Morose Vignettes

Proses moroses, Remy de Gourmont's classic collection of prose poems, here presented as Morose Vignettes, in its first English translation, by Brian Stableford, is, like a series of fine charcoal sketches, or a box of neatly cut gems, an exquisite sampling of perfection. Precursory in some ways of surrealism, the pieces contained herein, representing a distilled essence of prose fiction, an osmazome of literature, are brief, flippant and excessively impressionistic. That combination of traits, and the variety of its deployment in the three phases of the text, entitles it to be considered a remarkable book, entitled to consideration as a true work of art, despite its small size.