SOURCE: Le Vay, John. “Musset's ‘La Nuit d'octobre.’” The Explicator 57, no. 4 (summer 1999): 209-12.

In the following essay, Le Vay observes mythic patterns and imagery of rebirth and redeemed love in Musset's Les nuits poems.

According to myth, in the fall (October), Attis/Adonis is slain. He goes underground in winter (December), is reborn in spring (May), and attains heroic strength in summer (August).¹ There is something of that pattern in the four “Nights” (Les Nuits) of Alfred de Musset. But the May rebirth is abortive: “le printemps naît” (line 3), but the frozen poet remains in suspended animation: “who can write on the sand / in the teeth of the north wind?” (194-195).² December conforms to the underworld archetype, being dominated by a melancholic, ghostly visitant clad all in black. August begins with a lovelorn, girlish goddess and a world-weary, slightly patronizing poet who has not yet recovered the...