The Centaur & The Bacchante

Maurice de Guérin's "The Centaur" and "The Bacchante" represent two of the earliest examples of the prose poem. Both pieces are heavily centered in classical Greek mythology, and are deeply entrenched in the natural world. Each piece has its narrator relate in luscious, sustained and highly charged prose their life stories. And both narratives are inextricably wedded to the mountains, hills, valleys and sea. Written in the mid-1830s by de Guérin, these pieces serve as a contrast against Lou...