Jules Laforgue (1860–1887)

Laforgue was only twenty when some friends got him a sorely needed job and he found himself designated French reader to Empress Augusta in 1880. She was then, like her consort, in her eighties--and both would by a good few years outlive tubercular Laforgue, who never saw thirty.

The job left Laforgue a lot of free time which he used to write (at least two books of poetry), hang out in the one cafe that provided foreign newspapers, sight-see, and--introducing a French term if not the show more passtime--to flâner, stroll around the unprepossessing but burgeoning capital. The German Reich was then less than a decade old--Laforgue mentions running into its engineer Count Bismarck on numerous occasions. Indeed he seems to have run into everyone who was anyone, the Wilhelmine court being characterised by a strange simplicity and ease of access. The Emperor and Empress lived in the main residence on the ground floor with only six servants on hand, and Laforgue remarks it happened often that people would enter it and run straight into one or the other of the sovereigns.

The descriptions of the people, the customs, the balls etc. refer to various French opinions that are on occasion reinforced or overturned--who knew Germans were fiends for dancing?--and all together build an engaging, witty picture. show less

Aunque ya en las Complaintes inició sus audacias formales y temáticas, su verdadera revolución estética se inició con la Imitación de Nuestra Señora la Luna, prosigió con El concilio feérico y culminó en la docena de Últimos poemas, publicados el año de su muerte, con los que inagura la utilización del verso libre en la poesía contemporánea. En la gran revolución poética que la lírica francesa de finales del siglo XIX llevó a cabo, junto a Rimbaud el profeta, Verlaine el show more maldito, Mallarmé el hermético y Lautréamont el satánico, Laforgue, pese a su exilio perpetuo y a su muerte temprana, es un autor fundamental. show less

Des récits mythiques décrits avec une belle imagination poétique et surtout une langue grandiose. Pour cette dernière raison, cet auteur reste d'actualité.

> Par Adrian (Laculturegenerale.com) : Les 150 classiques de la littérature française qu’il faut avoir lus !
07/05/2017 - Il est drôle d’apprendre que Montevideo a vu naître trois de nos plus grands poètes, Lautréamont, Laforgue et Supervielle. Les deux premiers sont morts jeunes, à 24 et 27 ans. L’oeuvre de Laforgue ne se place pas sous le signe du mal, mais de l’ennui, de la tristesse, comme le titre de ce recueil, Les Complaintes, le laisse entendre.