Lamartine

Alphonse de Lamartine (Mâcon 1790 – Paris 1869) is considered to have renewed poetry at the beginning of the 19^thcentury. In both his Méditations poétiques (1820) and Harmonies poétiques ou religieuses (1830), he brings great sensibility to the themes of love, nature, death and faith; these troubled reveries on the human condition have left their mark on the whole of French lyric poetry since. Lamartine was also very active politically, which culminated in 1848 when he was named head of the provisional government following the fall of Louis-Philippe.

The execution of this portrait of Lamartine displays great finesse. The high forehead, the slight sadness expressed in the fold of his lips are all in keeping with the contemporary notion of what a great poet should look like. The swift, sure line emphasises the psychological depth of the sitter.

[…]
Alas! What of so long a life 
Is left when love’s no more? 
Just what dazzled eyelids keep
from the joys of days before!
What’s left unto the empty sail 
When the last billowing breeze 
Falls listless on the torpid wave,
What’s left to stalks of wild grain
After the storm’s swift wing
On the earth has spilled its seed!
And yet, must one go plodding on
To sleep and wake in turn,
Dragging on from dawn to dawn 
The reborn burden of each day?
Once the foaming cup of life 
Is drained until the dregs, 
Oh, to break it would be well! 
To hope and wait, yes, that is life! 
What use be there to count and trace
The days with nothing more to bring? 
So this is why my soul is sick
of the dreadful void that brims, 
Why my heart keeps turning overLike an invalid in his bed!
This is why my errant thoughts
Like the wounded dove,
Alight to rest nowhere,
Why I’ve turned my eyes away
From this thankless, barren Earth, 
And said at last: My God! 
[…]

Alphonse de Lamartine, « Pourquoi mon âme est-elle triste ? », Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, 1830`

Balzac writes of having spent, in March 1941, ‘a lovely evening with Lamartine, Hugo, Mme d’Agoult, Gautier and Karr, at the home of madame de Girardin; I’d not laughed so hard since the Mirabaud household.’ It is one of these receptions that Grandville illustrates, depicting the hostess amidst her guests. We may identify Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Franz Liszt, seen from the back, playing the piano. Relations between Balzac and Lamartine were thoroughly courteous, they exchanged several very friendly letters, however, their literary careers intersected hardly at all. In 1839 Balzac unsuccessfully pressed the poet to join a collective publication that would have brought together Hugo, Sand etc. Nonetheless, Lamartine was one of the four Academy members to support Balzac’s candidacy for the Académie Française in 1849, and César Birotteauis dedicated ‘To Monsieur Alphonse de Lamartine, from his admirer, Balzac.