Amable Tastu (1798–1885; French)

Summary

Amable Vouart began writing poetry at eleven years. She married Joseph Tastu, the editor of one of the journals where she published, when she was eighteen. Her first collection, Poésies (1826), was well received; a second came in 1835. After her husband died in 1849 she devoted herself to her son, living with him during his diplomatic assignments in Baghdad, Belgrade, and Alexandria. Despite these travels, Tastu was known as the “domestic Muse” for the modesty she displayed about her own gifts, but, as we may infer from the poem below, her deference to the sublime poetic “eagles” may be tinged with a critique of their seeming transcendence of common human woes. We might compare it with Karoline von Günderode’s “The Balloonist” (p. x).