Poetry
Poetical Meditations
Méditations poétiques
Alphonse de Lamartine · 1820
Opening lines
Souvent sur la montagne, à l’ombre du vieux chêne,
Au coucher du soleil, tristement je m’assieds ;
Often on the mountain, in the shade of the old oak,
At sunset, sadly I sit down;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from fr.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Twenty-four poems, for the most part in alexandrines, combine the contemplation of nature, prayer and the memory of a lost love. In the most famous, Le Lac, the poet, alone by the water, asks the lake, the rocks and time to keep the memory of a happiness now past. Elsewhere, he speaks of isolation, of the falling evening, of faith and of death.
Context
The collection appeared without the author's name in March 1820 and immediately met with a success that led to many reissues. It is steeped in the memory of Julie Charles, a married young woman whom the poet had loved and whom he calls Elvire. It is regarded as the birth certificate of Romanticism in France: sincerity of personal feeling replaces conventional abstraction, and the landscape merges with emotion.
Who it is for
Short poems, mostly in alexandrines, which can be read separately and gain from being read aloud.
Prizes and reception
It brought French poetry into the Romantic era and left its mark on later generations, from Hugo to Baudelaire.
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