct political action, as Hugo and Lamartine did, and he did not choose art for art's sake, as Gautier did.