Moral Tales

Download Mallarme defined the author of these ‘Moral Tales’ as the Voltaire of Symbolism - a demystifier of the cultural bric-a-brac of the bourgeoisie, a dandyish demolition expert specializing in disenchantment. According to Ezra Pound (who translated one of these stories in 1918), Laforgue had delivered the coup de grace to the facile exoticism (and eroticism) of the 19th-century historical novel; in clearing out the residual rubbish of romanticism, he had prepared the way for modernist prose.

Editions