Théophile Gautier

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was a French poet, novelist and critic, born in Tarbes and raised in Paris, where he first trained as a painter before turning to literature. A champion of Romanticism from the 1830s and the principal voice of "art for art's sake", he served as a journalist and theatre critic for most of his working life, and he is much admired by later poets, including the Parnassians and Baudelaire, who dedicated Les Fleurs du mal to him.

Émaux et Camées (Enamels and Cameos), first published in 1852 and enlarged until 1872, gathers his polished, sculptural short poems, in which he treats verse as a craft of enamel, marble and carved gem; the closing poem, "Art", is its manifesto. The original poems are in French. The English shown here is the translation by Agnes Lee, published in 1903 in the Complete Works of Théophile Gautier.