La Fanfarlo

Synopsis

The Baudelaire who wrote this curious novella in the mid-1840s was not yet that more famous Baudelaire who would create the poems of Les Fieurs du mal; nor was he a writer with sensibilities entirely alien to those that produced the poems. La Fanfarlo-part bitter fictionalized autobiography, part parody, part ambiguous poetic exploration, and the poet's only completed work of fictional prose- is very much the work of an apprentice beginning to find his way.