The play “Marianna's Whims. André Maurois

ALFRED DE MUSSET

THEATER

The fate of the theater of Alfred de Musset was unusual. Today, some of his plays are considered masterpieces of the French theater. Modern directors are happy to resume their production. Actors and actresses challenge each other for roles in these plays. Critics have compared Musset's comedies to those of Marivaux, Aristophanes and Shakespeare. And we believe they are right.

Quite different opinions were expressed about the author by his contemporaries. Even Sainte-Beuve, a man with a rather delicate taste, especially when he was not blinded by passions, wrote about the play “No need to wager” in such expressions: “It has quite a lot of lovely passages, but I was struck by the chaotic nature of the play and the lack of common sense. Her images are indeed borrowed from some very strange world; what is the value of an uncle who constantly reads sermons, a grumbler who gets drunk in the end; or a young man, rather a phat and rude than an amiable and witty youth; or a very promiscuous girl, a real milliner from the rue Vivienne, who is given to us as Clarissa ... And all this is extremely superficial, lightweight, inconsistent. All of them are taken from a fictional world or the author dreamed of when he was drunk during a merry feast ... Alfred de Musset is a whim of a satiated and free-thinking era. "

Surprisingly unfair severity, however, quite explainable by motives that have nothing to do with literature. Musset initially fascinated, but then began to annoy Sainte-Beuve and his friends. Both Proust and Alfred de Musset later did a disservice by his overly happy childhood and adolescence. He came from a completely prosperous and enlightened family, was handsome, distinguished by exquisite manners, was a close friend of the Duke of Orleans, possessed such a poetic gift that in a few days he could write such a beautiful poem as "Mardosh" or "Namuna". Could his bile brothers have been calm about such a darling of fate? When the first student in the class is also good as a cherub, one should not be too surprised that he stirs up black envy. Alfred de Musset could perhaps have been forgiven for talent and charm if he worshiped the fashionable gods of that time. Had he joined a literary school, he would have received the support of a certain group of writers. That was the time when classics and romantics threw down a formidable challenge to each other, when Victor Hugo led the rebels, but rebels very close to those in power; it was the time when Sainte-Beuve reigned supreme in magazine criticism. Musset who debuted romantic piece "Spanish and Italian stories" could well become the standard bearer in this illustrious army. But here's the bad luck: he simultaneously felt himself both a classic and a romantic. Like all the young writers of that era, he enthusiastically read Shakespeare and Byron, but also admired La Fontaine, Moliere and Voltaire:

Yes, I fought in two hostile camps, I inflicted blows and became known to the world. My drum is broken - I sit on it exhausted, And on my table Racine, crouching to Shakespeare, Sleeps near Boileau, who forgave them *.

Musset, by his own admission, suffered from the disease of the century, but was able to laugh at it himself. In his dramatic poem The Mouth and the Bowl, he imitated Byron, the creator of Childe Harold or Manfred, and his poems Mardosh and Namuna are more reminiscent of Byron, the creator of Don Juan. There is no doubt that Byron himself would have mercilessly condemned and cruelly ridiculed that attitude towards the world, which was called "Byronism." A follower of Byron, Musset Byronized, creating the poem "Rolla", and Shakespeare, creating the play "Lorenzaccio", but he also dared to write "Letters to Dupuis and Cotone", which can be called "Letters to the provincial"] romanticism. In short, Musset was a partisan, and partisans were always in greater danger than soldiers of the regular army. The era of Musset, a lofty and pompous era, reproached the writer with his irony. “A wonderful talent, but only for parodies,” a critic from the camp of Saint-Beuve romantics spoke of him with disdainful arrogance; and Ancelo, an academician and a supporter of classicism, remarked: "Poor Alfred is a charming young man and a charming socialite, but, between us, he never knew how and never will learn to write worthwhile poetry."

The funny thing about this story is that few people read the poems of Saint-Beuve these days, and Ancelo's poems are completely forgotten, while we and our children know by heart the whole poems of Musset. Time is the most honest critic.

Before moving on to Musset's comedies, let's face it: he had a much deeper talent than was commonly believed in his time and than is believed now. He was perhaps the most intelligent among the poets of the first half of the 19th century. Of course, Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigny were also highly educated people with an amazing creative mind. But neither the one nor the other is characterized by the clarity of mind that Musset is endowed with. Both of them often found themselves in captivity of their own virtuosity. Musset kept his virtuoso skills in check. He was more discerning than Victor Hugo. However, for the reasons already discussed, it seemed that he did not have the greatness of Hugo. All his life he played the role of a spoiled child who wants to be pitied by everyone around him, and especially women. You won't get respect that way. He was considered vain, to a certain extent he was. But behind vanity, an ardent disposition is often hidden; for Musset, vanity served as a mask for fiery and sincere passions. He expressed these passions in poetry, which never became fashionable, however, because fashion is by no means always right. However, even those who today condemn Musset's poetry because of the carelessness of form recognize the perfect beauty of his comedies.

MUSSET DRAMATURG

One can become a novelist or a historian, but a playwright is born. There is something of an actor's skill in understanding the laws of the stage, in a sense of rhythm, in the ability to compose a spectacular replica - in all those qualities that one who writes for the theater should have. The greatest of dramatic writers - Moliere, Shakespeare - were actors themselves. Alfred de Musset in his youth often took part in home performances. His father loved fun company, and the living room of their house was always full of young women and poets. Charades were played here. In those days, "dramatic proverbs" were in vogue - the plays of Carmontel, Colet, Leclair were still fresh in my memory. comedies. Sensitive and frivolous, like a page, he learned the game of love and chance from an early age. Life appeared before him in the guise of a comedy, full of voluptuousness and melancholy.

If Musset's first experiments in the theater had been successful, perhaps in a few years he would have become a clever playwright, a man who possesses the secrets of the craft, who can easily compose a well-done play and is more interested in the technique of drama than in its poetry. But the young author was lucky: he was booed. His first play, The Venetian Night, was staged on December 1, 1830 (when the writer was twenty years old), and the audience of the Odeon Theater received it very badly. The actress who played Loretta was in a white dress, she leaned on a freshly painted grille, and her skirt was covered with green stripes. This caused a burst of laughter in the audience. The play failed. The injured author vowed never to deal with this "cruel menagerie" again.

However, Musset passionately loved theater and therefore continued to write plays, but, creating them, he did not in the least care about their staging on stage, did not adapt to the tastes of critics, to the requirements of a capricious audience, and did not want to think about the financial difficulties of theater directors. And the result was not slow to show itself: the author's imagination remained completely free. At that time the theater was no longer at all the same as in Shakespeare's time, when dramatic art was still taking its first steps and creating laws for itself. In France, the classical tradition suppressed all independence; this tradition could only be escaped by romantic revolt, but romanticism developed its own patterns. Musset, who created his own theater, but not for the theater, remained on the sidelines. The first dramatic works - "Mouth and Bowl" and "What Girls Dream About" - he publishes in the collection "The Play in the Chair"; his next plays were published in the journal Revue de deux monde, which had recently been founded by Buloz, and then included in two volumes of Comedies and Proverbs.

Beginning in 1847, Musset's plays, which, in the opinion of people involved in the theater, were irrelevant, of which they managed to convince the author himself, began to make their way onto the theater stage. Gradually, they all entered the repertoire and never left it. The first was staged at the Comédie Française theater "Caprice". It was often told how Mrs. Allan, a famous actress at that time, during her tour in St. Petersburg saw a charming comedy with three characters, asked for a French translation and was surprised to learn that the original text of the comedy belonged to Musset. This anecdote seems unlikely. Mrs. Allan knew Musset and, of course, read his Caprice. But one thing is true: she really brought this masterpiece from Russia, lost on the pages of some collection. The play's success exceeded all her expectations.

“This small play,” wrote Théophile Gautier, “is in fact a great literary event. Many very long plays, the appearance of which are trumpeted six months in advance, are not worth the lines of this comedy ... Since the time of Marivaux, whose talent is based on sparkling wit, nothing so subtle, so graceful and so elegant has appeared on the stage of the Comédie Française theater. cheerful. It is not surprising that Alfred de Musset wrote a comedy full of wit, humor and poetry; something completely different can be called unexpected (especially since we are talking about a dramatic proverb that was not even intended for the theater) - extraordinary skill, skillful intrigue, excellent knowledge of the laws of the stage; it is these virtues that are guessed in the comedy "Caprice". Everything in it is so skillfully prepared, harmonized, woven, and everything is kept in balance literally on the edge of a needle. "

Noting that not only the intellectual elite, but also the widest audience will greeted this comedy with delight and that it is enough to post posters around the city to ensure a complete collection, Gaultier indignantly speaks of the delusion of French theatrical figures, in which they have been for so long: “Performance the comedy "Caprice", which is played between a tea table and a piano and a decoration for which an ordinary screen may well serve, confirmed to us what we already knew, but which was disputed by theatrical oracles: from now on it is clear to everyone that the audience is very thin, very smart and is very friendly to everything new, and all the concessions that are required on her behalf are completely unnecessary. Theater directors and actors are the only obstacle to the new. It is they who cling to everything that is dilapidated, stubbornly follow the routine, adhere to outdated methods; it is they who adore everything flat and banal and have an irresistible aversion to everything rare, bright, unexpected. " And in conclusion, Gaultier declares that it was precisely this pedantic addiction to "decent" theater, which in fact was too decorous, that deprived the French stage of two natural-born playwrights, and at the same time unusually gifted - Mérimée and Musset. The offspring recognized the correctness of the good-natured Theo in relation to these of his contemporaries.

In 1848, the play "No need to wager" was staged on the stage; it happened on the eve of the June revolution. And yet, despite the fact that the audience was preoccupied with more serious matters, the play was a success and was renewed in August. “What a joy for a man who is forever doomed to watch vaudeville and melodramas,” wrote the same Gaultier, “to finally see a play in which they speak in human language, in pure French, and to feel that you are once and for all delivered from the terrible and flat the jargon that is used everywhere today. What purity, liveliness and swiftness the phrase is distinguished! What wit the dialogue sparkles with. What slyness and at the same time what tenderness! .. Now, when the reception given by the public to this dramatic proverb, intended only for reading, showed how unfair the prejudice with which theater directors treat any work of art, composed not according to the recipes of gentlemen ", Should have shown on stage, without changing a single word in them, truly poetic plays by Alfred de Musset:" Fantasio "," Andrea del Sarto "," Marianne's whims "," Love is not joking "," What do they dream of young girls "and especially" Lorenzaccio "- a true masterpiece, reminiscent of the depth of analysis of the creation of Shakespeare."

A few days later, Austen put on the stage of the Historical Theater "Candlestick", "another pearl from a precious casket that had been open for so long, and no one had thought to ask about its contents." The production of this play was resumed in 1850 by the Theater of the Republic (as the theater was temporarily called "Comedie Francaise"), and the theater for ten years renewed its repertoire thanks to the dramaturgy of Musset. A certain minister considered this play immoral because Jacqueline and her lover find happiness at the expense of marital fidelity. Musset composed a new denouement: the lovers parted with sadness. Virtue was saved, art suffered. We have now returned to a more reasonable — and more moral — sincerity.

Bettina, Barberina, Carmozina, Louison enjoyed less success, and rightfully so. The play "They don't joke with love" was played on stage only after Musset's death, in 1861; it was well received, but the viewers of that time, as well as the present ones, experienced a certain feeling of dissatisfaction: it is generated, on the one hand, by the ambiguous and inconsistent character of Camilla, who remains completely faithful to either love or religion, and, on the other hand, the death of Rosetta. The play "Fantasio" was first shown in 1866, it was not very successful, and this is understandable. The public doesn't like it when the first lover is dressed up in the costume of an ugly and heartless jester. In short, the drama of Musset and Marivaux has a common destiny: only their masterpieces were firmly established on the stage. Contemporaries are sometimes wrong, but time is fair. 189

THE NATURE OF THE THEATER MUSSET

How to explain that free fantasy saved the Musset theater from oblivion, while Scribe's cunning intrigues bored us to death? Why Musset's plays, set in fairytale kingdoms and fictional lands, seem so much more truthful to us than many historical dramas? Because the theater is not intended, cannot, and should not simply copy life. The audience comes to the theater not only to see unadorned reality from the stage. A fixed curtain in the foreground frames the play like a frame does a painting. No true lover of painting requires that a portrait be only a copy of nature, no true friend of the theater requires that a performance only copy reality. Precisely because art has its own laws and they, no doubt, differ significantly from the laws of nature, works of art allow us to freely reflect on the nature of passions.

The theater during its inception was a solemn act. He showed the life of gods or heroes. The language of the actors was more sublime and euphonic than in everyday life... It would be a delusion to think that today's public has different requirements. And today the spectator, coming to the theater, is still waiting for a solemn performance. The mere fact that he is sitting in a room filled with people gives rise to feelings in him stronger than those to which he is accustomed. And this explains the special nature of theatrical dialogue. Which writers become the greatest playwrights? Those wingless copyists who expect to leave on thoughtless imitation of nature and meaningful pauses? No. The most famous playwrights were poets. The success of Aristophanes in his time, the success of Claudel in our day, the success of Musset over a whole century can be explained by the genuine poetry of their dialogue.

In Musset, as in Aristophanes, the chorus intrudes into the action, announcing in a lyrical tone the appearance of Master Bridan and Lady Plush: “On her lather donkey, shaking violently, Lady Plush climbs the hill; her groom, exhausted, pounds the poor animal with all his might, and it shakes its head, holding a burdock in its teeth ... Hello to you, lady Plush; you appear like a fever, along with the wind that makes the foliage turn yellow ”**. Do the villagers speak this language in life? Of course no. But, as the philosopher Alain subtly remarked: "An actor needs a special recitative, and in search of a natural tone, he should in no case imitate everyday speech: there is no more formidable trap for him." Musset, like Girodoux, found his own recitative, and his theater is unusually carefully "written". This, to some extent, explains the success and longevity of his plays.

On the other hand, and perhaps because Musset composed his plays, not caring whether they would be staged in the theater, he adhered to the division into scenes, like Shakespeare, regardless of the unity of time and place, which was obediently followed and classicists, and even romantics, at least within the same act. Frequent breaks in action reinforce the impression of a dream, a dream. Unexpectedly interrupted dialogues give food to the imagination, just as a crippled statue provokes thought. “Shakespeare does not care about the symmetry of his plays, he does not strive for clever intrigue,” Alain notes. - His creations are, as it were, assembled from fragments: here a leg sticks out, there is a fist, here you can see an open eye, and then suddenly you come across a word that is unprepared and nothing follows. But all taken together is real life. "

Compliance with the laws of form when it comes to style, and some confusion of composition - this is perhaps the secret of the greatest poetry.

PLOTS AND CHARACTERS

For Musset, there is only one subject, only one theme - love. But this, perhaps, can be said about many other playwrights. The only difference is that for some, for example, Moliere, a love affair is just a frame for action, and within it the author creates a satire of morals. And at the Musset Theater, love is everything. As in the comedies of Marivaux, lovers in Musset's comedies do not face external obstacles, such as the stubbornness of the father, family feud; the main obstacle to happiness is their own folly. But only the clashes in Marivaux's plays can be likened to "fencing with foils", it is "all these tricks, cautious approaches, skillfully placed snares that captivate refined minds with their grace"; in a word, while playing Marivaux's plays, the actors themselves do not take them too seriously, while for Musset love is a serious, often sad feeling; love is a captivating ailment caused by the beauty, and sometimes by the purity of a loved one, and completely capturing a person.

Seductive Jacqueline deceives her old husband with a soldier; seeking to deflect suspicion, she expresses a feigned interest in the humble clerk. However, this young man, Fortunio, is madly in love with Jacqueline and almost dies when he learns that he is just a screen for her love affair with another. This is the content of the play "Candlestick". Perdican loves his cousin Camilla, but out of pride and piety she flees his love; An annoyed Perdikan turns his attention to the charming, albeit poor girl, Rosetta. And then Camilla returns to Perdican, but Rosetta is unable to survive the deceit of Perdikan, who played with her heart - this is the content of the play "Love is not joking." The dreamy and gentle Celio, in love with Marianne, entrusts his friend Ottavio, a jouir, a skeptic and a reveler, to protect his interests. Meanwhile, Marianne falls in love with Ottavio himself: "A woman is like your shadow: you want to catch up with her, she runs away from you, you want to run away from her yourself, she overtakes you." This is the content of the play Marianne's Whims. The eccentric princess is ready for state reasons to marry a fool. The young schoolboy disguises himself as a buffoon, and the interests of love prevail over the interests of the state. This is the content of the play "Fantasio".

These plots are sewn on a living thread, but what of that? After all, they are only an excuse. In essence, Musset depicts in his theater only the feelings from which his poems are woven, and his whole life. The fact is that he was both a frivolous and sentimental man, a Parisian who would like to take love as a joke, and a Frenchman who took it seriously. In his youth, he twice experienced the pangs of jealousy. The first time this happened at the dawn of his youth, when a young beauty forced him to play the role of Fortunio. And the second time it happened when George Sand, whom Musset loved passionately, left him for the sake of "stupid Pagello" - her betrayal seriously wounded Musset's heart and darkened his whole subsequent life.

Almost all the young people in love who act in Musset's plays are, to a certain extent, "portraits of the author himself." Creating the images of Ottavio and Celio, Musset seems to split in two. He wrote to Georges Sand: “You must remember — you told me once — that someone asked you whether Ottavio or Celio was written off from me, and you answered:“ I think both are both. ” My fatal mistake, Georges, was that I revealed only one of my hypostasis to you ”. All the friends of the writer said that in the lyric monologues of Fantasio, they recognize those monologues sparkling with mind and poetry, which Musset, who was slightly drunk, pronounced when he felt in love and happy. Musset portrayed himself in the images of Valentin and Perdican, and according to the writer's brother, Paul de Musset, the count from the comedy "The door must be open or closed" is "a portrait of Alfred himself."

On the contrary, the women in love who act in Musset's plays are different from the women he loved most in life. Musset, who has known impermanence and even faced licentiousness, sadly seeks purity. Girlish naivety captivates and deeply excites him:

A shelter of innocence, where ardor and tenderness are hidden, Love dreams, naive babbling, laughter And timid spells that hurt everyone to death (Faust himself trembled at Margarita's door), Maiden purity - where is it all now?

The young girls we meet in his plays, such as Camilla, Cecile, Carmozina, are the most alive of his creations. He likes to portray how a woman is barely awakening in a girl. "There is something unusually fresh and tender in her looks, which she herself does not even suspect." Cecile, perhaps, is naive, or rather, it seems so, but how much dexterity and slyness appears in this simpleton, as soon as she falls in love, and with what ease she conquers a bachelor who considered himself a jaded man. Camilla is a more complex image, however, and she is adorable. She wanted to give up love, because the women in the monastery where she was brought up told her about the deceit and deceit of men. When Perdican, whom she pushed aside, is carried away by Rosetta, Camilla, against her will, herself is carried away by Perdican. "A woman is like your shadow ..." For this is the doctrine of Musset, like Racine in Andromache, as well as Proust in the book "Swann's Love", and it can be formulated as follows: love that is too frankly expressed rarely evokes reciprocity. “If you don’t love me, I love you ...” This is an old and sad story.

As for the rest of the actors from Musset's troupe - ridiculous and condescending widows, grumpy but complacent uncles, gluttonous and eccentric abbots, exaggeratedly virtuous governesses who love to eat, he took them both from Carmontel's Proverbs and from the memories of his own youth. Sainte-Beuve reproached Musset for the monotony of these minor characters and for the fact that the writer was looking for them in some fictional world. But, in truth, they are no more monotonous and no more fictitious than Moliere's minutiae, his rogue lackeys, his marquises, his pedants and doctors. The abbot from the play "No need to wager" is characterized by a dozen lines, but he is life itself. And the actors understand this very well. The theater requires such exaggerations, because the viewer perceives remarks by ear, he cannot, unlike the reader, return to the text. One famous actress once told me: "The audience most often does not listen, when it listens, it does not hear, and when it does, it does not understand." This is the artist's pessimistic and somewhat affected opinion of the average viewer. But this witty joke has some truth: in order to cause excitement or laughter in the audience, even the most subtle dramatic actor is sometimes forced to resort to cheap effects.

SOURCES OF DRAMATURGY MUSSET

Musset and Giraudoux have one thing in common: they are both very educated people, both have read a lot all their lives, and the lyrical tirades of Shakespeare or Aristophanes sound like well-known musical phrases to them. Musset, even during his apprenticeship, achieved brilliant success in the field of fine literature and was awarded an honorary prize at the competition; Unlike Giraudoux, Musset did not study at the Ecole Normal, but he was brought up not only on the classical texts of Greek, Latin and French writers, but also on the books of the great English and German authors. He penetrated the secret of Shakespeare; he, as we have already said, was the only Frenchman who, in that era, truly understood Byron.

So, the literary sources of Musset's drama are very diverse. He owes a lot to Shakespeare, he also owes Goethe (the idyllic features in the play Don't Joke with Love are reminiscent of The Sorrows of Young Werther), he owes something to Jean-Paul Richter (in particular, unusual, often grotesque and cynical comparisons). Italians have always attracted him. He not only read the works of Dante, Alfieri, Machiavelli, he also studied the chronicles of Varka, when he wrote "Lorenzaccio" and looked in Florence for materials for his scenes. Boccaccio's short stories, like Bandello's short stories, served as a source of plots for him. Among the French playwrights - we learn about this from the widely known poem by Musset - his idol was Moliere. Musset undoubtedly studied - and in every detail - Moliere's literary methods: of course, the genius of a writer is not limited to his technique, but manifests itself in it. Creating his dramatic proverbs, Musset also turned to more modest sources - to Carmontel and Theodore Leclair, whom he surpassed many times.

But the main source of inspiration for Musset was his own life and feelings. The widespread belief that one should not attach any importance to the artist's biography is simply ridiculous. Of course, every masterpiece is beautiful in itself, it seems wonderful to those people who know nothing about the history of its creation. But it is also true that any work is a kind of fusion of thought and feeling; this effect of events on the mind of the artist and the response of his talent to the events depicted is an amazing phenomenon, of great interest, and we ourselves will deprive ourselves of the opportunity to engage in fascinating research if we neglect the circumstances, often the most insignificant, that served as the direct cause of the birth of the play or novel. After all, such research - it can be likened to a play behind the scenes of a play or a novel in the margins of a novel - is often beautiful in itself.

Musset, more than anyone else, provides material for such a study. His love for George Sand, the spiritual enrichment that his friendship with this outstanding woman, who read and loved to read so much, brought him, the ability to take her work seriously, which she taught him in those, alas, too short periods when he submitted to her influence ; finally, and above all, the suffering and torment of love due to the painful break with her - all this gave many of Alfred de Musset's plays a deep and sincere sound. Before meeting George Sand, he was a charming young man, and after their breakup he became a man who comprehended the tragedy of life. If the character of Camilla from the play "They Don't Joke with Love" is so complex, it is because George Sand was a complex person. Sand and Musset indulged in the same dangerous game as Perdican and Camilla. This is what George Sand wrote to her beloved: "You see, what we do can be called a game, but our hearts and our lives are the stake in it, and therefore this game is not at all as funny as it might seem."

These words remind one of Perdican's remarks, and this is not surprising: the epistolary syllable of Georges Sand and the syllable of her diary are like two drops of water similar to the syllable of Musset in his plays. This was so indisputable that at times it allowed him to take lines from the letters of George Sand and, without changing a word there, include them in his comedy: “I often suffered, I was deceived more than once, but I loved. And I lived, I, and not an artificial creature created by my imagination and my boredom ”***. Where does this beautiful phrase come from? It is an excerpt from a letter from Georges Sand to Musset; this phrase became one of Perdican's remarks. Was the writer doing the right thing when he took a letter from his beloved and turned it into one of the elements of a work of art? Didn't he make a mistake here? In my opinion, on the contrary, he expressed this the highest tribute of respect and in this way merged with her in immortality (alas, transient!), With which people crown genius.

The play "Love is not a joke" was written in the summer of 1834, when Musset, left by George Sand, was trying to heal from his mental wounds. As for Lorenzaccio, the plot of this play was fully suggested to him by the writer: in 1831, George Sand composed a historical chronicle based on those that Mérimée created in those years. She called it The Conspiracy in 1537. Musset made extensive use of the canvas of this work, he borrowed whole scenes, ready-made replicas from there, but it should be admitted that the text of Georges Sand was rather flat, while Musset's play is an excellent creation, and this is all the more striking since the author was at that time twenty three years.

Speaking about the play "The Whims of Marianne", Paul de Musset remarked: "Everyone who knew Alfred de Musset understood to what extent the author resembled both heroes at the same time - Ottavio and Celio." In everyday life, Musset was Ottavio - he was always smiling, having fun, joking. But as soon as he fell in love, and he turned into Celio. "Fantasio" is also a play, the hero of which is copied from the author, the same can be said about Fortunio, the hero of the play "Candlestick". Paul de Musset claims that this play is about an unfortunate episode that happened to his brother when he was eighteen years old. Young Alfred was in love with a very witty, mocking and very flirtatious woman. In words, she behaved with him like a lover, but in fact she treated him like a child, and this alarmed him. Nevertheless, it took a long time until he realized that he was forced to play the role of a familiar character from "Candlestick". The lady had her own Clavaroche, but she did not have Jacqueline's heart. Alfred stopped going to her house, but showed no contempt or anger. And here is what Paul de Musset tells about the play “No need to wager”: “Alfredo was rotating simultaneously in two overly cheerful companies; one fine day he suddenly realized himself and decided that he had had enough of an absent-minded life ... He put on a dressing gown, sat down in an armchair and mentally read to himself no less strict morality than a father or uncle could have done. This silent dialogue later served as the prototype for the scene between Valentin and Uncle Van Buck. "

Paul de Musset cannot be considered an absolutely reliable witness; however, we believe that the writings of Alfred de Musset are closely related to his life, because this is true of any writer. But the fact is that an actual incident in life, which the writer himself experienced or observed, cannot be completely transferred into the drama. This episode lacks what might be called style. Fortunately, Musset - in contrast to the opinion prevailing among the theater workers - by nature possessed the talent of a playwright and a sense of theatrical style. After all, the scene requires remarks that hit the target, such an ending to each phenomenon, when the actors can rightfully leave, such an ending to each act, when the curtain must certainly fall, when applause must be heard, and the audience must be seized by such a feeling of satisfaction that can be resolved by mute excitement or stormy delight. Musset instinctively grasped all this.

COMEDY AND LYRICAL BEGINNING IN DRAMATURGY MUSSET

Musset, like Moliere, achieves a comic effect by resorting to repetitions and hyperbole. Reread the fourth scene from the second act of the play “They don’t joke with love” (repeated repetition of the words: “among the mouse peas”) or the first scene from the second act of the play “No need to wager”. Pay attention also to the symmetry, which is marked in the same comedy scene from the first act between Van Buck and Valentin: “My dear nephew, I wish you good health. "My dear uncle, your humble servant." This beginning resembles Moliere's dialogue, but the dialogue continues, as is typical of Musset, in a completely peculiar tone. Seeming inconsistency and incoherence are the charm of Musset's style, and large, well-polished and flowing tirades, such as those of Perdican and Camille, are particularly impressive because they stand out clearly from the rest of the text, as if outlined by a dotted line. Shakespeare alone was able to achieve such an effect, alternating lyricism and joke.

One of the striking proofs of Musset's inherent sense of theatrical style is the swiftness of his lines. Here are some examples, if you will.

In the play "Fantasio":

You are ugly to say the least; this is indisputable. “No more certain than the fact that you are beautiful.

In the play "Caprice":

Don't you think that the dress, like a talisman, protects from misfortunes? “It's a barrier blocking their path. - Or the veil that envelops them.

In the play "Lorenzaccio":

The priest must scold in Latin. - There are also Tuscan language, which can be answered.

In the play "Candlestick":

Silence and caution. Farewell. My friend is me; the confidant is you; and the wallet lies by the leg of the chair.

I would also like to note the final remark in the play "Candlestick": "Oh, this is an old song! .. So sing it, Mr. Klavaros!" How gracefully this remark echoes the words of Klavaros, who in the second act exclaimed: “Oh, this is an old song! So sing it, Mr. Fortunio! "

As for the symmetrical construction of the dialogue, an excellent example of this can be found at the beginning of the play "No need to gamble", another example can be easily found in the third scene of the first act of the comedy "What Girls Dream About". This symmetry is Moliere's favorite technique, and if we talk about tragedy, then - Corneille; in general, it is very characteristic of French speech. You won't find it in Shakespeare. She slightly softens the seriousness of the lyric tirades. But Musset owes Shakespeare the passionate excitement of the intermittent monologues: remember the speech of Madame de Leri in the play "Caprice" ... This passionate excitement reaches the point of exaggeration in the play "You cannot think of everything at once."

And all this from the author is completely deliberate. In Musset, as in any great artist, obsession gets along with the technique of writing. And technique tends to prevail. He knows perfectly well that, deviating from the "straight line" of Scribe, he is moving in the right direction. “On the contrary,” Musset confessed, “while composing some scene or verse stanza, I can suddenly change everything, overturn my own plan, oppose my beloved hero and let his opponent prevail over him in a dispute ... In a word, I was going to go to Madrid, but I went to Constantinople. " Musset, like no one else, knows how to calmly choose the moment when it is necessary to set in motion a "key scene", as one should say using his terminology. “In order to properly arrange an important scene,” he wrote, “you need to know the era, circumstances well and precisely determine the moment when the viewer's interest and curiosity are sufficiently excited, and therefore the development of the action can be suspended, and it should be replaced by passion for their fullness, pure feeling... This kind of scene, when the author's thought, so to speak, leaves the plot in order to return to it soon, and, as if forgetting about the intrigue, and about the whole play, plunges into the element of the universal, it is extremely difficult to create such scenes. Hamlet's famous monologue is an excellent example of such a scene. Musset learned the lessons of his teacher well.

One can only admire how he knew how to feed his creativity with the dramatic events of his own life. Sometimes it even seems that he subordinated his own life to the tasks of his drama. It is infinitely difficult for an artist to give up mistakes and hobbies that sharpen his talent. He realizes that certain sensations evoke in his soul a particularly strong and pure response. Chateaubriand knew that he should "show his broken heart." Whatever pain this or that feeling might cause the poet, whatever danger they might conceal to him, he would never want to voluntarily heal himself from the ailment that nourishes his genius. Musset's poetry is a painful fusion of love and bitterness, hope and madness. The poet's beloved always found in him, as it were, two different people: one was "soft, gentle, enthusiastic, naive, modest, sensitive, ardent, with an easily vulnerable soul"; the other is "frantic, harsh, oppressive, suspicious, touchy" and "burdened with a load of bitter memories, as is typical of a man who was a rake in his youth." Ottavio and Celio got along in it until the very end.

MUSSET AND WE

The success of Giraudoux's drama and the revival of poetic theater were the fame of Musset. Nevertheless, many of those who recognize the exquisite beauty of comedies are quite dismissive of his poems and essays. The traditions of poetry of a completely different kind, at the origins of which is Mallarmé, have instilled in us stricter requirements for the harmony of verse. Greatest poet of our time he wrote: "The poem is not composed of feelings, but of words." Musset, who composed poems precisely from feelings and who, as if out of protest, preferred poor rhyme and simple verse, found himself aloof from the pillar path of French poetry.

But this is just a delusion. While critics and literary historians treat Musset with the greatest disdain, he retains power over the hearts of his readers. When they read his poems, you see how the eyes of those who listen to them light up, and the sincere feelings expressed in these verses give rise to a response in souls:

That evening I was alone in the theater hall ... My friends, when I die, put a willow at my head ... Do you feel sorry for those times when the firmament hung over the earth, breathing a whole host of gods?

What French youth does not know these verses? And did we not find an extraordinary similarity between Musset's poems and those poems that appeared in France during the last war? You can love Debussy, but you don't have to neglect Beethoven. You can admire Valerie, but you don't have to stop admiring Musset.

No, Alfred de Musset is not “a whim of a blasé and free-thinking era,” as Saint-Beuve said about him on one of his bad days; Musset is a faithful friend of people with a fine soul, he is one of the greatest French writers, and, if you like, he is our Shakespeare.

Notes

* In this article, the poetic translations belong to Y. Lesyuk

** Musset A. Fav. manuf. M., "Goslitizdat", 1952, p. 192-193.

*** Musset A. Fav. manuf. M., "Goslitizdat", 1952, p. 214.

Comments

ALFRED DE MUSSET. THEATER

Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) made his literary debut with the poetry collection Spanish and Italian Tales (1830) and quickly became one of the leaders of the younger generation of French romantics. His lyric poetry, comic parody poems (Mardosh - 1830, Namuna - 1832), the novel Confession of the Son of the Century (1836) were famous; the most important part of his legacy is drama ("The Whims of Marianne" - 1833, "Lorenzaccio" - 1834, "They Don't Joke with Love" - \u200b\u200b1834, "Candlestick" - 1835, etc.). Musset, more daring than any of the romantics, transformed the canons of dramatic genres, combining the tragic and the comic, emphasizing the conventionality of theatrical performance. He combines an apology for passion, "immediate feeling" with a mockery of it in the spirit of romantic irony.

1 Duke of Orleans Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri (1810-1842) - son of King Louis-Philippe.

2 "Letters to the Provincial" (1656-1657) - a polemical composition by B. Pascal.

3 Ancelo Arsen (1794-1854) - playwright of the conservative-classicist direction.

4 "Dramatic Proverb" - a dramatic genre, a play illustrating a proverb; Carmontel (Louis Carroji, 1717-1806), Colle Charles (1709-1789), Leclerc Michel Theodore (1777-1851) - comedians of the 18th century.

5 Gautier Théophile (1811-1872) was a romantic writer and a prominent theater critic.

6 This refers to the June uprising of the Parisian workers (1848).

7 Austen Jules Jean-Baptiste Hippolyte (1814-1879) - playwright and director of a number of theaters.

8 Scribe Eugene (1791-1861) - playwright, master of entertaining comedies.

9 Claudel Paul (1868-1955) - poet and playwright of the "Catholic" direction, one of the classics of French literature of the XX century.

10 It is about the love affair of George Sand with the Italian physician Pietro Pagello (1807-1898) in 1834. According to one of the memoir testimonies, George Sand handed her lover a declaration of love in an unlabeled envelope and, in response to a question to whom this letter was addressed, wrote on the envelope: "To the stupid Pagello."

11 Ecole Normal - Higher Normal School in Paris, an educational institution that trains teachers.

12 Jean-Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763-1825) - German writer.

13 Alfieri Vittorio (1749-1803) - Italian playwright.

14 This refers to the work of the Italian humanist Benedetto Varka (1502-1565) "History of Florence", first published in 1721.

15 Bandello Matteo (1485-1561) - Italian novelist.

16 This refers to the plays of Mérimée from the medieval history "Jacqueria" and "The Karhaval Family" (1828).

17 Mallarmé Stefan (Etienne Mallarmé, 1842-1898) - Symbolist poet, art theorist.

18 This refers to Paul Valerie.

19 Debussy Claude (1862-1918) - composer; the founder of musical impressionism.

There is a big difference between my venerable family and a bunch of asparagus ...

Alfred de Musset, Marianne's Whims

The younger generation of the family, which by the age of forty-five was twenty years old, was a rather picturesque and cosmopolitan relative. The spirit of Franklin Street receded into the distant past, and after the death of Marguerite it was even difficult to understand how this fearless woman managed for so many years to defend her world against the winds and forces of the outside world.

In the Poiraton branch, a planter from Abidjan, who died in a shipwreck, left behind completely unpaired sons. The eldest, Charlot, whose skin gleamed with the most beautiful soot, but was ugly at the same time to impossibility, inherited his father's activity: the same spirit of curiosity, the same thirst for life, new discoveries and the same inclination to make far-reaching plans. Deeply devoted to his mother and the land where he was born, Charlot enthusiastically prepared to become a certified agronomist. His younger brother, much lighter-skinned and much more graceful, loved songs, dances, a long afternoon nap and led a lazy, cheerful life, not tormented by any anxieties, showing no curiosity, happy that he inherited this beautiful harmonious body, quite his satisfying.

Charlot came to Paris to continue his studies. His grandmother, Poyatevin, not without excitement saw this grandson who had arrived from Africa, whose unimaginable appearance she could not have foreseen, who looked like a devil and yet her son's son, taken away by the sea. Charlot had a deep, low voice, he did not pronounce "r". But by a thousand lines, he felt not only a memory, not only the influence of his father - his living presence. The old lady was filled with tears in her eyes. Very soon she stopped even noticing that Charlot had black skin. They both laughed at the same thing: she was covering her mouth with her palm out of habit, he was rolling, his head thrown back, sparkling with white teeth and pink gums, unrestrained. And yet it was the same laugh.

At the end of the school year, Charlot said goodbye to his grandmother tenderly but decisively: his father's plantation badly needed him. Old Madame Poiraton had grown strange and silent. Loneliness weighed too much on her. For some time it seemed to her that she was being pursued, besieged by invisible enemies. She lived for several months, barricaded herself, then died without inviting a doctor.

The son of a Hungarian Jew, for his part, shone. His mother got him to change his name - for who was able to pronounce all this block of consonants at once? The father disappeared a long time ago. A family legend, which was passed on to each other in whispers, said that the Hungarian, seized by nostalgia, went to Central Europe in the snowy winter, already seriously ill. Fleeing, as they said, from the pursuit of his loving wife, he drove the horses, borrowing a sleigh from someone and spending nights in straw on farms abandoned in the wilderness. A terrible and wonderful story - it remains unknown whether there is even a particle of truth in it.

Be that as it may, having received his mother's maiden name - one of those super-French names that Labiche loved so much - the Hungarian's son considered that the stain of exoticism had been completely washed off from him. A gifted, hardworking, knowledgeable, stubborn young man was created for a brilliant medical career and was already thinking about marrying one of his beautiful classmates - so full of health that she, with her tanned face, always seemed to have just returned from vacation. The girl did not remain indifferent to the courtship of a comrade. The day came when she started talking about wanting to introduce him to her father. It was too late to retreat, and the student mustered all his courage to take the inevitable step.

The meeting stunned him. Indeed, the swarthy girl's father turned out to be a notorious African. The young man hid his surprise. He was above prejudice. Mentally, he scolded himself for that subtle spiritual embarrassment that he felt when he saw his future father-in-law. He showed himself to be a truly heartfelt man. Unfortunately, he himself was not free of preconceived ideas and could not resist unnecessary conversations: “Well, young man! he cried. - You, like my daughter, I see, have shown courage, not being afraid to choose this field, where all sorts of half-breeds and Jews who have captured all the best places ascend. I hope you will be able to prevail over this brat and will not give way to him! .. ”- and further in the same spirit. It was too much. The son of the Hungarian backed down, deciding in his heart that he would not enter into a family that showed such intolerance. And he took his leave pretty quickly. A young girl, thin enough, felt that he was dissatisfied with something, and went to see off the one who almost became her fiancé. “Alas,” she said, crying, “it’s always like this with my father: you are the fourth one he’s daring.” After these words, the student only quickened his pace.

He got married a year later. By a strange whim of fate, he fell in love with an Englishwoman, blond and pink, who did not know a word of French. He had the joy of teaching her. Their children are said to display great language skills.

Who could have foreseen that the family would be so thrown in all directions? And that this tribe, trapped in its provincial microcosm, will spread throughout the world with such impetuosity and such a clear taste for the other and the unlike?

The feeling of alienation, strangeness that gripped the innocent Germaine when she first stepped into the house on Franklin Street, stirring up the whole family, was, however, only a timid harbinger of everything that happened later. The head is spinning, it is worth imagining the continuation.

What would Marguerite think of all this? One, the daughter of a doctor, the wife of a doctor, the mother of a large family, refuses everything in order to join, when she is already well over thirty, into the troupe of Antillean dancers. Another is giving up teaching Greek and Latin in order to surrender, as passions are given, to the art of puppet theater and to show avant-garde performances in Parisian cabarets.

At Charlotte's funeral, an attempt was made to gather all family members who could be found. The attempt is rather sluggish, to tell the truth, since the organization of the mourning meeting was not specifically entrusted to anyone. Therefore, some of the main pieces of the mosaic were missing from this collection. Those present formed a motley and variegated company in which memories of Charlotte wandered. But different generations had completely incompatible ideas about her: a young girl, an inveterate old maid, an elderly lady - each generation buried its Charlotte.

A huge cemetery in the vicinity of Paris looked like a factory for the dead. At the entrance to it they were handed a plan, where an ink cross marked the burial place. Without this plan, the grave could not be found. The most sincerely upset, much stronger than everyone else, looked like the pastor; after all, he was the one who knew her best. Relatives lowered their noses, listening to his speech. A humiliated, sacrificed, loser in love, the wretched Charlotte was not at all what her brothers, nephews and nieces thought she was. Each reproached himself for neglecting her, not knowing her properly, and more than once laughed aloud at her incorrigible naivete.

At the edge of the grave, everyone felt some awkwardness. A light merciful snow whirled over the dull plain, powdering the wretchedness of this place with some grace. No one thought to bring at least one flower for Charlotte.

The family has landed at Port d'Itali. The group, wrapped in their winter coats, stomped about, shifting from foot to foot like a flock of penguins.

Who will decide what to do next? So to part here in the middle of the street? We went to discuss this in the nearest cafe. Everyone looked at each other with curiosity. The old people wondered how their peers had aged. The young were lost in names and family legends, confusing uncles with each other, who did not look at all what they imagined.

All this was very reminiscent of the old family debates in Poitiers, when it was not possible to decide where to direct our feet - to Blossack Park or to the city. Still voted in favor of having lunch together. The most business-like people ran to make phone calls, that they were late. The family was warmed up. Here, in the warmth, red noses turned pale, and eyes sparkled over a glass of aperitif.

The heavy colossus started to move in search of a suitable restaurant. "We," someone said, "are indecisive, like a heron from a fable." The elders thought of Marguerite. Finally the crowd settled in a tavern.

An ancient stove rumbled in the back room. They exposed themselves by dropping their coat on a lame hanger. The family suddenly grew thinner and younger. They began to sit down, courteously showing each other signs of attention. No one wanted to take the risk of taking a seat that someone else might have liked. They offered to change: "Would you like to sit closer to the stove?" "Would you like to sit next to your cousin?" Finally they all sat down. And they felt tired.

The waiter, not very well-trained, rushed the meeting rudely. Nobody has chosen anything yet. The young were indignant. The elderly have apologized. Everyone focused on studying the menu. And everyone thought of Charlotte, who was lying alone in the ground, who would probably say: “I eat very little in general,” and would be content with some salad.

All the steaming dishes exuded one smell - the corrosive smell of stagnant stew, firmly and obsessively reigning over the table. We noticed one chair between the brothers of the deceased, and one that remained unoccupied. An obvious place for Charlotte, who would be happy to attend such a gathering. But how to gather so many people, if not on the occasion of someone's death?

Charlotte, accustomed to living alone when she had two guests, was swinging wide, even too wide. At the last minute before the planned lunch, she again rushed downstairs, seized with anxiety, to buy something else. And, wishing not to miss anything from the conversation, she put everything on the table at once, in advance, so as not to leave the guests for a minute. There was pate, sausage, sardines, butter, mackerel with white wine, four or five different salads, chicken, three or four vegetable dishes, a large selection of cheeses, all kinds of creams, cakes, cookies, sweets, and lots of fruits. Then she was terribly sad and upset, since almost everything remained uneaten. She feared that the lunch offered was not good enough. She begged that the guests, leaving, take with them what they did not eat. At the moment of parting, with tears in her eyes, she fussed, picking up bags and jars. It often happened that, in order to please her, they left her with full hands.

The family thought about this, sitting without her at the table dedicated to her.

The cold outside was quickly forgotten. As well as about the stinking smell of stew, because, having plunged into it, everyone himself was soaked in it. Everyone was thirsty. Wine, not thin, but strong, invigorated. Some sarcastic remarks were heard. They laughed at my uncle, who converted to Catholicism and became famous for his belated hypocrisy, pilgrimages and participation in religious processions. The Antillean dance expert cast fiery glances at her hated mother-in-law. But everything is pretty good-natured. In this congregation held by a thread, no one was overly fierce. Mutual sympathy awakened among the youngest, and conversations began. They took out address books and self-records. We exchanged phones. Appointed dates. In short, they forgave each other blood relationship. Neither Charlotte nor Marguerite would have disapproved of these dates and these plans.

Upon leaving, the family was almost surprised to find themselves in this suburban area, unusual for everyone. The sky was still swelling with snow, the first night of the buried Charlotte was beginning to descend.

After the heat and hum of this long dinner, the oldest suddenly felt that they were very tired, and the youngest, that their patience was exhausted. We parted without much hesitation.

It occurred to some that the next joint meal of Marguerite's children would probably take place on the occasion of the next funeral. They wondered - to no avail and fleetingly - about which of them would fall out of it.

Close to the psychological study of a new type of personality, generated by the post-revolutionary reality, Musset turns in the plays "The Whims of Marianne", "Fantasio", "Love is not joking." In all these plays, whimsical in plot and setting, only the portrait of the hero is truly modern - inactive, eaten away by reflection, doubt, irony, and egoism. Musset infinitely varies this image, plunges into the depths of it psychological lifeoverly complicated, devoid of integrity, restless and unsteady. All his characters are seized with anxiety, ironic and subject to the whims of their whimsical fantasy. Throwing away all illusions, these young men no longer believe in high human feelings... Skeptical disbelief often leads them to debauchery. The hero of The Whim of Marianne (1833), the gambler and drunkard Ottavio, has many positive qualities. He is piously loyal to friendship, disinterested, despises the traders.

He is witty, eloquent, feels beauty, and is drawn to joy. But he also hides under the guise of a carefree reveler a heavy melancholy born of a lack of purpose, faith, ideals. Musset again throws love off the pedestal to which the romantics raised it. He proves that love is devoid of creative power. Her quirks are fatal to humans. Ottavio's friend Celio fell deeply and passionately in love with Marianne. For him, there is nothing in the world except his love. “Reality is only a ghost,” he says; it is spiritualized only by the fantasies and madness of man. Such a feeling, completely absorbing the human soul, was also a product of the century, whose sons were torn away from all social affairs and responsibilities. These young men, obsessed with love or debauchery, are not busy with anything, they do not bear any responsibility. Consciousness, chained only to the contemplation of its own experiences, inevitably comes to a painful exaggeration of the smallest emotions, moods, thoughts. For a person of this kind, a great feeling is destructive.

Even shared love cannot bring happiness to an unstable subject who has lost faith in himself and in people. This was shown by Musset in Confessions of the Son of the Century. Unrequited love kills the heroes of Musset. Celio dies. His great love was powerless to evoke a response in the soul of Marianne. But Marianne fell in love with Ottavio, who was indifferent to her. Her love is also hopeless - Ottavio does not know how to love. From his youth, fascinated by Shakespeare, Musset learns from him, first of all, the ability to reveal inner world heroes. Shakespeare is inspired by the dialogues of Ottavio and Marianne, which, in their acute tension, originality of humor, and deliberate complexity of turns, resemble the verbal duels of Biron and Rosalind (Love's Labour's Lost), Benedict and Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing), Olivia and Viola ( Twelfth Night"). But the heroes of Musset lack the wholeness and spiritual strength of the heroes of Shakespeare's comedies. For them, a funny intellectual game almost always turns into a tragedy. Musset asserts not a triumph, but a collapse of humanistic ideas. Musset's previous experience of French drama gave a lot. Following Mérimée, he brought to French drama the high skill of individualization and speech characteristics... When Musset recreates life-like phenomena, he achieves a realistic relief of the image. This is especially evident in cases where Musset reveals the ugly sides of modern reality. In "The Whims of Marianne" appears a satirical image of a tradesman, an evil owner, in the name of protecting his rights, ready to kill.

The satirical notes are heightened in the two-act comedy Fantasio (1834), one of Musset's most bizarre, narratively sophisticated plays. The whole story of how the city dweller Fantasio, putting on a costume and a mask of a court jester who had just died, saves a young Bavarian princess from marriage with a ridiculous fool - the Prince of Mantua, is almost a demonstrative challenge to life's verisimilitude. The conventional Munich of an unknown century is a perfectly suitable frame for the fantastic events of this play, in which three characters act in disguise and perform acts contrary to logic and common sense, and the problems of war and peace are solved with the help of a wig pulled off the head of the hapless groom by a fishing rod.

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The image of one of the main characters, the sovereign prince of Mantua, is painted by Musset in a mockingly mocking, caricatured manner. Fantasio calls this narcissistic monarch, who threatens to start a war if the princess is not given to him, "a vile animal", "to whom fate has dropped the crown." In creating this figure, Musset, in his characteristic ironic manner, continues, in essence, the tradition laid down by the democratic drama of France. Monarchist illusions are alien to the playwright. But in contrast to the crowned jester, Fantasio is devoid of a socially creative ideal. A careless reveler who has squandered his property and is hiding from creditors, Fantasio, like Ottavio in Marianne's Whims, is immersed in melancholy reflections on the insignificance of the century, on the emptiness of life. The thought of the loneliness of people torments him, the cheering crowd disgusts him. His sharp mind allows him to pinpoint the cause of his longing: he and his friends have no vital business. But he does not want to do anything - everything is pointless, says Fantasio, any business is useless. In this play, the image of a dying, powerless age is repeated again. In the second chapter of "Confessions of the Son of the Century," Musset precisely defined what great social catastrophes "clipped the wings of the century." In the play, he does not talk about it. But the image of the wingless century is felt in the whole atmosphere of comedy and even Fantasio's jokes gives a taste of bitterness and tears. The only value that Fantasio finds is two tears that have rolled from the eyes of a princess who is being married off for state reasons to the Prince of Mantua. To save the girl, Fantasio commits an eccentric feat - fishing the prince's wig with a rod. He knows that it is about the happiness of two states, about the tranquility of two peoples. But the fate of the peoples does not bother him. Musset's humanistic thought narrows. The lyrical theme of the play is openly contrasted with the theme of public duty, civil exploit. In Andrea del Sarto, in The Whims of Marianne, in Fantasio, Musset, with the same careless ease as in his first dramatic experiments, destroys the classicist regulation. He resolutely rejects the unity of place and time, much more subtly than other authors of romantic drama, weaves the tragic and the comic in his plays. An ironic intonation arises in his most dramatic moments, and a funny idyll suddenly ends with a tragic denouement.

This construction of plays is deeply connected with Musset's perception of modern reality as a tragedy of the death of human ideals and at the same time as a disgusting comedy of the well-fed complacency of the bourgeoisie. Some came to despair, says Musset in "Confessions of the Son of the Century", others, "children of the flesh" - the bourgeois, counted their money. "The soul was crying, the body was laughing." This duality of perception of the world with the artist's position of non-interference, dictated by ridicule and despair, determines the originality of Musset's dramatic poetics. In no other play by Musset does the inner contradictoriness of his consciousness appear so clearly as in the three-act comedy They Don't Joke with Love (1834), defining the composition of the play, and the construction of its images, and the emotional life of the characters.