Raphaël - Lamartine Beautiful signed Moroccan Binding - Champollion with Suite 1885

Description (ch)


"Nothing will deprive Lamartine of the glory of having been the first romantic voice," wrote Gaëtan Picon.

If the fatal heroine, the ardent poet and the landscape-state of the soul are unavoidable in Romanticism, we must not forget that Lamartine has a lot to do with it. Even if he did not become a leader like Victor Hugo, Lamartine worked for a real revolution in literature.

His poetry, in verse as in prose, is at the origin of a truly personal lyricism which will continue to touch many readers beyond the centuries. And what about his style except that it is one of the purest and most elegant in the French language!

After reading “Raphaël”, we must return to “Méditations poétiques”, the poet's masterpiece, which seems even more touching when we have read this childhood dream.


In Raphaël (pages of the twentieth year), an autobiographical novel published in 1849, Lamartine evokes his love of youth

Lamartine portrays himself as Raphaël, a poor young aristocrat who falls in love with a married and consumptive woman. This passion doomed to failure and nevertheless absolute leads the hero into a material decline, since he sacrifices his health, his way of life,

his ambitions and even his family on the altar of a senseless idyll. Raphaël's Julie is none other than Mme Charles, Lamartine's great love. As for the sumptuous mountain landscape which shelters this connection, it was painted from nature: it is Le Bourget, this "Lake" which inspired the poet with his most famous verses.

As in the Meditations, the evocative power of the story is intimately linked to the natural setting.


Raphaël, Lamartine's second love novel after Graziella retains areas of intensity and mystery

which revive a great voice of Romanticism

There are grandiose panoramas in these pages, with sunsets over the ruins and lake storms. But the descriptive talent of Lamartine even poeticizes the capital of which he evokes the parks and the woods in the spring. Nature, cheerful or melancholic, opulent or morbid, echoes feelings of love. Always tinged with mysticism, it allows the encounter with God, celebrated through his creation.

To a contemporary mind, the excessive idealization of love and the shedding of tears may seem antiquated; but the evocation of amorous passion, with its obsessions and its ravages, remains interesting. It is also a meditation on the ephemeral side of earthly happiness, since the shadow of death hovers over this relationship.



https://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcrit/47872

https://gallica.bnf.fr/blog/25032020/lamartine-une-posterite-retrouvee?mode=desktop



Editions Maison Quantin

sd 1885 inscribed at the bottom

(Vicar gives 1887)



Format 17*23.5cm, 292p

Numbered 557/1100



Embellished with 10 compositions by Adolf Sandoz

etched by Champollion

With a suite on mounted china (the blacks are more intense)

(this seems to correspond to the series of engravings for the edition indicated by Vicaire of 1000 copies

on vellum with 10 engravings drawn on Chinese paper)



Superb publisher's half morocco binding with corners

Signed Edouard Pagnant

(renowned Parisian bookbinder, former worker at Chambolle-Duru, member of the jury at the Estienne school,

gold medal at many exhibitions 1906 to 1911 in Turin etc.)



Back with nerves and boxes with romantic finials

Swirls of tulips surrounding a rosette



Golden slice of head

preserved blankets




State

Very nice work with slight wear from use
rubbing on corners and edges
small lack of leather on one edge
slight friction on the back
Fresh interior