1786-1859.
Is still ranked well among the lyric poets of the first part of the century, though the celebrity that she enjoyed for a time has passed. Though her language still has a flavor of the eighteenth century, the note of emotion is direct and sincere. The theme that best inspired her was love—love betrayed and disappointed.
Works: Poésies, 1818; les Pleurs, 1833; Pauvres Fleurs, 1839; Contes en vers pour les enfants, Lyon, 1840; Bouquets et prières, 1843; there is a selection, with notice by Sainte-Beuve, with the title: Poésies de Madame Desbordes-Valmore.
For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii; Causeries du lundi, vol. xiv; Nouveaux lundis, xii; these notices are collected in a volume: Madame Desbordes-Valmore, sa vie et sa correspondance; Montesquiou-Fezensac, Félicité, étude sur la poésie de Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1894.
57. LES ROSES DE SAADI. Saadi (1195-1296) was a Persian poet; one of his works is the Gulistan, or Garden of Roses.
ALPHONSE-MARIE-LOUIS DE LAMARTINE. 1790-1869
The first great poet of the century and still one of the greatest. He passed a quiet youth in the shelter of home influences on his father's estate near Mâcon, receiving his most lasting impressions from his mother's instruction, from the fields and woods, and from certain favorite books, among which were the Bible and Ossian. This education was supplemented by a visit to Italy in 1811-12, memorable for the episode of Graziella, and a short service in the royal guards. His first volume, the Méditations poétiques (1820), was something entirely new in French letters and made him famous at once. These poems were saturated with the poet's personality and informed with his emotions; and to communicate his pervading melancholy he found the secret of lines which, while they did not yet have the color, brilliancy, and variety that the Romanticists presently gave to verse, charmed the ear with a harmony and a music unattained before. His long poems, with more or less of philosophical intention, especially Jocelyn (1836), are important works, but it was as a lyric poet that he made his chief impression.
Works: Méditations poétiques, 1820; Nouvelles Méditations, 1823; Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, 1830; Recueillements poétiques, 1839; Poésies inédites, 1839; Poésies inédites, 1873; republished under the same names in various collected editions of his Oeuvres since 1860.
For reference: Faguet, Études littéraires sur le dix-neuvième siècle, 1887; Sainte-Beuve, Premiers lundis, vol. i; Portraits contemporains, vol. i; F. Brunetière, Évolution de la poésie lyrique, vol. i; Histoire et littérature, vol. iii, 1892; F. Reyssié, la Jeunesse de Lamartine, 1891; E. Deschanel, Lamartine, 2 vols., 1893; J. Lemaître, les Contemporains, vol. vi, 1896; E. Zyromski, Lamartine poète lyrique, 1898.
58. LE LAC. Written September 17-23, 1817; from les Méditations poétiques. The lake here celebrated is Lake Bourget in Savoy. Here the poet met in 1816 Mme. Charles, wife of the well known physicist, with whom he fell very much in love and who is immortalized by him under the names Julie and Elvire. She died Dec. 18, 1817. Cf. Anatole France, l'Elvire de Lamartine, 1893. When this poem was written Lamartine already knew that she was hopelessly ill. This experience of his colors many poems of his first two volumes. Le Lac has often been set to music; most successfully by the Swiss composer Niedermeyer (1802-1861). For interesting variants in the text see Reyssié, la Jeunesse de Lamartine, p. 201.