Alfred de Musset.

— Mr. Timothée Trimm published, in the Petit Journal of October 23, 1865, stanzas that one of his friends had presented to him as having been dictated mediumistically by Alfred Musset to a lady of his acquaintance, because the madness of Spiritism wins over even the friends of those gentlemen, who do not dare publicly to send them off to the asylum, especially when those friends are, as in this case, men of notable intelligence, placed at the head of the high artistic industry. No doubt out of consideration for that friend, he did not so greatly disparage the provenance of these verses; he contented himself with framing them within a fanciful, semi-burlesque staging. Among other things he said: “I invent nothing; I report. In a château in the outskirts of Paris, they had the author of Rolla and of The Cup and the Lips summoned… to a table. They asked for verses!!!… unpublished. A Spiritist secretary sat down at the enchanted desk; he says he wrote under the dictation of an immortal… and behold what he showed to the gathering.” In truth, these verses were not obtained in a château in the outskirts of Paris, nor by a table, but by ordinary writing; nor had they summoned Alfred de Musset. In the writer's eyes, the idea of bringing the poet to a table had, no doubt, something more trivial about it with respect to Spiritism. Here is how things came to pass. Mrs. X… is a woman of the world, educated like all those who have received an education, but absolutely not a poetess. She is endowed with a powerful mediumistic faculty, both psychographic and seeing, and on many occasions she has given irrefutable proofs of the identity of the Spirits who communicate through her. Having gone to spend the fine season with her husband, also a fervent Spiritist, in a little chalet amid the dunes of the Department of the Nord, one evening she found herself on her balcony, under a magnificent moonlight, contemplating the celestial vault and the vast expanse of the dunes, in a solemn silence interrupted only by the barking of the house dog, a circumstance worth noting, because it gives the verses a stamp of timeliness. Suddenly she felt herself agitated, as though enveloped by a fluid and, without any premeditated design, she was led to take up a pen; she wrote in a single burst, without erasure or hesitation, in a few minutes, the verses in question, with the signature of Alfred de Musset, of whom she absolutely was not thinking.

— We reproduce them in full. It was September 1, 1865.

Poor Spirit, here you are, thus, Contemplating the day and the night, at last, The mournful dune, Having naught to dispel your gloom, Save that dog who comes to howl In the light of the moon.

When I see you alone and astir, Raising toward the starry vault A moistened gaze, The sad days come back to my mind That I cursed without any hope Of finding aught.

As much as in you, I am sure of suffering, In flame within this immense desert My heart lies;

Like a pearl in the depths of the sea, A cry of the soul throughout the world I sought in vain.

To cool my burning head, Under the sky of Italy I traveled, Living thereafter;

Florence and Venice have seen me, Among maidens with bared bosoms, Filling my life.

At times the feeble fisherman, Seeing me, like a child, with grief, Weep on the shore, And halting, full of pity, Forgetting the nets that half The sea spreads wide.

Poor child, come unto us;

Setting him on his knees with tender voice He stems his weeping, We shall bear you off to your stroll In the lands full of fair recreation There where I dwell.

If in these verses for you thus, Still captive and despite myself This composition, It is for the learned who deeply mock, To bring from my soul of the other world, The signature.

A. de Musset. n

— In publishing these verses, the Petit Journal made several alterations that distort their meaning and lend themselves to ridicule. In the first stanza, 6th line, instead of: Au clair de lune, it put: Au clair de la lune, which mangles the line and renders it grotesque. The second stanza was suppressed, which breaks the chain of the idea.

In the third, 2nd line, instead of: Ce grand désert, which depicts the locality, it put: Le grand désert.

In the sixth, 5th line, instead of: Dans les terres pleines d'amour, which has meaning, it put: Dans les serres pleines d'amour, which has none.

These rectifications having been requested, it is regrettable that the Petit Journal refused to insert them. Yet the author of the article said: “I invent nothing; I report.”

— Apropos of the novel by Mr.

Théophile Gautier, entitled Spirite - Google books, the same Spirit dictated to the medium the following stanzas, on December 2, 1865:

Here I am once more. Though having, Madam, sworn to the gods that I would rhyme no more.

It is a most sorrowful office that makes one print The works of an author who now comes from beyond.

I went far away from you, yet, an affable Spirit Ventures to speak of us with a gracious smile.

I think that he knows more than is needful, And that he has found his own soul agreeable.

A soul from the other world! It is strange indeed;

I myself once laughed when I found myself there;

But on informing me that he did not believe, A merciful angel would have had me saved.

How I would have loved him, at evening, at the window, Resting upon my hand my pallid brow, When, in tears, probing that great perhaps, Roving through space upon its dazzling watercolor!

Friends, what do you expect of an age without belief?

When, then, you have squeezed out your fairest fruit, Man will always find his sepulchral refuge If, to sustain him, hope is defenseless.

But my verses, they will say, are not for them.

What does it matter to me, besides, the censure is vulgar!

With that, when I was alive, I would not concern myself;

Today, in the end, I would laugh, with all the more reason.

A. de Musset.

— Here is the opinion on these verses of one of the editors of the Monde illustré, Mr. Júnior, who is not a Spiritist. (See the Monde illustré of December 16, 1865).

“Mr. T. Gautier received from a lady a poem signed by Alfred de Musset, and which one might entitle: To a Spiritist lady, who had asked me for verses for her album. Evidently that lady claimed, since it is a matter of Spiritism, to have been the intermediary, the obedient medium, whose hand traced the verses, dictated by Alfred de Musset, dead now for some years. “Up to this point all is very simple, because, ever since one scrutinizes the infinite, all those who believe in Spiritism turn toward you and flood you with communications more or less interesting. But the verses signed by Musset are such that whoever traced them, man or woman, is a poet of the first order. It is Musset's manner, his enchanting language, his cavalier's ease, his charm and his graceful style. It is not excessive like pastiche, it is not intentional nor forced; and if you think that a master such as T. Gautier is mistaken, then the picture must be admirably imitated. The curious side of it is that the honorable Mr. Charpentier, publisher of Musset's complete works, to whom these enchanting verses were sent to read, which I hope soon to communicate to you, began to cry out: “Stop, thief!” You surely presume that I do not believe a single word of all that the Allan Kardecs and the Delaages narrate, but this troubles me and irritates me; I find myself constrained to suppose that these verses are unpublished, that they are by the poet of the Nights — which is quite admissible, because, after all, on what pretext would the lady in question have these verses in her drawer? — or else a legitimate poet would have invented this mystification, and poets do not lose their copies in this way. What, then, is the possible solution? — I hear from here a practical man saying to me: “My dear sir, do you want a solution? It lies in your imagination, which exaggerates the scope and excellence of these verses; they are pretty and nothing more; and the first somewhat pedantic medium who knows his Musset well will do as much.” Mr. Practical Man, you are right; this is the case in ninety-nine percent of instances. But if you knew to what degree I have my composure! I read these verses, but I still cannot show them to you; I read them, read them again still, and I assure you that Gautier himself, the great linguist, the great sculptor of the Poem of Woman, would not do a better Musset than this.” Observation. – There is one circumstance that the author does not take into account, and which removes any possibility that such verses might have been made by Musset during his lifetime: they are the topicalities and the allusions to present things. As for the medium, she is neither a poetess nor a pedantic woman and, moreover, her position in the world wards off any suspicion of fraud. [1]

[v. Alfred Musset.]