The Nereids

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was a French poet, dramatist, fiction writer, critic, and journalist. His verse is located between Romanticism and a host of other literary traditions, including Parnassianism and Modernism, and was admired by, among others, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. He is sometimes considered a hinge between Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire.

Karl Kirchwey is the author of seven books of poems, including Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems (Northwestern University Press, 2017), Mount Lebanon (Marian Wood/Putnam, 2011), and The Happiness of This World (Putnam, 2007). His translation of Paul Verlaine’s first book of poems is Poems Under Saturn (Princeton University Press, 2011). He has also edited an anthology of poems about Rome for the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series and has recently translated work by Italian poets Giorgio Vigolo (1894—983) and Giovanni Giudici (1924—2011). He is professor of English and creative writing at Boston University. (updated 10/2022)