Poetry of Laforgue by Jules Laforgue

First published: 1885-1903; includes Les Complaintes, 1885; L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune, 1886; Les Derniers Vers de Jules Laforgue, 1890; Le Sanglot de la terre, 1903 (English translation, 1956, as Selected Writings of Jules Laforgue; 1958, as Poems of Jules Laforgue; 1984, as Selected Poems)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Although Jules Laforgue’s span of creative activity was tragically brief (about nine years), his poetry attests a prolific and versatile innovator. His artistic evolution carried him from the traditional Alexandrines and somewhat oratorical poems of the posthumous Le Sanglot de la terre, written between 1878 and 1882, to experimentation with the rhythm and mood of chansons populaires in Les Complaintes and, finally, to culmination in Les Derniers Vers de Jules Laforgue. Here Laforgue made frequent use of free verse and of what he himself described as psychology in dream form presented in melodic and rhythmic patterns of verse.

“Funeral March for the Death of the Earth,” the most celebrated of the poems in Le Sanglot de la terre, reveals a young poet who is not afraid to indulge in an uninhibited display of his personal views and to capitulate to a rather bleak pessimism concerning the state of the universe. The poet’s cries of despair as he bombastically depicts the horrors of civilization and the corpse of the earth are rarely muted, as they are in succeeding works. Certain lines (“The nocturnal silence of echoless calm,/ Floats, an immense and solitary wreck”) are reminiscent of Charles Baudelaire, the precursor of Symbolist poetry whose spell and sphere of influence were ubiquitous in the late nineteenth century.

One of the most distinctive qualities of Laforgue’s own personal manner is effective in Les Complaintes: The poet cultivates a witty and mocking detachment as an antidote to the blunt expression of personal feelings. The theme of death recurs often in Laforgue’s poetry, but it is not personified as a sinister figure in “Complaint About Forgetting the Dead”; Laforguian irony changes death into the “good gravedigger” who scratches at the door. If you refuse to welcome him,

If you can’t be polite,He’ll come (but not in spite)and drag you by your feetInto some moonlit night!

The “complaints,” named for a folk-song style that the poet imitates, also reveal a flair for inventing humorous anecdotes and dialogues couched in colloquial language; a case in point is the “Complaint of the Outraged Husband,” an amusing conversation in verse form between an irate husband, who insists he saw his wife flirting with an officer in church, and his wife, who maintains with injured innocence that she was piously conversing with a “life-size Christ.”

A predilection for creating a cast of characters and for dramatizing experience remains a permanent characteristic of Laforgue’s style; it reappears most notably in 1886 in the form of a verse drama titled Le Concile féerique (The Faerie Council). This work, which again demonstrates the poet’s preference for depersonalized expression of his sentiments, places onstage the Gentleman, who bemoans the indifference of the cosmos and the tedium of existence, and the Lady, who offers her charms as a cure for his ennui. The subject is typically Laforguian: Love is painted as lacking in glamour, as being somewhat sordid, but it is still an acceptable escape from the disenchanting realities of the world. The structure of this verse drama, as of many of Laforgue’s poems, presents an ironic commentary on experience, since a certain frame of mind is developed in the course of the drama and then negated at the end. The earth is round “like a pot of stew,” and we are mired in its banalities, but, since this is all human beings can possess, acceptance of one’s lot is preferable to some sort of impassioned and futile revolt (“Why don’t you see that that is truly our Earth!/ And all there is! and the rest is nothing but tax/ About which you might just as well relax!”). Gaiety and disdain are the prevailing moods of Laforgue, and he prefers these to bitterness and melancholy.

Perhaps the most startling and engaging product of Laforgue’s imagination is to be found in the collection titled L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune. This work contains a gallery of “choirboys of the Moon,” all of whom are named Pierrot. These bizarre individuals prefer lunar landscapes because the moon seems to symbolize aspiration to some absolute, whether it be savoring the love of an ideal and idealized female or giving in to the temptation of suicide and blissful nothingness. However, the thirst for self-extinction inevitably ends with an antithetical declaration of a prosaic determination to enjoy the present moment: “—Of course! the Absolute’s rights are nil/ As long as the Truth consists of living.”

Clowns are a favorite source of inspiration for modern painters and poets, and few are more individualized and appealing than the Pierrots of Laforgue. They are uniformly white except for a black skullcap and a scarlet mouth:

It’s, on a stiff neck emerging thusFrom similarly starchèd lace,A callow under cold-cream faceLike hydrocephalic asparagus.The eyes are downed in opiumOf universal clemency,The mouth of a clown bewitchesLike a peculiar geranium.

It is worth noting that Ezra Pound was struck by the phrase “like hydrocephalic asparagus” and, in general, by Laforgue’s frequent reliance on a scientific lexicon to revivify patterns of poetic expression. In this domain, also, the French poet was an important innovator.

The Pierrots, who “feed on the absolute, and sometimes on vegetables, too,” are distinguished not only by their acute awareness of death and by their refusal to seek solace and protection from their fate but also by the inexplicable spell they cast over the opposite sex. They rhapsodize extravagantly when they talk of love, but they speak “with toneless voices.” As amusing embodiments of contradictory elements, they offer another example of Laforguian irony. In addition, the portraits of these “dandies of the Moon” permit Laforgue to assume an imaginary identity and expound behind a mask a blasé and mocking view of love, life, and death.

Laforgue was one of the first poets in the nineteenth century to exploit successfully the possibilities of the free-verse form. “Solo by Moonlight” in Les Derniers Vers de Jules Laforgue is an excellent illustration of his talent for molding the length of the verse line to conform to the flow of thought and the association of images: The poet is stretched out on top of a stagecoach moving rapidly through a moonlit countryside, and his composure, as well as his body, is jolted, for he remembers a promising love that ended in misunderstanding. The rhythm and mood are partially created by Laforgue’s use of lines of radically different length. At the same time, the poem is infused with a dreamlike atmosphere; impressions are nebulous, and the woman is only briefly glimpsed and partially understood as the poet attempts to recall the past. The theme of frustrated love is purposely left ambiguous and contributes to the evocation of psychology in dream form. A kind of paralysis engendered by boredom and a vague malaise prevented the poet from declaring himself; a simple gesture would have elicited a warm response in the woman, but “Ennui was keeping me exiled,/ Ennui which came from everything. So.”

Familiar themes recur in Les Derniers Vers de Jules Laforgue. “The Coming Winter” is a poem on autumn that suggests encroaching deterioration and imminent death. Startling verbal juxtapositions help avert the dangers of overstatement and sentimentalism (“Rust gnaws the kilometric spleens/ Of telegraph wires on highways no one passes”), and Laforgue’s sense of humor remains very much in evidence, as in “Oh! the turns in the highways,/ And without the wandering Little Red Riding Hood.”

Critics have frequently noted the debt that many French writers of imposing stature owe to Laforgue’s original handling of irony, versification, imagery, and colloquial language. At the same time, along with Paul Verlaine, Laforgue inspired composers as different as Arnold Schoenberg, Darius Milhaud, and Jacques Ibert. He also had a profound influence on the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hart Crane.

Bibliography

Arkell, David. Looking for Laforgue: An Informal Biography. New York: Persea Books, 1979. Accessible biography traces elements of Laforgue’s poetry to specific events in his life. Includes translations of many of Laforgue’s letters, providing insight into his personal relationships and creative evolution. Includes illustrations.

Collie, Michael. Jules Laforgue. London: Athlone Press, 1977. Brief volume offers a well-constructed introduction to Laforgue and his poetry. Includes sections on the poetry and its influence on later writers, a brief critical analysis by Collie, and select appraisals by other critics.

Everdell, William R. “Whitman, Rimbaud, and Jules Laforgue: Poems Without Meter, 1886.” In The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Argues that the three nineteenth century poets laid the groundwork for the modernist poetry of the twentieth century. Discusses Laforgue’s life and literary influences, his literary career, and the characteristics of his poetry.

Holmes, Anne. “’De nouveaux rhythmes’: The Verse of Laforgue’s ’Solo de Lune.’” French Studies 62, no. 2 (April, 2008): 162-172. Analyzes the poem in the light of the Symbolists’ claim that their free verse was inspired by music. Examines the poem’s double narrative and contrapuntal structure and its use of musical features, describing how Laforgue’s desire to connect music, Impressionist painting, and free verse influenced the poem’s structure and detail.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Jules Laforgue and Poetic Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Excellent, exhaustive study is divided into sections on Laforgue’s collections of poetry. Focuses primarily on Derniers Vers but provides ample information about all of the poetry, including its effects on later poets and its place within literary discourse.

Laforgue, Jules. Poems of Jules Laforgue. Translated and introduced by Peter Dale. Rev. ed. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2001. Dale, himself a poet, provides new English translations of Laforgue’s poems accompanied by an introduction that discusses Laforgue’s work and influence.

Ramsey, Warren. Jules Laforgue and the Ironic Inheritance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953. Enduring study of Laforgue examines his aesthetics and his poetry. Includes chapters on Laforgue’s influence on T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hart Crane.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Jules Laforgue: Essays on a Poet’s Life and Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Collection of twelve essays includes biographical information, analyses of the poetry, and discussions of Laforgue in relation to his contemporaries and literary heirs in France and the United States.