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Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (French: [alfɔ̃s maʁi lwi dəpʁa də lamaʁtin]; 21 October 1790 – 28 February 1869)[2] was a French author, poet, and statesman. Initially a moderate royalist Lamartine became one of the leading critics of the July Monarchy of Louis-Phillipe aligning more with the Republican Left and Social Catholicism. He was a leading figure in the 1848 French Revolution and was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic along with the continuation of the tricolore as the flag of France. During the revolutionary year of 1848 he served as Foreign Minister and frequently worked to ease tensions between the government and the working class. He was a candidate in the 1848 French presidential election but lost to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. After the election he retired from political life. BiographyEarly yearsBorn in Mâcon, Burgundy, on 21 October 1790,[3] into a family of the French provincial nobility, Lamartine spent his youth at the family estate. In his youth he read Fénelon, Voltaire, Parny, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Racine, Tasso, Dante, Petrarch, Mme de Staël, Shakespeare, Chateaubriand, and Ossian.[4] Lamartine made his entrance into the field of poetry with a masterpiece, Les Méditations Poétiques (1820) and awoke to find himself famous.[5] One of the notable poems in this collection was his partly autobiographical poem Le Lac ("The Lake"), which he dedicated to Julie Charles, the wife of a celebrated physician.[6] In it he describes in retrospect the fervent love shared by a couple from the point of view of the bereaved man. He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825. He worked for the French embassy in Italy from 1825 to 1828. In 1829, he was elected a member of the Académie française. He was elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1833. In 1835 he published the Voyage en Orient, a brilliant and bold account of the journey he had just made, in royal luxury, to the countries of the Orient, and in the course of which he had lost his only daughter. Lamartine was masterly in his use of French poetic forms but from then on he confined himself to prose. Raised a devout Catholic, Lamartine became a pantheist, writing Jocelyn and La Chute d'un ange and in 1847, Histoire des Girondins, in praise of the Girondists. In his older years Lamartine returned to the Church.[4] Political careerJuly Monarchy Initially a monarchist, Lamartine came to embrace democratic ideals and opposed militaristic nationalism.[7] Around 1830, Lamartine's opinions shifted in the direction of liberalism.[1] His first run for Parliament was an unsuccessful attempt in 1831 as a "board and moderate royalist". When elected in 1833 to the Chamber of Deputies, he was asked what side of the chamber he was going to sit on, he responded "on the ceiling".[8] Throughout his time in the Chamber, Lamartine always sat in the opposition. He quickly founded his own "Social Party" with some influence from Saint-Simonian ideas and established himself as a prominent critic of the July Monarchy. Initially critical of both the Bourgeois Monarchy and the Republican agitators, Lamartine becoming more and more of a republican in the monarchy's last years.[1][9][10] Lamartine denounced the French government's decision to back down during the Oriental Crisis of 1840, forcing France's ally Muhammad Ali to surrender Crete, Syria, and Hejaz to the Ottoman Empire, calling it "the Waterloo of French diplomacy"[11] A follower of Lamennais, Lamartine advocated the separation of church and state believing it allowed the church to better fulfill its diving mission.[12] By the end of the 30s the radical opposition considered Lamartine their leading spokesman against King Louis-Phillipe and François Guizot.[13] Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins was an instant success to the point that he styled himself the "Minister of Public Opinion" and considered one of the causes of the 1848 revolution.[14] Second RepublicHe was briefly in charge of the government during the turbulence of 1848. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 24 February 1848 to 11 May 1848. Due to his great age, Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, Chairman of the Provisional Government, effectively delegated many of his duties to Lamartine. He was then a member of the Executive Commission, the political body which served as France's joint Head of State. Lamartine was instrumental in the founding of the Second Republic, having met with republican deputies and journalists in the Hôtel de Ville to agree on the makeup of its provisional government. Lamartine himself was chosen to declare the Republic in traditional form in the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, and ensured the continuation of the Tricolour as the flag of the nation. On 25 February 1848, Lamartine said about the Tricolour Flag:
During his term as a politician of the Second Republic, he led efforts that culminated in the abolition of slavery and the death penalty, as well as the enshrinement of the right to work and the short-lived national workshop programs. A political idealist who supported democracy and pacifism, his moderate stance on most issues caused many of his followers to desert him. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1848 presidential election, receiving fewer than 19,000 votes and losing to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. He subsequently retired from politics and dedicated himself to literature. Final years and legacy He published volumes on the most varied subjects (history, criticism, personal confidences, literary conversations) especially during the Empire, when, having retired to private life and having become the prey of his creditors, he condemned himself to what he calls "literary hard-labor to exist and pay his debts". Lamartine ended his life in poverty, publishing monthly installments of the Cours familier de littérature to support himself. He died in Paris in 1869. Nobel prize winner Frédéric Mistral's fame was in part due to the praise of Alphonse de Lamartine in the fortieth edition of his periodical Cours familier de littérature, following the publication of Mistral's long poem Mirèio. Mistral is the most revered writer in modern Occitan literature. Lamartine is considered to be the first French romantic poet (though Charles-Julien Lioult de Chênedollé was working on similar innovations at the same time), and was acknowledged by Paul Verlaine and the Symbolists as an important influence. Leo Tolstoy also admired Lamartine, who was the subject of some discourses in his notebooks.[16] Other interests Alphonse de Lamartine was also an Orientalist. He used themes and materials of the Levant and the Bible to create plotlines, heroes, and landscapes that resemble an exotic Oriental world.[17] He also had a particular interest in Lebanon and the Middle East. He travelled to Lebanon, Syria and the Holy Land in 1832–33.[18] During that trip, while he and his wife, the painter and sculptor Elisa de Lamartine, were in Beirut, on 6 December 1832,[1] their only remaining child, Julia, died at ten years of age.[19] It was, however, considered a journey of recovery and immersion in specific Christian icons, symbols, and terrain with his view that the region could bring about the rebirth of a new Christianity and spirituality that could save Europe from destruction.[20]  During his trip to Lebanon he had met prince Bashir Shihab II and prince Simon Karam, who were enthusiasts of poetry. A valley in Lebanon is still called the Valley of Lamartine as a commemoration of that visit, and the Lebanon cedar forest still harbors the "Lamartine Cedar", which is said to be the cedar under which Lamartine had sat 200 years ago. Lamartine was so influenced by his trip that he staged his 1838 epic poem La Chute d'un ange (The Fall of an Angel) in Lebanon. Raised by his mother to respect animal life, he found the eating of meat repugnant, saying 'One does not have one heart for Man and one for animals. One has a heart or one does not'. His writings in La chute d’un Ange (1838) and Les confidences (1849) would be taken up by supporters of vegetarianism in the twentieth century. Religious belief
On the spirit of the times
On Catholic priestsAlphonse de Lamartine as quoted in "A Priest" by Robert Nash (1943) on Catholic priests:
Bibliography
See also
References
Further reading
Online
External links Wikiquote has quotations related to Alphonse de Lamartine.  Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alphonse de Lamartine.  Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de".
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