prepared a collection of poems titled The Tears of the Earth, which he later abandoned, though some pieces were altered for Les Complaintes. Also in 1881 his sister left him alone in Paris to tend to their father who was seriously ill in Tarbes. Around that time, he also began to frequent Le Chat Noir and adopted the style of fumisterie (smoke screening). The origins of this can be found in Willette's panel cartoon, launched in the Parisian cabaret, which centered on a clown called "Pierrot fumiste" and exerted significant influence on Laforgue. When his father died, Laforgue did not attend the funeral. From November 1881 until 1886, he lived in Berlin, working as the French reader for the Empress Augusta, a sort of cultural counselor. He was well paid and could pursue his interests very freely. In 1885, he wrote L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune, widely regarded as his masterpiece . In 1886, he returned to France and married Leah Lee, an Englishwoman. That year, his poetry was published in La Vogue alongside the work of Arthur Rimbaud. His poem "L'Hiver Qui Vient" ("The Coming Winter") was one of these poems, which he believed set the tone for his work to come. While he was able to publish some experimental writings there, his most creative and original work, at least as he saw it, was not published during his lifetime. He died the next year of tuberculosis, four days after his 27th birthday, his wife following him shortly thereafter. When he died, he left an unfinished book of free verse, Des Fleurs de Bonne Volonté, and an unfinished final essay for his series, Moral Tales. Influenced by Walt Whitman, Laforgue was one of the first French poets to write in free verse. In fact, his translations of Whitman's poetry, which were published by La Vogue, are believed to have influenced Laforgue's compatriot Gustave Kahn. Philosophically, he was pessimist and an ardent disciple of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann. His poetry would be one of the major influences on Ezra Pound and the young T. S. Eliot (cf. Prufrock and other observations). Louis Untermeyer wrote, "Prufrock, published in 1917, was immediately hailed as a new manner in English literature and belittled as an echo of Laforgue and the French symbolists to whom Eliot was indebted." Works Soir de Carnaval (ca. 1880) Stéphane Vassiliew (1881, not published until 1943) Les Complaintes (1885)