SOURCE: "Alfred de Vigny's Conception of Esthetics," in Symposium, Vol., XXIII, No. 3-4, Fall-Winter, 1969, pp. 265-276.

In the following essay, Gullace examines the tension in Vigny 's aesthetic between poetry as a means for philosophical inquiry and poetry as an expression of emotion.

The development of esthetic theory in France is to be credited more to the practitioners of the arts than to philosophers or critics. Poets and artists seem, in fact, to have expressed more penetrating views on the nature of artistic creation than did the builders of esthetic systems. Alfred de Vigny's is a case in point. Among the men of his generation he is perhaps the most deeply concerned with the essence and the function of art. While Lamartine, Hugo, and Musset wrote mostly by pure instinct, in Vigny poetic creation always was accompanied by a keen theoretical awareness.

Vigny, however, left no systematic treatise...