This blog post compares how emotions and nature are expressed romantically in the poetry of France’s Lamartine and the Czech Republic’s Macha.

Introduction

Romanticism is a literary movement that originated in Germany, spread through England, and then to France. However, Romanticism that developed in the Czech Republic was significantly more influenced by French Romanticism than by German Romanticism. This stemmed from a rejection of the German national identity dating back to the Middle Ages and an anti-Magyar attitude. Considering this background, examining French and Czech Romanticism together is meaningful. This article will first examine the definition and characteristics of Romanticism, then introduce the representative French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha, along with their major works.

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism is essentially a lyrical literature that freely expresses each author’s individuality. This individuality is primarily revealed through emotion and sensation, with relatively less emphasis on the expression of ideas. Therefore, Romantic literature is emotional and descriptive, caring little about truth as long as it moves the reader.
Romanticism emerged in opposition to the traditions, rules, and worship of antiquity found in Classicism. Romantic writers rejected the rules of Classicism, instead turning to medieval and foreign literature. The origins of Romanticism were formed diversely in literary, artistic, and social aspects.

1. Literary Origins – The importance of sensitivity and imagination had long been emphasized, and foreign influences particularly heightened the value of these elements.
2. Artistic Origins – Romantic writers interacted with painters and artists, rediscovering movement, color, and passion in paintings through the works of Gros, Géricault, Delacroix, and others.
3. Social Origins – Traditional barriers like schools and salons were dismantled by the Revolution, and the Empire stimulated imagination, creating the social foundation for Romanticism to spread.

Characteristics of Romanticism

1. Individualism and Lyrical Traits
Romantic lyric poetry is an expression of individuality, focusing on emotion and sensation. Romantic writers immersed themselves in depicting personal affection and impressions of nature, giving birth to emotional and pictorial lyric poetry.
2. Emotional and Descriptive Literature
Romantic writers deeply explored and expressed human emotions. While the nature, intensity, and form of the emotions expressed by each poet are unique, readers resonate with the poet’s emotional depth.
3. Abandonment of Genres and Rules
Romanticism abolished the strict genre distinctions and rules of Classicism, liberating artistic expression. Artists broke free from fixed forms to exercise creativity, and Romanticism developed through its opposition to Classicism.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869)

Lamartine’s literary career can generally be divided into four periods. The first period expressed personal lyricism, the second religious lyricism, the third political lyricism, and the fourth consists of works written in his later years to settle debts. His representative work, the collection of meditative poems, resonated deeply with readers of the time who had grown weary of the classical poetic style. Lamartine’s lyric poetry is characterized by musicality, pure lyric beauty, and the celebration of nature, love, and family. By freely expressing emotion and lyricism, he contributed significantly to the development of lyric poetry.

Lamartine’s poetry generally unfolds in three stages.
1. It depicts scenes or memories within nature.
2. Feelings of frustration and disappointment seize the poet’s soul, expressing melancholy emotions.
3. However, the poem concludes with faith in God and hope for the afterlife.

Readers of the time found solace in Lamartine’s poetry amidst their own melancholy, and his works spoke to their hearts.

In “The Lake Beyond,” he sings of the sorrow of parting from love amidst lakes and the grand natural world. Lamartine poignantly sings of emotions residing deep within the human soul, characterized by meditation and lyricism within nature. His poetic language possesses profound, indescribable sweetness and musicality, breaking from classical forms to attempt a Romantic revolution through the use of allusion and metaphor.

Lake of the Beyond (Alphonse de Lamartine)
Always thus, driven toward new shores,
In the eternal night, without return,
Led away, we—
Can we not cast anchor
In the sea of time, even for a single day?

O lake! As the year draws to a close,
Look upon the rock where she once sat,
By the riverbank she so often sought,
Now I sit here alone,

You who wailed beneath the rock, deep-rooted in the water,
You who shattered, striking the broken rock’s back,
The foam of the waves within you, carried by the current,
Wet her fair feet.

Do you remember that evening when we rowed in silence?
Far below the sky, riding the waves,
keeping time with the beautiful sound of the waves,
the faint echo of the boatman’s oars
suddenly, the unfamiliar voices of this world crash upon the quiet lakeshore and become an echo,
even the waves hold their breath to listen,
yet the beloved voice, familiar to the ear,
the words it sends drifting away.
– The rest is omitted –

Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-1836)

Karel Hynek Mácha is a representative Czech Romantic poet who left behind a single collection of poems, May (Maj). His works explore the contrasting themes of life and death, nature and the human soul. Though not widely recognized during his lifetime, Mácha was later reevaluated by the critic F. X. Šalda.

It was late evening, the first day of May
A May evening, a time for love
A dove’s voice entered into love
Into the fragrant pine forest
Quiet moss whispered of love
The blossoming samu falsely speaks of Sāri’s pain
He sang his love to himself
A fragrant sigh reveals the rose
Whispering secret pain in the darkness
The riverbank embraced the lake’s edge
The bright sun of another world
Shimmered in a sky-blue band
Shining there like tears of love
The world of shining stars in the sky too
As if ascending to the temple of eternal love
Burning towards itself
Transforming into a dying flame
Until wandering stars meet like lovers
The full moon beautifully illuminates the cheek
Pale and clear, clear and pale
Like a woman seeking her lover
In the burning flame of a rose
She dies upon the water
The girl dies for her own love
A faint shadow fell upon the marshy yard
The shadow drew ever closer to her
As if embracing lower and lower
The wind blew to the knees of ecstasy
Finally merging into one within the faintness
Trees drew near to each other, to the trees, along with the shadow
The mountain’s twilight casts its shadow
The birch leans on the pine, the pine on the birch
Waves upon waves
Urge in the stream, boiling over completely
Each moment of love, time by time
– Omitted –

In the work ‘Maj (May)’ above, Ma Ha speaks of the beauty of nature against the natural backdrop of May. He departed from strict classical rules and poetic forms, employing freer rhythms and verses rich in musical effect. Later, people would discover in his verse a fluid rhythm and ‘enchanting harmony’.
In this poem, he maximizes the expression of emotion, using symbols and allusions as a medium to make the poem even more romantic. The main themes of this poem are composed of the oppositions of life and death, nature and humanity, and the soul.
The hidden truth is gloomy, yet not so; the revealed truth is beautiful and lovely, yet not so. It is perhaps due to this dualistic opposition and its mystical elements that this poem is counted among the representative Romantic poetry collections of the Czech Republic.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we examined the definition and characteristics of Romanticism and explored Romantic literature, focusing on the French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha. I chose this topic because I was captivated by the spirit of Romanticism’s call to “return to nature” and its mystical elements. While representing an entire literary era with a single author can be risky, I believe their representative works serve as excellent examples for understanding literary movements.