Alfred de Vigny

He married a young English woman, Lydia Bunbury, in 1825 against the wishes of her father. The marriage, however, soured with time and the couple had no children. His wife became an invalid which further added to their domestic woes.

He became involved in a relationship with the great actress Marie Dorval. He was very possessive of her and this relationship was a stormy one.

In spite of his troubled marriage he lived with and cared for his ill wife till the very end. He experienced severe stomach pains during his later years and died on 17 September 1863, of what is believed to be stomach cancer, .

He was born on 27 March 1797 into an aristocratic family in Loches. His father, L�on Pierre de Vigny who was 60 years old at the time of Alfred’s birth, was a veteran of the Seven Years’ War. His mother, twenty years younger than her husband, was a strong-willed woman. He was their only son.

His mother took a keen interest in his education. He was brought up in Paris and he attended the �cole Polytechnique at the Lyc�e Bonaparte. His family, though aristocratic had lost much of its wealth during the French Revolution.

He harbored a dream of joining the military as a young boy. He also loved to read and write.

Since he was from an aristocratic background, he was made a second lieutenant in the king’s guard in 1814 when he was 17 years old. He was looking forward to a meaningful military career, full of exciting adventures. However, his work was limited to garrison duty and he got no chance to fight on the battlefield. This badly disillusioned him.

Bored with the military work, he had also started writing poetry in his free time. His first poem, ‘Le Bal’ was published in 1820, and a couple of years later he published a collection of verse titled, ‘Po�mes’.

In 1822, he was promoted to first lieutenant, and the next year, to the rank of captain. However, he was very disappointed with the military and started taking long leaves of absence to concentrate on his writing. He brought out an expanded version of ‘Poemes’, titled as ‘Po�mes antiques et modernes’ in 1826.

He published a historical novel, ‘Cinq-Mars’ in 1826 which was about the conspiracy of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars against the Cardinal de Richelieu. The novel was the first historical novel in French and was inspired by the works of Sir Walter Scott.

He was beginning to gain much fame as a writer and a poet, and thus he left his military career in 1827. An English theater troupe visited Paris the same year, rekindling interest in Shakespeare. Vigny translated some of the great playwright’s works and was inspired to start writing his own plays.

Known for his pessimism and meditative tone, Vigny’s best known work was the play, ‘Chatterton’, based on the tragically short life of the teenage English poet Thomas Chatterton. This play is considered to be one of the finest dramas of the French Romantic movement.