Babels, Balloons and Innocent Eyes

Charles Morice (1860-1919), a Symbolist writer and art critic who was an early champion of people such as Paul Verlaine, Rodin, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin, produced during his lifetime a great deal of literature, but only a single volume of short prose pieces, Quincaille, from which the stories and prose-poems in this current volume are taken, translated into English by Brian Stableford for the first time. Morice’s prose poems and short stories frequently blend the lachrymose and the cynical in a distinctive alloy, shaped by his particular Symbolist method and Decadent style, which bring many of his confessional pieces close to a surreal stream-of-consciousness that was somewhat ahead of its time, but his works span a broad and rich spectrum, illustrated by the selections translated herein.