Alphonse de Lamartine

Travels in the Near East (Voyage en Orient, 1832-33)

Part I: Departure from Marseille

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Translator’s Introduction.
Author’s Preface to the First Edition.
Memories, Impressions, Sights and Reflections During a Voyage to the Orient.

Translator’s Introduction

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) author, poet, and statesman was a major representative of the French Romantic movement in poetry, and a traveller and historian of note.

He was born in Mâcon, Burgundy, into a family of provincial nobility, spending his youth on the family estate. His father, Pierre de Lamartine, the Chevalier de Pratz, was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and was fortunate to escape the guillotine. Lamartine was educated at the college at Belley (near Lac du Bourget), which was maintained by the Jesuits though they were suppressed in France at that time.

Though he had aspirations to enter the diplomatic corps, he was unable to do so, due to family sentiment, until 1814 and the restoration of the monarchy; he then served in Louis XVIII’s bodyguard. During the Hundred Days, he emigrated to Switzerland, and following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the second Bourbon Restoration, he abandoned the military profession.

In 1816, in ill-health, he visited the spa of Aix-les-Bains, where, beside Lake Bourget, he met the desperately ill Julie Charles, with whom he fell in love. Through her Paris connections, he was able to find a position in the capital. After her death in December 1817, Lamartine, wrote a number of poems in her memory. In 1820 Lamartine married Maria Ann Birch, a young Englishwoman connected to the Churchill family, and finally joined the diplomatic corps, as secretary to the French embassy at Naples. His first collection of poems, Les Méditations Poétiques, in which Romanticism, sincerity, sentiment, and religiosity mingled, published that year, brought him instant fame. Between late 1826 and mid-1828 he was attaché to the embassy, and then chargé d’affaires, in Florence. He abandoned his diplomatic career in 1830 and entered politics, being elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1833.

In 1835, Lamartine published the journal of his 1832-33 travels in the Near East, Voyage en Orient, during the course of which travels his ten-year old daughter Julia had died.

Initially a moderate royalist, he became a leading critic of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, aligning himself with the Republican Left and, as a religious and political idealist, with Social Catholicism. He was a leading figure in the Revolution of 1848, and instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic. During that year he served as Foreign Minister, and was a candidate representing the moderates in the presidential election, which was however won by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. After his failed bid in the election, Lamartine retired from political life.

In his later years, he was burdened by debt, penning many works in order to make a living, particularly his histories of the Restoration (published 1851-2) of Russia (1855), and of Turkey (1854-55).

The following translation is of Books I to III of Voyage en Orient, covering Lamartine’s travels. Book IV containing other material, of a literary, social and political nature, which he associated with his travel notes has been omitted, along with some other minor, extraneous content.

This enhanced translation has been designed to offer maximum compatibility with current search engines. Among other modifications, the proper names of people and places, and the titles given to works of art, have been fully researched, modernised, and expanded; comments in parentheses have been added here and there to provide a reference, or clarify meaning; and minor typographic or factual errors, for example incorrect attributions and dates, in the original text, have been eliminated from this new translation.

You may view a map of all locations on Lamartine’s route in Travels in the Near East, provided by uMap (open map in new tab).

Author’s Preface to the First Edition

This is neither a prose work nor a travelogue; I possessed no intention of writing either. A book, or rather the poem, of the Orient, was penned by Chateaubriand in his Itinéraire (‘Record of a Journey from Paris to Jerusalem and Back’, his travels of 1806-7). The great author and poet merely traversed that region of wonders, yet forever imprinted the mark of his genius on the dust stirred by so many centuries. He journeyed to Jerusalem as a pilgrim and a knight, with the Bible, the Gospel, and the History of the Crusades in hand. I did so merely as a poet, and philosopher, returning with profound impressions as regards the heart, and noble and dreadful lessons as regards the mind. The studies I undertook there concerning religion, history, custom, tradition, and the various phases of humanity, were not lost on me, however. Such studies, which broaden the narrow horizon of thought, pose religious and historical problems for the powers of reason, and force one to retrace one’s steps, examine one’s innate convictions, and formulate new ones; that great and intimate education of the mind by the mind itself, and by places, facts, and comparisons of one age, one set of customs and beliefs, with another — none of this could be lost on a traveller, poet, and philosopher; rather they provide the elements of one’s future poetry and philosophy. When one has amassed, classified, ordered, illuminated, and summarised the multitude of impressions, images, and thoughts that the world and its people offer to those who interrogate them; when one’s soul and convictions have matured, one may give utterance in turn; and for good or ill, rightly or wrongly, offer one’s thoughts to one’s contemporaries, either in the form of poetry or in philosophical form. Then one may have one’s say, as every thinking person is entitled to do. Perhaps that time will arrive for me: it has not done so yet.

As for penning a travelogue — a complete and faithful account, that is, of the countries one visited, of the personal events that befell one, and the overall impressions of the places, people, and customs one found there — I have given even less thought to such an undertaking. For the Orient, this has already been achieved in England, and is being undertaken in France at this very moment, with a conscientiousness, talent, and success that I could not expect to surpass: Monsieur de Laborde (Comte Alexandre de Laborde) a traveller in Spain, writes with the skill and paints with the brush of our foremost writers and artists (see his ‘Voyage Pittoresque et Historique de l’Espagne’, published 1806-1820); Monsieur Fontanier (Victor Fontanier), consul in Trebizond, has granted us, in succession, accurate and vivid portraits of the least explored parts of the Ottoman Empire (see his ‘Voyage en Orient, Entrepris par Ordre du Gouvernement Français de l’Année 1821 à l’Année 1829); while the ’Correspondance d’Orient’ (1830-31) between Monsieur Michaud (Joseph-François Michaud) of the French Academy, and his young and brilliant collaborator, Monsieur Poujoulat (Baptistin Poujoulat), contains all the historical, moral, and picturesque details that curiosity could desire as regards the Orient. Michaud, an experienced writer, a man of substance, a classical historian, enriches his descriptions of the places he travels through with vivid accounts of the Crusades; he critiques places through history, and history through places; his mature, analytical mind illuminates the past as well as the customs of the peoples he visits, and sheds light, with incisive wit and graceful wisdom, on the manners, customs, and civilisations he encounters; of the joint authors he is the traveller advanced in intellect and years, leading the younger man by the hand, and showing him, with a smile, born of reason and irony, scenes new to him. Poujoulat is rather a poet and a colourist; his style, imbued with the impressions and hues of places, reflects them with all the heat and vibrancy of their local light. One feels the Eastern sun shining upon and warming his young and fertile mind, as he writes to his friend; his pages are slices of those lands, which he conveys to us radiant with their native splendour. The diversity of these two talents, complementing each other, makes the ‘Correspondance d’Orient’ the most complete collection of letters we could wish for regarding those admirable shores: it is also the most varied and engaging of reads.

In terms of geography, we have little as yet; but the work of Monsieur Callier (Camille Antoine Callier, lieutenant in the engineer-geographer corps), a young staff officer whom I met in Syria, will undoubtedly be published soon (see his bulletin, ’Voyage en Asie Mineure, en Syrie, en Palestine et en Arabie-Pétrée’ 1834). and will complete our understanding of that part of the world. Monsieur Callier has spent three years exploring the island of Cyprus, Caramania (the southern Coast of Anatolia), and the various regions of Syria, with the zeal and intrepidity that characterise educated officers of the French army. Having recently returned to his homeland, he brings knowledge that would have been very useful to Bonaparte’s expedition, and which will assist others.

The notes I offer the readers here possess none of these merits. I publish them with regret; they are only useful to me as a record of my memories; and were intended for myself alone. There is nothing of science, history, geography or local customs in them; the public was far from my thoughts as I penned them: and where and when did I pen them? Sometimes at midday, during the noon rest, in the shade of some palm tree, or beside the ruins of some monument in the desert; more often in the evening, in a tent battered by wind or rain, by the light of a resin torch; now, in the cell of a Maronite monastery in Lebanon; now, on an Arab boat as it rocked from side to side, or the deck of a brig, amidst the cries of sailors, the neighing of horses, the interruptions and distractions of every kind involved in a journey by land or sea; sometimes a week passing without a word being written; at other times, the author suffering the loss of scattered pages from an album torn by jackals, or drenched by sea foam.

Once I returned to Europe, I could doubtless have revisited these fragments of impressions, gathered, arranged and composed them, and produced a travelogue like many another. But, as I have said, to write about the journey was absent from my plans. That requires time, freedom of mind, and attentive labour; I had nothing to offer on that score. My heart was broken (due to the death of his daughter Julia), my mind was elsewhere, my attention was distracted, my leisure hours wasted; it was for me to either burn these notes or let them appear as they were. Circumstances, the details of which it is unnecessary to explain, led me to the latter course; I regret it, but too late.

Let the reader reject them, before even glancing at them, who seeks anything more than the most fleeting and superficial impressions of a traveller who journeys without rest. They can hold a modicum of interest only for artists: these notes being almost exclusively picturesque; they are the written gaze, the glance of a passenger seated on a camel, or on the deck of a ship, who sees the landscape slipping by, and who, to recall it the following day, creates a few colourless strokes with his pencil on the pages of his journal. Sometimes the traveller, forgetting the scene around him, withdraws into himself, converses with himself. He listens to his thoughts, attends to his own pleasure or suffering, then engraves a word or two of his impressions, gathered afar, so that the wind blowing over the sea or across the desert may fail to bear away his days entire, and some trace of them may remain to him, in later times, on his return to his solitary home, and serve to revive the dead past, to warm chill memories, to reconnect the links of a life that events have severed in so many places. Here then, are those notes: they are of little interest; they will win little in the way of success; they have even less right to the reader’s gracious indulgence.

Memories, Impressions, Sights and Reflections During a Voyage to the Orient

Marseille, May 20, 1832.

My mother (Alix de Lamartine, Françoise-Alix de Royes) received from her mother (Marie Marguerite des Roys, née Gavault), on the latter’s deathbed, a beautiful Royaumont Bible (The Royaumont Bible, or ’Histoire du Vieux et du Nouveau Testament’, published in 1670, was a popular, illustrated retelling of Biblical stories, written by Nicolas Fontaine whose pseudonym was the Sieur de Royaumont) by means of which she taught me to read when I was a little child. This Bible had engravings of sacred subjects on every page. There was Sarah, there was Tobias and his Angel, there were Joseph, and Samuel and, above all, those beautiful patriarchal scenes where the solemn and primal nature of the Near East was interwoven with all the simple and wondrous acts in the life of an earlier people. When I had recited my lesson well, and read, almost flawlessly, the half-page of a sacred story, my mother would uncover the engraving and, holding the book open on her lap, would show it to me to contemplate while she explained the image by way of reward.

She was endowed by nature with a soul as pious as it was tender, and with the most sensitive and vivid imagination; all her thoughts were feelings, all her feelings were images; her beautiful, noble, and gentle face reflected, in its radiant countenance, all that burned in her heart, all that was painted in her mind; and the silvery, affectionate, solemn, and passionate tone of her voice added, to everything she said, an accent of strength, charm, and love, which still resounds in my ear at this moment, after years of silence (she had died in 1829). The sight of those engravings, and my mother’s explanations and poetic commentaries, inspired in me, from my earliest childhood, a taste and inclination for biblical matters.

From the love of events, to a longing to see the places where those events had taken place, was but a step. From the age of eight, I burned with the desire to visit those mountains where God had descended; those deserts where Angels came to show Hagar the hidden spring, so she might revive her poor banished child, Ishmael, dying of thirst (see Genesis: 21); those rivers that flowed from the Garden of Eden (see Genesis: 2); that heaven to which and from which one saw angels ascend and descend on Jacob’s ladder (see Genesis: 28). The longing never faded within me: ever since then, I had dreamt of a journey to the East, the great drama of my inner life. I constructed, endlessly, in my mind a vast, religious epic, for which those beautiful lands would provide the main stage. It also seemed to me that my mental doubts, and religious perplexities, would find their solution and appeasement there. Finally, I would draw inspiration for my poem from it; for life to my mind was always a great poem, just as love was to my heart. God, Love, and Poetry — those are the three words alone, that I would wish inscribed on my grave-stone, if ever I come to merit one.

That is the source of the idea that is now driving me towards the shores of Asia. This is why I am here in Marseille, taking great pains to leave a country I love, where I have friends, where a few sad fraternal thoughts will accompany my departure, and follow in my wake.

Marseille, May 22.

I have chartered a ship of two hundred and fifty tons, with a crew of nineteen. The captain is an excellent fellow. I was pleased, at once, by his appearance. His voice possesses the deep and sincere tone of firm probity and a clear conscience; his expression is serious, while his eyes have that direct, frank, lively gleam, which is a sure sign of prompt, energetic, and intelligent resolve. He is also a gentle, polite, and well-bred man. I examined him with the care one should naturally take in choosing one to whom one is entrusting not only one’s fortune and life, but also the lives of his wife and only child, in whom the lives of all three are concentrated in one. May God protect us and return us safe and sound!

The ship is named the Alceste. The captain is Monsieur Blanc (Jean-Baptiste-Esprit Blanc), from La Ciotat. The shipowner is one of Marseille’s most distinguished merchants, Monsieur Bruno-Xavier Rostand (who was also a financier and shipowner). He showers us with kindness and consideration. He himself resided for a long time in the Levant. A learned man, capable of the most eminent positions, his probity and talents have earned him, in his native city, an esteem equal to his wealth. He enjoys it without ostentation and, surrounded by a charming family, devotes himself solely to instilling in his children the traditions of loyalty and virtue. What a country it is where such families are found in every class of society! And what a fine institution the family is, protecting, preserving, and perpetuating the same sanctity of morals, the same nobility of sentiment, the same traditional qualities in the cottage, the trading post, or the château!

May 25.

Marseille welcomes us as if we were children of its beautiful sky; it is a land of generosity, heart, and soulful poetry; they receive poets here as brothers; they are poets themselves, and I have found among ordinary people in society, in the Academy, and among young people just entering life, a multitude of characters and talents destined to honour not only their homeland, but all of France. — In this respect, the south and north of France seem to me far superior to the central provinces. Imagination languishes in the intermediate regions, in overly temperate climates; it needs extremes of temperature. Poetry is the daughter of the sun or of eternal frost: Homer or Ossian, Tasso or Milton.

May 30.

I will carry in my heart an eternal memory of the kindness of the people of Marseille. Almost as if they would amplify in me those feelings of anguish which grip the heart when one is about to leave one’s homeland without knowing if one will ever see it again. I also wish to bear with me the names of those men who welcomed me most warmly, and whose memory will remain with me as the last, sweet impression of my native soil: Jacques Fraissinet (a banker), Jean-Baptiste de Montgrand (former mayor of Marseille), the Messieurs de Villeneuve (Benoît-Hippolyte de Villeneuve Flayosc, president of the Marseilles Academy, plus another member of the family) Jules Van Gaver (poet and dramatist), Joseph Autran (poet and dramatist), Antoine Dufeu (literary translator), Pierre Jauffret (agriculturist), etc., etc., all distinguished by an eminent quality of heart and mind, scholars, administrators, writers, poets. I hope to see them again, on my return, and repay them with all those tributes of gratitude and friendship that it is sweet to owe and sweeter to render! I wrote a poem this morning while at sea, between the Isle of Pomègues (the largest of the Frioul islands, off the coast of Marseilles) and the coast of Provence; a farewell to Marseille, which I leave with the feelings of a son. A few of its stanzas reached further and deeper into my heart.

‘Si j’abandonne aux plis de la voile rapide

Ce que m’a fait le ciel de paix et de bonheur’ etc.

‘If I yield to the folds of the swift sail

All heaven has granted of peace and happiness’ etc

June 13.

We have visited the vessel destined to be our home for so many months! It is divided into little cabins, each with room for a hammock and a trunk. The captain has had small windows installed, which let in light and air, and which we can open when the waves are not too high, and the brig is not listing. The master cabin is reserved for Madame de Lamartine (Marianne Élisa de Lamartine, née Mary Anne Elisa Birch, English painter and sculptor), and our daughter Julia. The chambermaids will sleep in the captain’s cabin, which he has kindly agreed to give over to us. When the weather is fine, we shall eat on deck, beneath a tent pitched at the foot of the mainmast. The brig is laden with all sorts of provisions needed for a two-year voyage to impoverished lands. A library of five hundred volumes, all chosen from books of history, poetry, and travel, is the finest adornment of the master cabin. Bundles of weapons are gathered in the corners, and I have also purchased a special arsenal of rifles, pistols, and sabres to arm ourselves and our men. Greek pirates infest the seas of the Archipelago; we are determined to fight to the bitter end, and not let them aboard while we still live. I have two lives to defend dearer to me than my own. There are four cannons on deck; and the crew, who know the fate the Greeks reserve for the unfortunate sailors whom they attack are resolved to die rather than surrender.

June 17, 1832.

I am also taking three friends with me. The first is one of those men whom Providence places at our side when it foresees our needing the kind of support that wavers not an inch in the face of peril or misfortune: Amédée-Alexandre-Denis de Parseval. We have been bound since our earliest youth by an affection that no period of our lives has ever found lacking. My mother loved him like a son; I love him like a brother. Every time I have been struck by a blow of fate, I have found him there, or have seen him arrive, ready to accept his share, the principal share, the entire burden of it, if he could. His is a heart that lives only for the happiness, and suffers for the misfortunes, of others. When, fifteen years ago, I was in Paris, alone, ill, ruined, in despair, and dying, he spent the nights keeping vigil by what was like to be my death bed. When I lost a person I loved, it was always he who came to deliver the blow and soften it. When my mother died, he arrived at my side as soon as the fatal news reached us, and led me five hundred miles to the tomb where I went to seek, in vain, the last farewell she had addressed to me, but which I had failed to receive! Later… but my misfortunes are not over, and I shall find him a friend to me once more, as long as there is despair to quench in my heart, and tears to mingle with my own.

Two other good, intelligent, and educated men — men of distinction — have also arrived to accompany us on this pilgrimage. One is Ferdinand de Capmas, a former sub-prefect (mayor of Carnoules, Var), whose career was cut short by the July Revolution, and who preferred the precarious chances of a difficult and uncertain future to preserving his position. The oath would have been repugnant to his sense of loyalty, for it would have seemed self-serving. He is one of those men unaffected by the implications of a scruple concerning honour, and one in whom political sympathies possess all the warmth and purity of genuine feeling.

The third of these companions is a doctor from Hondschoote (in Flanders, of which he was mayor), Jean-Vaast de Laroyère. I met him at my sister’s house when I was contemplating undertaking this journey. The purity of his soul, the original and unassuming grace of his mind, and the nobility of his political and religious sentiments struck me. I wished to take him with me, more as a moral support than as a source of health. I have been glad I did so ever since. I value his character and his intellect far more than his talents, although he possesses very evident ones. We talk together about politics far more than about medicine. His views and ideas about the present and future of France are extensive, and in no way limited by personal affections or aversions. He knows that Providence shows no partiality in its work, and he sees, as I do, ideas and not proper names in human politics. His thoughts go straight to the goal, without worrying about whatever persons or places must be considered: and his mind reveals no prejudices, no biases, not even those of his religious faith, which is sincere and fervent.

Six servants, almost all of them long-time residents of, or born in, our family home, complete our entourage. They all set out in a joyful mood, and take a personal interest in this journey. Each of them believes they are travelling on their own account, and will cheerfully brave the hardships and dangers I have not concealed from them.

July 10, 1832. At anchor in the roadstead, before the little gulf of Montredon (off Marseilles).

I have departed: the waves will now dictate our entire fate. I am no longer attached to my native land except by thoughts of the dear ones I leave behind, especially of my father and sisters.

To explain, to myself, why, when already nearing the end of my youth, at that time in life when a man withdraws from the ideal world to enter the world of material interests, I choose to leave my beautiful and peaceful existence at Saint-Point (Lamartine had been gifted, at the time of his marriage, the dilapidated château, near Mâcon, in Burgundy, which became his family home, and which he restored in the neo-Gothic style), and all the innocent delights of a domestic home rendered charming by my wife, and more beautiful still by a child; to explain, I say, to myself, why I am now sailing over a vast sea towards unknown shores and an unknown future, I am obliged to return to the source of all my thoughts, and to seek there the causes of my sympathies, and my taste for travel — for imagination also has its needs, and its passions!

I was born a poet, that is to say, more or less receptive to that beautiful language with which God speaks to all men, but more clearly to some, through the means of his works. As a young man, I had heard that speech of Nature, those words formed of images and not sounds, in the mountains, in the forests, on the lakes, at the edges of the abysses and torrents of my country, and those of the Alps; I had even translated into written language some of those accents which had moved me, and which in turn moved other souls: but I had found these accents were no longer enough; I had exhausted the few divine words that our European land utters to humankind; I thirsted to hear those of shores more resonant and more radiant. My imagination was enamoured of the sea, the deserts, the mountains, the customs, and the traces of God to be found in the East. All my life, the Orient had been the dream of my dark days, amidst the autumn and winter mists of my native valley. My body, like my soul, is a child of the sun; it needs light; it needs the rays of life that star darts forth, not from the torn breast of our western clouds, but from the depths of that crimson sky that resembles the mouth of a furnace; those rays that are not merely a glimmer, but drench with burning heat; rays that calcine, as they fall, the white rocks, the sparkling teeth of the mountain peaks, and stain the ocean red, like a fire floating on its waves! I needed to stir things up, to knead with my hands a little of that earth that was trodden by our first family, the earth of the land of wonders; to see, to walk through that Gospel scene, where the great drama of divine wisdom grappling with human error and perversity unfolded; where moral truth was martyred to fertilise with its blood a more perfect civilisation!

And then I am, and have been, forever, a Christian at heart and in my imagination; my mother had influenced me thus: I had, it is true, sometimes ceased to be one, in the less good, less pure days of my early youth; equally, misfortune and love, the complete love that purifies all it burns, had later driven me again to that first refuge of my thoughts, to those consolations of the heart that one seeks again in one’s memories and one’s hopes, when the clamour of the heart fades within, when life appears empty all passion extinguished, or death leaves us nothing to love! This Christianity born of sentiment had once again become a comforting habit of thought; I often said to myself: ‘Where is there perfect, undeniable, self-evident truth? If it is anywhere, it is in the heart, in the evidence of the feelings, against which reason alone cannot prevail. But the truth of the mind is nowhere whole; it lies with God, not with us; our powers of vision are too curtailed to absorb a single ray; all truth, for us, is only relative; what is most helpful to humankind will therefore also prove the truest; the doctrine most fruitful of divine virtue will therefore be the one that contains the most divine truths, for what is good is true.’ All my religious logic lay there; my philosophy ascended no higher; it forbade doubt, the endless dialogues of reason with itself; I was left with this religion of the heart, which accords so well with all those infinite feelings that are the life of the soul; which resolves nothing, but which soothes everything.

July 10, 7 pm.

I thought to myself: ‘This pilgrimage which, if not exactly a Christian one, is at least a human and poetic one, would have pleased my mother! Her soul was so ardent, and so quickly and completely coloured by the impression of places and things! It is she whose soul would have been exalted before the empty, sacred stage of the great drama of the Gospel, that complete drama, in which the human and divine parts of humanity each played their part, one crucifying, the other crucified! This journey, made by a son she loved so much, must cause her to smile in the heavenly abode where I envision her: she will watch over us; she will stand like a second providence between ourselves and the storms, ourselves and the simoom, ourselves and the Arabs of the desert! She will protect from all perils her son, her adopted daughter, and her granddaughter, the visible angel of our destiny, whom we take with us everywhere, whom she loved so much! She rested her gaze with such ineffable tenderness, with such penetrating delight, on the charming face of this child, the last and most beautiful hope of many generations! And if there is imprudence in this undertaking, which we had often dreamed of together, she will forgive it on high, for the sake of its motives, which are born of Love, Poetry, and Religion.’

Same day, July 10, in the evening.

Politics assails us again, even here: France will be a fine country in the near future; a generation is maturing, which, by virtue of its youth, will be completely detached from the grudges and recriminations of the past forty years. It matters little to youth that one has belonged to this or that hateful faction of the old parties; it has nothing to do with their quarrels; it harbours neither prejudice nor vengeance. It presents itself, pure and full of strength, at the gate of a new age, filled with the enthusiasm of an ideal; yet we continue to plague the age with our hatreds, our passions, our interminable disputes. Let us make way. How I would have loved to enter its cause; to join my voice to its own, on this stage which still resounds only with repetition, which will fail to yield a future echo, where we battle each other, employing, as weapons, mere names!

The time has come to shine the beacon of reason and morality on our political turmoil, to formulate the new social ideals that the world is beginning to sense and understand: the ideals of love and charity among humankind, an evangelical politics! I do not, at least, accuse myself of selfishness in this matter; I would have sacrificed my very journey, this dream of a sixteen-year-old’s imagination, to this duty! May heaven raise up humankind! For our politics shames humanity, and makes the angels weep. Destiny grants humanity one single hour per century to regenerate itself; that hour is the hour of revolution, and we squander it tearing each other apart; we give over to vengeance this hour God has allotted to regeneration and progress!

The same day, July 10, still at anchor.

The July Revolution (of 1830, which overthrew Charles X, and ended the Bourbon Restoration) grieved me deeply because I am a descendant of an old and venerable Bourbon family, and because those Bourbons attracted to themselves the love and sacrifice of my father, my grandfather, all my relatives, and would have won mine had they so desired, did not, however, embitter me, nor did it surprise me. I saw it heralded from afar. Nine months before the fatal day, the fall of the restored monarchy was foretold for me in the names of the men it entrusted with leading its government. They were devoted and loyal, but belonged to another century, another manner of thought. While the spirit of the age marched in one direction, they were set to march in another; the contrast was complete in mind, it could not long delay revealing itself in action; it was a matter of mere days and hours. I wept for a royal family which had seemed to condemn itself to the fate and blindness of Oedipus! Above all, I deplored that unnecessary rift between the past and the future! One might have been beneficial indeed to the other! Liberty and social progress could have drawn strength from embracing the ancient royal houses, the ancestral families, the old virtues! It would have been politically astute, and a kindness, not to have divided France into two camps, two factions; but rather to march together, some quickening their pace, others slowing it so as not to become disunited along the way! All that is now nothing but a dream! We should regret it, but not waste the day dwelling on it uselessly. We must act and move forward; it is the law of things; it is the law of God!

I regret that what is called the royalist party, which possesses much capacity, influence, and virtue, wishes to rest content with the outcome of the July Revolution. It was not implicated in the affair — a matter of palace intrigue and cliquish politics — in which the vast majority of royalists took no part. It is always permissible, always honourable, to share in the misfortune of others; but one must not gratuitously take responsibility for a fault one did not oneself commit. The blame for the coup d’état and the installation of a backward-looking leadership, should have been placed on those who deserved it; the august victims of a fatal error should have been mourned and grieved for; yet affection for them, though honourable, should have been denied; their various hopes, however distant, should have been rejected; and, for the rest, its partisans should have returned to the ranks of citizens, and have thought, spoken, acted, and fought on the side of the family of families, that of the country! But let us leave the subject! We shall view France again in two years’ time. May God protect her, and all that we leave there that is dear and excellent in every party!

July 11, 1832, under sail.

Today, at half past five in the morning, we set sail. A few friends, known for only a brief time but held in great affection, had risen ahead of the sun, so as to accompany us a few miles out to sea and bear their farewells further. Our brig glided on a calm, clear, blue sea, like the waters of a spring pooled in the shade of a rocky hollow. The weight of the yards, those long arms of the ship burdened with sails, barely caused us to heel slightly, now on one side, now the other. A young man from Marseille, Joseph Autran, recited admirable verses to us, in which he entrusted his good wishes for our safe journey to the winds and the waves: we were moved by our separation from land, while our thoughts flew back to shore, traversing Provençe, to reach my father, my sisters, and my friends; moved also by those farewells, those verses, the beautiful shadow of Marseille, which receded, diminishing before our eyes; and by this boundless sea destined to become, and remain for a long time, our only homeland.

O Marseille! O France! You deserved better: the times, the land, those young men, were worthy of contemplating a true poet, one of those who etch a world, and an era, harmoniously, in the memory of the species! But I, and I feel it deeply, am only one of those formless men, from a transient and vanished era, whose few sighs have found an echo, because the echo is more poetic than the poet. Yet I once belonged to another time as far as my longings were concerned; I often felt another spirit within me; while immense, infinite, horizons, luminous with philosophical, epic, religious, and above all new poetry, unfolded before me: but, as punishment for a foolish and wasted youth, those horizons closed upon me all too quickly. I felt them as too vast for my physical strength; I shut my eyes, so as not to be tempted to plunge therein. Farewell then to those dreams of genius, of intellectual delight! Too late. Perhaps I may sketch a few scenes, murmur a few songs, and all I have to say will have been said. To others, the future! And, I see, with pleasure, others arriving. Nature was never more fertile in the promise of genius than at this moment. How many artists there will be in twenty years, if all who promise genius display it!

Nonetheless, if God were to grant me a wish, this is what I would ask of Him: a poem after my own heart, and after His! A visible, living, animated, colourful image of His visible and invisible creation; what a beautiful legacy to leave to this world of darkness, sorrow, and doubt! Food that might nourish it, rejuvenate it, for a century! Oh, that I could achieve that in praise of Him; or at least grant it to myself, even if none but myself ever read a single line!

Same day, July 11, at three o’clock, at sea.

The east wind, which has been vying with us for control of our course, blows with greater force; the sea has risen and the waves have whitened; the captain declares we must return to the coast, and anchor in a bay two hours from Marseille. We are there; the waves rock us gently; the sea ‘speaks’, as the sailors say; we hear, arriving from afar, a continuous murmur, like the noise that rises from large cities: this threatening voice of the sea, the first to make itself heard, resounds solemnly in the ears and hearts of those who are about to cleave to it so closely, and for so long.

To port, we see the Isle of Pomègues and the Château d’If, an old fort with round, grey towers crowning a bare, slate-covered rock; opposite, on the high coast broken by whitish rocks, are numerous country houses whose walled gardens reveal only the tops of shrubs, or the green arches of vines; about a mile inland, on an isolated, barren knoll, stand the fort and chapel of Notre-Dame de la Garde, a pilgrimage site for Provençal sailors before, and upon return from, all their voyages. This morning, unbeknownst to us, at the very hour when the wind filled our sails, a woman from Marseille, accompanied by her children, had risen before dawn, and gone to pray for us, on the summit of that mount, whence her friendly gaze probably rested upon our ship, a white dot on the sea.

What a world the world of prayer is! What an invisible yet all-powerful bond, that of beings known or unknown to one another, praying, whether together or apart, for one another! It has always seemed to me that prayer, an instinct so true to our powerless nature, is the only real force, or at least the greatest force, amidst humankind! We do not comprehend its effect; but what do we comprehend? The need that compels us to breathe alone proves that air is necessary for life! The instinct of prayer also proves to the soul its efficacy: let us therefore pray! And you who have inspired in us this marvellous communication with you, with all beings, with the invisible worlds; you, my God, hear us, abundantly! Hear us, beyond our own desires!

Same day, July 11, at 11 pm.

A splendid moon sways, seemingly, between the masts, yards, and rigging of two warships anchored not far from our brig, between our anchorage and the dark mountains of Var; the elements of rigging of those vessels are highlighted, against the blue and purple background of the night sky, like the fibres of two gigantic, gaunt skeletons, seen from afar in the pale, still glow of the lamps of Westminster, or Saint-Denis. Tomorrow, those skeletons must return to life, spread wings that are folded like ours, and fly, like sea-going birds, to reach other shores. From the deck where I stand, one hears the high-pitched, rhythmic whistle of the boatswain directing the manoeuvre, the drum-rolls, and the voice of the officer of the watch. The flags slide down from the mast; the boats and launches are raised on board, as if moved by swift, vivid gestures of a living being. All falls silent again, on their side, and on ours.

In former times, none fell asleep on this deep and treacherous bed which is the sea without raising their soul and voice to God, without, amidst all these stars, waves, mountain peaks, all these charms and perils of the night, giving praise to the sublime Creator; prayers were said in the evening, aboard every French ship! Since the July Revolution, no such prayers are offered. Prayer died on the lips of eighteenth-century liberalism, which in itself felt nothing but a cold hatred towards matters of the soul. That sacred breath of mankind, which the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve passed down to us, along with their joys and sorrows, has failed in France during our days of strife and pride; we have dragged God into our quarrels. The shadow of God frightens some. Those new-born creatures, destined to die tomorrow, whose sterile dust the wind will carry away in but a few days, whose bleached bones these eternal waves will cast upon some reef, fear to acknowledge, by a word, a gesture, the infinite Being to whom the heavens and the seas bear witness; they disdain to name Him who did not disdain to create them, and why? Because they wear a uniform, they can measure and calculate, and call themselves nineteenth-century Frenchmen! Fortunately, the nineteenth century is already passing, and I hope to see a better one approaching, a truly religious century, where, if human beings do not acknowledge God in the same language, or employ the same symbols and emblems, they will at least do so under all banners, and in all languages!

Same night, July 11.

I walked for an hour on deck, alone, amidst these sad or comforting thoughts; I murmured from my heart and lips all the prayers I learned from my mother when I was a child; the verses, the fragments of psalms that I had so often heard her murmur in a low voice as she strolled in the evening along the path in the garden at Milly (Milly-Lamartine, near Mâcon), rose up in my memory, and I felt a deep and intimate pleasure in scattering them in turn to the waves, to the wind, to that ear, ever-open, wherein no sound of the heart or lips is ever lost! The prayer that one has heard uttered by a person one has loved, and whose death one has witnessed, is doubly sacred. Who among us does not prefer the few words taught to them by their mother to the most beautiful hymns they could compose themselves? That is why, whatever religion our reason may lead us to adopt at the age of reason, Christian prayer will always be the prayer of humankind. Alone, I dedicated this evening prayer, and this prayer of the sea, to the woman who regardless of peril has united herself to my fate, and to our lovely child who was playing, meanwhile, on the deck of the longboat, with the goat that will yield our milk, and the beautiful and gentle greyhounds that licked her white hands, and nibbled at her long, blond hair.

July 12, in the morning, under sail.

During the night the wind changed and freshened; from my cabin between the decks, I could hear the sailors’ footsteps, voices, and plaintive song echoing for a long time above my head, along with the blows of the anchor chain being secured to the bow. We were setting sail once more; we were departing. I fell asleep again. When I awoke and opened the porthole to look at the French coast we had viewed the day before, I could see nothing but an immense, bare stretch of lapping waves, and but two sails, two tall sails rising like twin milestones, twin pyramids of the desert, in that featureless space, which extended to the far horizon.

The sea caressed the thick, curved sides of the brig, gently, and babbled winningly beneath my narrow window, to which the foam sometimes rose in white weightless garlands: it sounded like the varied, confused twittering of swallows on high, when the sun rises over a wheat field. There are harmonies between all the elements, just as there is a general harmony between things of a material and intellectual nature. Every thought finds its image in a visible object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror, and renders it perceptible in a double manner: to the senses through the image, to the mind through thought; this is the infinite poetry of the dual creation! Human beings call this process comparison: comparison is genius. Creation is but a thought in a thousand forms. To compare is the art of, or an instinct for, revealing more words of this divine language, these universal analogies, that God alone possesses, but something of which He allows certain individuals to discover. That is why prophets as sacred poets, and poets as profane prophets, were once regarded everywhere as divine beings. Today they are regarded as foolish or at least useless creatures; which is logical. If one considers the tangible world of matter as all that exists, that aspect of Nature which can be reduced to numbers, space, material gain, and physical pleasure, one is right to despise those who worship only moral beauty, the idea of a deity, and the language of images, of mysterious connections between the invisible and the visible. What does that language bear witness to? God and immortality, which mean nothing at all to such people.

July 15th, anchored in the small gulf of La Ciotat.

The favourable wind, rising briefly, was soon lost to our sails. They fell against the masts, swaying at the slightest swell. A fitting image of the characters of those lacking will-power, that forceful wind blowing from the human soul; fleeting characters that weary those who possess them: such a character exhausts a person more through its weakness than a rigorous will instils courageous effort in those who display energy and action, just as ships, on a calm, windless sea, labour more than when driven by the impetus of a fresh wind that pushes them forward, and sustains their course amidst the foaming waves.

Whether by chance, or by a hidden manoeuvre made by our officers, at three o’clock the wind obliged us to enter the charming gulf off La Ciotat, a little town on the Provençal coast, which contains the homes, wives, and children of our captain, and almost all the sailors. Sheltered by a small jetty, jutting from a graceful hill entirely covered with vines, fig-trees, and olive-trees, like a friendly hand offered to voyagers nearing shore, we dropped anchor. The water is calm, and so transparent that, at a depth of twenty feet, one can see pebbles and shells gleaming, long sea grasses swaying, and thousands of shimmering fish darting about, hidden treasures of the sea, which is as rich and inexhaustible as the land in its vegetation and inhabitants. Life is everywhere, like intelligence: all of Nature is animated, all of Nature thinks and feels! Those who fail to see this have never reflected on the inexhaustible fecundity of creative thought. It cannot not, should not, be absent anywhere; infinity is populated; and wherever there is life, there is feeling; and though doubtless thought exists to unequal degrees, there is no void. Do you desire a physical demonstration? Look at a drop of water under a microscope, and you will see thousands of worlds gravitating within it! Worlds in an insect’s teardrop; and if you were to manage to decompose each of these thousands of worlds further, millions more universes would appear before you! If, from those boundless and infinitely small worlds, one suddenly ascends to the great celestial vault with its countless points of light, if one’s gaze plunges into the Milky Way, that galactic dust formed of an incalculable number of suns, each of which may govern a system of planets vaster than that which contains the Earth and the Moon, the mind is crushed by the burden of immensity; but the soul bears it, and glories in possessing its place in Creation, the strength to understand it, and the powers of feeling which enable one to bless it, and to adore its author! Lord, how worthy of prayer is Nature for one who seeks you there, who discovers you in all its forms, and who understands a few syllables of its muted tongue, which yet speaks all!

Gulf of La Ciotat, 2 pm.

The wind has died, and shows no sign of returning. The surface of the gulf is perfectly level; the sea is so calm that, here and there, one can make out the impression of the transparent wings of flying insects floating on its mirror, the only thing that mars it at this hour. Such is the degree of calm and gentleness to which the watery element can descend, this element that lifts triple-decked vessels without consideration of their weight, that erodes miles of shoreline, wears down hills, cleaves rocks, and shatters mountains under the impact of its roaring waves! Nothing is so gentle, often, as that which is strong.

We go ashore at the urging of our captain, who wishes to introduce us to his wife and show us his home. The town resembles the pretty towns of the Kingdom of Naples, on the coast near Gaeta. Everything is radiant, cheerful, and serene; life is a continuous celebration given the southern climate. Happy the person who is born and dies in the sunlight! Happy above all whoever has their home, the house and garden of their ancestors, on the shore of this sea, each wave of which is a spark of light adding a greater brilliance to the land! Except for the high mountains, which borrow the brightness of their peaks and horizons from the snow that covers them, from the sky into which they ascend, no inland site, however charming and graceful its hills, trees, and rivers may be, can compete in beauty with places bathed by the seas of the South. The sea is to the scenes of Nature what the eyes are to a beautiful face; it illuminates those scenes, it grants them that radiance, that physiognomy which makes them live, speak, fascinate, and enchant the gaze that contemplates them.

Same day. July 15.

It is night, that is to say, what is called night in these climes. How many days less bright than this have I counted on the velvety slopes of Richmond Hill in England, or amidst the mists of the Thames, the Seine, the Saône, or Lake Geneva! A full moon rises in the firmament; our black brig is plunged in shadow, resting motionless some distance from the quay. As the moon advances, it leaves behind a trail, as of reddish dust, with which it seems to have sown half the sky; the rest is blue, and whitens as it approaches. About two miles distant, between a pair of small islands, one with high cliffs, yellow like the Colosseum in Rome, the other violet in hue like lilac blossom, one can see on the surface of the sea the mirage of a large city; the eye is deceived: one sees glittering domes, palaces with dazzling facades, long quays flooded with soft and serene light; to the right and left, the waves whiten and seem to envelop this city: it looks like Venice, or the island of Malta sleeping amidst the waves. It is neither an isle nor a city, it is the moon’s reflection at the point where its light falls vertically upon the sea; closer to us, this reflection spreads and lengthens, and rolls like a river of gold and silver between two azure shores. To our left, the gulf extends, to a high cape, in a long, dark chain of uneven and jagged hills; to the right, there is a narrow, enclosed valley, where a beautiful stream flows beneath the shade of a few trees; beyond, there is a taller hill, clothed to its summit in olive trees which the night renders black; from the top of this hill to the sea, grey towers and white cottages pierce here and there the monotonous darkness of the trees, and draw the eye and the mind to the dwelling places of mankind. Further on, at the end of the gulf, three enormous rocks rise sharply above the waves; of bizarre shape, rounded and polished by the waves and the storms like pebbles, they are in fact mountains; the gigantic sport of a primitive ocean, of which these waters doubtless grant only a faint image.

July 15.

We visited the house of the captain of our brig. A pretty, modest, though ornate dwelling. We were received by the young wife, who was unwell, and saddened by her husband’s sudden departure. I offered to take her on board so that she might accompany us on this voyage, which was expected to be longer than the usual journeys of a merchant ship. Her health prevented it. She would remain alone, childless, and ill, counting the long days, and perhaps long years, of her husband’s absence. Her gentle, sensitive face bore the marks of her melancholy regarding the future, and the loneliness in her heart. The house resembled a Flemish one; its walls were covered with portraits of ships that the captain had commanded. He took us to see a house in the countryside not far from there, where, though still young, he was preparing a retreat, far from the wind and waves. I was very glad to have seen the rural refuge in which he planned to seek rest and happiness in his old age. I always like to understand the home life, the domestic circumstances, of those with whom I have to deal in this world. It is a part of them, a second outward appearance that grants one a key to their character and destiny.

Most of the sailors also come from these villages. Gentle, pious, cheerful, hard-working men, skilled in managing the winds, storms, and waves, with the calm and silent orderliness of our ploughmen at Saint-Point wielding the harrow or the share; ploughmen of the sea, peaceful, singing as they labour, like the men of our valleys who forge long steaming furrows over the hill slopes, in the rays of the morning sun.

July 16.

Awakening early this morning, I heard, from the motionless deck, the sailors’ voices mingling with the rooster’s crow and the bleating of our sheep and the goat. A few women’s and children’s voices completed the illusion; I could have believed myself lying in the room of a wooden cabin on the shores of Lake Zurich or Lake Lucerne. I went on deck: they were some of our sailors’ children, brought to see their fathers by the wives. The fathers sat them on the cannons, held them upright on the ship’s railings, laid them in the longboat, and rocked them in a hammock with the tenderness, in their voices, and the tears, in their eyes, that mothers or nurses show; brave men with hearts of bronze when faced with danger, yet with hearts of almost womanly feeling for what they love, as rough and gentle as the element they voyage over! Whether he is a shepherd or a sailor, the man who has family has a heart imbued with human and honest sentiment. The spirit of family is the second soul of humanity; modern legislators have too often forgotten the fact; they think only of nations or individuals; they neglect the family, the sole source of strong and sound populations, the sanctuary for tradition and custom, in which all the social virtues are renewed.

Legislation, even that in accord with Christianity, has proved barbaric in this respect; it divorces human beings from the family, instead of inviting them to join it. It denies half of humanity — wives and children — the possession of home and land: these should be due to all, as soon as they reach adulthood; they should be forbidden only to those guilty of crimes. The family is a society in miniature; but a society where laws are natural, because they are based on sentiment. Excommunicating someone from the family should be the greatest means of censure, the ultimate punishment, within the legal system; It should be the only ‘death penalty’ acceptable to a Christian and humane form of government; the actual death penalty should have been abolished centuries ago.

Additional notes, from July 14 to 16, the air still wet due to the headwind.

July 14.

A mile from the coast to the west, the mountains seem as if shattered by blows from a club; enormous fragments have fallen here and there at the foot of the mountains, or lie beneath the blue and greenish waves of the sea that bathes them. The waves break there, ceaselessly; and from the crashing, alternating, muffled sound against the rocks, tongues of white foam spring forth that lick the briny shore. These heaped fragments of mountains (for they are too large to be called mere cliffs) have been thrown with such confusion upon one another, and pounded there, that they form countless narrow coves, pierced by deep, echoing arched caves, with dark cavities, whose entrances, twisting and turning paths, and exits, are known only to the children of the few fishermen’s huts nearby. One of these caverns, entered through the low arch of a natural bridge roofed by an enormous block of granite, gives access to the sea, then opens on a dark and narrow cove, which the sea fills entirely with waves limpid and calm as the firmament on a beautiful night. It is a place known to fishermen, where, when the waves roar and foam outside, shaking the coast with their crashing, the smallest boats can shelter; within it one can barely see the slight bubbling of a spring falling into a pool of water. The sea there retains that beautiful, shimmering, greenish-yellow colour, so distinctive to the eye of marine painters, but which they can never render exactly, since the eye sees more than the hand can imitate.

On both sides of this marine valley rise two walls of well-nigh sheer rock, dark and uniformly coloured like clinker shortly after it has tumbled into a furnace. No plant, no moss, finds even a crevice in which to take root, and hang or float its garland of vines and flowers such as are often seen swaying on the rock faces of Savoy, at heights where only birds can breathe the fragrance: bare, upright, black, repelling the eye, they seem placed there only to defend, from the sea air, the slopes of vines and olive-trees that languish beneath their shelter; true images of those people who dominate an era or a nation, exposed to all the ravages of time and storm, who serve to protect those weaker and happier.

At the rear of the cove, the water widens a little, meanders, and takes on a lighter hue as it reveals a greater extent of sky, and finally ends in a beautiful sheet of still water on a bed of small purple shells, crushed and densely packed like sand. If you step out of the skiff that brought you here, you will find on the left, in the hollow of a ravine, a spring of fresh, cool, pure water; then, turning to the right, a steep, stony and uneven goat track, shaded by wild fig-trees and azaroles (crataegus azarolus, a species of hawthorn, the ‘Mediterranean medlar’), descends from the cultivated lands towards the solitude of the waves. Few places have so struck me, or so enticed me in my travels. It is just such a perfect blend of grace and strength that forms perfect beauty from a harmony of its elements, as in a living or thinking being. It is, in this place, a mysterious marriage of earth and sea, caught, so to speak, in their most intimate and veiled union. It is an image of the most inaccessible calm and solitude, beside the stormy and tumultuous theatre in which tempests play, so close to the sounding waves. It is one of those many masterpieces of creation, which the deity has scattered everywhere as if delighting in contrasts, but which He most often takes pleasure in hiding among the impassable peaks of steep mountains, in the depths of ravines without access, on the most inaccessible reefs of the ocean, like jewels of Nature revealed, but rarely, to simple folk, shepherds, fishermen, travellers, or poets, or to pious contemplation by solitary individuals.

At ten o’clock, on the 14th of July a westerly breeze rises; we weigh anchor at three; soon we have nothing but sky and waves for our horizon — a sparkling sea — the gentle and rhythmic movement of the brig — the murmur of the waves, as regular as breathing. This regular alternation of the swell, of the wind in a sail, is found in all the movements, in all the sounds of Nature: does it not also breathe? Yes, without a doubt, it breathes, it lives, it thinks, it suffers and rejoices, it feels, it adores its divine Creator. He did not create dead forms; life is the sign of all his works.

On July 15th, under sail, at 8pm, we saw the last grey mountain peaks of the coasts of France and Italy sink below the waves, then the dark blue line of the sea on the horizon drowned everything: the eye, at this moment when the known horizon vanishes, travels through the space, the floating void, that surrounds it, like some unfortunate who has successively lost all the objects of their affections, and their habits, and seeks in vain where to rest the heart.

The sky becomes the great and unique scene of contemplation; until the gaze returns to this imperceptible point drowned in space, this narrow ship which has become the entire universe for those it bears.

The boatswain is at the helm, with impassive and masculine face; his firm and vigilant gaze, fixed sometimes on the cabin to check the compass needle, sometimes on the bow to read, amidst the ropes of the foremast, his course through the waves; his right arm, placed on the helm, with a movement imprinting his will on the immense mass of the ship; everything about him reveals the serious nature of his work, the fate of the vessel and the lives of thirty people furrowing at this moment his broad brow, and weighing on his robust hand.

At the front of the bridge, the sailors are standing, or seated in groups, or lying on the gleaming fir planks or on top of the cables wound in vast spirals; some are mending old sails with large iron needles, like young girls embroidering their wedding veils, or the curtains of their virginal bed; others leaning over the balustrades, gazing, at the foaming waves without seeing them, as we gaze at the cobblestones of a frequently-trodden road, while casually emitting puffs of smoke to the wind from their red-clay pipes. Some are feeding the hens, filling the long troughs; one, holding a handful of hay in his hand, allows the goat to tug at it, holding its horns in the other; those, over there, are handling two fine sheep, perched in the boat suspended above deck between the masts: the poor creatures raise anxious heads above the gunwales, and, seeing only the undulating plain whitened with foam, bleat for the rock and arid moss of their native hills.

At the ship’s extremity, on the horizon of this floating world, is the sharp prow, preceded by its bowsprit slanted over the water; this mast rises from the front of the vessel like the horn of a sea monster. The undulations of the sea, almost imperceptible at the centre of gravity amidships, cause the prow to describe gigantic, slow oscillations. Sometimes the movement seems to point the ship towards a star in the firmament, sometimes towards some deep valley of the ocean; for the level of the sea appears to rise and fall ceaselessly, when one is at the extremity of a vessel which, by its mass and length, multiplies the effect of the undulating waves.

Separated by the mainmast from this scene of maritime life, we seat ourselves on the watch benches, or stroll with the officers on the deck, watching the sun descend and the waves rise.

In the midst of all these severe, pensive male figures, the child, her hair loose and flowing over her white dress, her beautiful pink face, happy and cheerful, bordered by a straw sailor’s hat tied beneath her chin, plays with the captain’s white cat, or feeds seabirds, caught the day before, caged beneath the gun carriage, to whom she offers bread crumbs from her little store.

However, the ship’s captain, his marine chronometer in hand, silently watching the west for the precise second when the sun’s disk, refracted, seems to touch the wave and float there for a moment before being completely submerged, raises his voice and says: ‘Sailors, to prayer!’ All conversations cease and games end, as the crew throw their still-burning smokes into the sea, remove their red woollen Greek caps which they clasp in their hands, and gather to kneel between the two masts. The youngest among them opens the prayer book and sings the Ave, Maris Stella, and the litanies, in a tender, plaintive, and solemn manner, which seems to have been inspired, amidst the waves, by the restless melancholy of these last hours of daylight, when memories of land, of their cottages, of their hearths, rise in the minds of these simple men. Darkness will descend upon the waves once more, and engulf, until morning, in dangerous obscurity, the path of these sailors, and the lives of so many beings who have no beacon but Providence, no refuge but the invisible hand that sustains them on the waves.

If prayer had not been born with Mankind, it would have been invented by human beings, alone with their thoughts and weaknesses in the presence of the abyss of the sky where their gaze is lost, and the abyss of the sea from which a fragile plank separates them; amidst the roar of the ocean that rumbles, hisses, howls, and bellows like the voices of a thousand ferocious beasts; amidst the gusts of wind that make every rope twang; amidst the approach of night that magnifies all perils and multiplies all terrors. But prayer was not invented; it was born from the first sigh, the first joy, the first sorrow of the human heart, or rather, humankind was born only for prayer: to glorify God or to implore Him, that was its sole mission here below; all else perishes before or with it; But the cry of glory, admiration, or love that we raise to our creator, does not perish as it passes through the world; it rises once more, it resounds, from age to age, in the ear of God, like the echo of His own voice, like a reflection of His magnificence; it is the only thing that is completely divine in humankind, and that we can exhale with joy and pride, for this pride is a tribute to the only one who possesses it of right, to the Infinite Being.

No sooner had we entertained these thoughts, or others like them, each in our own silence than Julia on the side of the deck facing east, called out. ‘A fire! A ship on fire!’ We rushed to see this distant light on the waves. Indeed, a large, burning mass was afloat in the east, at the edge of the horizon; then, after a few minutes, we realised that it was the full moon, rising slowly from the sea, rounding to form an orb, ablaze amidst the vapours borne by the westerly wind, lifting like a red-hot iron disc a blacksmith might extract from the furnace with his tongs, and suspend above the trough of water in which he will extinguish it. On the opposite side of the sky, the sun’s disc, which had just set, had seemingly left a bank of golden sand in the western sky, like the shore of some unknown land. Our gaze flickered from one side to the other between these two celestial marvels. Little by little, the light of this dual twilight faded; thousands of stars were born above our heads, as if to guide our masts, which swung from one cluster to another; the first watch of the night was ordered, everything that could hinder the manoeuvre was removed from deck, and the sailors approached the captain, one after another, to say: ‘God be with us!’

I continued to walk, silently, on the bridge, for some time; then I descended below, giving thanks to God in my heart for allowing me to see once more this hidden aspect of His nature. Lord, to see your work in all its aspects, to admire your magnificence amidst the mountains or the sea, to adore and bless your name, which no letters can inscribe — that is life itself! Enhance ours, so that love and wonder may increase in our hearts! Then turn the page, and let us read, in another world, the endlessly wondrous book of your greatness and your goodness!

July 16, 1832, on the open sea.

All night, and then all day, we had a fine but rough sea. In the evening, the wind freshened, the waves rose, and began to roll heavily against the sides of the brig. A brilliant moon cast torrents of shimmering white light into the broad, liquid valleys carved between the tall waves. These floating streams of moonlight resembled springs of running water, cascades born of snowmelt, tracing the green valley floors of Switzerland or the Jura. The ship lumbered up and down each of the deep ravines. For the first time on this voyage, we heard the creaking and groaning of wood; the sides of the brig, under the blows delivered by each wave, made a noise comparable only to the last bellows of a bull struck by an axe, and lying on its side in convulsions of agony. This noise, mingled in the night with the roar of a hundred thousand waves, the vessel’s gigantic leaps, the creaking of the masts, the whistling of the wind, the hissing of the spray and foam hurled high as it swept the deck, the heavy, hurried steps of the watchmen running to bolster the helm, the odd brief yet firm words of the commanding officer; all this formed a significant and terrible mass of sound, enough to shake the human soul far more profoundly than a cannon shot on the battlefield. Such scenes one must have witnessed, in order to know the painful side of the mariner’s life, and to measure one’s own moral and physical sensibility!

An entire sleepless night was passed in this way. At daybreak, the wind dropped a little, the waves no longer broke fiercely, that is to say, they were no longer crowned with foam; everything promised a beautiful day; through the coloured haze on the horizon, we could see the long flanks of the tall mountain ranges of Sardinia. The captain promised us a sea calm and flat as a lake between that island and Sicily. We were sailing at a speed of eight knots, sometimes nine; every quarter of an hour, the dazzling coast toward which the wind was carrying us became clearer; the gulfs deepened, the headlands jutted out further, white rocks rose from the waves; houses and cultivated fields began to be apparent on the island’s slopes. At noon, we reached the entrance to the Gulf of San Pietro; but, just as we were about to round the reefs that bordered it, a sudden gust of northerly wind filled our sails; The massive waves that had built during the night caught the wind, and piled up in veritable shifting hills; the entire horizon was nothing but a sheet of foam; the ship staggered to the crest of each wave before plunging almost vertically into the depths between: in vain we sought shelter in the gulf. The moment we rounded a cape to enter the roads, a furious wind, whistling like a volley of arrows, burst from every valley, every cove along the coast, and threw the brig onto its side; there was barely time to reef the sails; only the lowermost were retained aloft, so as to steer close to the wind: the captain himself grasped the helm. The ship, like a horse held fast on a short rein by a strong hand, seemed to paw the foam of the gulf; the waves skimmed the edge of the deck as the ship heeled over, while the entire port side, down to the keel, rose from the water.

We ploughed on like this for some twenty minutes, hoping to reach the small harbour of San-Pietro Island (Carloforte); we could already see the vineyards and the white cottages of the township within cannon range; but the storm intensified, the wind struck us like a flight of cannonballs; we were forced to give way and tack, precariously, even amidst the most violent blows of the tempest. We succeeded, and left the gulf by means of the same manoeuvre that had gained us entry; we found ourselves far out on a dreadful sea. Fatigued by the previous night and the efforts so far that day, we sought shelter desperately before a second night which we feared would prove even more storm-filled. The captain resolved to brave everything, even at the risk of losing his masts, so as to find an anchorage on the Sardinian coast.

The Gulf of Palmas, a few miles from our position, promised us one. To enter it, we battled the same fury of the winds that had driven us from the Gulf of San Pietro. After two hours of struggle, we prevailed and entered, like a seabird poised on its wings, the very heart of the beautiful Gulf of Palmas. The storm had not yet subsided; we could hear the incessant roar of the open sea behind us; the wind continued to whistle through our rigging; but, in that basin surrounded by high mountains, it could only raise bursts of foam, which splashed over and cleansed the deck, and at last we anchored three cable-lengths from the Sardinian beach, on a seagrass bed, in peaceful and barely wrinkled waters.

It is a delightful feeling, that of the sailor who, having escaped the storm through sheer hard work and effort, finally hears the iron chain of the anchor rattle, the anchor that will tie him to a hospitable shore. As soon as it has taken hold, the tense faces of the sailors relax; their thoughts are at rest as well: they descend between-decks, and change their wet clothes; they soon return in their Sunday best, and resume all the peaceful habits of their life on land. Idle, cheerful, and talkative, they sit, arms crossed on the rail, or smoke their pipes, gazing calmly and indifferently at the landscape and houses along the shore.

July 17, 1832.

Anchored in this peaceful harbour, after a blissful night’s sleep, we lunch on deck, sheltered by a sail that serves as our tent; the sun-baked but picturesque coast of Sardinia stretches out before us. A boat armed with two cannons detaches itself from the island of Sant’Antioco, a few miles away, and appears to be approaching. We soon have a clearer view; it carries sailors and soldiers; it is quickly within earshot; we are interrogated, and ordered to go ashore: we deliberate; I decide to accompany the brig’s captain. We arm ourselves with several rifles and pistols to resist, should they try to use force to detain us. We set sail in the small dinghy. Reaching shore near the little Sardinian boat which preceded us, we land on the beach at the rear of the gulf. This beach borders an uncultivated and marshy plain. White sand, large thistles, a few clumps of aloe and, here and there, some bushy shrubs with pale, grey bark whose foliage resembles that of cedar-trees; herds of wild horses, grazing freely amidst this heathland, which come galloping to inspect and sniff at us, and, neighing, depart like flocks of crows; a mile away, bare, grey mountains, with only a few patches of stunted vegetation on their slopes; an African sky over those scorched peaks; a vast silent countryside; the desolate and solitary aspect that characterises all the fever-inducing beaches of Romagna, Calabria, and the borders of the Pontine Marshes — such was the scene. Seven or eight handsome men, with high foreheads and wild bold eyes, half-naked, half-dressed in tattered uniforms, armed with long rifles, and holding reed poles in their other hands to take our letters or present us with whatever they had to offer (so as to avoid potential infection) — such were the actors. I answered their questions in broken Neapolitan dialect; I named some of their compatriots with whom I had been friends in Italy during my youth: the men became polite and obliging, after having showed themselves insolent and imperious. I bought a sheep from them, which they butchered on the beach. We wrote letters: they received our letters on the forked ends of their long reeds, struck a flint and steel, tore a few green branches from the shrubs covering the shore, lit a fire, and passed our letters, soaked in seawater, through the smoke of this fire before touching them. They promised to fire a shot this evening to tell us to return to shore as soon as our other supplies of vegetables and fresh water were ready. Then, dragging from their boat an immense basket of shellfish, ‘frutti di mare’, they offered the contents to us, refusing to accept payment.

We return on board. — Hours of leisure and delightful contemplation, spent on the stern of the ship at anchor, while the storm still resounds beyond the ends of the twin capes that protect us, and we watch the foaming tide rise, another thirty or forty feet, against the golden flanks of these capes.

July 18, 1832.

We left the Gulf of Palmas, sailing over a mirrored and level sea — a light westerly breeze, barely enough to dry the night dew that shines on the cut branches of the mastic trees (lentisks), the only greenery on these well-nigh African coasts — on the open sea, a silent day, and a gentle wind that allows us to run at six to seven knots an hour — a fine evening — a sparkling night — the sea sleeps too.

July 19, 1832.

We wake sixty miles or so from the coast of Africa. I reread the story of Saint Louis (Louis IX), to remind myself of the circumstances of his death on the beach at Tunis, near the cape of Carthage, which we should see this evening or tomorrow.

In my youth, I knew not why, certain nations inspired in me an almost innate antipathy, while others constantly drew me to their history through an unthinking attraction. I felt for those shadows of the past, those inhabitants of dead ages, exactly what I feel, with irresistible force, for or against the faces of those with whom I live, or those who pass by. I love or abhor, in the physical sense of the word, at first sight. In the blink of an eye, I have judged a man or a woman forever. Reason, reflection, even resistance, offered, often, on my part against these first impressions, prove powerless. When bronze has received its imprint from the mould, you may turn it over and over in your fingers, it retains the contours; so, it is with my soul, with my mind. — This is characteristic of beings in whom instinct is swift, strong, instantaneous, and inflexible. We ask ourselves: ‘What is instinct?’ and we recognise that it is supreme reason; but innate reason, unreasoning reason, reason such as God wrought it, not as man finds it. — It strikes like lightning, without the eye having to seek it out. — It illuminates everything at once. — Inspiration in all the arts, as on the battlefield, is also this same instinct, this divinely-inspired reason. Genius, too, is instinct, not simply logic and labour. The more one reflects, the more one recognises that human beings possess nothing that is great and beautiful that belongs to them, that derives from their strength or will; rather, all that is supremely beautiful comes directly from Nature and from God. — Christianity, aware of all, understood this from its inception. — The first apostles felt within themselves this immediate action of the divinity, and exclaimed from the very first hour: ‘Every perfect gift comes from God’ (see the Bible: James 1.17).

Let us return to the nations of the past. — I have never found it in me to love the Romans; I have never been able to take the slightest heart-felt interest in Carthage, despite its misfortunes and its glory. — Hannibal seems to me no more than a general of the East India Company, conducting an industrial campaign, a brilliant and heroic commercial operation on the plains of Lake Trasimene (at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, in 217BC, Hannibal defeated the armies of Rome). — His people, ungrateful like all selfish nations, rewarded him with exile and death! — As for his death, it was beautiful, it was pathetic, it reconciles me to his triumphs; I was moved by it from my childhood. — For me, as for all humanity, there is always a sublime and heroic harmony between supreme glory, supreme genius, and supreme misfortune. — Here was one of those keynotes of human destiny that never fails of effect, a sad and voluptuous modulation within the human heart! Indeed, there is no glory, no virtue, eliciting sympathy, that is complete without ingratitude, persecution, and death. — Christ was the divine example of this, and his life as well as his doctrine explains the mysterious enigma of the destiny of great men, through the destiny of the divine man!

I discovered, later, that the secret of my sympathy or antipathy for the memory of certain nations lies in the very nature of their institutions and actions. People like the Phoenicians, those of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage — trading societies exploiting the land for their own profit, and measuring the grandeur of their enterprises only by the immediate and material utility of the result — I am to them like Dante: I observe and I pass by ‘Non ragionar di lor, ma guarda e passa!’ (see Dante’s ‘Inferno’, Canto III, line 15).

Let us not talk of them. — They were rich and prosperous, that is all. — They only worked for their present day; the future has no business concerning itself with them. — Receperunt mercedem (‘They have received their reward’, Vulgate, Matthew, VI.2).

But those, little concerned with the present they felt slipping from them, who, through a sublime instinct for immortality, through an insatiable thirst for the future, engendered national ideals beyond the present, and elevated human feeling above mere comfort, wealth, and material utility — those who consumed generations and centuries, yet left in their wake a beautiful and eternal trace of their passage; those selfless and generous nations who roused all the great and weighty powers of the human mind, in order to establish knowledge, law, theogonies, arts, and systems — those who have carved masses of marble or granite, raised obelisks and pyramids, as a sublime challenge to Time itself, mute symbols which yet forever speak to great and generous souls — those poetic nations, the ancient Egyptians, the Jews, the Hindus, the Greeks, who idealised politics and made the divine principle, the soul, predominate, in the life of their nation, above the merely human principle, that of the utilitarian — those, I love and venerate. I seek, and delight in, their traces, their memorials, their built, sculpted, or written works; I live their lives, I attend as a moved and partial spectator the touching or heroic drama of their destinies, and I cross the seas gladly to go and dream for a few days amidst their dust and ruins, and grant their memory a memento from the future; they have deserved well of humankind, for having raised their thoughts above this muddy globe, and beyond this fleeting day. They felt themselves to have been wrought for a higher and broader destiny and, though unable to grant themselves the immortal life of which every noble and great heart dreams, said to their works: ‘Immortalise us, endure for us, speak of us to those who will cross the desert, or who, on the waves of the Ionian Sea, will pass Cape Sigeum (Sigeion, near ancient Troy) or Sunium’s promontory (Sounion, at the southern tip of Attica), where Plato sang of a wisdom that will be the wisdom of the future still. (Compare the sentiments of Lamartine’s poem ‘Faith’, of 1818, from his ‘Méditations Poétiques’.)

Such my thoughts, as I listened to the sounds of the prow, on which I was seated, cutting the waves of the African waters, and looked minute by minute, to see if I could spot, beneath the pink mist on the horizon, the cape near Carthage.

The breeze died, the sea calmed, the day passed, as I gazed in vain, from afar, at the misty coast of Africa: in the evening, a strong gust of wind arose; the ship, tossed from side to side, crushed beneath its sails like the broken wings of a seabird, shook us against the rails amidst a terrible roar like that of a collapsing building. I spent the night on deck, my arm around a cable; from the whitish clouds that pressed together like a tall mountain in the deep Gulf of Tunis, flashes of lightning erupted, and distant thunderclaps sounded. Africa appeared to me as I had always imagined, its flanks scoured by the sun’s heat, and its scorched peaks hidden beneath the clouds. As we draw nearer, as Cape Bizerte, then Cape Carthage, emerged from the darkness and seemed to advance toward us, all the grand images, all the fabulous or heroic names that have resounded on these shores, also sprang to mind, reminding me of the poetic or historical dramas for which these places were successively the stage. Virgil, like all poets who wish to outdo truth, history, and Nature, rather spoiled than embellished the image of Dido. — The historical Dido, widow of Sychaeus, faithful to the spirit of her first husband, had her pyre erected on Cape Carthage, and ascended it, a sublime and willing victim of true love, and of fidelity even unto death. That is somewhat more beautiful, more holy, more filled with pathos, than the cold gallantries that the Roman poet grants his ridiculous, pious Aeneas, and the amorous despair, on Dido’s part, with which the reader cannot sympathise.

But his ‘Anna, soror’ (see Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ Book IV, line 8), and his magnificent farewell followed by her immortal silence that follow (in Book VI), will always render Virgil forgiven.

The historical role of Carthage is more poetic than any poetry. The celestial death and funeral of Saint Louis — the blind Belisarius — Marius expiating the crimes of Rome, among ferocious beasts, amidst the ruins of Carthage, itself a ferocious beast — that lamentable day when, like a scorpion surrounded by fire piercing itself with its own poisonous sting, Carthage, besieged by Scipio (Scipio Aemilianus, the younger), and Massinissa (King of Numidia), sets its own buildings and property alight — Hasdrubal’s wife, enclosed with her children in the temple of Jupiter, reproaching her husband for not knowing how to die, and lighting the torch herself that will consume her and her children, and all that remains of her homeland, leaving only ashes for the Romans! (In 146BC, at the end of the Third Punic War) — Cato of Utica, the two Scipios (Aemilianus, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus victor in the Second Punic War), Hannibal himself, all those great names still rise to mind, above the deserted cape, like standing columns before a ruined temple — the eye sees nothing but a bare promontory rising from an empty sea, a few cisterns intact, or filled with their own debris, a few shattered aqueducts, a handful of breakwaters ravaged by the waves, covered by the surf; a city nearby, in which even those few names are unknown to its barbarous inhabitants, like the names of those who live too long and become strangers in their own land. But the past suffices when it shines with such splendour in one’s memory — I might even say that I prefer a Carthage alone and isolated amidst its ruins than desecrated and troubled by the noise and throng of new generations? Ruins are like tombs — amidst the tumult of a great city, amidst filthy streets, they afflict and sadden the eye, they are anomalous surrounded by all that noisy, agitated life — but in solitude, on the shores of the sea, on an abandoned cape, on a savage beach, a few stones, yellowed by the centuries and scarred by lightning, make one reflect, think, and dream or weep.

Solitude and death, solitude and the past, which involves the death of things, are necessarily allied in human thought. Their accord is a mysterious harmony. I prefer the bare promontory of Carthage, the melancholy cape of Sunium, the bare and infested beach of Paestum, in their evocation of scenes from bygone times, to the temples, arches, and coliseums of a dead Rome, trampled underfoot by the living Rome through habitual indifference, and condemned to profane oblivion.

July 20, 1832.

At ten o’clock the wind dropped; we were able to go up on deck, and, sailing at seven knots an hour, soon found ourselves off the isolated island of Pantelleria (in the Strait of Sicily), the former island of Calypso (see Homer’s ‘Odyssey’), still delightful for its African vegetation, and the coolness of its valleys and waters. It was here that successive Roman emperors exiled their political prisoners.

It appeared to us only as a black cone emerging from the sea, and clothed up to two-thirds of its summit by a white mist lodged there by the night wind. No ship is allowed to approach; it harbours only small boats that bear exiles from Naples and Sicily to the island, many of whom have been languishing there for the last ten years or more, expiating their premature dreams of freedom (a reference to the failed Neapolitan Revolution of 1820, an attempt to end the autocratic rule of Francis I, King of the Two Sicilies, and the influence of Austria).

Woe to those who in every way are ahead of their age! The age will crush them. — Such is our fate also, we impartial, political, rational men of France. — France is still a century and a half behind our ideas. — She, looks to people and ideas born of sect and party: what do patriotism and reason matter to her? Hatred, resentment, and alternating bouts of persecution are all that her ignorance requires! She will clothe herself in them, until, wounded by the deadly weapons she so desperately wishes to employ, she falls, or casts them far from her in order to turn to our only hope for political improvement: God, the ultimate law; and reason, the innate law.

July 21, 1832.

The sea, when I awoke after a stormy night, seemed to be toying with the remnants of yesterday’s wind — foam still covered it like the streaks that stain the sides of a horse weary after a long race, or the froth shaken from its bit as it raises and lowers its head, impatient for a new course.

The waves run swiftly and irregularly, though they are light, shallow, and translucent: the surface resembles a field of fine oats undulating in the breeze of a spring morning, after a rainy night — we can see the islands of Gozo and Malta, a dozen or more miles away on the horizon, emerging from the mist.

The End of Part I of Lamartine’s ‘Voyage en Orient’

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