CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY – MUSSET

Confession of a Child of the Century is the only novel written by Alfred de Musset, a french romantic.

This novel tells the tumultuous story of Musset and Sand, who had a stormy passion and devastating. Sand later deliver his own version of their relationship in Him and Her.

Beyond the biopic aspect, through the hopes, disappointments, morbid jealousy, fits of violence of this confession is a book with a thesis on the romantic, considered the disease of the century, causing the loss of the generation. This generation was born on the decline of the empire built by Napoleon and saw the decline as his own. Desperate, the lost generation can no longer consolidate in religion, destroyed by the Enlightenment. It, therefore, has neither the seductions of Napoleonic glory nor the promises of salvation:

“The principle of death went down coldly and without shaking from head to belly. Instead of having the enthusiasm of the evil we had the dedication of the property, instead of despair, insensitivity ”

Confession is also a novel about youth, the age of illusions and fatal despair related to life skills. According to De Musset’s youth was marked by the refusal of the past, uncertain future and disgust of this. Musset has a very dark vision of human nature, unhappy and wicked purpose in nature:

“The habits of students and artists, these customs so free, so beautiful, so full of youth, felt the effects of universal change. Men, separating women, had whispered a word that hurts to death: the contempt they had thrown themselves into the wine and courtesans. Students and artists threw themselves also, love was treated as the glory and religion was an illusion old“