Selected Lyrics (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

. Another figure lingering in the shadowed back lanes of fame is Theophile Gautier, the poet, novelist, travel writer and journalist whose activities and influence took place in the thick of two generations of Parisian literary life. He was schoolmate to Nerval, friend to Victor Hugo, and close familiar of the early generation of French Romantics; he was the dedicatee of Baudelaire's FLEURS DU MAL, and was in the theatre for the furor over the first performance of "Hernani". He had his succes de scandale with MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN, a novel about a married couple who both fall in love with a woman, who is disguised as a man (ah, the French). He wrote some of the best-esteemed dance criticism of the nineteenth century, created the scenario for the ballet "Giselle," and his poem "Spectre de la Rose" inspired the Fokine ballet. He coined the phrase and the notion of "L'Art pour l'art"--"Art for art's sake"--and the idea and Gautier's verse acted as a hinge point for French poetry, moving from the Romantics to the Parnassians, Symbolists and Decadents; his mid-career collection EMAUX ET CAMEES (Enamels and Cameos) is one of the standard titles of French poetry. Loved and quoted by Wilde, extolled by Pound and Eliot, his star fell with English-language readers after the Modernists, and he is for most readers now a faintly-remembered name. So Norman R. Shapiro's new selection and translation of Gautier's verse (SELECTED LYRICS, Yale, 2012) is a lovely pop-up surprise of a book. Gautier's verse is varied, appealing, and an immense musical joy to read aloud; he occupies, emotionally, a sort of level ground, being a poete moyen sensuel, if you will. He hasn't Hugo's tremendousness or Baudelaire's fell, passionate gravity, but he also lacks Hugo's gaseousness and Baudelaire's morbidity; the poems are less lofty, more sweetly ordinary. They are also, especially the poems of EMAUX ET CAMEES, built by a master, and watching Shapiro's success in matching Gautier's metrical invention and his rhyme schemes is impressive and fun. His versions are literal enough to be used as ponies but nimble, clever and melodic enough to be no small success as poetry on their own. Bravo and a bow to them both.Glenn Shea, from Glenn's Book Notes at www.bookbarnniantic.com