The "Petits Poemes en Prose" are experiments, and they are also confessions. "Who of us," says Baudelaire in his dedicatory preface, "has not dreamed, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience?" This miracle he has achieved in these bagatelles laboriueses, to use his own words, these astonishing trifles, in which the art is not more novel, precise and perfect than the quality of thought and of...

Yei Theodora Ozaki wanted to put an end to the notion of the Japanese woman as an oppressed, passive geisha-like Madame Butterfly figure. She said, "When I was last in England and Europe, very mistaken notions about Japan and especially about its women existed generally." This collection is the outcome of a suggestion made by Andrew Lang. The tales have been translated from a version written by Sadanami Sanjin. The stories are not literal translations though the Japanese story and all quaint expressions have been faithfully preserved. They are told more with the view to interest young readers...

Yei Theodora Ozaki wanted to put an end to the notion of the Japanese woman as an oppressed, passive geisha-like Madame Butterfly figure. She said, "When I was last in England and Europe, very mistaken notions about Japan and especially about its women existed generally." This collection is the outcome of a suggestion made by Andrew Lang. The tales have been translated from a version written by Sadanami Sanjin. The stories are not literal translations though the Japanese story and all quaint expressions have been faithfully preserved. They are told more with the view to interest young readers...