The prose poems of the 1840s bohemia present a relation of antagonism to any Ideal. The notion of poetic dispossession and the appearance of pathetic characters are the signature themes of a chronicle of a death foretold : that of lyric poetry. In addition, the recycling in this production of the grotesque tropes of tininess and smallness (already a characteristic of romantic prose poems) is a way of regenerating poetry by displacing the loci and objects of utterance. Refusing lyricism thus leads to a renewed poetic voice whose harmony emerges from the meaning created by the allegorisation of the writer and his poetics. Written in prose rather than verse, and telling the story of the poet’s confusion and disarray, the prose poems written by the bohemia of the period transform the status of “minor” into an ethical and formal value of poetry.