The Poetry of Lamartine by Alphonse de Lamartine

First published:Poetical meditations, 1820; Poetic and Religious Harmonies, 1830; Jocelyn, 1836

Critical Evaluation:

As a young man, Lamartine’s first literary attempts were in the area of the epic and the drama. In 1848, after the Revolution of that year, Lamartine was made head of the provisional government of France. His liberal sympathies were known throughout the nation, and he was immensely popular. Yet it is neither as an epic poet, nor as a dramatist, nor still less as a politician that Lamartine is best known. His lasting fame has depended principally on his POETICAL MEDITATIONS, lyrical elegies about love and nature, life and God.

The French public had no doubts about the originality of the POETICAL MEDITATIONS when they first appeared in 1820. They had a resounding success; added to by Lamartine, they later ran into many editions. It is worth recalling that at this time, with the extension of public education, first by the men of the Revolution, then by Napoleon, it was possible to reach a much wider public than had ever before been the case. This factor needs to be cited in a consideration of the literature of the period. To a public living with the memory of Napoleonic splendor, yet tired of wars; with a great appetite for literature, while scarcely intellectual, Lamartine’s idealistic poetry of spirituality and sensibility appealed greatly.

By his dates, Lamartine may be situated among the French Romantics. In fact, his themes are the eternal themes of poetry, the prerogative of no single school. Moreover, the form of his poetry does not, at first sight, offer any noticeable break with the past. Yet by its lyrical qualities—its musicality and its intimate expression of deep, personal feelings—this verse must situate its creator in the vanguard of the French poets generally held to be Romantic.

The reputation of Lamartine has not remained constant. Toward the end of his life, poor and neglected, he wrote to make money and considered himself a galley slave of writing. One of the reasons for this neglect was the vogue, under Napoleon III, of the Parnassians, to the exclusion of others. In part, the Parnassians may be viewed as reacting against Lamartine, or at least against his example. Poetry, wrote Lamartine, is “the incarnation of that which is most intimate in man’s heart, and most divine in his thought.” This and many similar pronouncements must be held partly responsible for the chaos that marks the attempts at finding a Romantic doctrine in France. The best of Lamartine has been highly esteemed by many critics, granted grudging praise by others. Even that element often considered the greatest attribute of Lamartine’s poetry, its insubstantial, ethereal quality, has been deplored by those who long for high relief, color, precision, solidity.

The most famous of the Meditations is “The Lake.” It was originally entitled “Ode to the Bourget Lake.” This finest of love elegies seems to owe much, directly and indirectly, to Jean Jacques Rousseau. The theme of a return alone to a place filled with memories of love and happiness recalls THE NEW HELOISE by the eighteenth century writer. The direct inspiration for the poem, as for many in the collection, is Mme. Charles, the “Elvire” of the POETICAL MEDITATIONS. Lamartine had met her at Aix-les-Bains and immediately formed a very deep attachment for her. A proposed reunion between them did not take place because of her illness and death. “The Lake” was written before her death in December, 1817, when her illness prevented her from coming to meet the poet.

In this piece the writer has returned alone to the lake. He feels forlorn at the thought that his happiness, which had been of short duration, is already threatened. He cannot help expressing his anguish at the rapid flight of time:

Jealous time, can it be that these mo-ments of intoxicationWhen love pours happiness for us inlong draughts,Fly far from us with the same speedAs days of misfortune?

He wishes his love to be preserved at least as a memory. Aware of the transitory nature of all of man’s life, the poet implores the lake and its environs—those reflections of an unchanging, permanent nature—to be a temple to his love, a shrine which will forever contain the memory of it:

What! Gone for ever? What! Entirelylost?This time which gave them, which nowwipes them out,Will never give them back?O lake! Silent rocks! Caverns! Darkforest!You whom time spares or whom it canmake young again,Keep, fair landscape, keep at leastThe memory of that night!

The poem, rather than offering the thoughts and sentiments of one man, seems to express the eternal problems of all men, while appearing to make of them a unique experience. The themes, man’s awareness of the fragile and ephemeral character of happiness and his seeking of some consolation in nature, are to be found throughout the collection.

“Alone” is, after “The Lake,” one of the best known of the POETICAL MEDITATIONS. It was written shortly after the death of Mme. Charles and bears the direct, profound trace of the poet’s grief. His love for Elvire has been refined and purified by her death: it is now an ideal, spiritual love. His longing to be with her is associated with an aspiration to a higher reality, for he feels an exile on earth. Even nature cannot now console him:

What are they for me, these valleys,these palaces, these cottages,Vain objects which have lost the charmthey once had?Rivers, rocks, forests, once-cherishedsolitude,One person is missing, and the world isdeserted!

The emotion expressed here is anything but new to French poetry. By this time the laments and exaltations of sensitive souls in some nature setting were less than unusual. The secret of the beauty of the poem cannot therefore be found in the nature of the emotion expressed. Similarly, it is at first too hard to perceive any originality in the vocabulary or versification. The latter is quite regular; its only remarkable feature seems the frequency of perfect rhyme. The vocabulary involves a fair number of very conventional, classical periphrases and standard “poetic” words checked out from the classical armory. If one seeks an explanation in the person of the narrator or his mistress, it cannot be found; no telling detail reveals their appearance or character. Even the setting is so vaguely described as to be any one of countless sites having a lake, a river, mountains, and forests. If no color, sound, or person limits the poem to any one place, it is also impossible to say what time is being described, beyond an awareness that it is evening. In thus leaving his horizons wide open, Lamartine was running a considerable risk; by being so vague, he might very well have fallen into the danger of making his poem so imprecise as to be meaningless or unrecognizable. Instead, he has succeeded in revealing his setting as a state of mind of the person contemplating it. The reader fills in the scene for himself. By leaving it open, the poet is able to present memories of the past alongside a scene in the present, with a suggestion of a future life beyond this world. He is able to intermingle sadness with beauty and an aspiration to happiness. He suggests much more than he states or shows, and an impression of tenderness and sincerity arises from the work. The standard, regular form seems to underline this sincerity. Finally, by a remarkable deployment of alliterations and emotive words and phrases, Lamartine bestows upon this poem a free-flowing sound and movement strongly suggestive of the quaities of music. The techniques used in “Alone” are no different from those to be found throughout the POETICAL MEDITATIONS.

In other fine pieces from the POETICAL MEDITATIONS, Lamartine builds up an ambience rather than a view; “Immortality,” “The Valley,” and “Autumn” are only a few examples. In each, Lamartine proceeds by deft touches until the atmosphere has been diffused. The reader is then able to add to the scene by drawing upon his own background.

Like du Bellay, a spiritual if not a real predecessor of Lamartine, the author of the POETICAL MEDITATIONS lived for a time in Italy, as a representative of his country. It was in Florence, from 1826 to 1828, that he worked on the POETIC AND RELIGIOUS HARMONIES, which were published in 1830. Composed of forty-eight pieces, this collection contains some of the best of Lamartine, but is not perhaps so uniformly successful as the POETICAL MEDITATIONS of 1820. Running through the POETIC AND RELIGIOUS HARMONIES is a definite, spontaneous, religious ardor. Most of the poems are hymns of praise to God. In some there can be no doubt about the Christian inspiration. One of the finest examples is “Hymn to Christ.” Yet the reader comes away with the impression that Lamartine’s inspiration is perhaps less Christian than deistic or even Platonic. Although, unlike du Bellay, Lamartine seems to have enjoyed to the full his stay in Italy, one of the finest pieces in the collection, “Milly or the Native Land,” contains the poet’s affirmation of his preference for his humble village in France over the splendors of Italy.

JOCELYN is a long epic poem recounting the sacrifices and tribulations of a priest. The latter is scarcely orthodox. He is a practitioner of social Christianity, preaching by example, with sympathy for the spirit of the gospel, but little for Church pomp or literal dogma. Though there are magnificent descriptions of nature and rural life, the poem has many weaknesses.

It seems a pity that many imitations of Lamartine’s work by lesser poets have tended to detract from the original. Also, it is unfortunate that in defining poetry in a passive way, as something received, Lamartine seems to have helped the movement toward imprecision and verbiage that one finds in many writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. It is regrettable that in a large part of Lamartine’s work, looseness and inaccuracy are common. However, if this poet is granted the right extended to most, that only his finest works be considered in an evaluation of lasting value, his place among the most outstanding poets of the nineteenth century is by no means that of a usurper.

Lamartine’s poetry is both conventional and original. On the one hand a just comparison may be made with writers of a previous age. On the other hand, similarities between his poetry and that of Paul Verlaine are striking.