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.
To us, who are acquainted with a Lamartine in whom the Revolution of
1848 seemed to find its incarnation, a Lamartine who was universally
regarded as a prophet of humanism, it is of interest to examine the
poet's spiritual starting-point.
[Illustration: LAMARTINE]
Alphonse de Lamartine was born at Mâcon in 1790, of a family belonging
to the ranks of the lesser nobility. His father was one of the king's
last faithful adherents at the time of the Revolution, and suffered
for his devotion. Alphonse's loving, pious mother taught him to read
in an illustrated Bible. He thus received his first literary and
artistic impressions from scenes in the lives of the Patriarchs, the
stories of Joseph and Samuel, of Sarah, and of Tobias and the Angel.
After 1794 the family lived a very retired life upon small means on
their little property of Milly. The son was at first taught at home
by an amiable abbé, then sent to a school at Lyons, the rough, coarse
tone of which was terribly repellent to a boy of a naturally refined
disposition. By his mother's and his own wish he was removed to a
school at Belley, kept by certain Jesuits who had managed to elude the
laws banishing them from France, and who called themselves _Fathers of
the Faith_. Here young Lamartine felt himself inexpressibly happy. The
teachers were kind and refined; one of them reminded him of Fénélon;
in the present century the Jesuits are undoubtedly not only the most
unscrupulous, but also the most amiable, cleverest, and consequently
most dangerous of all ecclesiastics. Amongst his fellow-pupils
Lamartine soon found friends of his own standing, scions of French
and Sardinian noble families. Among these were a young Alfieri,
young Virieu, who, as V., plays a part in Graziella, and a nephew of
Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Vignet. Through de Vignet Lamartine made
acquaintance with all the members of the famous de Maistre family;
Count Joseph attracted him least as a personality, but influenced him
both by letters and by his works.
One day at Belley a master read some passages of Chateaubriand to the
boys. The grandeur and charm of the majestic style made the deepest
impression upon Lamartine, who had never heard anything like it before.
But he declares in his Memoirs that he almost immediately assumed a
critical attitude; he fell, he says, into a frenzy of admiration, but
"not into a frenzy of bad taste." And he maintains that he presently,
in talking to his comrades about the _Génie du Christianisme_, summed
up his objections in the following pronouncement: "The main element
in all perfect beauty, naturalness, is wanting. It is beautiful; but
it is too beautiful." In other words, Lamartine, who himself wrote so
instinctively, thought Chateaubriand's style strained. It is probable
that he slightly antedates this criticism. In any case his admiration
was such that as late as 1824, when hymning the consecration of Charles
X., he wrote:--
L'ARCHEVÊQUE.
Et ce preux chevalier qui sur l'écu d'airain
Porte au milieu des lis la croix du pélerin,
Et dont l'œil, rayonnant de gloire et de génie,
Contemple du passé la pompe rajeunie?
LE ROI.
_Chateaubriand!_ Ce nom à tous les temps répond;
L'avenir au passé dans son cœur se confond:
Et la France des preux et la France nouvelle
Unissent sur son front leur gloire fraternelle.
Tasso was another poet whom Alphonse read with enthusiastic admiration.
Ossian taught him that it is possible for true poetry to be vague and
misty. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, with his sweetness and his harmony,
was Lamartine's, as well as Madame de Krüdener's, favourite model.
Some of the entertaining and immoral books of the eighteenth century
which fell into the boy's hands delighted him, and excited his youthful
imagination for a short time, but these impressions were effaced by
those of the Jesuit school. A combination of religious enthusiasm and
delight in the freshness and beauty of nature purified his mind and
inspired it with activity.
"Were I to live a thousand years," he writes in his Memoirs, "I should
never forget those days of study, those hours of prayer, those nights
spent in meditation, and the raptures of joy with which I fulfilled my
duties, thinking all the time of God." And almost in the same breath
he tells of the bliss of skimming in winter on his skates across the
frozen marshes, as if borne on spirit wings, or of sitting under the
hornbeams in the mild, still spring air, lost in devotional feeling,
and happy in perfect peace of conscience.
The return of the Bourbons was hailed with rejoicing by the Lamartine
family, including Alphonse, now a young man. The father (who had
been wounded on the 10th of August 1792) conducted his son to Paris,
and had him enrolled in the King's Guard. It fell one day to the
young officer's lot to walk by the King's bath-chair, when he was
being wheeled through the galleries of the Louvre to inspect the art
treasures brought back by Napoleon from his various campaigns. The
profound reverence of the youth's own mind made him imagine Louis's
voice to be melodious, his person majestic and distinguished, his
glance commanding, his speech brilliant, his silence eloquent. Several
times after this the King addressed a few words to him when he was
riding by the side of the royal carriage.
When Napoleon had landed at Cannes and was making his triumphal
progress through France, Lamartine followed the Court to the Flemish
frontier; there the Guard was disbanded and sent home, and after
the Hundred Days Lamartine did not re-enter it, nor did he ever see
the King again. But when, in 1820, Louis read the first volume of
Lamartine's poems, he remembered their writer as a young officer of
his Guard, and sent him, by way of reward, an edition of the poets of
ancient Greece and Rome. Lamartine, apropos of this, makes the somewhat
hasty remark, that King Louis evidently looked upon himself as an
Augustus, who had discovered a Virgil.
The new poet openly proclaims himself to be a disciple of Chateaubriand
and Bonald. In his _Raphael_ (chap. 1.) he tells how he came to make
Bonald's acquaintance. When he was at Chambéry (in his twenty-fifth
year) worshipping the beautiful young Creole celebrated in his poems
under the name of Elvire, that lady asked him to write an ode to
Bonald, who was a frequent and honoured visitor at her house, Lamartine
informs us that all he then knew of Bonald was his name, and the halo
shed around it by its owner's fame as a Christian legislator. "I
imagined to myself," he says, "that I was addressing a modern Moses,
who derived from the rays of a new Sinai the divine light with which
he illuminated human laws." And so the ode which is to be found in the
first collection of Lamartine's poems under the title _Le Génie_ was
written. In it the young poet affirms--
Ainsi des sophistes célèbres
Dissipant les fausses clartés,
Tu tires du sein des ténèbres
D'éblouissantes vérités.
Par le désordre à _l'ordre_ même
L'univers moral est conduit.
Here, as everywhere, we come upon that meagre conception of
good--order. Bonald responded by sending Lamartine a complete edition
of his works. The poet read them with enthusiasm. In notes appended
to his ode at a later period he denies that they made any really
profound impression on him; but he is confusing his earlier with his
later conviction. He writes: "I read these works with that poetical
enthusiasm for the past and that emotional reverence inspired by
ruins which youthful imagination so easily transforms into dogma and
doctrine. For some months I tried to believe, on the authority of
Chateaubriand and Bonald, in revealed governments; but in my case,
as in other people's, the tendency of the day and the development of
human reason dispelled these beautiful illusions, and I comprehended
that God reveals nothing to man but his social inclinations, and that
the various systems of government are revelations of the age, of
circumstances, of the vices and virtues of humanity." It is certain
that Lamartine considerably antedates this conviction of his. All
the _Méditations_ are in the same tone as the ode to Bonald. The
one entitled _Dieu_ is dedicated to Lamennais, the dithyramb on the
subject of sacred poetry to Genoude, the translator of the Bible.
Lamartine himself wrote for _Le Conservateur_, a newspaper from the
first appearance of which Chateaubriand dated the pronounced European
reaction; and when this paper was given up, he, along with Lamennais
and Bonald, started a new one on the same lines, _Le Défenseur_, the
special aim of which was to oppose constitutional government. It fell
to Lamartine's lot to solicit a contribution from Joseph de Maistre. It
is significant that our poet, who by this time was aged thirty, should
write to the author of _Du Pape_ in such a tone as this: "Monsieur le
Comte! At the time I received your book and your kind and flattering
letter, I was very ill. I employ my earliest returning strength to
thank you for both, but specially for the honour you do me in calling
me nephew, a title of which I boast to all who know you. It is a title
which in itself is a reputation, in such estimation is your name held
by all those who in this misled and contemptible age understand true
and profound genius. M. de Bonald and you, Monsieur le Comte, and one
or two others who at a distance follow in your steps, have founded an
imperishable school of high philosophy and Christian politics, the
influence of which is steadily increasing, especially among the younger
generation."
In this same letter Lamartine defines Joseph de Maistre's position in
literature to be that of leader of the best writers, and attributes
the antagonism to him to "that absurd Gallican presumption" which De
Maistre has discountenanced in a manner worthy of all admiration.
Lamartine, thus, unmistakably favours the unlimited ecclesiastical
authority of the Pope--but, note well, only in theory. In his poetry
he is not nearly so dogmatic. When, for example--responding to
Chateaubriand's appeal--he considers it his duty, as a Christian poet,
to drive heathen mythology out of poetry, it is not really a pious, but
an artistic instinct by which he is inspired. The old myths had, as far
as lyric poetry was concerned, long ago dwindled into mere allegories
or paraphrases, things far too vapid to have an injurious effect upon
any one's religion. A crusade against faith in Apollo and Amor was a
perfectly unnecessary undertaking.
Lamartine's influence was due to the fact that he uttered, now the sad,
now the comforting, now the inspiring words which thousands craved to
hear. They did not feel the want of new thoughts in his utterances;
they were moved by the sound of his sympathetic voice. They felt
once more vibrating within them fibres which, during the period of
universal depression, had been completely benumbed; he conjured tones
from strings which had long given forth no sound; and men delighted
in the novelty which consisted in a revival of old memories. But,
besides all this, there was one really new element. For Lamartine the
ugly and the bad, nay, even the petty and the mean, did not exist. He
clothed everything in a garment of shining light. There was a heavenly
radiance over his poetry. For the first time for long years, a wealth
of beautiful feeling found expression in melodious verse.
The great naturalist Cuvier, in his speech on the occasion of
Lamartine's reception into the Academy in 1830, declared that men,
in the profound obscurity which surrounds their reason, require a
leader who can snatch them out of the black perplexity of doubt and
draw them along with him into the region of light and certainty. He
accused Byron of having seen nothing in the universe but a temple for
the God of evil, and greeted Lamartine as the poet of hope. Thus did
France, like some poor creature recovering from a dangerous illness,
confuse hope with belief, comfort with dogma, vital energy with
determined vindication of Papal authority--until at last the force of
circumstances dispelled the mist, and forced men of letters as well as
the general public to adopt definite standpoints.
Even later than this, Lamartine was still the man of the period. Only
four months before the outbreak of the Revolution of July, a eulogium
of Daru is prescribed as the theme of his oration before the French
Academy. He accomplishes the feat of pronouncing it without naming
Napoleon's name; and he says frankly: "This century will be dated from
our double restoration of lost blessings, the restoration of liberty
by the throne and of the throne by liberty.... Let us not forget that
our future is inseparably bound up with that of our kings, that it
is impossible to separate the tree from its root without drying up
the trunk, and that in our country it is monarchy which has borne
everything, even the perfect fruit of liberty."
Lamartine now enjoys a period of triumph, the period of budding fame.
Fame did not come to him early, for he was thirty years old; but it
penetrated like the first rays of the rising sun into his ambitious
soul. Let us picture to ourselves a salon in the days of Louis XVIII,
as described by writers of the day. About a hundred persons are
assembled in a suite of drawing-rooms in the house of some important
personage, say General Foy. Lamartine, then an attaché of the embassy
in Florence, but for the moment in Paris on one of his short visits, is
among the invited guests.[1] A movement of admiration passes through
the assembly as he enters--young, erect, handsome, aristocratic in
mien and bearing. A crowd, chiefly of ladies, gathers round him; he is
conscious of charming faces, splendid toilettes, smiles and flattery on
every side. People forget for a moment to offer their congratulations
to the deputies present on their last speeches. Even those who have not
seen Lamartine before know him at once, for he outshines all. General
Foy goes up to him, enthusiastically presses his hand, and assures him
that it is in his power, whenever he chooses, to become an ornament
of the Chamber, which has long stood in need of just such a talented
champion of the sacred principles of royalty. Then Lamartine, in the
melodious voice which as yet has never uttered a political catchword,
repeats one or two of his first poems--_L'Enthousiasme, Souvenir, Le
Désespoir, La Prière, La Foi_, or some such reflective pieces--thereby
producing boundless ecstasy, and calling forth outbursts of every
shade of enthusiasm and gratitude. Benjamin Constant comes up with
his impenetrable, solemnly ironic mien, congratulates him on having
discovered this new fountain of poetical inspiration, and assures him
that he knows of no such loftiness and purity of thought and expression
except in Schiller's reflective poems. The ladies are of opinion that
this comparison is very flattering indeed to Schiller, an unknown
German bourgeois poet, whose name they just remember having heard. What
is he compared with Lamartine!
Various circumstances contributed to heighten the effect produced by
the poems themselves--in the first place, the uncommon and almost
feminine personal beauty of their author; in the second, the rumours
in circulation regarding the lady whose praises were sung with such
seraphic enthusiasm, such supernatural purity. It was reported that the
poet had loved, and that death had deprived him of the object of his
affections. Much trouble was taken to discover the actual circumstances
of the case. Who was this Elvire? What was her real name?
We of to-day have been sufficiently enlightened by Lamartine's own
later prose works, but with the satisfaction of curiosity on this
subject interest in Lamartine's lyric poetry is not extinguished.
It was natural that the contemporaries of the youthful Lamartine should
see in him first and foremost the poet of the throne and the altar.
His earliest published poem was a heart-felt expression of gratitude
to the Jesuit school which had sheltered him in his boyhood. Such
a poem as his Ode was simply the essence of Chateaubriand's _Génie
du Christianisme_ versified. His lines on the birth of the Duke of
Bordeaux (Comte de Chambord), after the death of his father, the Duc
de Berry, with their refrain: "He is born, the miraculous child!"
expressed the feelings of the most loyal Catholics. And on every
occasion, in almost all of the poems, he lauds and magnifies, justifies
and adores God, Providence. At times, as for instance in the poem _La
Semaine Sainte_, written during a visit to the young Duc de Rohan,
who later in life became an archbishop and a cardinal, his verse is
almost like a fervently devotional burning of incense. If he is to be
taken at his word when he asserts, in writing of this poem many years
afterwards, that he alone, among the young men who gathered round the
Duke, had no relish whatever for the church's mystic joys, all we can
conclude is that his poetic talent was carried away by the current of
the tendency of the day.
Most of the purely religious poetry of Lamartine's youthful period
is, from its want of simplicity and real feeling, almost unreadable
nowadays. It is not lyric; it is not concise; it is reflection without
matter, meditation without thoughts, breadth without depth. A good
example is the poem dedicated to Byron, entitled _L'Homme_. The French
poet's conception of his English contemporary is the traditional,
stereotyped, inexpressibly silly one of the day, namely, that he
touches only the chords of despair, that his eye, like Satan's, fathoms
abysses, &c. To show Byron how the true poet ought to sing, Lamartine
strikes up the most servile hymn of praise to a God who, he himself
tells us, plagues, tortures, plunders, overwhelms with misfortune and
misery, and concludes with the exhortation:
Jette un cri vers le ciel, ô chantre des enfers!
The notes appended at a later period to this poem betray an astonishing
ignorance of Lord Byron's history; almost everything affirmed of him is
incorrect. Though Lamartine added a poem to Child Harold, he never so
much as learned to spell the name correctly.
The same admonitory tone which he here assumes towards Byron he adopted
many years later in writing of Alfred de Musset, to whom he also
offered pious and moral truisms as medicaments.
The piety which Lamartine felt in duty bound to display is less
offensive, because more sincere, in the ode entitled _L'Immortalité_.
This poem is addressed to the beloved of his youth, Elvire, whose
scepticism was a great grief to him, and its aim is to comfort her
on her death-bed with the prospect of an immortality in which until
now she has refused to believe. But even here we have such frigid
allegorical ideas as: "And Hope, standing by thy side, O Death!
dreaming upon a grave, opens to me a fairer world."
In only one of the poems which invoke the Deity is Lamartine really
the lyric poet and not merely the fluent verse-writer, namely in _Le
Désespoir_, a Meditation which expresses revolt against our idea of
God. In this poem we have rhythmic flow, passion, and two qualities
rarely found in Lamartine's productions--vigour and conciseness. What
has God seen since the creation of the world?
La vertu succombant sous l'audace impunie,
L'imposture en honneur, la vérité bannie;
L'errante liberté
Aux dieux vivants du monde offerte en sacrifice;
Et la force, par-tout, fondant de l'injustice
Le règne illimité.
And in its original form the poem contained verses, suppressed at the
time of publication, which expressed sentiments far more bitter and
impious than these. It is characteristic that almost immediately after
the appearance of _Le Désespoir_, Lamartine, at his mother's request,
refuted the ideas it expressed in a reply-poem, _Dieu à l'Homme_,
which, though not wanting in melodious sonority, is, as even its author
perceived, not to be compared with the first. The first, he himself
correctly observes, is the product of inspiration, the second of
reflection.
But all the theological trappings were, as one might say, only glued on
to Lamartine's poetry. Or one might perhaps with more propriety liken
them to a carelessly constructed raft, which for a time floats upon the
bosom of the stream and then breaks up into its component parts and
disappears. All this pious dogmatism soon resolved itself into love of
nature, worship of nature, a sincerely religious philosophy of nature.
What really lived and breathed in those early poems was something
independent of their religious dogmatism, namely, the whole emotional
life of a gentle, yet dignified soul. The soul which found expression
in them had this characteristic of the new century, that it loved
solitude, and only in solitude found itself and felt itself rich.
It was an unsociable soul, only disposed to vibrate in harmony with
nature. It was sad and pathetically earnest; under no circumstances
whatever cheerful or gay. And, finally, it was never erotic; one only
of the poems was an expression of the happiness of satisfied love; the
feeling pervading all the rest was sorrow over the loss of the loved
one, whom death had claimed as his prey. The poetry of the eighteenth
century had resolved love into gallantry, had taken neither it nor
woman seriously, but in this new poetry love was the silent worship of
a memory, and woman was adored and glorified as she had been in the
days of the Minnesingers; only now it was woman as the departed one, as
the spirit.
Never did Lamartine depict the wild grief of loss at the moment of the
loss; in his poems grief has become a condition, a silent despair which
blunts, stiffens, tortures, and at a rare time dissolves into tears.
This new song was song which flowed naturally from its fountain,
plentiful and pure; it was music like harp-strains blended with the
tones of celestial violins. And, borne on these tones, simple, familiar
emotions communicated themselves to the reader's mind, such thoughts
as that of the poem _La Retraite_--happiness awaits me nowhere; or of
_L'Automne_--nature's autumnal mourning garb harmonises with my sorrow
and is pleasant to my eyes; or of _Le Golfe de Baya_--this spot, once
the scene of such great events, preserves not a trace of them; in like
manner we ourselves shall disappear, leaving no trace behind. But,
note well; a thought like this last was expressed in such wonderfully
beautiful lines as the following:
Ainsi tout change, ainsi tout passe;
Ainsi nous-mêmes nous passons,
Hélas! sans laisser plus de trace
Que cette barque où nous glissons
Sur cette mer où tout s'efface.
There was never any systematic description of nature, or any attempt
at painting; the momentary impression of nature was caught, even as it
passed, by genius, and preserved for all time.
The poet is sitting at evening on the bare mountain side. Venus rises
above the horizon (_Le Soir_). A ray from the star seems to glide
across his brow and touch his eyes, and he feels as if the departed
one, in whose companionship he had lived here, were hovering near him.
He addresses the ray from Venus:
Mon cœur à ta clarté s'enflamme,
Je sens des transports inconnus,
Je songe à ceux qui ne sont plus:
Douce lumière, es-tu leur âme?
Or, sitting on a rock by the lake (_Le Bourget_), where in bygone
happy days he had sat by her side, he is painfully affected by the
feeling of the mutability of everything human as compared with the
unchangeableness of inanimate nature. This is the emotion to which
he gives expression in his poem _Le Lac_, which, in spite of its
extraordinary popularity, is probably the best he ever wrote. It is
an excellent type of his poetry; flowing gently, with no exertion
perceptible, not even that exertion which we call art, it is as
naturally melodious as the rippling of the lake. The emotion which
the poet desires to express is indicated with admirable precision in
the metaphor with which the first verse concludes: Is it impossible
to cast anchor on the ocean of time even for a single day? The lake
is described with its waves breaking upon the rocks as they did a
year ago, when the beloved one heard their murmur; and the bereaved
lover recalls the words which she spoke in the stillness of night, as
their boat floated on the waters--an invocation to time, that happy
time, to stay its flight, a prayer to it to hasten for the unhappy
and suffering, but to linger with those who love and are beloved.
He repeats her concluding cry: Prayer is fruitless; let us love one
another and enjoy the passing hour! For man there is no haven, time
has no shore; it flows on and we disappear. On this memory of the
thoughts of his dead love follows the poet's own invocation to nature.
He invokes the lake, the silent rocks, the caves, the dark woods, the
things which time spares and those which it re-animates, and beseeches
them to preserve the remembrance of that night.
And Lamartine, so spiritual in his expression of the grief and
loneliness of the bereaved lover, is almost as spiritual when for
once he gives expression to happy love. This he does in _Chant
d'amour_, a poem which he himself naïvely describes as a modern Song
of Solomon, quieter in tone and less Oriental in colouring than the
old, but which in reality has as little resemblance to that song as
the chastest spirituality of the West has to the glowing sensuality of
the East. Here, as elsewhere, the chord which he touches is the chord
of plaintive tenderness, gradually modulating into that of religious
devotion.
Of Lamartine's youthful verse these purely human poems are all that
we really care for nowadays. We are terribly bored by the vapid
compositions which, following the prescribed rule for religious poetry,
consist of nothing but adoration of the Deity as he reveals himself in
his works.
The poet whose acquaintance we make in the human poems is unmistakably
very vain, much engrossed with himself and his own lovableness, and at
times too honeyed in his language. But his vanity is so childlike and
innocent that it does not affect us unpleasantly; and we are favourably
impressed by the fact that it is not literary vanity. Lamartine
rejoices that he is good-looking, a favourite with distinguished women,
a good horseman, in course of time an eloquent orator; but he is not
conceited about his poetical gifts, not even proud of them. The man
whose talent was that of the true improvisatore with proud humility
describes himself in his prefaces and memoirs as one who cultivates
art for his pleasure, and who does not belong to the number of the
specially initiated. And he really is the dilettante in so far as he is
too careless to be called a true artist. He has unconscious technique,
he has flexibility and ease, but along with these an inclination to
long-windedness and repetition which at times spoils his effects, and
a want of the power of self-criticism which makes it difficult, nay,
almost impossible, for him to correct and improve. Nevertheless, all
his life long he was a poet, a true poet--in spite of his artistic
defects one of the most genuine whom France has produced. It was
not his fault that he made his appearance in literature under the
unpropitious planet of the reaction period.
It was under the influence of the same planet that the man destined to
become the most famous French poet of the nineteenth century won a name
for himself. Victor Hugo, born in 1802, is for a long period of his
life as good a Catholic and royalist as Lamartine, his senior by twelve
years. Hugo's literary career corresponds closely with the political
career of the French nation. He is an adherent of the Bourbons as
long as they are the reigning family. When the Revolution of July
takes place, he sympathises with it, and he is an adherent of the
new monarchy from the moment it is founded. During the reign of King
Louis Philippe, at whose court he is a frequent guest, he becomes an
enthusiastic eulogist of Napoleon when the cult of Napoleon is revived
in France. He warmly supports the candidature of Louis Napoleon for the
post of President of the Republic, continues to lend him his support
when he occupies that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an
empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician estranges
him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the _coup d'état_
drives him into the camp of the extreme Republicans. His life may be
said to mirror the political movements of France during the first half
of the century. He was, as is so often the case with poets, not a
leading spirit, but an organ.
In the last preface to his _Odes et Ballades_ Hugo, in his pompous
manner, writes of his own career: "History goes into ecstasies over
Michel Ney, who, born a cooper, became a marshal of France, and over
Murat, who, born an ostler, became a king. The obscurity of their
origin is considered to give them an additional claim to respect, and
to add to the glory of the position to which they have attained. Of
all the ladders which lead from darkness to light, the one which it is
most difficult and most meritorious to mount by is undoubtedly that
which leads from the position of loyal aristocrat to that of democrat.
To rise from a hut to a palace is, no doubt, an uncommon and admirable
achievement, but to rise from error to truth is more uncommon and more
admirable. In the case of the first ascent, the man gains something,
increases his comfort, his power, his wealth, with every upward step;
in the case of the second, exactly the opposite happens ... he must
pay for his spiritual growth with one sacrifice of temporal well-being
after another ... and if it is true that Murat could with pride lay his
postillion's whip beside his sceptre, saying: 'This is what I began
with,' then certainly the poet may with more justifiable pride and
greater inward satisfaction point to the royalist odes which he wrote
as a child and youth, and lay them beside the democratic poems and
works which he has written as a grown man. And the pride is perhaps
especially justifiable in one who at the end of his ascent, on the
topmost step of the ladder of light, has found banishment, in the man
who can date this preface from exile."
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO]
Victor Hugo was the son of one of Napoleon's officers who had
originally been a violent revolutionist, and as such had exchanged
his Christian name, Joseph, for that of Brutus, which, however, he
dropped again when the Revolution was at an end. Joseph Hugo was at
Besançon, in command of a battalion, when his famous son was born. A
few weeks later he was sent to Corsica. From Corsica he was transferred
to Elba, thence to Genoa and the Italian army. He entered the service
of Napoleon's brother Joseph when Joseph became King of Naples, and
at Naples his wife and children joined him in October 1807. When in
1808 Joseph was made King of Spain, Colonel Hugo followed him to that
country, sending his wife and three little sons to Paris, where they
lived from 1808 till 1811. In the spring of 1811 they accompanied a
strong detachment of troops to Madrid, but Hugo thought it prudent
to send them back to Paris in the following year, while he himself,
who had been promoted with extraordinary rapidity to be aide-de-camp
to the King, major-domo of the palace, general, Count of Cisuentes,
inspector-general of the Peninsular army, and governor of three
provinces, took part in the war until the defeat of Vittoria, in June
1813, obliged Joseph to abdicate. Napoleon, who could not bear General
Hugo, and always treated him badly, refused to confirm his appointment
as general and his title as count (his other preferments he had lost),
and ordered him to enter the French army again with the rank of major.
In 1814 and 1815 Joseph Hugo distinguished himself by his able defence
of the fortress of Thionville. His son writes of him as if he had been
an ardent votary of Napoleon. This he most certainly was not, and when
the Bourbons returned they at once gained his complete allegiance by
restoring him to his rank of general, with promotion dating from 1809,
the year in which he had received it from King Joseph. Thus it was not
only Victor Hugo's mother, the daughter of a loyal shipowner of the
Breton town of Nantes, who was a devoted royalist; his father, too,
was strongly attached to the restored royal house. Causes entirely
unconnected with politics produced a misunderstanding between the
parents, and they separated. The sons, Abel, Eugène, and Victor,
remained with their mother in Paris.
All three possessed literary ability, though only the youngest lived
long enough to display his full power and win fame. All three were, to
begin with, champions of royalty and the church. Victor said as a boy:
"I will be Chateaubriand, or no one."
After winning prizes for their poems in Paris and at Toulouse, the
three brothers, with the view of earning a living, started a literary
periodical (in 1819). Chateaubriand was at this time editing the
extreme Conservative newspaper _Le Conservateur_. The brothers named
their venture _Le Conservateur littéraire_, and Chateaubriand gave it
a warm welcome. The new periodical came out twice a month until March
1821, and Victor Hugo alone supplied more poems and articles than all
the other contributors together. In _Le Conservateur littéraire_ are
already to be found some of his most famous odes--_Les Vierges de
Verdun_, the odes on the fate of La Vendée, on the death of the Duke
of Berri, on the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux, and the beautiful,
more personal song of rejoicing on the occasion of the restoration of
the statue of Henry IV. And in it we also find, to the number of over
a hundred, his first essays in criticism, of which only a few, and
these much tampered with, have been included in the collection entitled
_Littérature et Philosophie mêlées_.
At this period poetry is to Victor Hugo the daughter of religion.
Apropos of an ode on the existence of God, he writes: "The desire to
thank a bountiful God in language worthy of Him begat poetry. From its
birth it shared in the triumphs of religion, which united the earliest
societies and began the civilisation of the world. At the present day,
when, in order to demolish society, men attack religion, the only
bridle upon man, the only lasting tie which holds societies together,
it is not surprising that they should seek to make an ally of poetry.
But the divine muse does not allow herself to be inspired by that which
is nought."
And at this period, too, he proclaims the superiority of Corneille
and Racine to Shakespeare and Schiller: "We have never understood
the difference alleged to exist between classic and romantic art.
Shakespeare's and Schiller's dramas differ from Corneille's and
Racine's only in being more faulty."
The first edition of Victor Hugo's _Odes_ appeared in 1822. Louis
XVIII., who read them over and over again, settled an annuity of 1000
francs a year on the poet out of his private purse; in the following
year the Ministry of the Interior conferred on him a pension of 2000
francs; and in 1826 the King, on being applied to, increased the amount
of his yearly grant.
The King had good reason to show approval, for these first poems
of Victor Hugo contain the whole system of orthodox political and
religious principles valid under the Bourbon monarchy. They are a
faithful image of the period during which they were written.
They pass in review the history of France from 1789 to 1825. In
those of them which treat of the Revolution we observe, as in the
corresponding poems by Lamartine, that two words occur more frequently
than any others--executioners and victims. In the history of the
Revolution Hugo sees nothing else. For its leading spirits he has but
this one designation--executioners; the Convention he describes as a
creation of the devil (livre i. ode 4); and, little as he loves heathen
mythology, he cannot resist using the expression, _Hydra_ of anarchy,
when he wishes to depict the horrors of the revolutionary period. For
the enemies of the Revolution victims is the stereotyped designation;
the revolt of La Vendée is eulogised in every second poem, and odes
are addressed to its heroes and heroines (_La Vendée, Quiberon,
Mlle. Sombreuil_). The guillotine is always present to the poet's
imagination, and is the constant object of his anathemas, except when,
as in the ode _Le Dévouement_ (livre iv. ode 4), he is carried away to
the extent of desiring martyrdom for himself, "because the martyrs'
angel is the most beautiful of all the angels who bear the souls of men
to heaven."
Following in the footprints of Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo goes back
to the Christian martyrs of ancient Rome, and in no fewer than four
odes (_Le repas libre, L'homme heureux, Le chant du cirque, Un chant
de fête de Néron_) describes the agonising triumph of the martyrs over
the brutal and voluptuous cruelty to which they in outward appearance
succumb. And the symbolism, too, is the same as in Chateaubriand's
poetry; it is the death of the orthodox noble or priest which is
represented under the form of the butcheries of the circus.
One of the finest of these poems of the Revolution is the oldest,
written in memory of a little company of innocent young girls who,
under the Reign of Terror, were executed after a long imprisonment
without being brought to trial, on the vague and incorrect suspicion
that they had testified pleasure when the Prussians entered their town
(_Les vierges de Verdun_). Hugo paints the tribunal of the Convention
blacker than is necessary, by crediting the public prosecutor,
Fouquier-Tinville, with impure designs upon his victims and putting
insulting proposals into his mouth; but even without the addition of
unhistorical incidents, the sentence of these girls was so shameful,
their fate so tragic, and their behaviour so beautiful and dignified,
that they well deserved a poetic monument, even a better one than Hugo
raised to them.[2]
The poet's pathos is entirely justifiable in cases like this, where the
Revolution showed its dark and unjust side in its dealings with youth
and innocence, but it becomes grating and false as soon as his dogmas
come into play. His tone in writing of the monarchy and the glories
of royalty is positively insufferable. In the Ode to Louis XVIII.
God calls upon the seraphs, the prophets, and the archangels to do
obeisance to the newly arrived heir to the throne: "Courbez-vous, c'est
un Roi." And not content with this, the Deity Himself calls him by his
title, not his name: "O Roi!" and reminds him that _God's own Son was,
like him, a king with a crown of thorns_. In the poem on the occasion
of the baptism of the Comte de Chambord, the language is even stronger:
"God has given us one of His angels, _as He gave us His Son in the days
of old_." We are reminded that the water of the river Jordan (brought
home by Chateaubriand) in which the child has been baptized is the same
in which Jesus was baptized; it is the will of Heaven, we are told,
"that the reassured world should, even by the very water used for his
baptism, recognise a _Saviour_." In _La Vision_ the eighteenth century
is summoned before the judgment-seat of God, and there accused of
having in the pride of its knowledge mocked at the dogmas which are the
support of the law and of morality. It timidly expresses the hope that
the future will view its actions in a more favourable light, but it is
mercilessly condemned; the "guilty century" is plunged into the abyss,
pursued as it falls by the inexorable voice of the judge.
The standpoint from which Napoleon (who is always called Buonaparte)
is viewed harmonises with that from which the Revolution is judged;
he is the usurper, the savage soldier, the murderer of Enghien; and
again and again it is impressed on us that lilies are better than
laurels. Under the name of Colonel G. A. Gustaffson (livre iii. ode
5), Gustavus IV., who lived as an exile in France during the reign of
Louis XVIII, is eulogised as the representative of the fallen kings.
The personality and story of Gustavus are represented in a manner which
witnesses to Hugo's remarkable ignorance of foreign history--the king's
whole life is a model life; his great mind is like a temple, whence
proceeds the voice of God; he dictates the history of the future; he is
the successor of the ancient seers; actuated by disgust at seeing the
monarchs bow their necks to Napoleon's yoke, he has voluntarily taken
off his crown, and thereby raised his head high above all the other
royal heads on earth. Could folly go farther than this? The wretched,
insane Gustavus a model king! The Bourbons are of course exalted to
the skies. All their family events--birth, baptism, death, ascension,
consecration--are treated as of world-wide import. In a poem on the
subject of the reprehensible war which France, at Chateaubriand's
instigation, carried on with Spain in the interests of the European
reaction, royalty, the royal power, is declared to be miraculous; and
in the same poem the king is expressly described as the war-lord,
supporting himself by the power of the sword; war is, we are told, the
companion of royalty:
Il faut, comme un soldat, qu'un prince ait une épée;
Il faut, des factions quand l'astre impur a lui,
Que, nuit et jour, bravant leur attente trompée
Un glaive veille auprès de lui;
Ou que de son armée il se fasse un cortège;
Que son fier palais se protège
D'un camp au front étincelant;
_Car de la Royauté la Guerre est la compagne:_
On ne peut briser le sceptre de Charlemagne,
Sans briser le fer de Roland.
It is not surprising that all these odes should have mottoes taken
either from the Bible or from religious works, notably Chateaubriand's
_Les Martyrs_, a book by which men's minds were so powerfully impressed
that the younger poets of the day took a pride in transposing whole
pages of it into verse.[3] Lamartine addressed his ode _Le Génie_ to
Bonald; Hugo dedicates an ode with the same name to Chateaubriand, of
whom he writes that "he suffers the double martyrdom of genius and
virtue."
He addresses several poems to Lamartine--it is his desire, he writes,
to go into battle on the same war-chariot as his friend, to manage the
horses while Lamartine wields the spear--and these poems are among the
most attractive of all, partly because they are remarkably beautiful,
and testify to the respectful and yet at the same time brotherly
feeling of the younger for the elder poet, partly because in them we
have, along with Hugo's views on religious and social questions, the
expression of his ideas on the subject of art. All the poems prove with
what earnestness, but also with what exaggerated and almost offensive
self-consciousness, the young poet has apprehended his mission--it is
always called a prophet's mission; the poet is a seer, a shepherd of
the people; of Lamartine, Hugo goes the length of declaring that one
feels as if God had revealed Himself to him face to face. But it is in
the poems to Lamartine that we perceive most clearly what is Hugo's
conception of the position and relation of the new literature to that
of the eighteenth century. It bears a remarkable resemblance to a
kindred literary phenomenon in Denmark, namely, Oehlenschläger and his
friends' conception of their position to Baggesen. Read, for example,
the poem _La Lyre et la Harpe_ (livre iv. ode 2). The lyre represents
the frivolous, licentious poetry of the preceding century, which chants
the praises of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Eros, and inculcates an
intellectual epicureanism, whereas in the tones of the harp we hear
the admonition to watch and pray, to remember the seriousness of life,
to think of death, to support and help our stumbling brethren. The
poem is dedicated to "Alph. de L."; the word harp in itself pointed to
Lamartine.
This offensive attitude towards the past is the first symptom of the
approaching breach with that past's whole system of ideas, from which
Hugo's significance as an author and leader of a literary movement
dates.[4]
[1] Villemain, _M. de Féletz et les salons de son temps_.
[2] Any one interested in their real story will find it told according
to the original historical documents in Cuvillier-Fleury's _Portraits
Politiques_, 1851, pp. 377, &c.
[3] For example, Émile Deschamps, _Poésies_, edition of 1841, p. 124.
"Une page des martyrs."
[4] Lamartine, _Mémoires; Voyage en Orient; Méditations poétiques;
Nouvelles méditations poétiques; Harmonies poétiques et religieuses_,
i. ii; Victor Hugo, _Odes et Ballades_; Edmond Biré, _Victor Hugo avant
1830_.
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