Learn what Romanticism is with a focus on Alphonse de Lamartine and Karel Hynek Matcha.

Introduction

Originally, Romanticism is a literary movement that originated in Germany, traveled to England, and then to France. However, in the case of the Czech Republic, Romanticism was heavily influenced by French Romanticism, rather than German Romanticism, which was the origin of Romanticism, due to the rejection of the German people from the Middle Ages and anti-Majesticism. Because of this, it is meaningful to introduce French Romanticism and Czech Romanticism together. In this blog post, we’ll give you an overview of Romanticism and introduce you to Alphonse de Lamartine, a representative poet of French Romanticism, and Karel Hynek Matcha, a representative poet of Czech Romanticism, and their works.

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism is essentially a lyrical literature, that is, a literature in which the individuality of the author is freely expressed. But the individuality of the author is expressed especially in his feelings and sensations, and only to a small extent in his ideas. Therefore, Romanticism is an emotional and descriptive literature, a literature that does not care about the truth, as long as it moves.
Romanticism was finding before it the tradition of Classicism, with its rules and its ancient worship. Romanticism threw down its rules, threw down its ancient worship, and turned to medieval and foreign literature to better throw off the tradition.
Romanticism has several origins: literary, artistic, and social.
Literary origins – the importance of sensitivity and imagination had been growing for half a century, and foreign influences increased it even more.
Artistic origins – writers are intermingled with artists. Painting, however, regains its movement, color, and passion with Gerrito, Delacroix, and others.
Social origins – all obstacles (schools, salons) were removed by the Great Revolution. The Establishment had strongly stimulated the imagination, and its fall left it idle.

Individualism – characteristic of lyricism

Lyricism is first and foremost an expression of personal temperament. The components of individuality are phenomena of our sensibility. There are two kinds of these phenomena They are either emotions, such as affection and hope, hatred and despair, enthusiasm and melancholy, or they are sensations. Some of our sensations bring us such images that we construct a universe with them, and others are not generally representational. The Romantic writers left the expression of the latter to their successors, and contented themselves with the former; they were therefore occupied with the expression of their personal affections and impressions of nature; hence their lyricism was emotional and pictorial.

Emotional and descriptive literature

In order to express the feelings of the jigi, they retained only those feelings which are fully human, which any of us have felt.
that any of us have felt. The characteristics of these emotions, their intensity, their casual form, and their causes, are indeed unique to the poet, but at a deeper level, where the emotions are born, the reader fully sympathizes with the poet.

Discarding genres, rules, and constraints

Inevitably, Romanticism was determined by its relationship with Classicism. For Romanticism to become Romanticism, it was distinguished first by negation and then by opposition.
Negation refers to the abolition of the rules that governed literary works. These rules were threefold The different genres were distinctly separate from each other and had no contact with each other. Each genre had its own rules that had to be strictly followed. Artists were constrained by the norms of their hobby when choosing what to imitate and how to express themselves. Romanticism broke all those fixed forms that could no longer be handled by the artist’s mind, broke the oppressive conventions that automatically excluded originality, and freed poetry from the abstractions that were suffocating it.

To confront is to do the opposite of what the classicists had done. Eighteenth-century literature had looked to the ancients and the 17th century in France. Romanticism rejected them in favor of the Middle Ages and foreigners.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869)

His work can be roughly divided into four periods. The first period is mainly “personal and intimate lyrics”, the second is “religious lyrics”, the third is “political lyrics”, and the fourth is the beginning of his miserable old age. It was during this period that he was overwhelmed by debt and wrote to try to find a way out. Although it can be divided into four periods, he said in his later life

“I regained the lyrical inspiration and sincere emotion of my early poetry. Neither religious, political, nor social inspiration had ever smothered the lyrical and sincere touch.”

When Alphonse de Lamartine’s Meditations was published, the response was overwhelming. It was enthusiastically welcomed by the readers of the time, who had grown tired of his tasteless classicist poetry. His lyrical poems were characterized by beautiful musicality and innocent lyricism, celebrating nature, love, and home.
As a lyric poet, he was exceptionally gifted and talented, freely expressing his emotions and lyricism, inspiring new readers and paving the way for the development of lyric poetry.
Alphonse de Lamartine’s lyric poetry is characterized by three main phases
Describing a sight or memory from nature.
Feelings of melancholy, frustration, or disappointment take hold of the poet’s soul, and he expresses his melancholy.
However, the poet’s faith in God and hope for a world of peace and security often leads him or her to end the poem with a hope or prayer for this peaceful nature and the afterlife.
In 1820, the general public was confused and without any hope, so Alphonse de Lamartine’s melancholy poems reflected the feelings of his readers. It’s no wonder that this kind of lyrical poetry was so well received by the readers of the time; they were waiting for a poet to sing their feelings.

Lake Fianna (Alphonse de Lamartine)
Always like that, drifting towards new shores,
drifting toward new shores, never returning
without ever returning,
we cannot cast anchor in the sea of time
Can we not cast anchor, even for a day?

O, lake! When the year is drawing to a close,
by the river where she had often gone, where she would long to see it again.
Upon the rock where she sat.
Now I come and sit alone,

You, who were crying beneath the rooted rocks in the water,
You who were breaking against the broken rocks,
The foam of the waves within thee is carried away by the barim
And wet her fair feet.

Do you remember that evening, when we rowed wordlessly?
Far away under the sky, riding the waves,
Riding the waves, keeping time with the beautiful sound
The faint sound of the master’s rowing.
Suddenly, strange voices from another world echoed against the calm lake shore.
Even the waves are listening breathlessly,
and a lovely voice, familiar to my ears.
The words of a lovely voice familiar to the ear.
– Hereafter omitted – -.

A lyric poet of extraordinary talent, he sang the whispers and cries of the emotions that welled up in the human soul, without any finesse, but with great urgency. He often wrote about his feelings when he was in meditation in the great outdoors, in the mountains, forests, lakes, and other places.
Raised in an aristocratic family, Alphonse de Lamartine had a noble nature as a lyric poet: he had an innate love of poetry, a need for it, and used it to express his lyricism and emotions. His poems are characterized by spontaneous and urgent expressions of emotion and serious and melancholy lyricism. Most of his poetry is characterized by Vigatou’s somber and melancholy poetry. He first thought of poetry as a solace to soothe his sobs.

“For Alphonse de Lamartine, poetry never became a profession, never even a purely artistic activity; it was merely a way of giving vent to his feelings as soon as he was moved. That is why his poems are rarely polished. He was lightened in mind by the creation of works; and he had the unfortunate talent of creating easily and without effort; he could improvise so admirably that he did not need to polish his improvisations; they sufficiently satisfied his wants.”

Alphonse de Lamartine improvised, but he also meditated for a long time before choosing words that appealed to the intellect as well as the emotions. Alphonse de Lamartine wanted to create a language that could express the most intimate and elusive nuances of emotion, which is why his poetry is so deep and indescribably sweet.
In Alphonse de Lamartine’s poetry, I find a particularly fluent musicality and rhyming harmony. Castex and Scherrer explain this as follows. Lamartine ponders the meaning of his words thanks to the special meaning of rhyme and harmony. The syllables connected to each other ring in the ear like a continuous song. Rhymes are formed and softened by inspiration. In the Meditations, the rhymes are monotonous and soft to express the lamentation of painful emotions; in the Reflections, the rhymes become more vigorous to express the hope of a soul open to the problems of humanity.
Alphonse de Lamartine’s poetry deviates from the classicist method. He revolutionizes poetry by using a vocabulary full of alliteration, images borrowed from noble literature, allusions and metaphors.

Karel Hynek Matcha (1810-1836)

He was a very short-lived writer. He published only one book of poetry, Maj (May), but it was with Maj that true romanticism began to emerge in Czech literature. He is considered to be one of the most representative poets of Romanticism, as his works develop opposing images of life and death, nature and the human soul.
In fact, his work was not recognized at the time of its publication, and his greatness was only discovered long after his death by the critic F. X. Salda.

It was late evening on the first day of May
It was the evening of May It was the hour of love
A dove’s voice came into love
To a fragrant place in the pine forest
The silent moss was whispering of love.
The blossoming samu is lying about Sarah’s pain
Sang his love to himself
Fragrant sighs are showing the rose
Whispering secret pain in the darkness
The river bank hugged around the lake
The bright sun of another world
sparkled with bands of sky blue
Shining there like tears of love
And the world of stars in the shining sky
As if ascending to the temple of eternal love
burning toward itself
transforming them into a dying flame
Till the wandering stars meet each other like lovers.
The full moon beautifully illuminates the arm
Pale and clear, clear and pale
Like a woman seeking her man’s lover
In the dying flame of a rose
Dies herself on the water
The girl dies of love for herself
A faint shadow shone in the swampy yard.
The shadow came closer and closer to herself
More and more like a downward embrace
The wind blew it to the knees of ecstasy
Finally, in the dimness, merging into one
With the shadow, the trees drew closer to them, tree to tree.
The twilight of the mountains cast shadows.
Birch on pine, pine on birch.
Leaning against each other, wave upon wave.
In the brook, it rushes to a full boil
With time after time of each love
– Hereafter omitted.

In the above piece, “Maj (May),” Maha talks about the beauty of nature in the natural setting of May. He broke away from the strict classical rules and forms of poetry and used more free rhyming and musically rich verse. Later people would say that they found fluent rhyme and “mesmerizing harmony” in his poetry.
He maximizes the expression of emotion in this poem, making it even more romanticized by using symbols and allusions to convey his thoughts and feelings. The main theme of the poem consists of the opposition between life and death, nature and man, and the soul.
The hidden truth is depressing, but it is not, and the revealed truth is beautiful and lovely, but it is not. This duality and mysteriousness is perhaps why this poem is considered one of the most representative Czech Romantic poems.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have discussed the definition and characteristics of Romanticism, focusing on the French Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and the Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Matcha. I chose Romanticism as the topic of my report because I am fascinated by the “back to nature” and mystical elements of Romanticism. I also chose poetry from among the various literary genres because of the appeal of “reinventing interpretation through myself. It might be a risky and simplistic idea to try to represent the literature of an era as a single writer. However, I think that the representative works can be a good example when trying to understand the concept of what romanticism is in the history of literature.