J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,
Et mes amis et ma gaîté;
J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fierté
Qui faisait croire à mon génie.


Quand j'ai connu la Vérité,
J'ai cru que c'était une amie;
quand je l'ai comprise et sentie,
J'en étais déjà dégoûté.


Et pourtant elle est éternelle,
Et ceux qui se sont passés d'elle
Ici-bas ont tout ignoré.


Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui réponde.
Le seul bien qui me reste au monde
Est d'avoir quelquefois pleuré.

Alfred de Musset, Tristesse.

Alfred de Musset, French Romantic poet and playwright, was born in Paris in 1810 to parents of distinguished descent. His father was a published writer, with a repertoire of travel and historical works. After graduating from Collège Henry IV with honors in 1827, qualms of dissection steered Musset away from a career in medicine. He instead studied painting in the Lovure for six months, and went on in 1828 to begin his career as a poet and dramatist.

Musset's first work was a ballad called The Dream, which was followed by Contes D'Espagne et D'Italie (Tales of Spain and Italy) in 1829. A year later, Musset was invited by the director of the Théâtre de l'Odeon (Theater of Odeon; an admittedly obvious translation) to write La Nuit Vénetienne (The Venetian Night).

I lost my strength and my life,
And my friends and my gaiety;
I almost lost the pride
Which made me believe in my genius.

When I first met the Truth,
I believed that it was a friend;
When I understood it and felt it,
I was disgusted by it.

The play was a resounding failure.

The humiliation of the botched effort caused Musset to again change his path--he decided to sell books. His work did not reach the underclasses, as a single copy of one of his books would have been roughly a day's salary to a craftsman or person similar in occupation.

In 1833 Alfred de Musset met novelist Georges Sand. The affair that blossomed resulted in Musset's finest lyric poetry; his autobiogaphy, La Confession D'Un Enfant du Siécle (The Confession Of a Child of Siécle), is a fictionalized account of the affair.

Musset's affair with Sand ended in 1835, two years after its beginning spark, when Sand fell in love with a physician.

Musset found another flame in 1837 by the name of Aimée d'Alton; he became engaged to her, but the relationship was short-lived. After a series of brief affairs, his health and his career began to falter. In 1845 he was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and during the 1850s he started finally to experience success on the stage. In 1852, he became a member of the French Academy.

And yet it is eternal,
And those who did without it
Have ignored everything down here.

If God speaks, one must answer him.
The only good which remains for me in the world
Is to have cried sometimes.

Alfred de Musset had developed a vascular heart condition; it was apparently made worse by drinking, and its obscurity prompted doctors to name it Musset Symptom. He died in the city of his birth on the second of May, 1857.

Much thanks to gwenllian, for translating Tristesse; her help here was indispensable, and greatly, greatly appreciated.
Much thanks also to Gritchka, who helped with some spelling errors in the French version of the poem.

--Wrangler of Words--