The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cinq Mars, Complete, by Alfred de Vigny

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Title: Cinq Mars, Complete

Author: Alfred de Vigny

Last Updated: March 3, 2009
Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3953]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CINQ MARS, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

CINQ MARS

By Alfred De Vigny

With a Prefaces by CHARLES DE MAZADE, and GASTON BOISSIER of the French
Academy.

ALFRED DE VIGNY

The reputation of Alfred de Vigny has endured extraordinary vicissitudes
in France. First he was lauded as the precursor of French romantic
poetry and stately prose; then he sank in semi-oblivion, became the
curiosity of criticism, died in retirement, and was neglected for a long
time, until the last ten years or so produced a marked revolution
of taste in France. The supremacy of Victor Hugo has been, if not
questioned, at least mitigated; other poets have recovered from their
obscurity. Lamartine shines now like a lamp relighted; and the pure,
brilliant, and profoundly original genius of Alfred de Vigny now takes,
for the first time, its proper place as one of the main illuminating
forces of the nineteenth century.

It was not until one hundred years after this poet's birth that it
became clearly recognized that he is one of the most important of
all the great writers of France, and he is distinguished not only in
fiction, but also in poetry and the drama. He is a follower of Andre
Chenier, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, a lyric sun, a philosophic poet,
later, perhaps in consequence of the Revolution of 1830, becoming a
"Symbolist." He has been held to occupy a middle ground between De
Musset and Chenier, but he has also something suggestive of Madame de
Stael, and, artistically, he has much in common with Chateaubriand,
though he is more coldly impersonal and probably much more sincere in
his philosophy. 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
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