SOURCE: "People, Prisons, and Palaces," "The Terrestrial Eden," and "Conclusion," in In Search of Eden: Lamartine's Symbols of Despair and Deliverance, Classical Folia Editions, 1976, pp. 15-66, pp. 199-232, pp. 307-10.

In this excerpt, Araujo examines the significance of Lamartine's religious symbolism in his major poetical works.

The point of departure in Lamartine's quest for Eden is a shattering sense of man's nothingness. No figure in human history more tragically and more meaningfully symbolizes that nothingness, in his view, than Job, whom he quotes in his Cours familier de littérature (1856-1869). This work of his mature years, presumably designed to educate the masses to the moral beauties of world literature but more significant as a depository of some of Lamartine's fundamental philosophic and literary tenets, records the essential and unanswered question which the anguished victim of divine wrath puts to God:

An initial assumption might be that Lamartine...