Blague

The difference is this: one may be obliged to maintain a falsehood from feelings of pride or self-respect, but a blague can be given up without a scruple.

I wonder if the cholera-sick fishing harbour is so sweet, after all! Blague probably. Blague, blague! Brides, love, Naples, joie de vivre, ancient, modern, liberal, conservative, ideal, real, natural—blague. Blague all the way.

The blague differs from the laughter of, say, Hugo's L'Homme qui rit, just as it is distinct from irony, which is never coarse or untrue, and indeed presupposes a whole shared system of values.

But whereas blague, as Pound seems to envisage it, begins with pomp and ends in derision, this poem emerges from circumstances of derision

"Yes," said Farnham, "so the woman told me, and she added that they were authentic of the twelfth century. asked her if she could not throw off a century or two in consideration of the hard times, and she laughed, and said I blagued, and honestly she didn't know how old they were, but it was dro^le, tout de me^me, qu'on pu^t adorer un petit bon Dieu d'une laideur pareille."

"When he blagued just now about his crosses, I thought there was something in him,” whispered the Eastern hero to the painter.

I left the ward with a heavy heart, though blagued to my mother later that he had been in good spirits .

After I had blagued and bullshitted Sandy and his wife for a while with various half-truths, red herrings. and false promises, and they had yelled at me, and I had yelled at them, they finally had to let me go, since Sandy, who is still quite slight of build and has replaced booze with weed, was not going to hit me, after all.