SOURCE: "Jesus as Romantic Hero: Le Mont des Oliviers," in The French Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 5, Spring, 1973, pp. 41-8.

In the following essay, Bishop defends the coherence of Vigny 's portrait of Christ in Le Mont des Oliviers, arguing that Christ in the poem shares the religious doubts of Vigny and his contemporaries as well as their continuing need to believe.

Alfred de Vigny's famous poem on Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane has recently been attacked in an interesting article by J. M. McGoldrick for its "utter confusion," its "organic disunity."¹ The problem according to McGoldric lies in the characterization of Christ. The image the reader receives of the Savior, he says, is that of a series of heterogeneous impressions rather than a coherent personality, and "The message expounded does not always grow out of the plot that is supposed to illustrate it" (p. 510). McGoldric focuses his...