Alfred Musset's Nights, a landmark of French Romantic poetry, grew out of Musset's tempestuous relationship with George Sand, the novelist and feminist. Saint-Beuve, a critic who knew both Sand and Musset well, said of him: "That love was the great event in his life and I speak only of his life as a poet. his youthful talent was suddenly purified and ennobled." Sainte-Beuve said Musset's four Nights "mark the highest reaches of his lyrical gift." Now there is an English translation that does justice to the original.
