In their words — Alphonse de Lamartine

14 remarks beyond the poems. Back to Alphonse de Lamartine · All quotations

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“My God! I have often regretted that I was born! I have often wished to fall back even into nothingness, rather than advance through so many falsehoods, so many sufferings, and so many successive losses, towards that loss of ourselves which we call death!”

Original: Mon Dieu! J'ai souvent regretté d'être né! J'ai souvent souhaité retomber même dans le néant, plutôt que d'avancer à travers tant de mensonges, tant de souffrances et tant de pertes successives, vers cette perte de nous-mêmes que nous appelons la mort! — An honest cry of existential weariness that still affirms the value of family bonds and simple affections. · Les Confidences, 1849 (French)

“Silence is the winding-sheet of the past: it is sometimes impious, often dangerous to raise it. But even when it is raised piously and lovingly, the first moment is a cruel one.”

Original: Le silence est le linceul du passé: il est quelquefois impie, souvent dangereux de le soulever. Mais même lorsqu'on le soulève pieusement et avec amour, le premier moment est cruel. — Warns that revisiting the past, however tenderly, first wounds before it consoles. · Les Confidences, 1849 (French)

“I am a man before I am a Frenchman, an Englishman or a Russian, and if there were opposition between the narrow interest of nationalism and the immense interest of the human race, I would say: Perish my nation, so long as humanity triumphs!”

Original: Je suis homme avant d'être Français, Anglais ou Russe, et s'il y avait opposition entre l'intérêt étroit de nationalisme et l'immense intérêt du genre humain, je dirais, comme Barnave: « Périsse ma nation, pourvu que l'humanité triomphe! ». — Asserts a cosmopolitan priority of humanity over national interest, invoking an earlier revolutionary precedent. · La France parlementaire, political writings, 1864 (French)

“I was the first to bring poetry down from Parnassus and to give what was called the Muse, instead of a conventional seven-stringed lyre, the very fibres of the human heart, touched and moved by the innumerable thrills of the soul and of nature.”

Original: Je suis le premier qui ai fait descendre la poésie du Parnasse, et qui ai donné à ce qu'on nommait la muse, au lieu d’une lyre à sept cordes de convention, les fibres mêmes du cœur de l’homme, touchées et émues par les innombrables frissons de l’âme et de la nature. — Lamartine claims to have personalised French poetry by grounding it in authentic human feeling rather than classical c… · Preface to the Méditations poétiques, 2 July 1849 (French)

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