Liebe! lehre uns beten, dass uns erhöre die Liebe.
O der Liebe vereintes Gebet ist Quelle der Liebe,
Quelle des ewigen Lebens und unaussprechlicher Wonne!
Schwester, rufe mir zu: "O Bruder! Bitten der Liebe
Sende dem Vater für mich—ich sende Bitten der Liebe
Täglich dem Vater für dich." O Schwester! der Bitten nicht eine
Kann an die Liebe, von Liebe, für Liebe umsonst seyn.
[5] Sources: Charles Eynard, Vie de Madame Krüdener, vols. i. and ii.; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de Femmes; Derniers Portraits; Deutsche Rundschau for November and December 1899.)
[IX]
LYRIC POETRY: LAMARTINE AND HUGO
When the Hundred Days were over, and Louis XVIII, had returned for the second time, a mixed feeling, in which melancholy was the chief ingredient, took possession of the French people. Their king's first return had partaken of the appearance of a recall by the nation. But, seeing that he himself had made no attempt whatever to resist Napoleon with the troops which remained faithful to him, it was not possible to disguise the fact that he had been brought back by the bayonets of foreign armies. Hence in the eyes of the great majority his second accession bore the appearance of a humiliation inflicted upon France. But, on the other hand, it meant the restoration of lawful liberty after the terrible military despotism under which France had now sighed for so many years.
To literature the restoration of the monarchy was, to all appearance at least, a herald of liberty. After the lapse of twenty-five years, free discussion of ideas was again possible. The heavy hand which had lain so crushingly on the press had been removed. The fettered intellects and suppressed ideas were free to bestir themselves; men were at liberty to investigate into and judge the past, the Empire as well as the Revolution; and no great hindrances were placed in the way of their deliberating the future of France.
They were free to do it, but had they any inclination? If they had, it was of the slightest. The mood of France was the mood which follows on a long illness or on a war which has ended in defeat. Not that men longed for redress on the field of battle. Towards the close of Napoleon's reign no echo was awakened in their hearts when the cannon in front of the Invalides proclaimed a victory. They longed for peace, as the sick man, exhausted by blood-letting, longs for rest.
To Frenchmen the idea of living a long, peaceful life once more became a familiar one. For years mothers had trembled when they saw their sons approaching the age of manhood, that is to say, the age at which they became first soldiers and ere long corpses; now they began to hope that these sons had a long life before them. The youths, to whom in their boyhood the rattle of drums and blare of trumpets had been familiar sounds, who even at school had accustomed themselves to the thought of early won honour and an early death, were now obliged to familiarise themselves with the idea of life in time of peace. The natural death to which they now looked forward seemed hideous in comparison with death as it had displayed itself to them heretofore, gloriously beautiful in the purple of victory; what was almost a feeling of disappointment came over them, and they began to brood. Most of the young men who had so long been forced to sacrifice their personal life to the life of the State, the requirements of war, the general aims of their country, welcomed with delight the news that they might break the ranks, and were no longer bound to walk in step behind the drum; they shook the dust of the highways off their feet, threw off their uniforms, and tried to banish every remembrance of military discipline. Coming straight from the battle-fields of the Empire, from the noise and bloodshed of war, they took refuge in the quietness of a country life, far from the bustle and uproar of human crowds. Such was the mood of the moment—a wearied, but complex mood. There was disappointment in it, and hope, and inclination to personal day dreaming. It was not a mood favourable to action, but to brooding, reflection, deliberation.
This national mood explains how it was possible for such poetry as Lamartine's Les Méditations to become the favourite literature of the day. No book since Chateaubriand's Génie du Christianisme had made such a sensation as did the First Part of this work; 45,000 copies of it were sold in four years. Strange as it may seem to us now, the Restoration period found in Lamartine's poetry an interpretation of its feelings and of all that moved its inmost heart—a picture of its ideal longings, painted in the clearest, loveliest dream-colours. It was poetry that resembled the music of an Æolian harp, but the wind that played upon the strings was the spirit of the age. The poems were not so much songs as reflections, not so much heart as spirit harmonies; but in real life there had for long been enough, and more than enough, of the positive—definite forms, decided characters, solid substance, silent acceptance of the strokes of fate. It was by no means considered a fault that there was no strong passion in the poems, no tendency to see the dark and dreadful sides of life, or, in fact, life as it is. There had been enough of all this in reality. After a period during which so many instincts had been forcibly suppressed, men rejoiced in this purely poetic instinct, in this most melodious poet, who had, as he himself said, a chord for every feeling and mood. They longed for just such lyric restfulness after philosophy, revolution, and wars without end. The poem Le Lac was read with delight by the whole French-speaking world, just because it was so long since men had felt in sympathy with nature, so long since they had looked at the face of the earth from any point of view but the tactical one. It was not only, however, as the poet of feeling that Lamartine represented the spirit of the day; he also represented it in his character of orthodox Christian. The leading note in his poetry was the note of Christian royalism, and devotion to the Bourbon family in particular.