SOURCE: "Towards the Derniers Vers: 'Trouver une langue'," in Jules Laforgue and Poetic Innovation, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 95-120.

In the following excerpt, Holmes highlights affinities between the stories of Moral Tales and Laforgue's poetry.

Laforgue's completion of five short stories, later to be published with one addition as the Moralités légendaires, no doubt. . . had an influence on his poetic manner, since it must have established him in his own eyes as a writer capable of sustained narrative exposition. His earlier excursions into prose had been either brief and unremarkable or had remained in fragmentary form. A connection can be traced between the successful writing of these Moralités and Laforgue's move to the longer poem. The Derniers Vers are all significantly longer than any of the Fleurs. They breathe a greater poetic confidence and expansiveness, which in turn lend the poems greater substance...