Selected Lyrics

In hisABC of Reading, Ezra Pound begins his short list of nineteenth-century French poets to be studied with Theophile Gautier. Widely esteemed by figures as diverse as Charles Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Gustave Flaubert, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and T. S. Eliot, Gautier was one of the nineteenth century's most prominent French writers, famous for his virtuosity, his inventive textures, and his motto "Art for art's sake." His work is often considered a crucial hinge between High Romanticism--idealistic, sentimental, grandiloquent--and the beginnings of "Parnasse," with its emotional detachment, plasticity, and irresistible surfaces. His large body of verse, however, is little known outside France. This generous sampling, anchored by the completeEmaux et Camees, perhaps Gautier's supreme poetic achievement, and including poems from the vigorously exoticEspanaand several early collections, not only succeeds in bringing these poems into English but also rediscovers them, renewing them in the process of translation. Norman Shapiro's translations have been widely praised for their formal integrity, sonic acuity, tonal sensitivities, and overall poetic qualities, and he employs all these gifts in this collection. Mining one of the crucial treasures of the French tradition, Shapiro makes a major contribution to world letters.

Théophile Gautier [1811–1872] was a prominent French poet, novelist, critic, and journalist. Norman R. Shapiro is professor of Romance languages and literatures at Wesleyan University.  His many translations include the award-winning volumes The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine and French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen.  He divides his time between Middletown, Connecticut, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.