Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse de Lamartine, (born October 21, 1790, Mâcon, France—died February 28, 1869, Paris), French poet, historian, and statesman who achieved renown for his lyrics in Méditations poétiques (1820), which established him as one of the key figures in the Romantic movement in French literature. In 1847 his Histoire des Girondins became widely popular, and he rose to considerable political prominence in early 1848, when he led the Second Republic for a short time.

Early Life And Méditations Poétiques
His father, an aristocrat, was imprisoned during the culminating phase of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror but was fortunate enough to escape the guillotine. Lamartine was educated at the college at Belley, which was maintained by the Jesuits though they were suppressed in France at this time.

Lamartine had wanted to enter the army or the diplomatic corps, but, because France was ruled by Napoleon, whom his faithful royalist parents regarded as the usurper, they would not allow him to serve. Thus, he remained idle until the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814, when he served in Louis XVIII’s bodyguard. The following year, however, Napoleon returned from exile and attempted to rebuild his empire during the Hundred Days. Lamartine emigrated to Switzerland. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the second Bourbon Restoration, he abandoned the military profession.

Attracted to literature, he wrote some tragedies in verse and a few elegies. By this time his health was not good, and he left for the spa of Aix-les-Bains, where, in October of 1816, on the shore of Lake Bourget, he met the brilliant but desperately ill Julie Charles. Early in 1812 Lamartine had fallen deeply in love with a young working girl named Antoniella. In 1815 he had learned of her death, and later he was to recast her as Graziella in his prose “anecdote” of that name. He now became passionately attached to Charles, who, because of her vast connections in Paris, was able to help him find a position. After her death in December 1817, Lamartine, who had already dedicated many strophes to her (notably “Le Lac”), devoted new verses to her memory (particularly “Le Crucifix”).

In 1820 Lamartine married Maria Ann Birch, a young Englishwoman connected by marriage to the Churchills, and he finally joined the diplomatic corps, as secretary to the French embassy at Naples. That same year he published his first collection of poetry, Méditations poétiques, which became immensely successful because of its new romantic tone and sincerity of feeling. It brought to French poetry a new music; the themes were at the same time intimate and religious. If the vocabulary remained that of the somewhat faded rhetoric of the preceding century, the resonance of the sentences, the power of the rhythm, and the passion for life sharply contrasted with the often-withered poetry of the 18th century. The book was so successful that Lamartine attempted to extend it two years later with his Nouvelles méditations poétiques and his Mort de Socrates, in which his preoccupation with metaphysics first became evident. Le Dernier Chant du pèlerinage d’Harold, published in 1825, revealed the charm that the English poet Lord Byron exerted over him. Lamartine was elected to the French Academy in 1829, and the following year he published the two volumes of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a sort of alleluia, filled with deist—and even occasionally Christian (“L’Hymne au Christ”)—enthusiasm.

Later Life
A broken man, Lamartine entered the twilight of his life. He was 60 years old in 1850, and his debts were enormous, not because he had been personally extravagant but because of the allowances he gave his sisters to compensate for the total property inheritance he had received as the only male in the Lamartine family. For 20 years he struggled desperately, though in vain, against bankruptcy, publishing book after book: Raphaël, a transposed account of his love for Julie Charles; Les Confidences and Nouvelles Confidences, wherein he intermingled real and imaginary elements (Graziella is a fragment of it); the novels Geneviève (1851), Antoniella (1867), Mémoires politiques (1863), the last work being of great historical interest; a periodical titled Cours familiers de littérature (1856–1868/69), in which he published such poems as “La Vigne et la maison” and “Le Désert”; some historical works that remained unequaled, including Histoire des Constituants (1854), Histoire de la Restauration (1851–52), Histoire de la Russie (1855), and Histoire de la Turquie (1854–55). He died nearly forgotten by his contemporaries.

The Butterfly

Coming with the daffodils and dying with the roses,
Wafted by the zephyr's wing athwart the spaces high,
Lurking in the flower's bloom or e'er its breast uncloses,
Reeling with sweet draughts of scent, and light, and deep blue sky;
Shaking wide its dusty wings and like the breezes breasting
Burdenless and innocent the sky's eternal steep:-
Thus doth fare the butterfly like hope that never resting,
Rifles all but cannot quench desire that ever questing,
Bears it home to heaven again for lasting joy and deep.

Le papillon

Naître avec le printemps, mourir avec les roses,
Sur l’aile du zéphyr nager dans un ciel pur,
Balancé sur le sein des fleurs à peine écloses,
S’enivrer de parfums, de lumière et d’azur,
Secouant, jeune encor, la poudre de ses ailes,
S’envoler comme un souffle aux voûtes éternelles,
Voilà du papillon le destin enchanté!
Il ressemble au désir, qui jamais ne se pose,
Et sans se satisfaire, effleurant toute chose,
Retourne enfin au ciel chercher la volupté!

Alphonse de Lamartine, Nouvelles méditations poétiques