His parents, Charles-Benoît Laforgue and Pauline Lacollay, met in Uruguay where his father worked first as a teacher and then a bank employee.

In 1880 he moved in the literary circles of the capital and became a protégé of Paul Bourget, the editor of the review La Vie moderne.

In 1881 Laforgue wrote a novel, Stephane Vassiliew and prepared a collection of poems titled The Tears of the Earth, which he later abandoned, though some pieces were altered for Les Complaintes.

Around that time, he also began to frequent Le Chat Noir and adopted the style of fumisterie (smoke screening).

The origins of this can be found in Willette's panel cartoon, launched in the Parisian cabaret, which centered on a clown called "Pierrot fumiste" and exerted significant influence on Laforgue.

In fact, his translations of Whitman's poetry, which were published by La Vogue, are believed to have influenced Laforgue's compatriot Gustave Kahn.

Louis Untermeyer wrote,[7] "Prufrock, published in 1917, was immediately hailed as a new manner in English literature and belittled as an echo of Laforgue and the French symbolists to whom Eliot was indebted."