When Jules Laforgue's Moralites legendaires was published in 1887 a few months after his death at the age of twenty-seven, it was hailed as a masterpiece. In the words of Remy de Gourmont, it gave "the sensation (specially rare) that we have never read anything like it: the grape with all its velvet hues in the morning light, but with curious reflections and an air as if the seeds within had become frozen by a breath of ironic wind come from some place farther than the pole." Subsequent readers have agreed. The book, which parodies great figures of literature and legend, Hamlet, Lohengrin, and Salome, was an important influence on James Joyce and T. S. Eliot as well as on any number of French poets from Guillaume Apollinaire to Jacquest Prevert. In his introduction to this lively translation, William Jay Smith points out that Laforgue had hit upon a wholly modern approach: "The heroes of the past must be recreated by each human consciousness in its own way: they are perpetually waiting to be reborn." Their rebirth, in the wit and elegance of these finely wrought tales that Smith has carried over into English is a joy to contemplate.

About the Author
Jules Laforge (1860-1887) was a French poet born in Uruguay. He moved to France in 1866 to attend school. Beginning in 1881, he spent five years as French reader to the empress Augusta of Germany. He retired in 1886, returned to Paris and married, but soon after came down with tuberculosis and passed away in 1887. William Jay Smith, American poet and two-time finalist for the National Book Award, was the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970.

Reviews
"Mallarme defined the author of these 'Moral Tales' as the Voltaire of Symbolism - a demystifier of the cultural bric-a-brac of the bourgeoisie, a dandyish demolition expert specializing in disenchantment. According to Ezra Pound (who translated one of these stories in 1918), Laforgue had delivered the coup de grace to the facile exoticism (and eroticism) of the 19th-century historical novel; in clearing out the residual rubbish of romanticism, he had prepared the way for modernist prose. " -- New York Times Book Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780811209434
Author Jules Laforgue
Format Paperback
Page Count 194
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 218g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 135mm * 15mm