It is all very well for Lamartine to explain, in his original prologue,
that the touching, fascinating and pathetic story of Raphael was the
experience of another man. It is well known that these feeling pages
are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the
tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure,
perhaps, to the fact that, during his earliest and most impressionable
years, Lamartine was educated by his mother and was greatly influenced
by her ardent and poetical character. Who shall say how much depends on
one's environment during these tender years of childhood, and how often
has it not been proved that "the child is father to the man?" The
marvel of it is that a man so exquisitely sensitive, of such
extraordinary delicacy of feeling, should have been able, in later
years, to stand the storm and stress of political life and the grave
responsibilities of statesmanship.
Although not written in metrical form, Raphael is really a poem--a
prose poem. Never upon canvas of painter were spread more delicate
tints, hues, colors, shadings, blendings and suggestions, than in these
pages. Not only do we find ourselves, in the descriptions of scenery,
near to Nature's heart, but, in the story itself, near to the heart of
man. Aix in Savoy was, in Lamartine's time, a fashionable resort for
valitudinarians and invalids. Among the patrons of the place was Madame
Charles, whose memory Lamartine has immortalized as "Julie" in Raphael
and as "Elvire" in the beautiful lines of the _Méditations_. In drawing
the character "Julie," idealism and sentimentalism have full play. The
whole story is romantic in the extreme. The influence of Byron is
clearly to be seen. The beautiful hills of Savoy, tinged with the
melancholy tints of autumn, were a fit setting for the meeting with the
fair invalid. Besides physical invalidism, the pair were soul-sick and
heart-sick. Such were their points of sympathy, an affinity was the
most natural thing in the world. "Ships that pass in the night" were
these two creatures, stranded by illness, "out of the world's way,
hidden apart." At the feast of pure, unselfish, romantic love that
followed, there was always a death's-head present, always the sinking
fear, always the mute resignation on one side or the other. Death and
love have been a combination that poets have used since the world
began. And so, as the early snow whitened the pines on the hilltops of
Savoy, this pathetic and ultra-sentimental love-affair between the
banished _Parisienne_ and the poet had its beginning. That it could
have but one ending the reader knows from the start. But with what
breathless interest do we follow this history of love! We seem to be
admitted to the confidences of beings of another sphere, to celestial
heights of affection. We hear the heart-beats and see the glances of
the languid, languorous eyes. The universe itself seems to stand still
for these two lovers. Their heads are among the stars, their hearts in
heaven. Their love is as pure as a sonnet of Keats, as ineffable as
shimmering starlight. Day by day we trace its current, we cannot say
growth because it sprang into life full-grown. Although Julie said that
"her life was not worth a tear," she caused torrents of tears to flow.
From the first, their love seemed centuries old, so entirely was it a
part of their being. Day after day their souls were revealed to each
other, their hearts became more united. Every pure chord of psychic
affection was struck, even almost to the distracting discord of suicide
together, that they might never part, and from which they were saved as
by a miracle. In such unsullied love, there is an element of worship.
It is the sublimation of passion, freed from sensuous dross, a
spiritual efflorescence, a white flame of the soul.
The parting of the lover, the pursuit, their meeting again in Julie's
home in Paris, the flickering candle of her waning life, burning down
to its socket, the touching interchange of letters, the gathering
shadows of the end, all these have stirred the hearts of entire
Christendom, appealing to all ages and conditions. Raphael is a lovers'
rosary.--C. C. STARKWEATHER.