Böcker av Jules Laforgue

A full-length collection from a classic French symbolist poet that explores an innovative, organic form of free verse. Juxtaposing common objects with romantic ideals, it projects the authors ideas into uncharted territories of spiritual realms, sexual extremity, and the purity of despair.

Moralités légendaires (Nouvelle édition) / Jules LaforgueDate de l'édition originale: 1894Le présent ouvrage s'inscrit dans une politique de conservation patrimoniale des ouvrages de la littérature Française mise en place avec la BNF. HACHETTE LIVRE et la BNF proposent ainsi un catalogue de titres indisponibles, la BNF ayant numérisé ces oeuvres et HACHETTE LIVRE les imprimant à la demande. Certains de ces ouvrages reflètent des courants de pensée caractéristiques de leur époque, mais qui seraient aujourd'hui jugés condamnables. Ils n'en appartiennent pas moins à l'histoire des idées en France et sont susceptibles de présenter un intérêt scientifique ou historique. Le sens de notre démarche éditoriale consiste ainsi à permettre l'accès à ces oeuvres sans pour autant que nous en cautionnions en aucune façon le contenu. Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.fr

Poet Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) is considered one of the creators of modernism: part-symbolist, part post-impressionist, he was one of the first poets to write in free verse. He heavily influenced such modern poets as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. This is a completely revised and greatly augmented version of Patricia Terry's now classic 1958 edition of this work. Fully bilingual edition (French-English) Terry fully captures Laforgues intricate word play, puns, and rhythm in a way lacking in many modern translations. Great introduction to this poet.

When Jules Laforgue's Moralités légendaires 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 Prévert. 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.