Musset, protagoniste de l'avenir

Musset like Baudelaire is a modern poet. Both are handsome young dandys, ambitious, lazy and devoted to poetry. They see the poet descending from above to lessen human baseness. Both are Sampson ensnared by his Delilah. Debauchery and eroticism alternate with a thirst for purity. From the themes of evil, passion, and death, the vampire emerges as a common image. Believers in the nobleness of suffering; participants in bouts of hope and despair, the "disinherited child" and the "fallen poet," in their love and fear of night, call upon the Muse, Madonna for tenderness and inspiration. (PJS)