Writers No One Reads

No one reads Aloysius Bertrand (1807–1841). Bio courtesy of Gilbert Alter-Gilbert:

French writer generally acknowledged as the progenitor of the prose poem, as elaborated in his posthumously published volume Gaspard de la Nuit (Rat About Town or Fly-by-Night). Bertrand’s creative vision was shaped, to a great extent, by his admiration for painters, and he dedicated his ground-breaking Gaspard to the artists Rembrandt and Callot. Bertrand is noted for recreating medieval milieux and for vivid, highly-colored evocations of settings and scenes. A tubercular wretch, Bertrand reached the end of an existence made miserable by ill-health and impecuniousness at the age of thirty-four. His funeral expenses were borne by his friend, the sculptor David d’Angers. Bertrand was designated, in a famous essay by Paul Verlaine, as a charter member of the circle of “cursed poets,” and his influence has been emphatically acknowledged by such Symbolist poets as Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Corbiere, Jules Laforgue, and Stephane Mallarme, and by the Surrealist group as a whole.

Read Gilbert’s translations from Bertrand’s “Scarbo Suite”

Image: Jacques Callot, from the series Gobbi, circa 1621