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
Anne Brontë
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…
“Les utopies ne sont souvent que des vérités prématurées.”
In the pantheon of Victorian literature, Anne Brontë stands as perhaps the most underestimated literary genius of her era. Born into a family that would produce three of the nineteenth century's most celebrated novelists, Anne has long lived in the shadow of her more famous sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Yet this youngest Brontë sister, who lived only twenty-nine years (1820-1849), created works of startling moral com…
“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find.”
About 958 km separate Mâcon, Burgundy, France from Thornton, Yorkshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
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. Anne Brontë: thornton, agnes grey, the tenant of wildfell hall, charlotte brontë, emily brontë, brontë sisters, governess, glass town confederacy.
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. Anne Brontë: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.
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