Vigny, Alfred de (1797-1863)

Vigny, Alfred de (1797-1863)

French poet, playwright, and novelist of the romantic period, known for the emphasis placed in his poetry on the "inner life" of man and on the role of the poet as a lonely martyr to his art. Vigny is considered to have been among the first poets to express the latter concept and also to adopt the scientific view of the non-human and unalterable character of natural law. His poetry is marked by melancholy, pessimism, stern pride and an attitude of Stoicism, frequent primitive and historical coloring, a simple, classical technique. Among his works are the following: Poèmes ( 1822), Poèmes Antiques et modernes and Les Destinées ( 1864), volumes of poetry; La Maréchale d'Ancre, Quitte pour la Peur, and Chatterton ( 1835), dramas, the lastnamed being considered by some critics to be the best play of French romanticism; Servitude et Grandeur militaires ( 1835), short stories; Cinq Mars ( 1826), the first important example of the historical novel in France; and Journal d'un Poète ( 1867).

Vigny, of a noble family, was disillusioned by the low regard in which nobility was held in his day and by the failure of his term of military service to make a military career attractive to him. After an unhappy love affair with an actress, he broke with his former associates in the romantic movement and retired to intellectual, social, and artistic solitude. It was in connection with this retreat from the active world that Vigny became the first writer about whom the phrase "Ivory Tower," almost a cliché in later criticism, was used.