Abstract:

A lot of poets appeared in France after the Revolution as a fertile field after abondonned for years. The France before the Revolution, in others words, the XVIIIth century was a philosophy century. The France was a country of philosophers. Rousseau, Voltaire, Saint Simon, Diderot, Buffon and D’Alembert had lived in this century. This period was the most splendid, magnificient and influential period of French philosophy. The French philosophy witnessed the magnificence in XVIIIth century had been followed by the French Poetry in the XIXth century. Some of the poets of this period signed great poems in thought and art groups , some wrote poems with their indiviual voice. This period the most fertil of the french poetry prepared two great literary movements: the romantism and the symbolism. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Vigny, Baudelaire, Nerval, Gautier, Verlaine, Mallarmé became the poets of this period. Thes poets composed unforgettable poems which protect their value in the eyes of poem readers. A poem of Lamartine “ The Lake”, “Tomorrow since the Dawn”, a poem written by Victor Hugo for his daugther Leopoldine, “The Death of the Wolf” of Alfred de Vigny, “ the Correspondances” and “Albatros” of Baudelaire, “the Vintage” of Verlaine and “ The Sea Breeze” of Mallarmé are all unforgettable poems There is a poet rising among all these apex poets even if he isn’t high. This poet is Alfred de Musset who is the mirror of his epoch with his tides, loves, quarrels and melancholies. He is a melancholy poet famous for his poem named “Sadness”. Alfred de Musset shouldering alone all loads after the Revolution and becoming the voice of his period succeeded in writing a great number of poems and dramas during his life of 47 years. Beside all these works, he wrote a novel which is the subject of our article: “The Confession of a Child of the Century”. This novel has an importance because of lighting the life of Alfred de Musset and his time even if it hasn’t a literary value. Alfred de Musset wrote “The Confession off a Child of the Century” after the stormy love that he lived with George Sand and the travel that they realised in Italia. Not only this novel elucidates a love history but also the time where the author had lived. When Alfred de Musset was ill, George Sand cuckolded him with an italian doctor Pagello. This became a destruction for Musset having a romantic character. This love exerced a great influence on the life of Musset. It made him melancholiac. This love novel, as its title shows, is also a documentary of a period. There are four characters coinciding with the real life: Octave, Brigette Pierson, Desgenais and Smith. This novel is an autobiographic novel and the love history of the hero Octave indirectly that of Alfred de Musset. Octave symbolises Musset, Brigette Sand, Desgenais Alfred Tattet the friend the most sincere of Musset and Smith the italian doctor Pagello with whom Sand cuckolded Musset. The novel starts with a cuckolding event and ends with a cuckolding event. In the novel the quarel is discussed between the romantism and the realism by the novel characters. The classicism had been defeated by the romantism continuing since Rousseau and Madame de Stael and subsiding on the solid basics by Chateaubriand and Lamartine. The publishing year of The Red and The Black of Stendhal announcing the high summits to which the french realism would rise is 1830. Just after four years, The Father Goriot of Honoré de Balzac the greatest master of the french realism, had been published. “The Confession of a Child of the Century” had been written in such an atmosphere. Naturally, the quarel between these two literary movements is reflected on the novel. This quarel is made between the main characters Desgenais and Octave of the novel. Desgenais is perfectly realist, Octave is a incorrigible romantic. “The Confession of a Child of the Century” enlightens the social reality and the religious conception of that time. Alfred de Musset being a child of the century with all his characteristics observes precisely his time and becomes a intimate voice of his time. He became one of those who perceived the sad truth that the reason, that is to say, the Enlightenment doesn’t afford to console everything in France after the Revolution. For this reason he doesn’t like Voltaire and his similars. For him, they belong to France before the Revolution. The generation of Voltaire leaved a belief confusion to the fallowing generation. This generation goes neither to the church nor believes to Jesus. If they have a religion, it is a shapeless and worshipless religion and their God is vague. For this reason, Musset feels himself poisoned with the writtings of the former century. The disbelief isn’t no more a pride and becomes a malediction of which everybody want to get ride. Musset want to make live to the hero Octave the religious liberation that he couldn’t live. He can realise the religious enlightenment on Octave.

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