Papiers retrouvés (review)

This interesting volume consists of three very different sets of previously unpublished documents: fifty or so poems and prose pieces by Laforgue largely from c. 1880; the diary kept by the poet's father Charles in Montevideo from 1856 to 1860; and thirty-two letters from Charles Laforgue to his sons Adrien and Jules from 1869–72 while they they were boarding students at the Tarbes lycée.

While the poems and prose texts are mostly from the period of Le Sanglot de la terre, they are in fact far more varied and less "philosophical" than might be expected: more realistic and naturalistic, dealing with Paris, city life, and urban misery ("Petites litanies de Paris"), and more resonant of Baudelaire. Thus, amid texts typical of the cosmic, Buddhist, Schopenhauer-inspired imagery and thematics of Le Sanglot, one also finds many of the hallmarks of Laforgue's later, more original writing: the ubiquitous jeunes filles au piano (97), references to modern life, frequent allusions to, or examples of, rewritings suggestive of the future Moralités légendaires ("Tragédie" is a version of Othello, there are notes for a Prometheus, the Laforguian figure of Hamlet makes an appearance). The poet's interest in the visual arts is much in evidence (Rembrandt's Philosopher, Gustave Moreau's Sphinx, Wilhelm Kaulbach, Rodolphe Töppfer), as are his literary tastes (Shelley, Leopardi, Musset, Heine, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dostoievski, and what is surely Byron rather than Peyron, p. 31). "Berceuse d'automne" will not fail to remind readers of "L'Hiver qui vient" from Laforgue's last poems:

C'est l'automne, l'automne, on est seul près du feu. Adieu soleil puissant, feuilles vertes, ciel bleu! L'averse bat la vitre et le vent s'époumone À gémir longuement sa chanson monotone, Ô toilettes d'avril, bonheur de vivre, adieu.

On est seul près du feu, on écoute la pluie, Et parfois l'on va voir écartant le rideau Si le ciel est encor badigeonné de suie, Si la rue est toujours pleine de flaques d'eau Et l'on revient s'asseoir, on s'ennuie, on s'ennuie.

Ô désespoir du vent dans le grand bois jauni Roulant par tourbillons des feuilles mortes sales, Et des lettres d'amour et des débris de nid, Emporte les beaux jours dans tes longues rafales, C'est l'hiver à jamais, tout est fini, fini [. . .]

The short prose piece "Orientale" contains a hint of irony suggestive of Salomé: "Sous un dais de velours parmi les coussins bariolés et les tissus précieux repose pachalesquement accoudée Miss Spleen. [. . .] Une main soutient plongée sous sa chevelure, soutient son front chargé d'ennui, l'autre fine et bleuâtre jouant avec les oreilles soyeuses d'un grand lévrier accroupi" (113). "La Marseillaise des Inconscients" points ahead to the Complaintes. A good portion of the manuscripts are reproduced in color plates, permitting one to follow the process of composition, complete with Laforgue's characteristic doodling, and also to fill in the occasional "illisible" in the usually excellent transcription of his difficult handwriting.

The diary of Charles Laforgue, the poet's father, is a fascinating account of a Frenchman's experience in colonial Montevideo at a time when French immigrants would come to make up nearly a third of the city's inhabitants. Begun in 1856, it fills in key events of the author's life prior to the moment of writing, and then recounts his daily thoughts and activities from January 1856, about fifteen months before his marriage, to September 1860, shortly after the birth of his second son Jules. Born in Tarbes in 1833, Charles Laforgue emigrated to Montevideo with his parents and sister in 1842. The loss of his right hand in a hunting accident in 1852 made him unable to continue his apprenticeship as a tailor, so he opened a school for...