Reading Order
Graziella Reading Order
Graziella (1852) by Alphonse de Lamartine is the autobiographical novel that gives narrative form to the emotion that the Méditations poétiques lyricized — the story of a young French student's love affair with the granddaughter of a Neapolitan fisherman, set during Lamartine's youthful journey to Italy. The Graziella story is based on a real episode in Lamartine's life (he traveled to Naples in 1811–12, aged twenty-one, and formed a relationship with a young woman of the local fishing community), though the degree of fictionalization in the 1852 version is considerable. The novel is the most directly Mediterranean of French Romantic texts — its Italian landscape (the Bay of Naples, the island of Procida, the fishing villages of the coast) is rendered with the lyric precision that Lamartine brought to the Berry landscape in the Méditations; and the relationship between the French student and the Italian girl is the most perfectly achieved version of the Romantic archetype of the innocent natural woman and the educated man who cannot stay. Graziella is also important for its influence: George Sand cited it as a formative work; Turgenev thought it the most beautiful French prose of the century; and Flaubert's Sentimental Education is partly a response to the Graziella story's sentimentalism.
Where to start
Graziella (1852) — the novel is short (about 170 pages) and reads very fast. The best edition is the GF-Flammarion French text; English translations exist in old Bohn's Library reprints. Read after or alongside the Méditations poétiques to understand the relationship between Lamartine's lyric poetry and his autobiographical fiction; the Italian landscape of Graziella is the narrative version of the Mediterranean natural world that the Méditations invoke.
Complete Graziella Book List
- 1Buy
Graziella
Alphonse de Lamartine·1852·Published 1852, as part of Lamartine's Confidences (autobiographical writings). The story is based on Lamartine's 1811–12 stay in Naples and the island of Procida; the degree of fictionalization in the published version was disputed in his lifetime by those who knew the real Graziella.
Graziella — Frequently Asked Questions
How does Graziella relate to the Méditations poétiques?
Graziella (1852) and the Méditations poétiques (1820) are related as narrative and lyric versions of the same emotional world. The Méditations are abstract lyrics — 'Le Lac' mourns the loss of Julie Charles without naming her, without narrative, without place more specific than a lake; the emotion is primary and the circumstance is suppressed. Graziella tells the story that the lyrics suppress: a specific journey, a specific young woman, a specific landscape, a specific relationship and its ending. The two books together give Lamartine's Romantic imagination in two different modes — the concentrated lyric and the extended narrative — and the contrast illuminates what each mode can and cannot do. The Méditations reach heights of emotional intensity that the narrative cannot sustain because narrative requires particularity and continuity; Graziella achieves a vividness of place and character that lyric poetry necessarily sacrifices. Many French readers in the nineteenth century who began with the Méditations turned to Graziella to find out 'what actually happened,' though the fictional transformation in Graziella is considerable.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.