SOURCE: Hamilton, James F. “Reversed Polarities in the Nuits: Anatomy of a Cure.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 20, nos. 1-2 (fall-winter 1991-92): 65-73.

In the following essay, Hamilton offers a psychoanalytic reading of Musset's Les nuits as poems based on the polarity of projected ego and anima.

Musset structures his series of lyrical poems as a dialogue between the Muse and the Poet and, in one instance, between the implied poet and his alter ego, “qui me ressemblait comme un frère.”¹ The two voices or roles in the poems are linked with Musset's “duality of temperament.”² In the Nuits, personality and biography lend themselves to his romantic technique of dédoublement, the projected splitting of self and the feeling that one contains dual and usually opposed identities.³ Polarity in the Nuits (1835-37) arises from the emotional aftermath of Musset's two-year love affair with George Sand that ended in March...