Selected
Poems (Oxford World's Classics) by
Paul Verlaine, Martin Sorrell (Editor)
The tempestuous Paul Verlaine was born into a
staid and wealthy family. His father was in the army so, as a
young boy, Verlaine was left solely with his doting mother who
very much spoiled her turbulent and talented son. Even while still
in school, Verlaine showed tremendous promise, especially in
Latin, but he was far too bored to apply himself to the
development of his scholastic abilities. He turned to poetry at
the age of fourteen.
After graduation, Verlaine worked as a clerk in
an insurance agency and later in the Paris City Hall. But at
night, he devoted himself to the poetry he had come to love and to
the Bohemian lifestyle of the Paris cafés where he met other
talented young poets, such as Mallarmé and Anatole France. His
romance with poetry began at the same time as his romance with
liquor, in particular, Absinthe, a hallucinogenic brand of alcohol
popular with artists of that time. He fell in love with a cousin,
who, although she spurned him in love, did help him to publish his
first collection of poems, which he dedicated to her.
Unfortunately, the volume met with little success. Verlaine then
fell in love with and married the sixteen year old Mathilde Maute
and thus began years of quarrels, drunkenness and abuse.
After Paris was seized and made a commune,
Verlaine became a press office for the revolutionaries, but he
lived in constant fear of reprisal. Mathilde gave birth to a son
and the arrival in Paris of the young Rimbaud gave birth to a
homosexual fascination that led Verlaine to abandon his young wife
and son to wander northern France and Belgium with his talented
and equally tempestuous lover. Rimbaud and Verlaine ended up in
London where they found more than enough Bohemian amusements to
fill their days and a group of admirers who helped Verlaine
publish the daring collection of poems he composed during his
travels. Unfortunately, things took a serious turn for the worse.
Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud, an event that not only ended
his relationship with Rimbaud but set Verlaine on the road to a
conversion. Verlaine spent two years in prison for shooting
Rimbaud, during which time he inexplicably converted to
Catholicism and began composing poems about his change of heart.
Verlaine's wife had (understandably) divorced
him, so, when he left prison, he first tried to live,
unsuccessfully, among Trappist monks. Verlaine next traveled to
Germany in order to reconcile with Rimbaud, but Rimbaud violently
rejected him. Next came a period as a high school teacher where
Verlaine was admired for his piety and dignity by everyone from
Tennyson to the local hymn writers. The publication of his
Catholic prison poems (published at his own expense) eventually
brought him literary recognition even though the volume initially
sold only eight copies. His treatise on the art of poetry, which
he composed in prison was adopted by the Symbolist movement who
used it to blaze new trails in poetic form. (Verlaine, however,
distanced himself from the Symbolist movement.)
With the death of his favorite pupil (with whom
he had tried his hand at farming) and the death of his beloved
mother, Verlaine found himself alone in the world. He returned to
a life of drink and debauchery, gaining a notorious reputation
that threatened his growing stature in the literary community.
Deteriorating health forced Verlaine into extended hospital stays,
where, incredibly, he found the peace he had so long sought. When
released, however, he immediately went back to his old ways,
drinking up whatever money he had made and dividing his time
between two aging prostitutes. His literary reputation allowed him
to earn drinking money from his writing, but his later works are
devoid of the magic of his earlier period, save for a collection
of homosexual love poems he published anonymously. To his enormous
credit, he did, however, write a number of works that exposed the
public to many of the writers he knew and admired, including
Rimbaud and Mallarmé. His own growing network of admirers
provided him with money and the French government provided him
with a pension, thus allowing him to accept many public speaking
engagements throughout England. He died of pulmonary congestion in
the home of one of his favorite prostitutes and his funeral in
Paris was attended by thousands.
One of Varlaine's most enduring themes in that
of salvation in love. He, himself, looked for salvation in his
early loves, hoping that each beloved could save him from himself
and his errant ways. Later he tried to find this salvation in the
love of God. He often wrote about unrequited love and forbidden
love, the subject of his last accomplished poems. His handling of
these themes is not particularly profound but the beauty of the
imagery and of the French language give the poems a resonance and
force not found elsewhere.
Verlaine was one of the first poets to focus on
the pure musicality and rhythm of his native French without
concern for classical form. Though his innovations in rhythm
provided the foundation for free verse, Verlaine, himself, always
thought rhyme was a necessity for French poetry. His influence is
so pervasive that a modern reader may not notice the innovations
he developed because his rhythms, imagery and way of depicting his
themes are now so common in modern poetic language. Verlaine's
true talent did not lie in the depth of his subject matter but in
the sound images of his native French. While a good translation is
invaluable, Verlaine is one poet, above all others, who is
absolutely essential to read in French. -- Anonymous Review
