Jules Laforgue

Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) was one of the first French poets to write in free verse. Although he lived only 27 years, he had a major impact on many important poets in the 20th century. He himself was heavily influenced by both Whitman (whom he translated) and Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious, which argued that the world is governed by an all-powerful unconscious spirit. Laforgue took this for his credo, summing up his new-found artistic freedom with the battle cry of: "Aux armes, citoyens, it n'y a plus de RAISON," a sentiment that would later be taken up by Andre Breton and the Surrealists. The feeling of spontaneous inner monologue that Laforgue conveys is achieved by skillful fragmentation of the subject, a technique that later was to be associated with Cubism. Through Padraic Colum we know that Joyce, in his early writing career, admired Laforgue's Moralites legendaires. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Alain-Fournier, and Jules Supervielle have emphatically admitted their debt to Laforgue. This bilingual anthology, translated and edited by Patricia Terry, fully captures Laforgue's constant word play, puns, irony, and versification in a way that will enable Anglophone readers to see more fully what other poets have heard and admired in the French poet's writings. This book is a revised and expanded edition of Terry's Poems of Jules Laforgue (1958). Also included here is Laforgue's prose tale "Perseus and Andromeda," translated with Nancy Kline. Patricia Terry was Professor of French Literature at Barnard College and the University of California San Diego. Her recent titles include Capital of Pain by Paul +luard (with Mary Ann Caws and Nancy Kline), Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles: or, The Book of Galehaut Retold (with Samuel N. Rosenberg), The Sea and Other Poems by Guillevic, and a book of her own poems, Words of Silence. At present, in collaboration with Nancy Kline, she is working on an anthology of the poems and prose of Jules Supervielle (Black Widow Press 2011). She and Nancy Kline are also collaborating on a second volume of Jules Laforgue's work, Legends and Morals. --Book Jacket.