Graziella: A Novel

Description

In its first modern translation, a novel-cum-memoir of a Frenchman's erotic awakening in Italy by a preeminent writer of the Romantic period. When I was eighteen, the narrator begins, as if penning his memoir, my family entrusted me to the care of a relative whose business affairs called her to Tuscany. The tale that unfolds here, of a young man's amorous experiences amid the natural grandeur and subtle splendors of the Italian countryside, is one of the finest works of fiction in the French Romantic tradition. Remarkable for its contemplative prose, its dreamy passions and seductive drawing of the Italian landscape, and its place in the Romantic canon, Graziella is a timeless portrait of love, chronicling the remorse and the misguided ideals of youth that find their expression, if not their amends, in art.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) is best known as France's preeminent Romantic poet and, in later life, as a progressive politician who advocated for the abolition of slavery and freedom of the press. Raymond N. MacKenzie is professor of English at the University of St. Thomas and translator of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's Diaboliques and Stendhal's Italian Chronicles, both published by Minnesota.

"In a new translation and with contextual notes and an introduction by MacKenzie, Lamartine's story comes to us afresh." -Kirkus Reviews