The echoes of the “Valley” in “The Wanderer above the Sea of Fogs”

"The Wanderer above the Sea of Fogs" by Friedrich David Caspar dating from 1818 and the nine stanzas "Valley" by Alphonse de Lamartine written in 1819 both share a similar theme, the relations of man with nature. For the Romantics, the "true" was not in the intellectual domain, but in a contemplation of human nature and of Nature itself. First, we will study the fascination and the wonder that man feels while contemplating nature, mysterious, wild and omnipotent, then demonstrate the desire to live in harmony with the Nature. The last part will be devoted to an analysis of the spiritual dimension of nature, the lost paradise that will fascinate Romantics.

"The Wanderer above the Sea of Fogs" is a oil painting. In the foreground, we observe a man standing on a high rock above the clouds. A solitary walker seen from the back. He is scrutinizing the horizon of this wild, imaginary and romantic landscape. The image is similar to a sea with dangerous reefs. Friedrich decision to place the man on the summit of the mountain is compare to a man standing on top of his existence looking at his life. He contemplates the path to meet God. In the distance, the forms become more and more blurred, dissolve and become lighter in a bluish tint. The forms eventually get lost and blend with the sky. The more deeper, the more abstract which seems to be the representation of the vivid past and the unknown future.

The “Valley” is a poem that marks an opposition between the stability of nature and the instability of man. In the nine stanzas, Lamartine begins to blame the human condition and then brings out the praise of nature that save him which he brings with God.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, landscape paintings became the common practice of romantic art. In the “Valley”, Lamartine seeks to emphasize nature by many expressions of praise. The author evokes nature as "the plains of the air" , " the soft ray". Expressions like "celest concerts" or " bends on the hillsides" remind us of this relation of the ego with nature. This valorization of nature is even more pronounced perhaps in Friedrich’s painting. In fact, the gentle colors of the distance, the play of light in the clouds and the contrasts between the first and second planes reinforce the sublimity of nature that we immediately understood. Here we can evoke the "diaphanous hills" which, in Lamartine's text, show purity and transparency, allow us to see the landscape differently, like "through a cloud". The two authors present to us their own vision of nature. Both nostalgic and mystical and represents the link between man and the cosmos, seen from within and as idealized.