[An English-born Canadian educator, critic, and poet, Collie has published several books on Laforgue and produced a 1977 edition of Laforgue's verse collection Les complaintes. He has also published several works on the English novelist George Gissing. In the following excerpt, Collie examines themes, symbols, and tone in Moral Tales.]

The exact point at which Laforgue began to write Moralités légendaires is uncertain. In all likelihood it was during the winter of 1885-6, for in June 1886 he told [his friend, the editor Gustave] Kahn he had enough to make a volume and listed the stories by name: 'Salomé'; "Hamlet ou les suites de la piété filiale'; 'Le Miracle des Roses'; 'Incomprise'; 'L'Amour de la Symétrie'; 'Persée et Andromède, ou le plus heureux des trois'; 'Corinne au Cap Misère'; 'Malborough s'en va-t-en-guerre'. The volume as it was actually published included not all of these, however, but only those stories which had appeared in La Vogue or La Revue indépendante during Laforgue's lifetime, together with a story not mentioned in Laforgue's original letter to Kahn called 'Les deux Pigeons'. It eventually fell to [the editor Edouard] Dujardin to collect copy for the book, on the basis of Laforgue's letter of authority to publish, and it is probably fair to speculate that the question of which stories justified publication had already been discussed extensively both by Laforgue and Kahn, and by Laforgue and Dujardin, since Laforgue made strenuous efforts during the last year of his life to publish everything that was publishable.

As a matter of fact, these strenuous efforts verged on the desperate, for Laforgue tried but failed in hard bargaining with [the publisher Léon] Vanier, to whom it was natural for him to turn. J. L. Debauve gives the date of Christmas day 1886 to the letter from Laforgue to Vanier (quoted in full in Laforgue en son Temps) in which Laforgue proposed to give two volumes, 'un volume de vers (titre encore en blanc)' and a volume of 'six nouvelles en prose (Petites moralités légendaires)'. Laforgue wanted 325 francs for each book, with larger sums for subsequent editions if the books were successful. Vanier, however, declined to commit himself, either to early publication dates which from Laforgue's point of view were essential, or to the advance of money for books he had not yet seen and whose worth he could not estimate. Perhaps Vanier made a mistake in turning Laforgue away; Laforgue was undoubtedly mistaken in thinking he was justified in expecting a quick decision. The upshot was that, before the end of January, Laforgue had sent the manuscript (or the copy) for Petites Moralités légendaires to Dujardin, who eventually published them. Since Laforgue mentions 'Les deux Pigeons' in his letter to Vanier dated 6 January 1887, the published volume must have been much as Laforgue himself would have liked to see it. Critically short of money as he was, Laforgue was too inexperienced to realize that even a sympathetic publisher might not for practical reasons be able to produce a book quickly and that it would be some time after publication before he could expect an income. In the event, he was able to correct the copy Dujardin brought to him (these corrected pages from La Vogue are now in the Jacques Doucet Library) but died before the volume was published late in 1887. That the stories were republished in 1894 shows in a small way that Laforgue was justified in pinning his hopes to them.

In Moralités légendaires Laforgue amuses himself by giving popular stories or myths an extravagantly anti-romantic treatment. In each case the story is turned upside down, its heroic or cosmic 'meaning' made fun of, and its plot given ironic or sardonic twists that negate the idealizations of the original. Thus Hamlet is more interested in the play that he has written than in what he calls his 'domestic situation'. Similarly, in 'Le Miracle des Roses', Ruth believes she is miraculously cured of the curse which causes the suicide of every young man she sees—without ever knowing that yet another kills himself on the very day of the 'miracle'. Salomé, likewise, having obtained the head of the prophet Iaokannan, tries to fling it dramatically into the sea—but in making this final, decisive gesture, falls over the cliff herself. The heroic gesture, the romantic stance, the classical archetype—none of these is compatible with the modern sensibility, Laforgue seems to be saying, and he negates them by inventing situations which make the original seem ridiculous. This is done by means of an exuberant indulgence in the far-fetched, as in 'Persée et Andromède'.

In 'Persée et Andromède', Andromède, imprisoned on her island, and in a state of high anguish not because of her ancient or classical 'fate', but because of her difficult puberty, teases the Dragon, the foul monster who loves her, disdains the presents that he brings from the sea bed and engages in all manner of theoretical bavardage. When Andromède throws herself on the sand, 'qu'elle griffe et laboure le long de ses deux flancs légitimement affamés, et puis recommence ses petits gémissements aigus et rauques', the monster tries to calm her by telling her the story of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' but to no avail. She watches the triangles of migrating birds flying purposefully over the island, wishes to go where they are going, to love, but then disappears over the grey dunes, running wildly. 'Le Monstre sourit débonnairement, et se remet à polir ses galets;—tel le sage Spinoza devait polir ses verres de lunettes.' Andromède chases about the island until she is tired and desires simply to be rocked in a cradle until her head is filled with 'maternal rhythms'; but the only motherly lines she really knows are in a poem called 'La Vérité sur le cas de tout', which the Dragon taught her when she was young. It is Laforgue's evolutionary and fatalistic hymn to the Unconscious, and appears in this story as a parody of the Gospel according to St John.

Persée comes at last. To give Andromède a chance of seeing and admiring him he engages in a little mating dance on his hypogriff. He is a superb hero and fiancé. He carries a mirror, wears sandals, has a rose lacquered on his chest, hearts pierced by arrows tattooed on his arms, and a lily painted on his calves, and he wears an emerald monocle, and innumerable rings and bracelets. This young hero is famously sure of what he is doing. Indeed his first words to Andromède are: 'Allez, hop! à Cythere! .. . ' He decides to kill the Dragon by 'medusizing' it since he has the Gorgon's head tied round his neck, but the Gorgon recognizes the Monster and with unbelievable determination closes her eyes. Persée therefore has to use his sword. Then the dandy, having done what was expected of him, admires himself in the mirror while Andromède laments the dragon's death. His first advances are repulsed; to Andromède's amazement he begins to yawn; he affects to think she is playing with him and abruptly leaves: 'Ah! bien, en voilà des manières! Ma petite, sachez que mes pareils ne se font pas dire deux fois de pareils ordres. Vous n'êtes déjà pas d'une peau si soignée'. The Monster, on the other hand, after a charming lament by Andromède, comes to life again in the form of a highly eligible young man, the man or creature she had known before, 'un bon ami, gentleman accompli, savant industrieux, poète disert', with, now, an acceptable appearance in addition. When the listener to this story protests about the dénouement and the diabolic interpretations the story-teller places upon even the most normal things, he recollects as he rows home for tea across the lake that the story anyway had a moral:

Jeunes filles, regardez-y à deux fois
Avant de dédaigner un pauvre monstre.
Ainsi que cette histoire vous le montre,
Celui-ci était digne d'être le plus heureux des trois.

Seen within a historical context, a story like 'Persée et Andromède' is obviously a forerunner of many early twentieth-century mock-heroic works and, in particular, of plays by Cocteau, Giraudoux, T. S. Eliot and Anouilh, where a story taken from classical Greek literature is given a modern treatment which involves a reversal of the original meaning. To the extent that there was a connexion between the educated, literate, established middle-class of the mid-nineteenth century and the 'classics' both of French and of Greek and Latin literatures as taught in schools and universities, the fin-de-siècle writer tended to dissociate himself from what was socially or culturally correct, by making fun of myths in which the heroic virtues were popularly but properly expressed. What Laforgue does when he makes fun of the heroic in 'Persée et Andromède' is thus analagous to the rejection of classical ideals by many of the French painters of the seventies and eighties. Like Laforgue, they had heard Taine lecture on the classic ideal in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and, like Laforgue, they had rejected Taine's view that the beauty expressed in classical sculpture was socially 'healthy', that is that the idealizations of art were socially useful and acceptable. Laforgue rejected this idea with the same violence as, for example, Manet whose work he greatly admired. Art tended to reduce the boredom of existence was about the most Laforgue would say on the subject of its social utility. Detachment from other people's normal worries about values was expressed here, as in Laforgue's poetry, in a habitual irony—an irony which determines both the structure and the style of these stories. The irony was truly a habit of mind, a means of structuring experience, almost a philosophy of life, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the stories were received with mixed feelings. Normal expectations are so subverted that, even today, some readers find it difficult to enjoy the wit and impudence of the stories, and if it is evident that Laforgue was not trying to be serious this too, in some quarters, is scarcely to be forgiven.

Laforgue's stylistic irony can be seen in a number of ways. In the story 'Hamlet', for example, he creates a character who really does not wish to be involved in the situation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Laforgue's character is a late nineteenth-century dandy who is forced to accept the existence of court intrigue but does not feel its importance. This being the case, any reference to or use of the wording of the original will be ironic. A blatant instance is 'Frailty, thy name is woman'. In Shakespeare, Hamlet really does care about Ophelia's fate (though he cares about other things more) and associates Ophelia's actions and supposed infidelities with the general corruption of the court. Laforgue's Hamlet accepts corruption and does not moralize about it. When he says 'Stabilité! Stabilité! ton nom est Femme', he means that Ophelia is a representative of the Eternal Feminine, the mindless female presence which tends to distract a Bohemian from the sanity of Nihilism. This is a trivial example, perhaps, but one which is quite typical of the way Laforgue worked. He makes Hamlet into the person who cannot, does not wish to accept the terms by which others would describe his situation. Here, for instance, is how he reacts to the burial of Ophelia:

Elle en serait décédée, ne laissant qu'une bien vilaine réputation de Belle-Helène, tandis que, grâce à moi . . .

Hamlet s'oublie un instant à suivre les gestes des moines officiant authour du trou; [ils vont vite en besogne, les moines, car ils auront fort à faire, demain dimanche. Une jeune fille; c'est aussi promptement enterré que marié. Où trouver le temps pour se révolter contre tout cela? L'art est si long et la vie si courte! Et Hamlet ne peut que se sentir crispé d'un remords à fleur de nerfs, pour son humble part.]

Tout de même! tout de même! Moi qui ai si bon cœur, moi dont le cœur d'or est si connu, avoir fait ça! Oh! fi, Hamlet, fi! . . .

For interest's sake, the lines Laforgue added to this passage when he corrected a copy of La Vogue for book publication are marked in square brackets. (A good modern edition of Laforgue's stories has yet to be published, incidentally.) Clearly Laforgue makes his Hamlet a decadent, who cannot take his own rôle in life seriously, an archetypal decadent, in fact, with whom T. S. Eliot, or J. Alfred Prufrock, later identified.

The exact character of Laforgue's preoccupation with the Hamlet story is a little difficult to determine. He had known the play since his schooldays. He re-read it with [his future wife] Leah Lee. He spent the New Year's holiday in 1886 in Elsinore, an expedition variously described as a literary pilgrimage and as a holiday with his future wife away from the court. It seems likely that he saw Irving in the title rôle in Berlin, where he also saw an operatic version. The unpublished prose fragments on the Hamlet theme probably date from 1886 and his short article in Le Symboliste of 22 October 1886 certainly does. In many of the poems Ophelia and Hamlet appear as archetypal figures, where Ophelia represents the frail and beautiful sex object, to use today's terminology, that seduces the man of intelligence back into the meaningless reproductive processes of existence, and Hamlet represents the thinking man, who becomes preoccupied by his own rôle in life, is trapped into self-consciousness and cannot believe that normal existence has any meaning whatsoever. In this sense, the 'Hamlet' of Moralités légendaires has a central place in the Laforgue canon. Despite what, for many readers, is the formidable barrier of the decadent prose, this story is obviously imaginatively consistent with many of Laforgue's last poems, for they were written in the same year and published in the same magazine. It enjoys this central position without, of course, being necessarily the best of the stories in the collection.

As for Laforgue's style, influenced undoubtedly by Huysmans, space can be found for only one longish excerpt from 'Hamlet' which will be sufficient probably to convey its characteristic flavour. Laforgue explains why Hamlet was not immediately recognized by the gravediggers:

On ne reconnaît guère le prince Hamlet à Elseneur. On hésite, on ne salue pas. Et d'ailleurs, sa petite personne . . . Jugez plutôt.

De taille moyenne et assez spontanément épanoui, Hamlet porte, pas trop haut, une longue tête enfantine; cheveux châtains s'avançant en pointe sur un front presque sacré, et retombant, plats et faibles, partagés par une pure raie droite, celer deux mignonnes oreilles de jeune fille; masque imberbe sans air glabre, d'une pâleur un peu artificielle mais jeune; deux yeux bleugris partout étonnés et candides, tantôt frigides, tantôt réchauffés par les insomnies (fort heureusement, ces yeux romanesquement timides rayonnent en penseurs limpides et sans vase, car Hamlet, avec son air de regarder toujours en dessous comme cherchant à tâter d'invisibles antennes le Réel, ferait plutôt l'effet d'un camaldule que d'un prince héritier du Danemark); un nez sensuel; une bouche ingénue, ordinairement aspirante, mais passant vite du mi-clos amoureux à l'équivoque rictus de gallinacés, et de cette moue dont les coins sont tirés par les boulets de la galère contemporaine au rire irrésistiblement fendu d'un joufflu gamin de quatorze ans; le menton n'est, hélas! guère proéminent! guère volontaire, non plus, l'angle du maxillaire inférieur, sauf aux jours d'ennuis immortels ou [sic] la mâchoire alors, portant en avant et les yeux par cela même reculant dans l'ombre du front vaincu, tout le masque rentre, vieilli de vingt ans. Il en a trente. Hamlet a les pieds féminins; ses mains sont solides et un peu tortues et crispées; il porte une bague à scarabée égyptien d'émail vert à l'index de la main gauche. Il ne s'habille que de noir, et s'en va, s'en va, d'une allure traînarde et correcte, correcte et traînarde . . .

D'une allure traînarde et correcte, Hamlet chemine donc devers le cimetière, au crépuscule.

The stories of Moralités légendaires anticipate both the early twentieth-century insight into human relationships in terms of sexuality and the discovery of sexual symbolism in stories and myths that had previously been interpreted in other ways. This is not the reason for Laforgue's adoption of a legend but, having adopted it, he so writes his new story that the pattern or interrelationship of character and situation tends to be Freudian, often by implication, occasionally (as in the character of Andromède with her love of the sea-Monster) by heavy emphasis. Laforgue's interest in psychology developed from his early reading of Hartmann and it is quite evident that he knows what he is doing. The epigraph to 'Salomé', for example, is: 'Naître c'est sortir: mourir c'est rentrer.' From this point of view both the themes and the details of the stories have a double significance. Thus in 'Pan et la Syrinx', after the momentary encounter before Syrinx is transformed, Pan consoles himself with a reed pipe which is art; and in 'Lohengrin, fils de Parsifal', the hero escapes from his marriage bed and from the incompatibility of the relationship by clutching at his pillow which turns into a swan and carries him away. Similarly, Hamlet lives by himself in his tower and sticks pins into the statue of his lecherous mother; Salomé's seductive dance ends with a decapitation; and Andromède stretches herself out against the cliffface in the hope that a sea-bird will come to carry her away. The perception of sexual symbolism in the myths and stories he took as his models was completely consistent both with the iconoclastic nature of the stories and with his anti-heroic stance, by which ordinary, humdrum, 'realistic' things were preferred to the extravagant, the idealized and the heroic.

In the last analysis, however, even if the humanist element in Moralités légendaires is admitted, and even if the ebullience and flippancy of the stories can be enjoyed, the underlying tone of the collection is, undoubtedly, cynical and remorselessly negative.

In the last story, 'Les deux Pigeons', which is different in tone from the others since the two characters are led to realize and to acknowledge, though too late, that there has been something genuine in their relationship, there is a scoring of extreme pessimism and an exceptionally cynical and bitter twist to the conclusion. The two lovers who had tried to avoid each other and negate their love, and who had tried above all to avoid the sordid conclusions of an affair, were brought by the irony of life to the same deserted spot, exhausted by their efforts to battle against instinct. A passing resin merchant, seeing them lying there half dead, was sufficiently intrigued by their cadaverous condition to take them back to town on the back of his wagon. They regained consciousness in a hotel bedroom, together. It was what they had intended to avoid. Though disfigured and made ugly by their experiences, they do their best to live as fate has ordained. Gaspard is particularly good, in his love for Juliette, at keeping up appearances. But she is not deceived and, realizing what she has done to him, slowly commits suicide, as he does after her.