Reading Order
Rolla Reading Order
Rolla (1833) by Alfred de Musset is one of the most famous and most controversial of his poems — a long narrative poem about Jacques Rolla, a young man who has spent three years dissolving his inheritance in dissipation in order to die on the night when he can no longer pay for it. On his last night alive, Rolla pays for one final night with Marie, a fifteen-year-old prostitute, and in the early morning, contemplating her sleeping innocence, he drinks poison. The poem is simultaneously an indictment of the Romantic generation's spiritual desolation (the famous opening passage, which develops the 'Rolla' diagnosis from Namouna, argues that Voltaire killed the God who made life meaningful and left the Romantic generation with nothing to believe in) and a lyric celebration of the beauty that persists in the midst of desolation — Marie's sleeping form as the last beautiful thing Rolla sees before he dies. The poem was controversial when published (George Sand defended it against conservative critics who objected to its subject matter) and is now seen as the defining text of French Romantic libertinage and its moral and aesthetic contradictions.
Where to start
Read the opening passage on Voltaire and the death of God first — it is one of the most famous passages in French Romantic poetry and establishes the argument. Then read the whole poem in order; the final scene with the sleeping Marie is the emotional center and only works after the opening establishes what Rolla has lost.
Complete Rolla Book List
- 1Buy
Rolla
Alfred de Musset·1833·Available in French in the Pléiade Poésies complètes and in various anthology collections. Seldom translated complete into English; selections appear in studies of French Romantic poetry. - Buy
Les Nuits
OptionalAlfred de Musset·1840·The lyric poems that develop the same spiritual desolation into an argument about art and suffering — the emotional sequel to Rolla.
Rolla — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the significance of the Voltaire passage in Rolla?
The Voltaire passage (Canto I, octaves 1-8) is the most famous passage in Rolla and one of the most quoted in French Romantic literature. It argues that Voltaire's critique of Christianity destroyed the God who gave European culture its metaphysical foundation, but that the Enlightenment left nothing to replace the destroyed foundation with: 'I came too late in a world too old / For me, born in a world without faith.' The argument is not that Voltaire was wrong but that he was right too destructively — that after the Enlightenment, the generation of 1830 inherited the ruins of the old faith without the possibility of genuine secular hope, because the Revolutionary idealism that might have replaced religious hope had been discredited by the Terror and Napoleon. Musset's position is not conservative nostalgia for religion; it is the diagnosis of a historical condition, the cultural orphan's lament for a home that no longer exists. The passage is the most direct statement of what he calls the 'sickness of the century' and became one of the defining self-images of the French Romantic generation.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.