Note 186 — Notes

The same thing is to be found in Lamartine when he says of Byron: ‘There is more true, imperishable poetry in the tent at Missolonghi where he lies prostrate with fever, under arms, than in all his works.’ (Commentaire de la 2e Meditation.) This is precisely the teaching adopted by Barrès, Suarès, Péguy (the last preached it by his example, however), which comes down to saying: ‘There is more poetry in a heroic death than in all the activities of the mind.’ Note that this position is by no means common to all the Romantics. Hugo, Vigny, Michelet, felt all the poetry of action, but they never appear to think it superior to the poetry of the lofty forms of intellectual life. Hugo never thought of sacrificing Homer or Galilei to Napoleon, or even to Hoche—to take a disinterested hero such as Lamartine praises in Byron.