SOURCE: "The Moral of the Moralités," in Jules Laforgue: Essays on a Poet's Life and Work, edited by Warren Ramsey, Southern Illinois University Press, 1969, pp. 60-5.

An American poet, author of children's verse, critic, and dramatist, Smith has also translated Laforgue's Moral Tales and Selected Writings of Jules Laforgue. In the following essay, he explores Laforgue's themes in Moral Tales, including the deflation of the archetypal hero and of myth.

"Jules Laforgue—quelle joie!" said Huysmans, and nowhere in all his work does one feel the aptness of this remark more than in the Moralités légendaires. Here, as in his final poems, Laforgue is at the height of his inventive powers. What delight there is in these exquisitely wrought tales; what flash and sparkle of youthful genius. There is surely no prose of the late nineteenth century that is so ornate without being heavy: it...