Gloomful Poem – by Alphonse Allais

With a Forward by Fast-Sedan Nellson (Prince of Translators).

The avant-garde comedian, writer, prankster, artist, performer, and editor Alphonse Allais was a motivating force in the fool’s-golden age of Bohemian subculture in Paris, co-founding a string of groups including the Hydropaths (Water-Haters), the Fumistes (Smokers), the Incoherents, and finally the famous Chat Noir (Black Cat) cabaret and magazine. His anarchic humour exercised an absurdist influence upon both the popular culture of the Fin-de-siècle and the next generation of avant-gardes including Cubists, Dadas, Surrealists, and the College of ’Pataphysics. In this poem, Allais parodies the morose and rarefied themes (including infidelity, domestic abuse, drug use, and suicide) and the controversial free-verse of the Decadent movement – the opposite pole to Allais’ Bohemian fumisme within the cultural underground of 1890s Paris.

Translated by Olchar Lindsann.