Cirrus@Austlit

'As John Hawke examines in Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement (2009), there has been a long and fruitful engagement between Australian modernism and the French avant-garde poets of the 19th century. This trend has continued into the 21st century through works like Street to Street (2009) by Brian Castro, about the influence of Stephane Mallarme on the Australian poet Christopher Brennan, and David Brooks' study The Sons of Clovis   (2011), which traces the French precursors of the Ern Malley hoax. My own book on From Poet to Novelist : The Orphic Journey of John A. Scott (2022), focuses on how Scott reads the myth of Orpheus through French poets like Mallarme and Arthur Rimbaud. Alex Landragin joins this tradition for both literary and personal reasons: born in France, Landragin's family moved to Australia when he was a child. This essay examines how his debut novel, Crossings (2019), draws on the work of Charles Baudelaire to evaluate the ethical shortcomings of the modern world.' (Introduction)