PARIS STREETS, PARIS NIGHTS, HIGH SOLITUDE

Paris at night, Brassai

Peter Thompson on Léon-Paul Fargue's High Solitude:

"The strange quiddity of Fargue’s Paris—his favorite nooks and disparate, radiant objects—has come through with his exact emphasis: sometimes as plain apparition, sometimes with inexplicable tenderness—even a sense of loss. The “high solitude” that results is the pluperfect intimacy, that is, Fargue’s own. It is unlike certain others: the lyrical intimacy of the Romantics, the analytical intimacy of Proust, the “confessional” intimacy of Robert Lowell and the group that wore that label.

Still, because this intimacy is understated, and sometimes alloyed or even muddled with the strange vibrancy of Surrealism, we are invited into it. We are invited into his pool of lamplight and into a dim uncertainty. “I work at my solitude” – and we are shown how this is done. Fargue’s nightly journey “toward himself” can be our own search for self and meaning."

Scroll to the bottom here to read the full review: Ezra Journal (Fall 2025).

Book synopsis and free excerpt available here.