Two of the most notorious members of the 19^th century degenerate school of versifiers in Le Belle France were Hermann Baudalare (1847-1904) and  R.T. (Artie) Rambo (1851-1879), who both typified and embodied the principles of sloth, ignorance and quasi-illiteracy that marked the work of this woeful bunch of bards.  Baudalare was a provincial schoolteacher-poet who shot to fame with the publication of his first book of verse, Mal de Merdre (Flowers of Sh*ite) in 1869, and his young companion (perky Robin to his Dark Knight) Rambo was thrust into the limelight of publicity at the height of the Franco-Prussian War with his precocious volume, Je Ne Sais Quoit (Hoops of Life, 1871).  Baudalare tottered on into obscurity for many years, while Rambo rushed off to darkest Africa to sell slaves and buy guns, a trading combination that did not work. Last sighted in Ibeseeinya in an all-male harem, he vanishes from the annals of the lyric art.  These two artists influenced French poetry by purifying the language of ancient poetic diction and focusing on subject matter too disgusting for naked prose.

From Mal de Merdre (Bk. XVIII)

A man in queue ahead of me with pimples on his neck

A florid constellation of pustules,
Bright red and yellow-tipped
Like teeny blossoms—making
A shape like Lyra (the lyre)
Or Cygnus (the swan).

Far more pleasing and artful
Than a mere tattoo or vulgar
Body piercing.
A bloom of subtle disease
Beneath the skin,
Like malice, like malaise.

Hermann Baudalare (trans. Irmegard Feskue), 1869

From Je Ne Sais Quoit

Pensee 1

A spider runs
down my withered p*n*s.
A chill runs
down my spine.
Time to sail to Africa,
sell slaves and buy guns.
Yes?

Pensee 2

The bronze light
of a guttering candle
makes the abortionist’s
steel instruments glow
like gold.

                        —R.T. Rambo (trans. Ethelbert Frumble), 1871