Musset

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sees Musset as an undervalued author. For him, La Confession d'un enfant du siècle is one of the most intelligent books of Romanticism on the mal du siècle1. He finds in it an almost sociological analysis of a generation, the generation of the cafés, which came after the men of the Grande Armée and is tied to the memory of Napoleon23. Above all, he dwells on Musset's self-mockery: Musset called himself the "prince of the cafés" and, in the "Ballade à la lune," he compares the moon to a "dot on an i." Pagani reads this as the humour of late Romanticism, a sign that Romanticism is handing over45. He also points out that the elegiac poet is mocked even though he wrote lucid comedies, and he quotes Perdican's closing speech6. He often returns to the rose and the hornet in La Nuit de mai, an image of the link between flower and eros and of the trap of Romantic temptation. He connects him with Nerval and Vigny and sets him against the classical concern for form.

1. 1#4.6 Angélique (de Nerval)15 Mar 2018 · 14:08
2. 2Griaule (Marcel)18 Oct 2017 · 34:53
3. 3"Napoléon ou les raisons de la ruse", avec Dominique Pagani2 Dec 2024 · 1:07:17
4. 4#9 TABLEAUX D'UNE EXPOSITION : L'art, vu d'ici ou d'en face?10 Feb 2022 · 1:00:07
5. 5Kleist « Sur le théâtre de marionnettes » - Pagani - Lectures sur le vif29 Sept 2023 · 24:33
6. 6Dominique Pagani : De la débauche du sens à l'orgie du sentiment29 May 2023 · 2:35:23

Summary produced automatically from 36 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.