United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One never gets him with his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more.
Coming as he does after Rimbaud, turning the divination of the other into theories, into achieved results, he is the eternally grown-up nature to the point of self-negation, as the other is the eternal enfant terrible." Tout était pour le vieux dans le meilleur des mondes, Laforgue would have cried in the epigram of Paul Bourget.
He reminds one sometimes of Rameau and sometimes of Ravel, sometimes of Lafontaine and sometimes of Laforgue. Renoir never reminded anyone of Ravel or Laforgue. Renoir and Bonnard are not so much alike after all. In fact, both as artists and craftsmen they are extremely different. Renoir's output was enormous; he painted with the vast ease of a lyrical giant.
Laforgue, a philosopher, a pessimist, makes his art the canvas for his ironic temperament. The Prince's interview with Ophelia is full of soundless mirth. And how he lavishes upon his own deranged head offensive abuse: "Piteous provincial! Cabotin! Pédicure!" This last is his topmost term of contempt. His parleying with the grave-diggers is another stroke of wit.
He came before Nietzsche, yet could he have said with Zarathustra: "I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers, they are arrows of longing for the other shore." Now Laforgue was a great despiser.
I have a pamphlet by Médéric Dufour, entitled Etude sur l'Æthétique de Jules Laforgue: une Philosophie de l'Impressionisme, which is interesting, though far from conclusive, being an attack on the determinism of Taine, and a defence of Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley. But then we only formulate our preferences into laws.
In addition to these, and Dufour, Kahn, De Gourmont and Felix Féneon, we have in English essays by George Moore, Arthur Symons, Philip Hale, the critic of music, and Aline Gorren. Mr. Moore introduced Laforgue in company with Rimbaud to the English reading world and Mr. Symons devoted to him one of his sensitive studies in The Symbolist Movement in Literature. Mr.
The damage, however, to the vivacity of the whole narrative, by the persistent alterations of M. Laforgue, is incalculable. I compared many passages, and found scarcely three consecutive sentences untouched.
The damage, however, to the vivacity of the whole narrative, by the persistent alterations of M. Laforgue, is incalculable. I compared many passages, and found scarcely three consecutive sentences untouched.
Word Of The Day