Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Alphonse de Lamartine
A. Mary F. Robinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alphonse de Lamartine was born on 21 October 1790 in Mâcon, in the Burgundy region of eastern France, and died in Paris on 1 March 1869. Poet, novelist, historian, diplomat, parliamentarian, and revolutionary statesman, he lived at the point where literary Romanticism and modern French political life came into being. Few writers have more completely embodied the nineteenth-century belief that eloquence might be a pub…
“La France est une nation qui s'ennuie.”
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…
“But if I see the necessary grace that they possess, how clearly, alas! do I perceive the magnificent qualities they lack!”
About 812 km separate Mâcon, Burgundy, France from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. Shared ground: France.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alphonse de Lamartine: mâcon, burgundy, le lac, méditations poétiques, julie charles, voyage en orient, mary ann birch, romanticism. A. Mary F. Robinson: leamington spa, aurillac, madame darmesteter, madame duclaux, a handful of honeysuckle, the new arcadia, emily brontë, james darmesteter.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Alphonse de Lamartine: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. A. Mary F. Robinson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.