On some commonalities between Maurice de Guérin and the German Romantics

This article seeks to lay the groundwork for a comparison between Maurice de Guérin and two of his German precursors, Hölderlin and Novalis. Like Novalis, Guérin mourned a loved one, which leads to an initiatory and mystical trajectory. With Hölderlin, he finds himself fascinated by a mythical Arcadia, a place of plenitude where the divine is omnipresent. One can describe the philosophical and religious attitude of the three poets as “mystical naturism.”