Context of a romantic work
The first two chapters of The Confession recount the Napoleonic period, with which Alfred de Musset links the story of Octave and the 19th century. This historical reference corresponds to the feelings of the character, given that we are here in the middle of the romantic era. In his novel, Musset speaks on behalf of a generation, and compares the revolutionary period to Love. The loss of his sentimental illusions relates to the loss of the freedom of the people:“Ah God! I cried suddenly, my poor mistress, I am ruining you, and I did not know how to love you! [1] The wars of the Empire were a painful period for the French, and the suffering of a single man (Octave) was equivalent to the pain of an entire people:"there was not one who, in returning home, felt bitterly the emptiness of his existence and the poverty of his hands. [2]
In the midst of the Romantic period, The Confession is a novel about dreams, passion and emotions. Beginning by talking about the revolutionary period, Alfred de Musset wishes to show the confrontation with reality, like a child leaving childhood, or a man surprising his companion cheating on him:"When passion carries the man, the reason follows him crying and warning him of the danger. » [3]
Romanticism:literary movement of the 19th century
A current that appeared in the aftermath of the French Revolution, romanticism succeeded the Age of Enlightenment. Characterized by melancholic writing, romantic literature is essentially based on passion and the pain of living, with characters prey to tenfold feelings. Romanticism is born in England and opposes the classic codes:the dream succeeds the nobility of feelings, as well as the introspection of the main character. A certain taste for the fantastic develops, and also for historical novels such as the works of Stendhal, retracing the Napoleonic period or that of the Restoration.
The Evil of the Century
It is in a framework moved by the romantic current that the Evil of the century emerges and permeates the spirit of the writers. The preponderant ego established by Rousseau and instigated by Lamartine plunges literature into introspection. Once the author gives access to the inner world of the hero, he exposes the pain of living and the melancholy that animates him. Boredom becomes the obsession of the authors, and nostalgia invades the spirits:“Everything tires me; I hardly tow my boredom with my days, and I go everywhere yawning my life. Chateaubriand would say for a generation endowed with sensitivity and prey to the disillusions of life, which it considers too fragile for the ideal it covets:"It was like a denial of all things in heaven and earth, that 'we can name disenchantment, or, if you want, despair; as if lethargic humanity had been believed dead by those who felt its pulse. [4] Powerless in the face of an inaccessible ideal, some romantics fall into debauchery in the hope of escaping this disease of the century. Charles Baudelaire remains the emblematic figure of the cursed poet, victim of the evil of living. Spleen, as he calls it, a term from the Nordic countries, reveals the terrible human condition and its despair. He tries to escape it through dreams, but also through alcohol, sex and drugs. Exacerbated melancholy, depression evacuated in the words:all his disappointments overwhelm him:"When the low and heavy sky weighs like a lid / On the groaning mind prey to long troubles, / And that from the horizon embracing the whole circle / It pours us a black day sadder than the nights” [5]
Other authors find a remedy in proximity to nature. Indeed, the Illness of Living is characterized by an escape into reverie and travel. But exoticism is also a mode of escape:nature becomes a place of healing and freedom where the spirit takes refuge, as evidenced by the famous poem "Le Lac" (1820) by Lamartine. Nature allows you to distance yourself from a world that is "too old" and a society overflowing with conventions.