The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

LÉON-PAUL FARGUE

Sleep’s the sum total of your poetry,
Young Ms., you with your lazy, dangling arm.
Dreamland’s big set piece has taken you hostage.
And other options? Yawn, you couldn’t care less.
—alfred corn

Léon-Paul Fargue 1876–1947

paris, france

A

poet, anecdotalist, and literary journalist, Fargue was initially very

much influenced by the Symbolists, particularly Stéphane Mallarmé,

whose ‘‘Tuesdays’’ he attended. He quickly moved to adopt a unique

style, however, recording his own conversations. His vivid descriptions of Pari-

sian streets, bars, and train stations by day and night led him to call himself the

‘‘Paris stroller.’’ He was a fellow student with Alfred Jarry and a close friend of

André Gide, Erik Satie, and Paul Valéry. In 1923 Fargue founded the review

Commerce with Valéry and Philippe Larbaud. Principal works: Nocturnes, 1905;

Pour la musique, 1912; Banalité, 1928; Espaces, 1929; Sous la lampe, 1929; Les

Ludions, 1930.

A Fragrance of Night...

A fragrance of night, not to be defined, that brings on an obscure doubt,
exquisite, tender, comes by the open window into the room where I am at
work...
My cat watches the darkness, as rigid as a jug. A fortune of subtle seeing looks
at me through its green eyes...
The lamp sings its slight song quietly, subdued as the song one hears in a shell.
The lamp reaches out its placating hands. In its aureole, I hear the litanies, the
choruses and the responses of flies. It lights up the flowers at the edge of the
terrace. The nearest ones come forward timidly to see me, like a troop of dwarfs
that discover an ogre...