| * * *
De "LE GOLFE DE BAIA:
Ainsi tout change, ainsi tout passe,
Ainsi nous-memes nous passons.
Helas! Sans laisser plus des traces
Que cette barque ou nous glissons
Sur cette mer ou tout s'efface.
(Original)
|
* * *
FROM "LE GOLFE DE BAIA"
All in the world - changes of a turn,
All with sequence will pass the century short.
We shall pass also, we shall disappear without a trace –
We plough the sea in a sliding boat,
But the instant has passed - and the pathway is erased. (Translated by Tanya Pahn)
|
French poet, novelist, and statesman.
After a trip to Italy and a brief period in the army, Lamartine began to write. His first publication was Meditations poetiques (1820). This group of 24 poems, including the famous "Le Lac," expressed his own feelings - religious, melancholic, or amorous - as he came in contact with nature and the land. 
He competed unsuccessfully for the presidency with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III). Lamartine was the first to sound a more personal note in his poetry and to establish a direct bond between himself and his public. He left politics and devoted himself entirely to writing, spending much of the remainder of his life in a hopeless effort to repay the fantastic debts he had accumulated in his youth.
Him belong are poems Joselen (Jocelyn, 1836) and Falling of an angel (La Chute d'un ange, 1838), autobiographical novels Rafael (Raphael, 1849)and Graciella (Graziella, 1852), books of memoirs, works on history and the literature.
Some of Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine aphorisms:
- There is a woman at the begining of all great things.
- Even in the finest dreams the person cannot imagine anything more perfectly than the nature.
- The world - is a book which pages open to us with every step.
- The god - is only the word which has been thought up to explain the world.
- Laughing at clever people makes the natural privilege of fools.
