In this blog post, we will compare and examine how emotions and nature are expressed in romanticism in Lamartine from France and Mahasanghi from the Czech Republic.

 

Introduction

Romanticism is a literary and artistic movement that originated in Germany and spread to England and then to France. However, Romanticism that developed in the Czech Republic was more influenced by French Romanticism than German Romanticism. This was due to the Czech people’s aversion to the German people and anti-Magyarism that had been prevalent since the Middle Ages. Considering this background, it is meaningful to shed light on French and Czech Romanticism together. In this article, I will look at the definition and characteristics of Romanticism, and then introduce the representative French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha and their major works.

 

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism is essentially lyrical literature, which is literature that freely expresses the individuality of each author. This individuality is mainly expressed through emotions and senses, and the expression of ideas is relatively less. Therefore, Romantic literature is emotional and descriptive, and it does not care much about whether it is true or not as long as it moves the reader.
Romanticism arose in opposition to the traditions and rules of classicism and the worship of antiquity. Romantic writers rejected the rules of classicism and instead turned to medieval and foreign literature. The origins of Romanticism were diverse in literary, artistic, and social terms.

1. Literary origin – The importance of sensitivity and imagination has long been emphasized, and foreign influences have especially increased the value of these elements.
2. Artistic origin – Romantic writers interacted with painters and artists, and in painting, they rediscovered movement, color, and passion through the works of Gros, Géricault, Delacroix, and others.
3. Social origins – Traditional barriers such as schools and salons were removed by the Great Revolution, and the social foundations were created for Romanticism to spread as the regime stimulated the imagination.

 

Characteristics of Romanticism

1. Individualism and lyrical features
Romantic lyric poetry is an expression of individuality, focusing on emotions and sensations. Romantic writers were preoccupied with describing personal affections and impressions of nature, which led to the creation of emotional and descriptive lyric poetry.
2. Emotional and descriptive literature
Romantic writers deeply explored and expressed human emotions. Although the characteristics, intensity, and form of the emotions expressed by each poet are unique, the reader empathizes with the poet’s emotional depth.
3. Abolition of Genres and Rules
Romanticism abolished the strict genre distinctions and rules of classicism and freed the ways of artistic expression. Artists were freed from fixed forms and exercised their creativity, and Romanticism developed through confrontation with classicism.

 

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869)

Lamartine’s literary works can be divided into four periods. The first period expressed personal lyricism, the second period expressed religious lyricism, the third period expressed political lyricism, and the fourth period consisted of works written in his old age to resolve his debts. His representative work, a collection of meditative poems, was a great hit with readers at a time when they were tired of the classicist style of poetry. Lamartine’s lyric poetry is characterized by musicality, innocent lyricism, and the singing of nature, love, and family, and it contributed to the development of lyric poetry by freely expressing emotions and lyricism.

Lamartine’s poetry is generally divided into three stages.
1. It depicts scenes or memories in nature.
2. Feelings of frustration and disappointment take hold of the poet’s soul, and he expresses melancholy emotions.
3. However, faith in God and hope for the world beyond the grave bring closure to the poem.

The readers of the time were comforted by Lamartine’s poetry amid the melancholy emotions, and his works expressed the sentiments of the readers.

At the Lake of the Other Side, he sings of the sadness of having to say goodbye to love in the midst of the lake and the great outdoors. Lamartine sings passionately of the emotions that exist deep within the human soul, and his poetry is characterized by meditation and lyricism in nature. His poetry is profound and has an indescribable sweetness and musicality, and he attempted a romantic reform by using allusions and metaphors, breaking away from classical poetic forms.

The Lake of the Other Side (Alphonse de Lamartine)
Always like that, being pushed towards a new shore,
being led without ever returning from the eternal night,
we,
can we not throw an anchor into the sea of time, even for just one day?

Oh, lake! When the year is coming to an end,
by the river where she often went, by the river where she would have wanted to see you again
She was sitting on that rock, looking out over the water.
Now I’m sitting here alone,

You who were crying out from under the deep-rooted rocks in the water,
You who were hitting the broken rocks and breaking apart,
The foam of the waves inside you was carried away by the breeze,
And it soaked her beautiful feet.

Do you remember that evening when we rowed silently?
Far below the sky, riding the waves,
the rhythm of the oarsman’s oar echoing in the distance,
to the sound of the beautiful waves
Suddenly, the strange voices of this world hit the quiet lake shore and reverberate,
even the waves are listening in silence,
The familiar, lovely voice
sings words.
– Omitted below –

 

Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836)

Karel Hynek Mahá is a representative Czech romantic poet who left only one collection of poems, Maj, and his works deal with the conflicting themes of life and death, nature and human soul. Mahá was not well-received during his lifetime, but he was reevaluated by the critic F. X. Šalda after his death.

It was late in the evening. The first day of May.
The evening of May. It was a time of love.
The voice of a pigeon entered into love.
To the fragrant place in the pine forest.
The quiet moss whispered about love.
The flowering samuga is telling a lie about Sara’s pain.
He sang his love to himself.
The fragrant sighs show the roses.
They whisper about secret pain in the dark.
The banks of the lake embraced the lake’s surroundings.
The bright sun of another world sparkled with a band of sky-blue light.
Like tears of love, the world of stars in the shining sky also burned,
burning toward the couple,
until the wandering stars met each other like lovers,
transforming themselves into the dying flames that burned toward them,
as if ascending to the temple of eternal love.
The full moon shines beautifully on her face.
Pale and clear, clear and pale.
Like a woman looking for her lover.
In the burning flames of the rose,
she dies on the water.
The girl dies for the love of herself.
A faint shadow was cast on the swamp.
The shadow came closer and closer to her.
As if it was hugging her further and further down.
The wind blew. Until the ecstasy of the knees.
Finally, they merged into one in the dimness.
Along with the shadows, the trees came closer to each other and to the trees.
The dusk of the mountain casts shadows.
The birch tree leans against the pine tree, and the pine tree leans against the birch tree.
Waves upon waves,
in the stream, they rush. It completely boils.
Each time of love, time after time.
– Omitted –

In the above work “Maj (May),” Mah talks about the beauty of nature in the natural setting of May. He used more free-flowing rhymes and musical lines that were free from strict classical rules and forms. Later, people would say that they found fluent rhymes and “seductive harmony” in his lines.
He maximizes the expression of emotion in this poem, and makes it even more romantic through the medium of symbols and allusions to his thoughts and feelings. The main themes of this poem are life and death, nature and humans, and the conflict between the soul.
The hidden truth is depressing, but it is not; the truth revealed on the surface is beautiful and lovely, but it is not. This poem may be considered one of the representative romantic poetry collections of the Czech Republic due to the conflict between these two elements and the mysterious element.

 

Conclusion

In this article, I will look at the definition and characteristics of Romanticism and shed light on Romantic literature, focusing on the French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Macha. I chose to write about Romanticism because I was fascinated by its “return to nature” spirit and mystical elements. Representing the literature of an era with a single author can be risky, but I think their representative works can be good examples for understanding literary trends.